Fighting Chance(70)

“I do have good news,” Russ said. “I actually got the court to grant an injunction. Why they should do it now when they wouldn’t for the last six months is beyond me, but they did it. That means that nobody can go forward with the foreclosure until we’ve been able to bring our entire case into court on the countersuit. And that means that you’re safe in your house for the foreseeable future. Safe from J.P. CitiWells, anyway. If you’ve got a problem with American Amity, that’s something else.”

“There is no problem with our real bank,” Asha said stiffly. “Mikel is always on time with all his payments. Also his payments for electricity and everything else.”

“I think the problem now is to find out what’s happened to him,” Gregor said. “I told Asha here that I’d seen him this afternoon. He was rushing off to an appointment. That could have been his appointment with you. Except I think it was just after lunch, and if his appointment with you was—”

“After three o’clock,” Russ said.

“It seems a little early,” Gregor said. “It seems a lot early. But he was very excited. He didn’t stop to talk. And he looked frantic.”

“He was going to the Hall of Records,” Asha said. “He was going to look there for something to help our case.”

Russ looked puzzled. “The Hall of Records? But why? There wouldn’t be anything there. The only crux of this case is the fact that J.P. CitiWells didn’t use the Hall of Records. They used that online database. If they’d used the Hall of Records, we could have had this whole thing cleared up in a day.”

“There wasn’t anything he could have found there at all?” Gregor said.

“I don’t see what,” Russ said. “The real mortgage is filed there, the one from American Amity Savings. But there’s nothing wrong with that mortgage. And there’s nothing there about J.P. CitiWells.”

“I think maybe there is something he could find,” Asha said. “And then these people, these people from the big bank with the ridiculous name, maybe they wanted to stop him from telling you about it.”

Russ shook his head. “There really isn’t anywhere to go with that. There isn’t anything anybody could have found out that would make J.P. CitiWells want to … uh…”

“Liquidate him,” Asha said firmly.

“Right,” Russ said. “Liquidate him. There really isn’t any reason why somebody from J.P. CitiWells would want to liquidate him. Or anybody else. No matter what they found out.”

“They could go to jail for what they are doing,” Asha said. “They don’t want to go to jail.”

“Nobody at J.P. CitiWells is going to jail for anything they’re doing,” Russ said. “No matter what it is. I can’t even think of a scenario where that would be the case. Hell, they nearly wrecked the entire country and none of them went to jail. And this is, what? Yet another case of a mortgage mess the same as dozens they’ve had before.”

“It’s the dozens part I can’t get over,” Gregor said. “But I agree with Russ here. I don’t think it’s plausible to believe that somebody from J.P. CitiWells sent a hit man after Mikel, even if the timing wasn’t so tight. Even if he found something out, how would the bank had known he’d found it? We’re talking about the space of a few hours here.”

“You said he was running,” Asha said. “He was running for his life.”

“He said he was late for an appointment,” Gregor said. “It sounds to me as if that was too early to be his appointment with Russ here. Did he say anything about another appointment?”

“No,” Asha said. “He said he was going to the Hall of Records, and then he was going to see Mr. Donahue.”

“Maybe he made another appointment while he was out,” Gregor said. “We should try to think of whom he’d make an appointment with. That might help.”

“I hate to say it,” Russ said, “but I think the most plausible explanation is that Mikel ran into trouble somewhere. You know what Philadelphia is like. There are neighborhoods and then there are other neighborhoods and they change in a flash. If he ended up somewhere that wasn’t safe—”

“You are saying my Mikel is dead,” Asha Dekanian said. Her voice was edging up into the frantic range. “You are saying somebody killed him and left his body in the street.”

“I’m not saying anything of the kind,” Russ said firmly. “I’m saying that the first thing we ought to do is to check the hospitals, because if he did run into trouble and got knocked out, he could be in one of those. He wouldn’t necessarily still have his wallet with him. They would take the wallet. Did he have anything else on him that would identify him? You didn’t by any chance sew a tag into his clothes.”