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  Krystal watched him drive away in his muddy Jeep. He must do some off-roading in that thing. It said something about Wolf being a risk taker, and she liked that. And he was smart.

  CHAPTER 26

  Krystal drove straight to Strachey’s house. She arrived just as they were sitting down to dinner, and Amy insisted she join them in a true Southern meal of fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, and corn on the cob. Thomas Jefferson Dawson watched pridefully as his grandson worked diligently on a corn cob. Robert Thomas had adopted the “typewriter” technique.

  “That’s my boy,” beamed Thomas Jefferson, “just look at him go after that corn.”

  “Daddy,” said Amy with a smile that belied the admonition, “it’s not polite to comment on the eating habits of others at the table.”

  Her father pretended to be offended. “I’m just admiring my grandson’s skill,” he said. “Ain’t he efficient, though? There won’t be a kernel left on that cob when he’s done with it.”

  Robert Thomas paused in his demolition of the corn to look at his grandfather. “Papaw, you said ‘ain’t’ again.”

  “Oh,” said Thomas Jefferson, “I’m sorry. I just keep forgettin’ my grammar.”

  Robert Thomas nodded sagely, apparently satisfied with his grandfather’s response, and resumed attacking the corn.

  The meal was completed with apple pie, and Krystal, Amy, and Strachey retired to the living room while Thomas Jefferson took his grandson upstairs to prepare for bed.

  Strachey was anxious to hear about the meeting with Wolf and leaned forward, hands on knees to listen to Krystal’s account. When she had finished, he stood and walked to a side table where he opened a large, burled walnut humidor and withdrew a postprandial cigar. He clipped the cap and held a match to the foot before taking a draw of fragrant smoke. Krystal and Amy waited for him to speak, both aware that it would be a faux pas to interrupt the ritual.

  “This is downright interesting,” he said after resuming his seat. “Do you think Curry sent him, or was he telling you the truth?”

  Krystal frowned. “I can’t be sure. He seemed sincere, but he’s a cop, which means he follows orders.”

  “That wasn’t always the case with you,” smiled Strachey.

  “I always had a good reason.”

  “Maybe Wolf has a good reason, too.”

  “So, you think we should trust him … tell him about Wang and the bank thing?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet, but we might need an ally in the police before this is over. There has to be somebody to make an arrest.”

  “An arrest seems like wishful thinking at this point. So far, we’ve got nothing that would pin the murder on Yang.”

  Amy had said nothing until now. “But according to the bank documents Wang is breaking the law, isn’t he?”

  “He’s breaking some kind of law, for sure,” said Strachey, “and he’s stealing from the bank. But some of it is quite abstruse. Double bookkeeping is certainly against the rules of any honest business. I’m sure there is a list of federal banking regulations he’s broken, apart from the theft. In and of itself, what we’ve discovered could hurt the bank big time and probably cause a terrific scandal if it becomes public. There is plenty of motive for murder there, but so far, we’ve found nothing provable apart from the financial crimes.”

  “You still don’t think Pushkin was attempting to blackmail Yang?” asked Krystal, recalling Amy’s earlier speculation. “He brought the evidence home and apparently hid what he’d discovered from his boss, Kim Stevens. That’s a little strange, isn’t it, if Pushkin didn’t have blackmail in mind?”

  “Yeah. Why would he hide something like this from his boss? It’s something to keep in mind,” agreed Strachey. “Maybe …” He paused in mid-sentence as if a thought had struck him.

  Amy could read him like a book. “OK, out with it. What are you thinking?”

  “Well,” he started, “maybe we should shake the tree, see what falls out. The longer this drags on, the worst it is for Padruig.”

  Krystal gave him a wary look. “OK,” she said, “what do you have in mind?”

  “Look, nothing’s happening, right? We could watch Yang for a year and not find anything. He has no reason to deviate from the norm now that Pushkin is out of the way. Padruig is the very public prime suspect, and behind the scenes, the feebies and spooks have put everything else on hold. Wolf confirmed it.”

