Swindler & Son Read online

  Even if it was, the car would still be a bargain. Larry has no idea what he has. His 917 was painted over before he bought it, in the blue and yellow Gulf Oil livery used by Steve McQueen in his quixotic ‘Le Mans’ movie (you want a movie that works? Start with an actual script! Next question…) instead of the flaming red-and-white it originally carried—the red-and-white worn presently by a replica in the Porsche museum. Larry thinks he has a movie car, missing the fact that he actually owns the real-life race winner, the first Porsche to win Le Mans.

  “I’ll accept your price,” I tell him. “Bank transfer okay?” It’s worth an extra 10% just to see Larry’s face drop—he knows instantly he should have asked for more. “C’mon Larry, it’s six less tour groups this year.”

  “You’ve no idea what it takes to keep a place like this!” he moans. “I have a whole wing that needs repointing! The boathouse is sinking!”

  “Is there a boat in it?”

  “What’s the point of a boathouse?”

  “Then don’t ask me for sympathy.” I hand him Diamante’s phone. “Punch in your bank account here. You should be ashamed, hustling me.”

  “I’m not,” he answers, punching in the number and holding it out to me expectantly. I shake my head—not so fast, buddy.

  “Where’s the car?”

  “You want it now?”

  I panic for a moment. “It’s here, isn’t it?”

  “Of course, it’s here!” he declares with all the wounded honor of the ancestors who actually died for the place—or who at least waved their peons in the direction of the battle so they could die for the place. “I just have to dig it out.”

  Dig it out?

  It takes several minutes just to open the garage alongside the stables. I suspect Larry’s taking his time, trying to find an excuse to charge me more but eventually, the locks give and he slides the door open, revealing a Ferrari 250 GTO, two Mercedes 300 SL’s (a convertible and gullwing coupe), a Lotus 72 in John Player black and gold (Fittipaldi), a gray Duesenberg convertible, a 1965 Alfa Giulia with no rust (none! In England, no less!) and a silver 1947 Delahaye coupe, maybe the most outrageous car I’ve ever seen. Larry supervises his staff (who materialize out of nowhere) carefully shuffling the cars to get to the 917.

  “I think you’re overplaying your poverty, Larry.”

  “They’re investments. I’m cash-poor.”

  “That’s a white man’s problem,” Diamante mutters as we finally reach the car.

  Pardon me—the CAR!!!!

  It’s a 917K, alright—a shark’s face, brutal-looking, thigh-high, crude and shrieking once we hook up the portable starter and make sure all twelve cylinders still light. Oh, do they ever.

  With that, Diamante holds his finger over the ‘transfer’ button.

  I hold my breath and take Larry’s place in the driver’s seat—if Hastings or Woczynski set the cops on me, they’ll surely have canceled my access to the accounts. In which case—? In which case, I tell Larry the transfer went through and hope he can’t stop me before I’ve sped past his gates.

  I tried calling Woczynski on the way here. His assistant said, “You don’t need to speak to him” and hung up. Which isn’t the same as “He’s not speaking to you.” At least, I hope it’s not the same.

  At the last second, I take the phone from Diamante and attach a note to the payment saying it’s for ‘Porsche 917K’—if Woczynski reads notes, which I doubt, maybe that’ll make a difference.

  Then I push the button. And, after just a short delay, hear a beep from Larry’s phone. He clicks his home screen and smiles.

  We sign documents so it’s really legal and Diamante and I hustle the thing onto the trailer.

  Once we’re on the road again, I call ahead. “Staff Sergeant Hector Lopez, please. Hector, I’m with Parker Meridien. Dieter Miller said we should call you—we’re transporting a car, to Qumradhi, Wadiirah—today, if at all possible.”

  -So this Staff Sergeant Lopez, he was in on the scheme?

