Blood Trust - Eric van Lustbader [137]
“Funny you should say that,” Fraine said, “Nona had compiled just such a list. Hold on a moment. Ah, yes, here it is.”
“Would you read off the names, please?”
Fraine did. Seventeen names, but none of them rang a bell. Jack wondered what he was missing. “Is there anyone else?”
“Well, you said bank personnel. As you may know, Middle Bay is in the process of being acquired by InterPublic Bancorp.”
Henry Holt Carson’s bank. Jack stood still as a statue while his brain, working at the speed of light, placed Carson and InterPublic alongside Middle Bay at the nexus of the conspiracy universe and began to follow the tentacles reaching outward. He was riding this wave of thought so completely that he almost missed what Fraine said next.
“So, of course, Nona had added the members of the forensic accounting team auditing Middle Bay’s books to the list of the bank’s personnel.”
Jack was dizzy with the sudden swirl of calculations. “Let’s have them all, Chief Fraine.”
“There are five individuals on the team.” He named them. Nothing. “And then there’s the team leader. His name is, let me see, ah yes, John Pawnhill.”
Annika had said, “We’re all soldiers in the night, and because of this, like it or not, we’re pawns.” And at that moment, two disparate things collided in Jack’s head, and the unknown part of the name equation he’d been trying to solve at last swam into focus. Thatë’s nickname was Grasi—fat. But his real name—Thatë—meant skinny. The kid was neither fat nor skinny, so how was he given the nickname? Jack had been looking at the equation through the wrong end of a telescope. Mbreti wasn’t the unknown in the equation, it was the key. Mbreti meant king. And what was the opposite of king on a chessboard? Pawn.
John Pawnhill was Mbreti!
TWENTY-EIGHT
“VERA, YOU’RE a chip off the old block.”
“A heart like black ice.” Vera crossed one leg over the other. “Like my new shoes?”
Carson didn’t bother looking; he knew his daughter’s tastes all too well. “Tell me about today.”
Vera’s smirk widened. “Let’s see, what happened? Oh, yes, my lover, Andy Gunn, recruited me to help him terminate two lowlifes.”
“Names, Vera, names.”
“Willowicz—though Gunn referred to him as Blunt—and O’Banion.”
Carson wet his lips. “They’re both dead? You’re sure?”
“Could not be deader.” Vera watched his profile, which was vexingly noncommittal. “Why?”
“I’m wondering why he killed them and why now.”
“He was very focused, I can tell you that. Like he’d been given a deadline.”
“Odds are he had been. He’s taking orders from someone other than me.”
“But you knew that already.”
“Yes, but not who he’s playing both sides with.” Carson seemed to be staring at nothing and everything at once. “I had him followed, but he slipped the tail. He must have gone to meet with the person who gave him today’s marching orders.”
“Any ideas who it might be?”
“That’s something you’re going to find out for me.”
Vera closed her eyes for a moment. “Listen, you fixed me up at Fearington so I’d become Alli Carson’s roommate. Alli knew Caroline. You thought Alli might know where she is; she doesn’t. No one knows where that bitch has got to.”
“Don’t call your half sister that,” Carson said sharply. “You haven’t earned the right.”
“She left, just like that. We shared so many things, and then poof she was gone. And after that she never contacted me.”
“She never contacted anyone.”
Vera clenched her fists. “This is all your fault, you shithead.”
“Down, girl. You should see a doctor about that overabundance of testosterone.”
“Ha ha.” There was little mirth in Vera’s voice. “Only if you come with me to see about your satyriasis.”
“Now who’s the bitch.”
“Neither of us can help it, that’s the way you made us.”
Carson made a derisive sound. “Oh, yes, blame it all on Daddy.”
She turned to him, draped one leg over his lap, snuggled up to