The Lasko Tangent (14 page)

Green and his lawyer showed up just when she had finished. I looked Green over. He was a walking definition of the word “seedy.” It wasn’t his clothes; Green was just one of those people who looked second-rate. He had a ferret face and the kind of furtive eyes that seemed to dart away. His thinning hair was styled in the wet look and his skin was fish-belly pale. Robinson and I shook his hand reluctantly and turned to his lawyer.

It was the lawyer who was a surprise. Green usually came equipped with a low-rent item named Johnson, with a scar on one cheek and a dull, nasty look that made you wonder where he had gone to law school. But this time Green had stepped up in class. All the way to Edmund O’Hair.

O’Hair shook my hand, and sat next to Green. He had white hair and a red Irish face, gone Establishment around the edges. I knew a bit about him. He was a boy from Hell’s Kitchen turned Wall Street hired gun, and he’d never looked back. Now he was chief trial lawyer for a hundred-man law firm, with a tough, atavistic pride in his work, and clients like General Motors. Green wasn’t in his usual line. That suggested possibilities I didn’t much like.

Robinson and I sat at the opposite end of the conference table. I asked O’Hair if his client was ready. He nodded. The reporter’s fingers poised over the machine. I began my litany: right to counsel, Fifth Amendment, and the penalty for perjury. I came down hard on the last.

Then my questions started. Yes, Green had purchased 20,000 shares of Lasko Devices on July 14 and 15, through three different brokers. Yes, he still had the shares. I moved in, feeling O’Hair’s watchful eyes.

“For what reason did you place those orders?”

Green’s eyes slid off toward a corner. “I thought it was a good investment.”

“Did anyone specific suggest it?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Do you know a man named William Lasko?”

He stared at the curtains. “I can’t recall.”

“Have you ever spoken to a William Lasko?”

“I don’t remember having done that.” He had a thin, reedy voice. Lying didn’t improve it.

“Speak up, Mr. Green. Did you discuss your purchase of Lasko stock with William Lasko at any time prior to July 15?”

“I’m not sure.” His whine took on a phony, insulted quality.

“It’s a simple question,” I snapped. “Yes or no?”

He shook his head stubbornly. “I can’t. I don’t know.”

“How did you finance your purchases?”

“I’m trying to think.” He spoke to the ceiling in feigned recollection. “I believe I borrowed the funds from the First Seminole Bank of Miami.”

“How much?”

“Four hundred thousand.”

“When did you borrow the money?”

“About the first week of July.”

“With whom did you make the arrangements?”

“A Mr. Billings. He’s a vice-president.” The sentence had an incomplete sound.

“Did you discuss the First Seminole Bank with someone else at any time prior to the loan?”

“I can’t recall doing so.”

“What about discussions with Mr. Lasko?”

“I can’t remember.”

I shifted abruptly. “Who’s paying for Mr. O’Hair’s services here today?”

O’Hair broke in. “I’m directing my client not to answer that. It’s privileged.”

“The hell it is.”

“Then take us to court and try to compel an answer.”

I stopped, frustrated. O’Hair stared back impassively. He would stick to it. Green was either more afraid of someone else, or O’Hair figured I could be fixed somehow, or maybe stopped before I ever got that far. And he knew that I didn’t have proof. I asked several similar questions and got similar answers. I noted for the record that Mr. Green would be recalled at a later date. Then I quit.

O’Hair and Green rose. Lying made Green nervous. He looked weary, and he left quickly. O’Hair got ready to follow, but I stopped him. “When we call Green back, Mr. O’Hair, it won’t be so much fun. I know you’ll remind him of that.”

O’Hair shook his head with a slight smile and walked out. So did the reporter, with her own half-smile. I turned to Robinson. “Being lied to always makes me hungry. Can I buy you lunch?”

“Sure.” He smiled. “You know, that kind of thing makes you wish for thumbscrews and rubber hoses.”

“Damn O’Hair anyhow, the smug bastard. It’s clear Lasko put Green up to it. Or else Green would have denied it without the weasel words. But all we have on the record is the First Seminole Bank. Can you dig around to see who owns the big interests in the bank?”

“OK. I’ve got a friend I can call at the Florida Corporations Commission. I’ll meet you downstairs in fifteen minutes.”

