Hearts of Sand(82)

“Sorry,” he said. “This is—”

“This is Fitzgerald at the New York office,” Fitzgerald said. “I’m sorry I woke you up. It is eight o’clock in the morning.”

“I was out late last night,” Gregor said.

“Chasing after a dead body,” Fitzgerald said. “We heard about it. That’s why I’m calling. We take it that the dead man is named Kyle Westervan?”

“Yes,” Gregor said. “Why are you calling me? Shouldn’t you be calling Jason Battlesea or one of the detectives?”

“We did,” Fitzgerald said. “We called, we asked questions, we got less-than-coherent answers. I don’t know what’s wrong with the people in that place, but I’ve had the same experience Andy has—”

“Andy?”

“Andrew Corben. I don’t remember what name he uses for cover, but it’s still Andrew. Never mind. He’s not doing anything connected with the Chapin Waring case.”

“So why are we talking about him?”

“Because he is doing something on a major case involving securities fraud,” Fitzgerald said, “and his main contact, the guy who informed the Bureau of the problem to begin with—”

“Was Kyle Westervan.”

“Exactly,” Fitzgerald said. “Excuse us for going for the obvious, but a number of us out here are wondering if the man might be dead because of something connected to the securities case. There’s a lot of money involved. A lot. In the ten- and eleven-figures range.”

“That is a lot,” Gregor said.

“You mind talking to Andy directly?” Fitzgerald said.

“Not at all.”

Gregor got out of bed and found his robe where he’d left it, over a chair near the table near the sliding doors. “Just a minute,” he said. Then he put the phone down and put the robe on. The last thing he wanted was for Darlee Corn to come in and find him in his boxer shorts.

He picked up the phone again and headed out onto the deck. The town was fully decorated for the Fourth of July and there was band music, all of it at various stages of the national anthem, coming from all directions.

He sat down at the table on the deck and said, “Okay. I’m here. Is this Mr. Corben?”

“Andy,” a strange voice said. It sounded young. “I am absolutely losing it. You have no idea.”

“I think I do,” Gregor said. “If it helps any, I don’t think you have to worry that Kyle Wetervan was killed over any of the work he was doing for you. Would you mind telling me, if you can, what that was?”

“It’s practically impossible to catch these guys if we don’t have anything on tape. He was running tapes for us. Westervan was wearing wires sometimes, but usually it was just something he had in his briefcase. Oh, and he was picking up cash. A lot of it, sometimes. Mostly it was six or seven thousand here or there, but once it was over fifty. And we had participation.”

“What kind of participation?”

“The CEO and the CFO both of two of the largest U.S. banks, the CEO and CFO of a huge international brokerage based in Switzerland, and several politicians, including a U.S. senator from a Southern state.”

“That’s a mess.”

“Yeah, it really is. It’s a very big deal. Big enough for somebody to hire an assassin.”

“And Kyle Westervan was what? Participating in this fraud? And you caught him?”

“No, no,” Andy said. “That’s the weird part. He wasn’t participating at all. He was clean as a whistle. We checked. He just walked into the office one day, opened the briefcase, and took out an absolute mountain of paper. Then he sat down and explained it all to us. It was the oddest thing. I think the guy was downright, rank furious.”

“Furious?”

“Yeah. It made him angry that the people he was working with were doing the things they were doing,” Andy said. “He did agree to wire himself up, get hold of all the papers he could—he was collecting copies of papers before they were shredded. I don’t know what else he was doing. If anyone had known he was feeding us information, it would be a very good motive for murder.”

“Just a minute,” Gregor said as Darlee Corn burst into the room with a tray full of just about everything—hash browns, sausages, bacon, orange juice, coffee, and what looked like three scrambled eggs.

“You didn’t look to me like the fruit cup type,” she said.

Gregor waved her a thank-you.

She sailed out again, and Gregor heard the snap of his door as she passed through it into the hall.

He took a long sip of coffee and said, “You were saying it was a good motive for murder. And I agree with you. But I don’t think it was the motive for this murder.”