The Partner (3 page)

Ten minutes passed. He tried to move his head, without success. He could see a few feet on either side. The room was dark except for a small light somewhere in a corner behind him.

The door opened, then closed. Guy entered alone. He walked straight to Danny Boy, placed his fingers on the edge of the plywood, and said, “Hello, Patrick.”

Patrick closed his eyes. Danilo Silva was behind him now, gone forever. An old trusted friend vanished, just like that. The simple life on Rua Tiradentes faded away with Danilo; his precious anonymity ripped away from him with the pleasant words, “Hello, Patrick.”

For four years, he had often wondered how it would feel if they caught him. Would there be a sense of relief? Of justice? Any excitement at the prospect of going home to face the music?

Absolutely not! At the moment, Patrick was terror-stricken. Practically naked and strapped down like an animal, he knew the next few hours would be insufferable.

“Can you hear me, Patrick?” Guy asked, peering downward, and Patrick smiled, not because he wanted to but because an urge he couldn’t control found something amusing.

The drug was taking effect, Guy noted. Sodium thiopental is a short-acting barbiturate that must be administered in very controlled doses. It was extremely difficult to find the proper level of consciousness where one would be susceptible to interrogation.
Too small a dose, and the resistance is not broken. A bit too much, and the subject is simply knocked out.

The door opened and closed. Another American slipped into the room to listen, but Patrick could not see him.

“You’ve been sleeping for three days, Patrick,” Guy said. It was closer to five hours, but how could Patrick know? “Are you hungry or thirsty?”

“Thirsty,” Patrick said.

Guy unscrewed the top from a small bottle of mineral water, and carefully poured it between Patrick’s lips.

“Thanks,” he said, then smiled.

“Are you hungry?” Guy asked again.

“No. What do you want?”

Guy slowly sat the mineral water on a table and leaned closer to Patrick’s face. “Let’s settle something first, Patrick. While you were sleeping, we took your fingerprints. We know precisely who you are, so can we please forgo the initial denials?”

“Who am I?” Patrick asked with another grin.

“Patrick Lanigan.”

“From where?”

“Biloxi, Mississippi. Born in New Orleans. Law school at Tulane. Wife, one daughter, age six. Missing now for over four years.”

“Bingo. That’s me.”

“Tell me, Patrick, did you watch your own burial service?”

“Is that a crime?”

“No. Just a rumor.”

“Yes. I watched it. I was touched by it. Didn’t know I had so many friends.”

“How nice. Where did you hide after your burial?”

“Here and there.”

A shadow emerged from the left and a hand adjusted the valve at the bottom of the drip bag. “What’s that?” Patrick asked.

“A cocktail,” Guy answered, nodding at the other man, who retreated to the corner.

“Where’s the money, Patrick?” Guy asked with a smile.

“What money?”

“The money you took with you.”

“Oh, that money,” Patrick said, and breathed deeply. His eyelids closed suddenly and his body relaxed. Seconds passed and his chest moved slower, up and down.

“Patrick,” Guy said, gently shaking his arm. No response, just the sounds of a deep sleep.

The dosage was immediately reduced, and they waited.

The FBI file on Jack Stephano was a quick study; former Chicago detective with two degrees in criminology, former high-priced bounty hunter, expert marksman, self-taught master of search and espionage, and now the owner of a shady D.C. firm which apparently charged huge fees to locate missing people and conduct expensive surveillance.

The FBI file on Patrick Lanigan filled eight boxes. It made sense that one file would attract the other. There was no shortage of people who wanted Patrick found and brought home. Stephano’s group had been hired to do it.

Stephano’s firm, Edmund Associates, occupied the top floor of a nondescript building on K Street, six blocks from the White House. Two agents waited in the lobby by the elevator as two others stormed Stephano’s office. They almost scuffled with a heavy secretary who insisted Mr. Stephano was too busy at the moment. They found him at his desk, alone, chatting happily on the phone. His smile vanished when they barged in with badges flashing.

“What the hell is this!” Stephano demanded. The wall behind his desk was a richly detailed map of the world, complete with little red blinking lights stuck on green continents. Which one was Patrick?

