While driving around and researching private charters, Michael had put his cell phone on silent mode. Now that he was on his way back home, he was catching up on missed calls. Jake’s message from an hour earlier had been brief.
“Call me when you get a chance,” he’d said.
Jake picked up on the second ring. “You in your office?” Jake asked.
“About two hours from it. I’m just leaving Panama City.”
“What are you doing there?”
“It was my last stop of the day. I traveled the Florida Panhandle coastline finding out who does booze cruises. And more to the point, strip trips.”
“Find anything?”
“Several charter companies do sunset specials and booze cruises. But it seems there’s only one ‘gentlemen’s charter’ in the area that comes complete with party girls. The outing isn’t advertised as a strip trip, probably to avoid liability, but I confirmed there’s a Panama City strip club that arranges for a party boat with what they call their ‘first mates.’”
“Let me guess: the name of that strip club is the Pussy Cat Palace.”
“Bingo. How’d you know?”
“That’s what I was calling you about. Carol and I navigated a maze of shell companies through databases and determined the ownership of the Emerald Hideaway. The proprietorship is one PDL Properties, an abbreviation for Ponce de Leon. The owner of PDL Properties is Viktoria Yevtushenko Driscoll, a naturalized citizen originally from Ukraine.”
“It seems like that’s where all our roads are leading.”
Michael considered telling Jake about Captain Moss’s charter, and how there might be a potential tie-in with the strip club party boat, but decided saying anything would be premature.
Instead, he said, “When Karina called Diana, she mentioned a friend of hers by the name of Nataliya who went missing months earlier. If I can establish that both the drowning victim and Nataliya worked at the Pussy Cat Palace, that should help me demonstrate to a judge that it’s a dangerous workplace.”
“Which might get you access that much sooner to depose Viktoria Driscoll.”
“That’s the hope. Any word on when an autopsy will be performed on the victim?”
“I’m told best-case scenario is by the end of the week, but we’re pushing for it ASAP.”
For Michael, even ASAP didn’t feel like it was soon enough. His gut told him time was not on their side.
* * *
It was half past seven when Michael arrived home, but he decided dinner could wait for a few more minutes. Hearing Captain Moss saying that he’d taken out military recruiters on his fishing charter had piqued Michael’s curiosity. It wasn’t just a casual interest on his part. Michael had a distinct bias against private military contractors, and one in particular. Peter Stone was the founder and CEO of Darkpool Security International, the biggest private military contractor in the world. There were a lot of things Michael detested about Stone and his organization. To his thinking, they were vultures feeding on the carrion of war.
Because of his surname, Stone was known by the nickname of “Rock.” And in Stone’s army, not the US army, he held the rank of general. It was probably nothing, but it was a coincidence Michael felt compelled to pursue. The drowned woman deserved at least that much.
Michael began doing searches on his phone, calling up multiple profiles of Peter Stone. In one posed picture, Stone was wearing a white Uncle Sam top hat complete with a blue band and white stars. The caption featured a quote from Stone: “I want you for my army.” The corporate offices for Darkpool were located in Virginia, in near proximity to Washington, DC. Given that there were so many military bases in Florida’s Panhandle, it would have been more surprising if Darkpool wasn’t recruiting throughout the area than if they were. But Michael couldn’t find anything linking Stone or Darkpool to having traveled to the area in the past week.
All the articles Michael scanned were in agreement on one thing: the business of war had been good for Stone and his company, and had made him rich.
“Some people refer to my fortune as blood money,” Stone was quoted as saying. “I’m okay with that.”
“I’m not,” Michael said, putting away his phone.
He had already kept Mona waiting too long and jogged to the stairs, taking them two at a time. Michael signaled his arrival by knocking, then unlocked the dead bolt and stepped inside. He was greeted by the aroma of the onions and peppers that had gone into the making of the riza shirwah, and the cinnamon, allspice, and mint in the rice dolma. Mona emerged from the kitchen. Her large dark eyes had beguiled him from the first. Mona’s arched eyebrows seemed to have their own vocabulary, telling stories with the way they rose, and lowered, and furrowed. The two of them kissed.
“You are hungry, I hope,” she asked.
“I am.”
“Then let us both eat.”
“I hope you weren’t waiting for me.”
“I sampled the food while preparing it, as any good cook must.”
“Did you leave any for me?”
“Only a very little. Enough for a mouse, and no more.”
They kissed again. “Need help serving the food?” he asked.
“I do not. Why don’t you select your beverage of choice?”
“I will get my beverage of choice,” said Michael, trying to hide his smile.
Mona had a unique way of saying, “Get yourself a beer,” the same way she had a unique way of saying most things. He grabbed a bottle and took a seat at the table. A plate of dolma wrapped in grape leaves was waiting for him, as was a basket of lavash and baba ghanoush. Mona came with their stew and joined him.
“You work late, husband.”
“And I’m afraid I will have to leave quite early.”
“You will forget what I look like.”
“Not in a million years.”
Judging by her smile, his remark pleased her. Mona had barely been holding on to life when the two of them had first met in the carnage of war. She had been the only one in her family to survive an ISIS attack, and at the time she was being evacuated by helicopter, Michael had wondered if the wounded young woman would ever smile again in her lifetime. Now, she smiled for him.
It felt like a miracle.