  Staff Sergeant Lopez is the loadmaster on a C5A military transport plane, moving whatever the spooks and contractors tell him to and not asking questions. He is also, happily for us, a supreme geekboy. He asks what our cargo weighs and if it needs any special handling. When I tell him it’s a 1970 Porsche 917K, he’s a six-year-old boy with a Lego set. Do I know the nose clearance off the top of my head? Because he won’t take a chance on scraping the precious nose, getting the Porsche onto his plane. He’s wants to build hydraulic mounts under the wheels so the thing won’t get jostled in flight—he makes it sound like he does this every day and maybe he does. If he could tailor a custom mink-lined car cover for us in the time available, it’s clear he would. “I’ll meet you at the gate,” he says, “so you won’t get dicked around at the guardhouse.”

  -You feel more confident on a military flight than civilian?

  Well, military, civilian, that’s really neither here nor there. The money transfer went through with Larry, which gives me some confidence that the Hastings/Dieter/Woczynski axis isn’t hunting me, at least not for the moment. And if they’re on my side, this is my best chance of getting to where Harry is.

  -Even if they know you’re trying to escape the Paris police?

  Well, the odds are at least 50/50 they don’t know, since I haven’t made the papers yet. But truthfully? I don’t think they’d care one bit, as long as I’m delivering Dieter’s 917.

  True to his word, Hector is at the gate when we reach RAF Mildenhall. The base is a through-the-looking-glass slice of America dumped into the Suffolk countryside. Right up to the gate, you’re still in normal English suburbs—hedgerows lining narrow roads, hatchbacks and little mini-trucks driving on the left, mom and pop stores and narrow houses with slate roofs. As soon as you pass inside the gate, it’s pimped-out Mustangs and huge Ford F-150’s driving on the right, Burger King, Taco Bell, Domino’s, an American supermarket, even American-style fire hydrants on the corners.

  Hector rides the running board of our flatbed, giving directions as we cross through the base town. He’s totally starstruck over the 917 and I think, I want this guy on our side. As soon as we hit the runway complex, I pull over and point to the race car.

  “You wanna ride out to the plane?”

  “Not a chance—they’d bust me out for that!” he says. “Nobody drives onto the flight line.” Then he gets that lovely larcenous look in his eye, the one that’s kept me in the black all these years. “You could take me the back way—around the service road.”

  “You won’t get busted for that?”

  “You drive me up to the gate, no problem. Everybody uses the service road for drag racing on the weekends.”

  Diamante and I unhook and carefully roll the 917 off the truck. With an expanse of curving service road laid out in front of me, we take our seats, I fire her up, take firm hold of the steering wheel and push on the pedal.

  It’s amazing, if you like being shot out of a cannon. Hector slams back into the firewall with a huge smile on his face. The Porsche has no speedometer so I don’t know how fast we’re going but I dump the accelerator after four or five seconds—that’s all we need—and coast the rest of the way to the checkpoint. Then Diamante and I load her back onto the flatbed for the short trip to the C5. It’s not like anyone has to point it out—a C5 is the height of a six-story building, with a wingspan the size of Big Ben.

  The plane stands open clamshell-style, nose cone high in the air, a metal ramp drooping to the ground like a tongue. An absurd collection of hardware waits at attention to be loaded on this behemoth—a tank the size of a seaside bungalow, six portable generators on wheels, a palette in plastic wrap with white powder puffing from the seams, a gorgeous antique mahogany power cruiser and a military helicopter (!), its rotors all folded in the same direction and locked down for travel.

  “That was fantastic!” Hector yelps, uncoiling himself from the car. “Does this thing have any sort of self-leveling?”

  �
��It was built in 1968. We’re lucky it has brakes.”

  “Okay, we’ll build a ramp.”

  He fiddles with two-by-fours and little planks of wood for twenty minutes, just so our precious baby makes it up onto the ramp without a scrape. I feel brilliant until he spends three hours putting the same laborious effort into loading all the other items into the cargo bay.

  The plane is scheduled for Dubai and I wouldn’t argue—my main concern for now is to get the hell out of Europe—but, after the pilots ogle the Porsche and attempt to sit inside (over 5’10”, don’t bother), everyone decides Qumradhi is less than an hour out of the way and add it to the flight plan.