“Who hired you to find Patrick Lanigan?” asked Agent One.

“That’s confidential,” Stephano sneered. He’d been a cop for years and was not easy to intimidate.

“We got a call from Brazil this afternoon,” said Agent Two.

So did I, thought Stephano, stunned by this but desperately trying to appear unfazed. His jaw dropped an inch and his shoulders sagged as his mind raced wildly through all the possible theories that would bring these two thugs here. He’d talked to Guy and no one else. Guy was utterly dependable. Guy would never talk to anyone, especially the FBI. It couldn’t be Guy.

Guy used a cell phone from the mountains of eastern Paraguay. There was no way the call could have been intercepted.

“Are you there?” asked Two smartly.

“Yeah,” he said, hearing but not hearing.

“Where’s Patrick?” asked One.

“Maybe he’s in Brazil.”

“Where in Brazil?”

Stephano managed a shrug, a stiff one. “I dunno. It’s a big country.”

“We have an outstanding warrant for him,” One said. “He belongs to us.”

Stephano shrugged again, this time a more casual one as if to say, “Big deal.”

“We want him,” demanded Two. “And now.”

“I can’t help you.”

“You’re lying,” snarled One, and with that both of them joined together in front of Stephano’s desk and glared down. Agent Two did the talking. “We have men downstairs, outside, around the corner, and outside your home in Falls Church. We’ll watch every move you make from now until we get Lanigan.”

“Fine. You can leave now.”

“And don’t hurt him, okay? We’ll be happy to nail your ass if anything happens to our boy.”

They left in step and Stephano locked the door behind them. His office had no windows. He stood before his map of the world. Brazil had three red lights, which meant little. His head shook slowly, in complete bewilderment.

He spent so much time and money covering his tracks.

His firm was known in certain circles as the best at taking the money and disappearing into the shadows. He’d never been caught before. No one ever knew who Stephano was stalking.

Three

Another shot to rouse him. Then a shot to sensitize the nerves.

The door opened loudly and the room was suddenly lit. It filled with the voices of many men, busy men, all with a purpose, all with heavy feet, it seemed. Guy gave orders, and someone growled in Portuguese.

Patrick opened and closed his eyes. Then he opened them for good as the drugs found their mark. They hovered over him, busy hands everywhere. His underwear was cut off, without much finesse, and he lay bare and exposed. An electric razor began buzzing, hitting his skin sharply at points on the chest, groin, thighs, and calves. He bit his lip and grimaced, his heart hammered away, though the pain had yet to start.

Guy hovered above him, his hands still but his eyes watching everything.

Patrick made no effort to speak, but just to be safe, more hands appeared from above and slapped a thick
strip of silver duct tape over his mouth. Cold electrodes were stuck to the shaved points with alligator clips, and he heard a loud voice ask something about “current.” Tape was then applied over the electrodes. He thought he counted eight sharp spots on his flesh. Maybe nine. His nerves were jumping. In his darkness, he could feel the hands moving above him. The tape stuck hard to skin.

Two or three men were busy in a corner, adjusting a device Patrick could not see. Wires were strung like Christmas lights across his body.

They were not going to kill him, he kept telling himself, though death might be welcome at some point in the next few hours. He had imagined this nightmare a thousand times in four years. He had prayed it would never happen, but he always knew it would. He always knew they were back there, somewhere in the shadows, tracking and bribing and looking under rocks.

Patrick always knew. Eva was too naive.

He closed his eyes, tried to breathe steadily and tried to control his thoughts as they scurried above him, preparing his body for whatever lay ahead. The drugs made his pulse race and his skin itch.

I don’t know where the money is. I don’t know where the money is. He almost chanted this aloud. Thank God for the tape across his mouth. I don’t know where the money is.

He called Eva
every
day between 4 P.M. and 6 P.M. Every day. Seven days of the week. No exceptions unless one was planned. He knew in his pounding heart that she had moved the money by now, that it
was safely hidden in two dozen places around the world. And he didn’t know where it was.

But would they believe him?

The door opened again, and two or three figures left the room. The activity around his plywood cot was slowing. Then it was quiet. He opened his eyes and the IV drip bag was gone.

