38
If Montmartre had been everything Sophie had expected, Fort Lauderdale was nothing like the place she had imagined. She had pictured a quiet, family-friendly tourist town with a sugar-white beach, a jigsaw of Creole cottages and boardwalks, shopping malls and fun parks. Instead it was a bustling city complete with a downtown financial district and out-of-town commuter belt. There was barely an inflatable dolphin to be seen. Certainly not in Sistrunk, the run-down neighbourhood their taxi was crawling through. Sophie was feeling more uncomfortable by the minute as they pulled up at a red light. On both sides were pawn shops and pizza joints, along with a liquor store that had a grille instead of a door, presumably to discourage hold-ups. A group of kids – no more than nine or ten – sat on BMX-style bicycles outside the store, openly smoking a joint; Sophie could smell the sickly-sweet herb through the open window. The light turned green and they moved off, past a down-and-out pushing a shopping trolley full of cans, past a red-brick church with a hoarding reading ‘Thou Shalt Not KILL’, past a single palm tree jutting out of a vacant lot, waving like a flag of surrender for the American Dream.
‘You sure you guys want this address?’ said the driver, glancing at them in his mirror, as they turned into a side street and pulled up outside a crumbling apartment complex.
Sophie looked up at the graffiti-scarred walls and wished she was back in the comfort of Lana’s Gulfstream that had brought them from New York.
In the last twenty-four hours she’d clocked up more air miles than your average pilot. After their meeting with Andrea Sayer, they had checked into an anonymous two-star hotel on the Lower East Side and called Lana. She had told them to get some sleep, then meet her – and the jet – at Teterboro at seven a.m. From there they flew straight to Fort Lauderdale executive airport, then into town to meet Tyler Connor. Lana had gone south to Miami, where she apparently had some friends.
I’m not surprised she didn’t want to hang around here, thought Sophie, looking at the building’s barred windows. It was exactly how she imagined a drug dealer’s house to look.
‘Can you wait for us?’ said Josh, slipping the driver a twenty-dollar tip.
‘Sure, but don’t be too long, huh?’ he said, his gold tooth winking at them in the sunshine.
Michael Asner’s biker cellmate lived in a complex called Shoreside Villas, a run-down block arranged around a pool long since drained of water and, despite its name, without any glimpse of shoreline.
‘Shouldn’t we have met him by the beach or in a diner or somewhere?’ whispered Sophie to Josh as they walked around to apartment 2b. Josh’s glance told her he agreed with her.
‘We won’t be long. Just a few questions, then we’re out of here, okay?’
Josh knocked twice. Inside, they could hear the thump of rock music. He slammed his fist against the door instead; it immediately opened a crack. ‘Yeah?’ said a deep voice.
‘You Ty?’ said Josh. ‘I’m the dumb-ass Limey who called earlier.’
There was a pause, then a gale of booming laughter and the door swung open.
‘Come on in, funny guy,’ said the man-mountain standing just inside. ‘And bring your bitch with you.’
Despite six weeks of Miami sunshine, Tyler Connor’s skin was still jail-cell white and covered in the smudged spidery tattoos of the correctional system. He was at least six foot five, with a fifty-inch chest, Sophie estimated. He was not fat, just bulky from prison yard weights, his arms bulging under a T-shirt that read ‘No Wuckin’ Furries’. His beard was scrappy and his face narrow, but the one thing you noticed were his eyes – they were so dark, they looked like the ends of expired matches. He was quite terrifying – as was his apartment. It was dingy and cluttered, lit only by a lamp with a red bandanna draped over it and the glare of the TV, currently showing a porn video. There was a half-assembled motorcycle in the hallway and the low coffee table was covered in what looked like drug paraphernalia.
‘So who do we have here?’ purred Ty as Sophie shuffled inside. ‘A fancy bit of Euro-*, huh? So you lost all your money with Mikey, baby-doll?’ he said, leering at her. ‘You want Ty to make it all better, huh?’
Josh took a protective step in front of Sophie, but she turned to face the big man.
‘No, Mr Connor,’ she said. ‘Someone is trying to kill me and I need your help to work out who.’
The lecherous smile faded from his face.
‘And what’s in that for me, sugar?’