We walked out together. Robinson headed for the telephone. I went back to my office.

The phone rang. It was Woods. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. Still want to go to St. Maarten?”

That threw me off. “Sure.”

“When would you go?”

“Tomorrow.”

Woods paused. “OK,” he said, “go ahead. I’ll tell McGuire.” His phone clicked.

I stared at the phone, surprised. But there was no use puzzling over a break when you got one. I hung up.

Eighteen

By two the next afternoon, my airplane hovered over St. Maarten. It was green and white, surrounded by vivid blue. I wished it were winter, and vacation.

I felt the searing heat as soon as we landed. By the time I got my bags and checked through customs, I was moist and enervated. I walked toward a line of cars parked expectantly at the end of the airstrip. The nearest one was an old Oldsmobile. The driver leaned against it with elaborate casualness. I don’t give a damn for you, his face said, but you’re a living.

I didn’t give a damn either. “Give me a lift to Philipsburg?”

He nodded and tossed my bags carelessly into his trunk. I opened my own door. Welcome to friendly St. Maarten.

We drove in silence through low green brush on a choppy slash of dirt and rock, past huts of wood and corrugated metal. It wasn’t hard to see: tourists arrived each winter like migratory birds and were chauffered past the huts, chattering about the white sand and blue water. They didn’t see the stony faces or shabby huts; if they had, they wouldn’t have chattered. The ones that saw felt guilty, and went to Palm Springs next year. And the natives despised them all and took their money. And despised them more. Which was stupid, in a way. Looking at the black rock, you knew the natives needed the tourists, not the other way around. We passed another hut, with a sad skinny goat tethered to it. Like a lot of things, it was tough to get moral about it, either way. But I was probably going to Palm Springs next year.

We came up on Philipsburg. It was not a likely spot for a Lasko enterprise. The town was mostly one-story stucco, with some metal and wood signs that needed paint, scattered along a few cramped streets. It had a desultory, absent-minded look, as if it had been thrown together a little at a time. The asphalt streets were crowded by trucks, jeeps, and some cars, most of them old enough to enhance the junkyard ambiance. The streets themselves were quiet and veined with cracks and lent the parked cars and trucks an abandoned quality. A few palms stood on scattered patches of grass, along with some leafy shade trees I couldn’t identify. The main thing was the heat; it was so wet you could almost see it. It seemed to have seeped into the wood and the metal and the cracks in the sidewalk. And into the movements of the few islanders—a listless amble. I felt a little like that myself.

The driver dropped me at the Government House, where the police were. This neighborhood was better—some large two-story white frames, freshly painted. The government building had a red tiled roof and a long covered porch. I pulled back the screen door and stepped into a pale green reception room presided over by a serious young black man in gold-framed glasses. I put down my luggage and asked for Inspector De Jonge. He directed me to a wooden chair in front of his desk and picked up the phone.

I waited for about five minutes. Then a bulky man in khaki slacks and a short-sleeved shirt jogged down the stairway. He came up to me, and shook my hand.

“Mr. Paget, I’m Henrik De Jonge. Would you care to come to my office?” His voice was soft and lightly accented.

“Yes, thanks.”

I followed him up the stairs and around the corner, into a broad hall that had once been the second floor of someone’s home. De Jonge’s office was on the left, also light green. It was small but neat, with a large overhead fan. He had a wooden desk, very uncluttered, and one chair stuck in front of it. The fan and shade made the office bearable, no more. I took the chair and looked around. The walls were bare save for an official portrait of a much younger Queen Juliana and Prince Bernhard, pre-Lockheed. De Jonge’s age was harder to peg. He had a full thatch of dirty-blonde hair, a creased young-old face, and clear blue eyes, but he slumped tiredly in his chair. I put the slump down to the white man’s burden and guessed late thirties. I kept wondering how he got there.

De Jonge was playing with a meerschaum pipe, watching me watch him. “Well, Mr. Paget, what can we do for you?”

“It’s really no more than I explained on the telephone yesterday. As far as I know, we’re not investigating any Dutch nationals. Just the one American. William Lasko.”

He pulled a tobacco pouch from his desk drawer by feel, still looking at me. “And you want to visit Mr. Lasko’s company here.”

“That’s right.”