  “Right,” she nodded. He’s about to propose another spook idea, she thought.

  “I can guess what you’re thinking, but just hear me out. So, even if Pushkin wasn’t trying on some blackmail, he was in a position to do so. Given Yang’s phone call to him before the murder, Yang knew he had something, and he was none too pleased about it.”

  Amy and Krystal nodded their agreement.

  “So,” he continued while trying to gauge their reaction, “even if Pushkin wasn’t blackmailing Yang, maybe we could.”

  Krystal and Amy stared at him for a few beats, their expressions unreadable. Strachey’s cigar had gone out, and he fussed with it, knocking the ash off into a large crystal ashtray and re-lighting it with another wooden match. He shook the match out and asked, “What do you think?”

  Amy asked, “And how do you propose we go about this exactly?”

  “We could call him and make some threats,” he said through a cloud of blue smoke

  “Who could call him?” asked Amy.

  Krystal still wasn’t sold on the idea. “But I thought you agreed we shouldn’t step over the line.”

  “Well,” said Strachey defensively, “I can’t think of anything better. Can you? We’re running out of time to figure this thing out. Our client might actually be arraigned and put on trial. There’s no telling how deep the feds can reach into Charlotte’s justice system.”

  Strachey was now puffing furiously on his cigar making the tip burn bright orange. “What if,” he continued, “Natasha Pushkin called him and threatened to expose his scam?”

  “He must know Pushkin had the incriminating documents,” said Amy. “Otherwise he wouldn’t have called Pushkin.”

  Strachey nodded. “Like we said, Yang has a lot to lose – a hundred million.”

  “We can’t get close to Natasha,” said Krystal. “The Feds are all over her, probably have her house surrounded now with instructions to shoot Robert Strachey on sight. And Yang knows the incriminating files are encrypted. He probably feels safe.”

  “Right you are,” he said. “But he would still want to get his hands on them. And it doesn’t necessarily have to be Natasha herself who calls. Amy can fake a pretty good Russian accent. And if Yang gets any murderous ideas about Natasha, he’d have to fight his way through a security cordon. Natasha’s safety is not a concern.”

  Amy had been thinking about her husband’s idea. “You think ‘Natasha’ should demand a blackmail payment. If he pays without trying to kill her, it would mean he’s not our murderer.”

  “Not necessarily, but something like that,” he said.

  Krystal still was not satisfied. “Even if he pays up or shows up with gun, what are we supposed to do? We can’t arrest him.”

  “There may be a way around that,” said Strachey.

  CHAPTER 27

  On weekends Raymond Yang liked to spend time with his kids, twins - a boy and a girl - 10 years old. Soon, he knew, they would enter that stage of life when children become rebellious and begin to think their parents are ogres. Raymond intended to enjoy their childhood before they grew out of it. This Saturday morning, they had planned a full day at his country club, Quail Hollow. He’d play a round of golf while his wife and the twins enjoyed the pool, followed by the Saturday buffet.

  Life was good except for THE THING, which hovered ever in the back of his mind, a dark backdrop that often could be glimpsed through the scenery as though everything else was an artificial construct. At times he felt like a high wire walker on a rubber band, and it had become worse over the pas
t month.

  The family returned home, exhausted at 4:00 PM. The twins were squirmy and quarrelsome with fatigue. Yang’s wife, Susan, led them to the entertainment room and put some cartoons on the 100-inch flat screen, then returned to the living room where Yang had flopped into an overstuffed chair. “Raymond,” she said, “you’re still in your sweaty golf clothes. Why don’t you go up and take a nice shower? I’ll have a pitcher of martinis waiting when you come back down.”

  He didn’t feel like going upstairs. He knew his wife meant well, but it still felt like nagging. He didn’t feel like moving, at all. His golf had been atrocious, ending with a score in the nineties, way above his average. It had put him in a bad mood which had persisted throughout the day.