Guy was looking down at him. He gently took one corner of the silver duct tape and pulled it free so Patrick could talk, if he so chose.

“Thanks,” Patrick said.

The Brazilian doctor appeared again from the left and stuck a needle in Patrick’s arm. The syringe was long and filled with nothing but colored water, but how could Patrick know?

“Where is the money, Patrick?” Guy asked.

“I don’t have any money,” Patrick replied. His head ached from being pressed into the plywood. The tight plastic band across his forehead was hot. He hadn’t moved in hours.

“You will tell me, Patrick. I promise you’ll tell me. You can do it now, or you can do it ten hours from now when you’re half-dead. Make it easy on yourself.”

“I don’t want to die, okay?” Patrick said, his eyes filled with fear. They will not kill me, he told himself.

Guy lifted a small, simple, nasty device from beside Patrick and displayed it close to his face. It was a chrome lever with a black rubber tip, mounted on a small square block with two wires running from it. “See this,” Guy said, as if Patrick had a choice. “When the lever is up, the circuit is broken.” Guy delicately gripped the rubber tip with his thumb and index finger, and slowly lowered it. “But when it
moves down to this little contact point here, the circuit is closed and the current moves through the wires to the electrodes attached to your skin.” He stopped the lever just centimeters from the contact point. Patrick held his breath. The room was still.

“Would you like to see what happens when the shock is delivered?” Guy asked.

“No.”

“Then where’s the money?”

“I don’t know. I swear.”

Twelve inches in front of Patrick’s nose, Guy pushed the lever down to the contact point. The shock was instant and horrific—hot bolts of current ripped into his flesh. Patrick jerked and the nylon ropes stretched. He closed his eyes fiercely and clamped his teeth together in a determined effort not to scream, but gave up after a split second and let out a piercing shriek that was heard throughout the cabin.

Guy lifted the lever, waited a few seconds for Patrick to catch his breath and open his eyes, then said, “That’s level one, the lowest current. I have five levels, and I’ll use them all if necessary. Eight seconds of level five will kill you, and I’m perfectly willing to do that as a last resort. Are you listening, Patrick?”

His flesh still burned from his chest to his ankles. His heart pumped furiously and he exhaled quickly.

“Are you listening?” Guy repeated.

“Yes.”

“Your situation is really quite simple. Tell me where the money is, and you leave this room alive. Eventually, we’ll take you back to Ponta Porã, and you can carry on as you see fit. We have no interest in notifying the FBI.” Guy paused for drama and toyed with
the chrome lever. “If, however, you refuse to tell me where the money is, then you’ll never leave this room alive. Do you understand, Patrick?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Where’s the money?”

“I swear I don’t know. If I knew, I’d tell you.”

Guy snapped the lever down without a word, and the currents hit like boiling acid. “I don’t know!” Patrick screamed in anguish. “I swear I don’t know.”

Guy raised the lever, and waited a few seconds for Patrick to recover. Then, “Where’s the money?” he asked calmly.

“I swear I don’t know.”

Another scream filled the cabin, and escaped through the open windows, into the crevice between the mountains where it echoed lightly before losing itself in the jungle.

The apartment in Curitiba was near the airport. Eva told the cabdriver to wait in the street. She left her overnight bag in the trunk, but carried her thick briefcase with her.

She took the elevator to the ninth floor where the hallway was dark and quiet. It was almost 11 P.M. She moved slowly, eyes looking in all directions. She unlocked the door to the apartment, then quickly disarmed the security system with another key.

Danilo was not in the apartment, and though this was not a surprise it was still a disappointment. No message on the phone recorder. No sign of him whatsoever. Her anxiety reached another level.

She could not stay long, because the men who had
Danilo might be coming there. Though she knew exactly what to do, her movements were forced and slow. The apartment had only three rooms, and she searched them quickly.

The papers she wanted were in a locked file cabinet in the den. She opened the three heavy drawers and neatly placed the paperwork in a handsome leather suitcase he kept in a nearby closet. The bulk of the files contained financial records, though not much for such a large fortune. His paper trail was as narrow as possible. He came here once a month to hide records from his home, and at least once a month he shredded the old stuff.