He carefully pinched some tobacco into his pipe. “And this relates to what, precisely?”

“We suspect—we don’t know, but we suspect—that the acquisition of Carib Imports may relate to some stock market activities by Lasko, done in America and illegal under American law.” I searched for a formula that sounded safe. “All my agency really wants is information as to where at home we should look. There’s a man at the company I’d like to talk with—a Peter Martinson.”

He lit his pipe, glancing sideways at the picture, as if Juliana were watching him. “After you called, I spoke to the Governor-General’s office on Curaçao. I can assist you to the extent of visiting the company and getting you the records you requested.” He sounded very cautious, like a bureaucrat. The thought must have crossed my face; his tone changed abruptly. “You understand, Mr. Paget, that these islands are very poor. We encourage foreign investment. The philosophy is—and it is not my choice—that one does not have to be a saint to do business in the Antilles.”

That was hardly a sunburst. But it was an explanation of a sort, the best he could make. I didn’t have his job and didn’t want it. “I understand, Inspector. We appreciate any assistance you can give.” I looked at my watch. “Have you time to visit the company now?”

He stood. “I can manage it. We can find a jeep and driver downstairs.”

The driver was a young black policeman named Duval, with sharp eyes and a strong grip. He steered us to a jeep and piloted us expertly through the narrow streets to the outskirts of Philipsburg. A corrugated metal warehouse stood in a patch of dirt and rock behind a scrofulous strip of cement. The warehouse was long, low, and singed with rust. A metal door was the only front entrance. We got out and approached it. Screwed next to the door was a heavy bronze sign, incongruously new, reading “Carib Imports.” I looked at the warehouse, a little amused. Pictures of this one would never grace the company bulletin.

We stepped inside, into a passageway between metal partitions. The partitions looked new and formed three offices on each side. The offices were empty. The passageway led through them to a large warehouse area, grubby bare cement half-filled with boxes and half-lit by hanging fluorescent tubes. A couple of workmen in sleeveless T-shirts were restacking boxes in a corner, clearing space. On the far wall of the warehouse a half-opened door admitted a crack of sunlight and some wet air. In one corner a wooden stall stood open, a dirty toilet visible. I craned my neck, searching for someone who looked like a Peter Martinson.

I settled for the only white face I saw, a stocky, blunt-featured man with thinning red hair. He wore a blue short-sleeved shirt and leaned in a far corner idly watching the workmen. We stood at the end of the partition until he spotted us. His gaze across the warehouse seemed to flick past the two police, then settle on me, as if I were expected. He gave the workmen a last careless inspection and sauntered over with a kind of calculated aggression.

“Yes?” he asked. His tone was as expressionless as his face.

I let De Jonge do the talking. He gave the man an even stare, neither impressed nor unimpressed. “I’m Inspector De Jonge,” he began, “and this”—he nodded at me—“is Mr. Paget, who is here representing the United States government. We wish to speak to Mr. Martinson.”

The man spoke with a heavy Dutch accent. “Mr. Martinson is not here.”

“When may he be expected?”

“I don’t know.” His voice seemed to push us toward the door.

“Who are you?”

“My name is Kendrick.” Kendrick was definitely not interested in talk. Each word had a grudging quality.

“What is your position here?”

“Working. Not talking.”

De Jonge’s voice was patient. “Nonetheless, we would like to talk for a moment.”

Kendrick shrugged and led us silently to a partitioned office nearest the door. He moved behind a bare metal desk and sat. De Jonge and I took two chairs across from him. Duval stood apart, marking Kendrick with sharp eyes as if filing him away.

De Jonge was talking to Kendrick. “I think,” he said, “that Mr. Paget wishes to make some inquiries.”

I nodded. “My agency is curious as to the business of this company.” Kendrick looked back at me in silence. He didn’t ask what my agency was or why we were curious. I didn’t like that, any more than I liked Martinson’s vague absence.

“What exactly is the business of Carib Imports?” I asked.

He folded his arms. “I am not authorized to speak for the company. You’ll have to ask Mr. Martinson when he returns.”

“Hasn’t anyone told you?”

The sarcasm stirred him a little. He flushed. “It should be obvious. We import electronic chips.”

“From Yokama Electric?”

His eyes flickered. “That is not a familiar name.”