Found Money - James Grippando [134]
She pulled into a parking space and killed the engine. “I was kind of hoping Jeb might help us figure that out.”
Amy tried not to look worried as they stepped down together and started toward Jeb Stockton’s office.
Phil Jackson was still mad. Liz had phoned him at dinnertime, said she was thinking about finding a new lawyer. The ingrate. Without him, she would have gotten nothing. Now she was at the doorstep of the mother lode. Of course, she couldn’t completely stiff him. The judge would order her to pay him the fair value of his services so far. That wouldn’t come close to the fees he would have racked up had he seen this battle through to the final chapter. Assuming he could get to the Duffys’ Panamanian accounts, the contingency fee he and Liz had discussed would have earned him over nine thousand dollars an hour. And he was worth it.
Liz hadn’t found the courage to utter the words, but he figured it was only a matter of days before she officially fired him. She’d probably do it by letter. Backstabbing bitch.
He’d been stiffed by clients before, but this one was especially hard to swallow. He’d worked hard on the case, but he always worked hard. He didn’t mind the sweat. This case, however, had taken his blood. Almost a half-pint of it, spilled on the garage floor in the predawn beating.
The anger, the resentment, were not subsiding. If anything, he’d worked himself more into a dither as the evening passed. It was hard to concentrate, difficult to make decisions. One thing, in particular, had become a vexing quandary. The briefcase.
It had been delivered by courier to his doorstep around ten o’clock, marked “PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL.” It was addressed to his client. The return address indicated it was from Ryan Duffy.
He was naturally suspicious. After Brent’s murder, he was at first afraid to touch it, fearing a booby trap. But the more he thought about it, the less likely that seemed. As much as he’d tried to make Ryan look like a gangster in the courtroom, he didn’t seem the type to send his wife a letter bomb. He seemed more likely to send a peace offering—a settlement.
Jackson settled into the plush sofa in his family room, staring at the briefcase on the coffee table before him. He noticed the tumblers near the latch. There were three altogether. A lock with a three-number combination. Just like the combination Liz had testified to in court. Three numbers: 36–18–11.
The realization hit like lightning. That was exactly what this was—Liz’s share of the money. Ryan had very cleverly put together a settlement offer his greedy wife couldn’t refuse: a briefcase full of cash. His instincts took over. This was his chance. Liz was trying to screw him, but he could beat her to the punch. He’d bet his life there was money inside. And he knew the combination.
He jumped forward and laid the briefcase flat. Eagerly he turned the tumblers into place, left to right. The first one, thirty-six. The next, eighteen. Finally, eleven. He flipped the latches, left and right. They popped up. His body tingled with a surge of excitement. This was it. He opened the briefcase. It opened just an inch, then seemed to catch on something, moving no farther. He heard a click. An ominous click. In a flash, he knew it wasn’t a cash settlement offer and that it wasn’t from Ryan Duffy.
Oh, shit!
A fiery orange explosion decimated the entire west wing of the Jackson estate. The impact rattled windows around the neighborhood, as a shower of glowing embers rained down on the brand-new windshield of his just-repaired Mercedes.
63
Two minutes after they met, Ryan already had a name for him: the gadget man.
Bruce Dembroski was a friend of Norm’s, a former CIA agent whose specialty had been sniping. Though life after the agency didn’t present many opportunities to use his laser range finder, suppressed weapons, or ultra-long-range .50-caliber sniper rifle, he had found a profitable niche in offering high-tech, high-quality private investigative services to an elite clientele, mostly security-conscious corporations. His bread and