Hauck did.
Vito grinned widely. “Out of Tortola—in the BVIs … Whaddaya know about that—Dolphin fucking Oil!”
“In Tortola?”
Vito nodded. “A lot of companies are being set up there now. It’s like a mini – Cayman Islands. Avoids taxes. Keeps the funds out from under the eye of the U.S. government. As well as the SEC, if they’re public. Far as I can tell, and I’ve only been at it a couple of hours, Dolphin’s basically just a holding company. No revenues or profits of any kind. No transactions. A shell. The management seems to be just a bunch of fancy barristers down there. Check out the board—everybody’s got an LLC behind his name. Far as I can tell, it basically belongs to this investment company that’s situated down there as well. Falcon Partners.”
“Falcon … never heard of it.” Hauck shook his head.
“You’re not supposed to have heard of it, Ty. That’s why the hell it’s there! It’s some kind of private investment partnership. Or at least was. The fund was dissolved and the assets redistributed back to its limited partners earlier this year. Took me a while to figure out why. I was hoping to try to get a list of who the partners were, but it’s totally private—buttoned up. Whoever they are, the money’s probably long back to wherever it came from by now.”
Hauck scanned over the one-page company summary of Falcon. He knew in his gut he was getting close.
Whoever owned Dolphin had been engaged in some kind of cover-up. They had used empty tankers but declared that they were filled with oil. Pappy had stumbled onto it, and they’d tried to shut him up, but whatever they were hiding, he wasn’t the kind that shut up easily, and it had ended up costing him his son. Seen enough now? Dolphin led to Falcon.
Close enough, Hauck felt, the hairs raised expectantly on his arms. “How the hell do we get to Falcon, Vito?”
The detective was staring at him. “What’s the point of all this, Ty?”
“The point?”
Vito shrugged. “First time since I’ve known you you’re not up front with me. My spies tell me you’re on leave from the department.”
“Maybe your spies told you why.”
“Something personal, is all. Some kind of case that’s consuming you.”
“It’s called murder, Vito, no matter who I’m working for. And if this was all just so personal”—Hauck looked back at him, curling a smile—“I’d have called Match.com, not you.”
Vito grinned. “Just warning an old friend to stay within the boundaries, that’s all.”
The private investigator took out a folded piece of paper from his jacket pocket and pushed it across the table. “Whoever Falcon is, Ty, they wanted to keep it secret. The board’s pretty much the same legal functionaries as Dolphin.”
Hauck scanned down the page. Nothing. Fucking close.
“One thing, though,” Vito added. “I mentioned that Falcon was comprised of a bunch of limited partners who want to remain secret. But the general partner is listed. In the investment agreement, plain as day. It’s the outfit who manages the funds.”
Hauck turned the page. Staring back at him, there was a name. Vito had highlighted it in yellow.
When Hauck’s gaze fell on it, his heart sank a little, as opposed to the leap he’d always imagined. He knew where this was about to lead.
Harbor Capital. The general partner.
Harbor was the firm that belonged to Karen Friedman’s husband.
“That what you’re looking for?” Vito asked, watching Hauck dwell on the page.
“Yeah, that’s what I’m looking for, buddy.” Hauck sighed.
The man broke through the surface of the glistening turquoise water in the remote Caribbean cove.
No one around. Not even a name for this place, just a speck on the map. The only sounds were the caws of a handful of frigate birds as they tumbled out of the sky into the sea searching for prey. The man looked back at the perfect half circle of white sand beach, palm trees swaying in the languid breeze on the shore.
He could be anywhere. Anywhere in the world.
Why did he choose here?
Twenty yards away, his boat bobbed on the tranquil tide. What seemed like a lifetime ago, it occurred to him, he had told his wife he could spend the rest of his life in just such a place as this. A place without markets or indices. Without cell phones or TV. A place where no one looked for you.
And where there was no one to find you.
Every day that part of his life became a more distant part of his mind. The thought had a strange appeal to him.
The rest of his life.
He raised his face into the warm rays of the sun. His hair was cut short now, shaved in a way that might make his children roll their eyes, some old guy trying to appear cool. His body was fit and trim. He no longer wore glasses. His face was covered in a stubbly growth. He had a local’s tan.
And money.
Enough money to last forever. If he could manage it right. And a new name. Hanson. Steven Hanson. A name he had paid for. A name no one knew.
Not his wife, his kids.
Not those who might want to find him.
In this complicated world of computers and personal histories, he had simply gone, poof. Disappeared. One life ended—with remorse, regret, at the pain he knew he’d caused, the trust he’d broken. Still, he’d had to do it. It had been necessary. To save them. To save himself.
One life ended—and another sprang up.
When the moment had presented itself, he could not turn it down.
He hardly even thought of it now. The blast. One minute he had gone back from the front of the car to make a call, then flash! A black, rattling cloud with a core of orange heat. Like a furnace. The clothes burned off your back. Hurled against the wall. In a tangle of people screaming. Black smoke everywhere, the dark tide rushing over him. He was sure he was dead. He remembered thinking, through the haze, this way was best. It solved everything.
Just die.
When he came to, he looked at the ravaged train car. Every place he had been just a moment before was gone. Obliterated. The car in which he’d sat. The people around him, who were reading the paper, listening to their iPods. Gone. In a horrifying ocean of flame. He coughed up smoke. Got to get out of here, he thought. His brain was ringing. Numb. He staggered out, onto the platform. Horrible sights—blood everywhere, the smell of cordite and charred flesh. People moaning, calling out for help. What could he do? He had to get out, let Karen know he was alive.
Then it all became startlingly clear.
This was how. This was what had been presented to him.
He could die.
He stumbled over something. A body. Its face almost unrecognizable. In the chaos he knew he needed to be someone else. He felt around in the man’s trousers. In the smoke-filled darkness, the whole station black. He found it. He didn’t even look at the name. What did it matter? Then he began to run. His wits suddenly clearer than they’d ever been. This was how! Running, stumbling over the flow, not toward the entrance but to the other end of the tracks. Away from the flames. People from the rear cars were rushing there. The uptown entrances. Away from the flames.