  After that, it’s just waiting. Waiting for the gatehouse guards to realize they’ve been hoodwinked or the pilots to get a security bulletin or for some well-connected spook onboard to get inside information and call us out. I’ve managed to hold myself in check all the way here, focusing on one task after another. But now, every few minutes, some noise—a car starting, a siren, a plane taxiing across the field—makes me jump. I use the stinking Air Force toilet three times on the runway (ignoring signs to the contrary) before engine start.

  Finally, the load-up is complete and maybe twenty of us climb a short ladder and a long staircase to the upper level of the plane, where ridiculously comfortable seats for 75 await. The engines turn, we rumble down the runway and finally take flight. Six hours to Qumrahdi. Six hours to figure out what to do next.

  Dreams

  “You take the apartment.” I tell Sara.

  “What?”

  Somehow, I slept. It’s a small miracle. On a military plane in flight, totally wound up, somehow I’d slept for several hours and dreamed of our endless apartment above the garden of the Hopital Saint-Louis—many more rooms than actually exist. Of course, it was a dream. All I know is, far too many empty rooms for me.

  “What are you talking about?” She seems drowsy too. How many hours were we up together before the plane? Was I sleeping on her shoulder? “The lawyers settled all that. You get the apartment, I get the furnishings. You said you didn’t want to dicker over the details.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll trade you the apartment for the TV, the Weegee photo and the mattress. You know you aren’t going to keep the mattress, it’s a reminder of me.”

  She considers a snarky reply, I can see it on her face—I know that expression, I love that expression, like all her expressions—but she abandons it. Have I become that pathetic? C’mon, wrestle with me a little.

  “Why the change of heart?” she asks. “You loved that apartment.”

  “I thought I did. I guess I just didn’t want to spend months arguing over things.” She still seems troubled. “If you love it—”

  “It’s too much for one person,” she says, a touch resentfully. “It’s right for two.”

  And that’s the answer. Of course it is. Another awkward pause, the ones we’ve become so used to in the last few months.

  “Nobody’s come around—asking questions? Looking us over?” I say.

  “I was sleeping too. We’re in flight—aren’t we okay for now?”

  “They could have gotten a bulletin in flight. Somebody could have read something before coming on board and recognized us.”

  She considers this for a moment. “Okay—and what can we do about it? Do you know where they keep the parachutes?”

  “I bet they’ve got bins full of them,” I mutter but that doesn’t get us any closer to finding any.

  Why is she staring at me?

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asks finally and I’m trying to figure out if it’s a general question or something specific. “I’m trying, I really am. I’m usually good at understanding people, but you? You can be so generous—you buy me a horse I desperately want and would never imagine buying, you offer me back an apartment you could easily sell. But you cheat people for a living. You’re a paranoid and a swindler. How did that happen?”

  “I’m not a swindler.” She snorts a laugh but I don’t blink. “Harry, whom you love—”

  “I do.”

  “Harry is a swindler. I’m the guy who totes the odds. I’m the guy who checks out the prospects, figures out what they want and what they can afford to lose without it hurting too much.”

  “So—you’re his enabler?”

  “I’m the guy who makes it safe.”

  “For the world?”

  “Fuck the world—the world can take care of itself. I make it safe for Harry.”

  She stares for a while and, when she speaks, it’s a quiet voice, not accusing, just trying to understand. “Why? Why screw the rest of the world for Harry?”

  “I’m not screwing the rest of the world, I’m just not watching out for them. I watch out for Harry because he saved my life.”

  Meeting

  I met Harry in Nassau, in the Bahamas. I was rootless, two years after my disgrace in front of a congressional committee. I was finally walking down the street without wondering whether passersby were more likely to be thinking ‘traitor’ or ‘imbecile.’ I’d done a few writing jobs and a little bartending but I had no purpose in life and I’d stopped looking for any.

  And then I saw Alec Broadmoor step out of a taxi with a trophy blond and six suitcases, heading into the most expensive hotel on the island. Broadmoor was the Chief of Staff for the Intelligence Committee, the little shit who instigated our assistance to the freedom fighters and led the grilling when it proved bad politics. Five-foot-four in his stocking feet and, at that size, towering over his moral footprint.

