diamonds.
Corbeil had good reasons: one-carat diamonds were easy to move, easy to sell, and anonymous. The necklace was a bank account. If you popped the diamonds out of their settings, you could put $300,000 in the toes of your shoes . . .
Another good reason was the sensuality of the stones. Corbeil’s face might have been chopped from a block of oak, but he was a sensual man. He liked the feel of a woman, the sound of a zipper coming down on the back of a woman’s dress, the smell of Chanel. He liked fast cars driven fast, French cooking and California wine, Italian suits and English shoes and diamonds. He hadn’t been able to afford the very best in women, wine, and song until AmMath. Now he had them, and he would be damned if he would give them up . . .
T he doorbell rang; he’d been expecting it. He put the book down, slipped the necklace into a shirt pocket, crossed to the intercom, and pushed the button. “Yes?”
“Hart and Benson.” William Hart’s voice. Four men were involved in various parts of the operation. Corbeil himself, as coordinator; Hart and Benson, as security and technicians; and Tom Woods, a computer-encryption expert who loved only money more than codes. Woods was not aware of the Morrison, Lighter, or Ward difficulties, other than that Morrison had been killed in a break-in. He was a nervous man.
“Come in.” Corbeil pressed the door-release button, buzzing them in.
D one,” Hart said.
Corbeil nodded. “So. There’s no reason to think that anything remains here in Texas.”
“Not as far as we know.”
Corbeil turned away, fished the diamond necklace out of his pocket, and began unconsciously pouring it from hand to hand, as though it were a slinky. “There remains the possibility that he sent his sister something.”
“He could have sent something to anybody; but we can’t find any really close friends. No girlfriends, right now. The sister’s the obvious candidate. I mean, we’re still backgrounding him, but if there’s somebody else, it’s not obvious,” Hart said.
“I wish we’d had time to interrogate him,” Corbeil said. “But the pressure to get him out of the way . . . well, we couldn’t both interrogate him and have a credible disappearance, could we?”
Hart shrugged. The other man, Benson, stood silently, listening. A follower. Hart asked, “So now what? Shut down the ranch for a while?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Corbeil said. “We can do it by pushing a button. No point in pushing it before we have to. There’s a lot of money out there right now.”
“I’ll tell you, Mr. Corbeil, this whole incident scared the shit out of me. I’m still scared and Les is just as nervous as I am.” Hart glanced at the silent man, looking for support, and got a nod.
“That’s why we’ve been so careful setting it up,”Corbeil said. “They’d need evidence to put us in jail, and there’s no physical evidence of anything. If I tell Tom Woods to push the destruct button, everything is gone. Not even we could get it back.”
“That’s well and good, but there’s still Lane Ward,” Hart said. “If she does have something, or if Morrison set up some kind of dead-man’s drop . . .”
“So we need to go out and look at her house.”
“That’s dangerous,” Hart objected.
“You didn’t have any trouble getting into Morrison’s place out there. Or here, either.”
“That was different. He was supposed to be out of town, and we knew he was dead, so nobody would be coming around to visit. With Ward, we don’t know the neighborhood, we don’t even know what we’d be looking for. It might be on a disk, on a hard drive, it might be stashed online somewhere. It might not exist.”
“But if it does, and if it were sent on to the FBI, we’d be in desperate trouble,” Corbeil said. “It’s worth the risk. If the worst happened, and you were caught, we might explain it as a security matter. Something that we were terribly
Corbeil had good reasons: one-carat diamonds were easy to move, easy to sell, and anonymous. The necklace was a bank account. If you popped the diamonds out of their settings, you could put $300,000 in the toes of your shoes . . .
Another good reason was the sensuality of the stones. Corbeil’s face might have been chopped from a block of oak, but he was a sensual man. He liked the feel of a woman, the sound of a zipper coming down on the back of a woman’s dress, the smell of Chanel. He liked fast cars driven fast, French cooking and California wine, Italian suits and English shoes and diamonds. He hadn’t been able to afford the very best in women, wine, and song until AmMath. Now he had them, and he would be damned if he would give them up . . .
T he doorbell rang; he’d been expecting it. He put the book down, slipped the necklace into a shirt pocket, crossed to the intercom, and pushed the button. “Yes?”
“Hart and Benson.” William Hart’s voice. Four men were involved in various parts of the operation. Corbeil himself, as coordinator; Hart and Benson, as security and technicians; and Tom Woods, a computer-encryption expert who loved only money more than codes. Woods was not aware of the Morrison, Lighter, or Ward difficulties, other than that Morrison had been killed in a break-in. He was a nervous man.
“Come in.” Corbeil pressed the door-release button, buzzing them in.
D one,” Hart said.
Corbeil nodded. “So. There’s no reason to think that anything remains here in Texas.”
“Not as far as we know.”
Corbeil turned away, fished the diamond necklace out of his pocket, and began unconsciously pouring it from hand to hand, as though it were a slinky. “There remains the possibility that he sent his sister something.”
“He could have sent something to anybody; but we can’t find any really close friends. No girlfriends, right now. The sister’s the obvious candidate. I mean, we’re still backgrounding him, but if there’s somebody else, it’s not obvious,” Hart said.
“I wish we’d had time to interrogate him,” Corbeil said. “But the pressure to get him out of the way . . . well, we couldn’t both interrogate him and have a credible disappearance, could we?”
Hart shrugged. The other man, Benson, stood silently, listening. A follower. Hart asked, “So now what? Shut down the ranch for a while?”
“That won’t be necessary,” Corbeil said. “We can do it by pushing a button. No point in pushing it before we have to. There’s a lot of money out there right now.”
“I’ll tell you, Mr. Corbeil, this whole incident scared the shit out of me. I’m still scared and Les is just as nervous as I am.” Hart glanced at the silent man, looking for support, and got a nod.
“That’s why we’ve been so careful setting it up,”Corbeil said. “They’d need evidence to put us in jail, and there’s no physical evidence of anything. If I tell Tom Woods to push the destruct button, everything is gone. Not even we could get it back.”
“That’s well and good, but there’s still Lane Ward,” Hart said. “If she does have something, or if Morrison set up some kind of dead-man’s drop . . .”
“So we need to go out and look at her house.”
“That’s dangerous,” Hart objected.
“You didn’t have any trouble getting into Morrison’s place out there. Or here, either.”
“That was different. He was supposed to be out of town, and we knew he was dead, so nobody would be coming around to visit. With Ward, we don’t know the neighborhood, we don’t even know what we’d be looking for. It might be on a disk, on a hard drive, it might be stashed online somewhere. It might not exist.”
“But if it does, and if it were sent on to the FBI, we’d be in desperate trouble,” Corbeil said. “It’s worth the risk. If the worst happened, and you were caught, we might explain it as a security matter. Something that we were terribly
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