  “You’ve hardly spoken since lunch,” said Susan. “Is something the matter?”

  “Lousy golf today,” he mumbled.

  “Well, next time will be better. Now go take a shower and put on some fresh things. It might help. Golf is not that important, you know.”

  “The hell it isn’t,” he growled. But he stood and made for the stairs.

  The hot water coursing over his body did make him feel better. He closed his eyes and let it pour over him for a full five minutes, twisting the temperature knob to its highest setting. There have been no repercussions yet, and weeks have passed. Everyone is convinced the old tightwad took out his brother and sister-in-law over some ancient feud that hardly anyone even remembers. Regrettable in many ways, but still a stroke of luck that they were there. The diversion of attention away from Davis was an unexpected benefit.

  He stepped out of the shower and dried himself with a soft, Egyptian cotton towel, wrapped it around his waist and wiped the fog from the mirror over the sink. The face he saw was emotionless. As cold as my mother-in-law’s heart, he thought as his lips twisted into a nasty sneer. For once he felt fortunate to have an inscrutable Oriental face. He looked at his hands. They weren’t shaking. Good.

  He pulled on a loose-fitting jogging outfit and went downstairs where Susan, true to her word, had an ice-cold pitcher of martinis waiting. She poured him one, and he downed it in one swallow.

  “Take it easy,” exclaimed Susan.

  “Thirsty,” he said, and held out the martini glass for more as he chewed on the olives.

  “You should have a glass of water, then,” she said, nevertheless obediently filling his glass. “At this rate you won’t be in any condition to have dinner with the kids.”

  He glared at her over the rim of his glass and defiantly swallowed half of the ice-cold gin.

  Susan gave up. Her husband was in one of his moods, which had become more frequent and darker. Something was bothering him, but no matter how hard she tried, he would tell her nothing. Now he was turning to drink to calm whatever demons were eating at him. Maybe there was trouble at the office. She’d hoped that a day at the club with the twins would mellow him out, but he was sinking into another depression, and she decided her best course of action right now was to leave him alone. She carried her untouched martini into the kitchen and poured it down the drain.

  At 6:00 PM Raymond Yang had not moved from his chair. The martini pitcher on the table beside him was empty, and the water which had condensed on its outer surface had long since slid down to make a puddle on the tabletop. His mind, at last, was a fuzzy blank.

  This hard-won tranquility was broken by the jangle of the phone which jolted him out of his fugue. He stared blearily at the source of the disturbance, which sat on an occasional table on the other side of the room. Given the rate at which the room was now spinning there was no possibility that he could traverse the space to the phone without risking a fall, so he could only sit there as the noise drove nails through brain.

  At last, the ringing stopped, and he closed his eyes trying to withdraw back into the shelter of the fog. But Susan came down the stairs. “Raymond, it’s for you. Some woman with an accent.”

  She had answered the phone upstairs.

  He managed to say, “I don’t want to speak to anyone right now. Tell them to call back.”

  Susan gave him an intent look that quickly turned to disgust. She recognized the symptoms. She’d placed the call on hold on the upstairs phone. “You’ll have to tell them yourself,” she said in a sudden burst of anger. “I won’t make excuses for you.” She lifted the cordless receiver and spoke into it. “Just a moment, please. I’ll put him right on.”

  Yang glared at his wife. “At least ask who it is,” he mumbled.

  Susan did so. Putting her hand over the microphone she said, “She says her name is Natalie Davis.”

  An electric shock passed through Yang’s body, and he thought for a moment that he might vomit. Instead, he passed out.

  Susan glared at him as she raised the phone to her ear. Making her voice normal with an effort, she said, “I’m sorry, but he simply can’t speak with anyone right now. May I take a message?” She listened to the response and said, “Very well. You should call back, then.”

  She replaced the phone in its cradle with a final angry glance at her husband turned and stalked back up the stairs. She had made sandwiches for the kids to eat in front of the TV, and soon it would be time to tuck them into bed. Raymond, as far as she was concerned, could lay in his chair the rest of the evening and all night. Maybe my mother is right about him. Her mother had always thought there was something off about Yang, which Susan had put to racial prejudice until now.

