Chapter Ten

 

Lieutenant Bennett stood at the deck door of his hotel room, sipping steaming coffee from a complementary hotel room mug. The light was the sort of wan, reluctant illumination provided by a late autumn sun, as if the yellow orb in the sky were already making plans to hibernate for the winter.

“Still nothing?”

The Lieutenant’s voice was a muted croak, a chronic lack of sleep obviously taking its toll on the man. Bennett hardly ever slept, two or three hours a night being the best he could come up with, the yawning gap filled by gallons of coffee and endless cigarettes.

“No, it’s beginning to come together. Two names: Aaron DeWinter and Liam Seaton.”

“We’ve got DeWinter, though admittedly not much.” Bennett faced Eldon then, the gruff lieutenant wiping his mouth with the cuff of his rumpled navy button-down. “Seaton, we’ll have to run the name on. Doesn’t ring a bell, but there’s so fucking many I could’ve skimmed right over it before. DeWinter’s a bag man, finance guy. Clean, according to his record.”

“He’s more than that. He runs all the books for Corddray. Not sure how much that helps us, but there it is. Seaton just appears to be his… associate, I think. Ex-military, if I were to guess.”

“Anything else? You’ve been at this for weeks…”

“I’m working on it.”

Bennett took a seat on the swaybacked, faded pink couch. “Work harder.”

Eldon simply shrugged. Bennett could pressure him, but he wasn’t going to pull the trigger on anything until he had a plan in place.

A plan for Tamara.

It was a growing source of frustration for him though, this deepening guilt at having to lie to the lieutenant to buy time, and yet continually coming up with zero when it came to divining a way to extricate the girl from the Farm.

The biggest problem was the silly woman didn’t want to leave!

Truth be told, he couldn’t blame her though, not when sharks like DeWinter circled just outside the gates. Nathan was sure to block any attempt to secrete her out of there. And Eldon still wasn’t sure exactly where the damned farm actually was.

“Well, you let me down, as usual, but it just so happens I’ve got a few things for you this time.” Bennett opened his laptop, the ghostly glow highlighting the cragginess of the man’s face. “There’s… something happening with the Dominion Trust.”

“Like what? Haven’t heard a thing about that from either Forster or Heller. Or Tamara for that matter.”

“She’s unlikely to know shit about this, if she’s ensconced in her little prison.”

“She doesn’t see it like that.”

Bennett glanced up from his screen. “Oh? What does she see it as? I think you and I both know what the women are there, don’t we?”

“They’re not hookers, and they’re not whores.” Eldon didn’t like the twinge of defensiveness he fought down at the Lieutenant’s insinuation.

“I’m not convinced. Victims they may be, but odds are, most of them are hookers, Bishop.”

“They’re not, Lieutenant.”

“Prove it then. Give me something.”

Eldon scrubbed his face with both hands, sighing loudly. “Like I said — workin’ on it.” He needed to change the subject, and fast. His emotions were all over the place on this case now, and he could sense his ability to influence events — and more importantly, his trust in his own judgment — beginning to slip away. “What do you have for me, Lieutenant?”

Bennett stared at him for a long, tense moment, then glanced down at his screen once more. “I looked up one of my old college buds a couple weeks ago. Asked a favor or two. He works for the SEC, enforcement division. Sharp guy. Anyway, I asked him to keep an eye on things, see if anything had popped up recently.” Bennett sat back, hands draped across this thighs.

“And?”

“And…about three months ago, several subsidiaries of the Trust liquidated — as in practically overnight. Looks like mostly shipping and transportation related, but several more have closed up shop since then. One or two every month or so. Before they pulled the plug, they’d spent weeks hoovering up all the outstanding shares — and paying out the ass for some of them too.”

“So… companies reorganize all the time, fail, pull up stakes. Whatever, right? Maybe the owners wanted to retire?” Eldon tried to keep his impatience from bleeding into his tone. He wasn’t in the mood to shoot the shit about Wall Street machinations when he had much more pressing concerns.

The girl he was becoming obsessed over — and spiriting that same girl away to safety.

“That was my first reaction too.” Bennett shrugged, slipping on his glasses as he read from the screen. “Then my friend sent me a copy of one of the reports publicly-traded companies are required to file with the SEC when a company liquidates. The companies involved — every single one — were wildly profitable. No debt, crazy strong balance sheets.”

“It’s a reorg then. Unusual way to go about it, maybe.” Eldon sighed. “Hell, what the fuck do I know? I’m a goddamned cop, not a stock analyst.”

Bennett laughed, a grating sound entirely devoid of any actual mirth. “I know, right? It’s all bullshit, pulling money from one pocket and stuffing it in the other. I wasn’t impressed either. My friend did a little more digging though, and finally found something that was interesting. Before two of these companies filed their liquidation notices, another outfit approached them with a proposal to buy them out.” Bennett leaned forward, looking down his nose at the screen, squinting as he read. “One Whitehall Companies, Limited. Snooty shit, right? Apparently, the offer was $1.5 billion — all stock. For both companies combined.”

“Let me guess — the offer was declined?”

Bennett was a huge Untouchables fan, his voice dropping into an exaggerated Sean Connery Scottish brogue. “You may be just a copper, my lad, but you’re a sharp one, you are. Nothing gets past you.”

Eldon lifted his middle finger toward his lieutenant, Bennett chuckling as he looked back down at his laptop again.

“Here’s something though. My friend checked the market cap for those two companies. Between the two of them they were worth barely 700 million. That offer… more than double what they were worth. Why would they turn that down?”

Eldon met Bennett’s gaze. Now, that was interesting. “You’ve got my attention, LT.”

“Oh, it gets even better. You want to know who the chairmen of the board for Whitehall Companies, Limited is? It’s one George Bryant Trask.”

“Our… George Trask?”

Bennett nodded, taking another sip from his mug. “And the owner of every single subsidiary liquidating in this case? It’s Corddray.”

“Sweet Jesus.”

“Goddamn right, Bishop. And it gets even more fucked up. Corddray actually filed a formal complaint with the SEC about some sort of trading irregularity, or some such bullshit — I don’t even remember what the term was. The SEC shot it down as frivolous, immediately, but it still stuck out like a sore thumb. Now, you tell me. The Dominion Trust is this impenetrable, opaque… thing. This entity. It prides itself on being mysterious, on being discrete. On flying below the radar. Nobody even knows what the fuck it does.” Bennett closed his laptop. “Yet here we have two prime movers and shakers in this thing… who are acting like they’re bitter fucking enemies. That look like a well-oiled machine to you?”

“Looks like a civil war to me.”

A wry smile quirked his superior officer’s lips. “Like I said, my boy, nothing gets past you.”

Eldon’s stomach dropped as he realized what this meant. If the Trust was spinning apart, then that meant…

The Farm.

He had to get her out of there. But how?

The lieutenant’s expression suddenly sobered. “But this does mean something to you and I, doesn’t it? The shit is going down — and fast. You need to get me something, Bishop — and soon. Because we’re running out of time.”

And Eldon was running out of hope.