  I stopped dead staring at him, my heart pounding, two years of fantasized rage rushing out of me.

  The fucker had to pay.

  I had to kill him, kill him cruelly, slowly, rip his heart out of his chest with my bare hands and make him eat it. Okay, maybe that was a bit much. At very least, I should be able to shoot him with a sniper rifle from half a mile away and be gone by the time someone had to clean up the mess.

  Suddenly, I had a plan and a purpose. I shadowed him for a day and a half, not sleeping, barely eating, until I knew his schedule, who he saw, where and what he ate and how frequently he went to the bathroom (much too often for the call of nature, which didn’t shock me).

  I fixed on three locations where I could shoot him at a convenient distance and be out of the neighborhood before anyone noticed. I found a shop where I could purchase an accurate rifle with a good sight and no records and a furnace nearby that would melt the rifle beyond recognition in less than a minute. I had everything—except the constitution required of an assassin.

  Sitting on a terrace overlooking his hotel, I had to face the fact that, unless it was self-defense, I wasn’t going to kill anybody, even that puny piece of shit. I can’t remember feeling more disillusioned with myself. I felt totally defeated. I had the most venal piece of scum in the galaxy by the throat and I was going to let him go. I felt useless, impotent, screaming with frustration. It was rock-bottom. It was the moment you realized you just couldn’t bring yourself to take advantage of the drunken sorority girl—you know you’re doing right, but what you hear most clearly in your head are the fraternity brothers calling you ‘pussy’.

  That was when Harry Grinnell (that was his name then) sat down at the table next to me, alongside a woman I remember only as Judy.

  “Darling, if you love your son, why waste his best years over some archaic tradition?” said Harry, in a seersucker suit and silk neckerchief, cool as an iceberg despite the heat.

  “We’re British,” said Judy, 40ish and not only well-dressed, but well-dressed as a woman of 40, meaning she had class and probably real money. “Archaic traditions are all we have left.”

  “The real issue is, she wasn’t raised to be Sovereign and he was—I believe she resents that.”

  “Does he think so?”

  “He wouldn’t tell me if he did.”

  “Would she prefer William, when he comes of age? Would that devastate poor Charles?”
r />   “You mustn’t speak of him in those terms. He will be King. She will do the conventional thing through gritted teeth, as always.”

  “He might be happier not being King.”

  “He is the child of both parents,” Harry sighed, looking through her as though Charles were there on the terrace, seeking their counsel. “He will do his duty.”

  By this point, I’d ordered lunch, even though I wasn’t the slightest bit hungry. I’d never met anyone like Harry but I recognized the silhouette and knew, somehow, that this was a door opening for me.

  He spun a great yarn. It was like hearing Ella Fitzgerald or Mel Torme scat—improvisation of a very high order and hopelessly easy to get caught up in. If you thought about it analytically, there were all sorts of holes, but Harry didn’t allow that sort of analysis. Every phrase appeared as a combination of high gossip and affairs-of-state secrecy.

  In less than fifteen minutes, he created a world where Charles was clearly a dear friend (though he never said so in so many words), the protector of a cherished past, set upon by all sides, an embattled idealist in need of champions.

  And the means to support Charles, once it finally appeared, turned out to be a horse Harry was syndicating in Ireland—of which he broadly hinted Charles was part owner. The story was ludicrous. How any of it might actually help Charles was never clear. Nor did any of that matter, really. Judy was a pile of goo on the floor by the time he finished his pitch, aching to serve in any capacity Harry could arrange. And if I’d had any money, I might have put some up, just in admiration for the way the story was put over.

  I may not know Art, but I know what sells and this was it.

  So right then, I switched from shadowing Broadmoor to shadowing Harry. Just long enough to find out where he was staying and make sure he wasn’t local mob. I made sure to keep my distance. I figured he’d be tougher to follow than Broadmoor but he was surprisingly casual, even a bit careless.