  *****

  Amy would use a burner phone, and except for Krystal, they were all gathered around Strachey’s desk at PSI. There was general disappointment when Amy ended the call without speaking to Yang. Krystal was posted down the street from the Yang house in case the call prompted him to make some sort of move. A non-response was the last thing they had expected.

  “So, what the hell do we do when he just refuses to take the call?” asked Amy.

  Despite the initial failure Strachey could not repress a chuckle. “Yeah, what happens when the mark just refuses to talk to us? We’ll try again tomorrow morning when he’s most likely to be available. I’ll call Krystal and tell her go home and get some rest.”

  Krystal was disappointed. She’d looked forward to watching a panicked Yang run out of his house and maybe contact a partner in crime or make a run for the airport. The evening, having lost its purpose now faded to black and stretched ahead like a road through a featureless landscape. She could go home and park in front of the TV, but she did not want to be alone.

  Being alone risked drowning in her own thoughts. She’d never confronted this difficulty before because she had been too busy pursuing a career in police work, and then Ray had come along and given her more.

  She sat there, gripped by indecision as her earlier enthusiasm evaporated leaving her feeling like a stale Coke left out overnight. She had a wild thought of going to a bar and picking up a man but discarded it as another manifestation of self-loathing. Should I buy a plane ticket and fly to Miami. Beg forgiveness of Ray? Her pride instantly overrode the thought. Pull yourself together! It’s not the end of the world.

  In the end, she drove home and dug an unopened bottle of scotch out of the kitchen cabinet.

  CHAPTER 28

  Strachey called Krystal early Sunday morning and was surprised when she didn’t answer. He tried several more times, becoming increasingly frustrated. “Where the hell could she be?” he asked Amy. “There’s work to do.”

  “Maybe she went out for groceries or something.”

  “She knew we were set to call Yang again this morning, and we need her in place for surveillance. It’s not like her to crap out on a job.”

  “Do you think something’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.” He shook his head, worried. “But I don’t want to wait any longer. I’ll drive over to Yang’s house myself. I’ll phone as soon as I get there, and you can make the call.”

  They had worked out a script for Amy to use, something they hoped would flush Yang into t
he open if he were the killer. It was after 10:30 AM when she finally dialed the number. Once again, Mrs. Yang answered the phone. And this time, after a short delay, Raymond Yang himself was on the line. “Who’s calling?” he asked.

  Such calls as Amy made to Yang have a common form and hew to certain rules. I know what you did, and it was wrong and illegal. I’ll tell the police unless you pay me X amount of money. Here is how I want to receive the payment. In this instance, Amy, impersonating Natasha Pushkin, said she had the files her husband had brought home and knew what they contained. She also said she was certain Yang had murdered her husband. She demanded one million dollars in cash to remain silent.

  Yang’s response was at first to deny that he had done anything wrong, but he seemed out of breath, as though someone had punched him in the stomach. “No matter what you think,” he said, “I didn’t murder anybody.”

  “I will give you a little time to think about it, Mr. Yang,” concluded Amy. “But just a little time. I will call you back this evening.” She pressed the end call button on the burner phone before he could answer.

  *****

  Yang did feel like he’d been punched in the stomach. He stood there in his living room staring at the dead phone in his hand, still in the track suit he’d donned the evening before, frozen in place. Stricken by l’esprit de l’escalier, he wished in retrospect that he had had the wit to demand proof of what the woman said. The troublesome files were encrypted, and it was entirely possible all she had was a bunch of data she could not decipher. In fact, the Davis woman had offered no proof that she had an inkling of what was in the files. The worst thing had been the accusation of murder. He cursed himself. When she called again, he would have some questions for her. She would not control the conversation or him. It was comforting to think he might be able to handle the situation. If not, he had options.