Josh pulled out a roll of dollar bills and tossed it to the biker. He gave it an uninterested glance, then pushed it into his pocket.
‘You got any smokes?’
Josh took a packet of Marlboro reds from his jacket and shook one out. Sophie was once again impressed. Josh was not a smoker – he’d come prepared. Ty lit the cigarette from a Zippo lighter, then spread himself across a creaking armchair, gesturing to the sofa next to the table.
He had the courtesy to switch off the porno video.
‘So who d’you piss off, English girl?’ he said, blowing smoke at Sophie.
She shrugged, determined not to show how much Tyler Connor intimidated her.
‘That’s what we want you to tell us. You shared a cell with Michael Asner for over six months. Did he ever mention a Benedict Grear to you?’
Ty blew a smoke ring into the air, then let his mouth open and close with a popping sound.
‘Never heard of him. Who is he?’
‘We think he helped Asner hide a hundred million dollars before his Ponzi scheme collapsed.’
‘Yeah? And who told you that?’
Sophie met his gaze.
‘A little bird.’
‘Fuck that little bird, bitch. Gimme names.’
Sophie shook her head slowly.
‘You’re the one who needs to provide the names, Mr Connor. Or would you prefer to return our money?’
Ty grinned at her, showing a gap where a canine should have been.
‘You want to come and get it back?’ he said, pushing his crotch up.
Josh sat forward, his Scottish accent suddenly more pronounced.
‘No, pal,’ he said. ‘I’ll come and take it. Nay fuckin’ bother.’
Ty looked at him with surprise, then sat up slightly straighter.
‘I thought you Limeys had a sense of humour.’
‘No more jokes, Ty,’ said Josh evenly. ‘Tell us what you know about Asner’s hidden money. We know he talked to you about it.’
‘Yeah, he did.’
Sophie felt a flicker of hope.
‘What did he say?’ she asked.
Ty shrugged.
‘Mikey said too much in jail, that was his problem. But then it was his currency.’
‘Currency?’ asked Sophie.
‘I bet a pretty little lady like yourself has never been in the slammer,’ said Ty, recovering his swagger.
‘Really? You’d be surprised,’ said Sophie.
Ty looked up and gave her a half-smile. ‘Then you’ll know it’s not an easy place for someone like Michael.’
She thought of Michael Asner and his Brioni suits, his John Lobb shoes, his $500 haircut, every inch of him wiped clean of his poor Sacramento background.
‘Because he was rich?’ she asked.
Ty laughed.
‘Fuck, no. Half of those kids inside loved Asner, worshipped him because of his money. He made billions, man. He was like the king to those guys, a big-time thief who said fuck you to all that Wall Street bullshit. Asner wasn’t some small-time con – he pulled off the scam everyone inside dreams of but no one has the balls or the brains to do.’
‘So why wasn’t it easy for him?’ asked Sophie.
‘Because the other half hated him. They thought he was an arrogant sonofabitch, which I guess he was, strutting around the yard like Tom fucking Cruise.’ Ty stubbed his cigarette out on the top of a beer can. ‘Cried like a baby the first night, though. He was scared to death, man.’
‘Scared of what?’ asked Josh.
Ty shrugged.
‘What you think? Getting fucked in the ass, getting shanked in the yard. So I told him: it’s an economy inside – supply and demand. Mikey had to give the animals something, so he gave them stories. Shit about all the famous guys he met at parties: all those rappers and TV actors. And he told them all about his houses and cars and jets. Man, they ate that shit up.’ He laughed. ‘They even came to him for advice about making money. I mean, sure, some of them laughed at him, asked him how, if he was such a smart-ass, he’d ended up inside. So he told them he’d beat the system, told them about his little stash of cash.’
‘He boasted about the millions he had hidden?’
Ty’s face twisted into a sneer.
‘He couldn’t keep his dumb-ass mouth shut – that’s what got him killed.’
Sophie opened her eyes a little wider.
‘What do you mean?’
‘There was a guy inside called Uri Kaskov – they call him Uri the Bear. Russian.’ Ty gave a little shiver. ‘Man, those goddamn Russians scare the shit out of me.’
‘Russians,’ repeated Josh quietly to himself, and Sophie imagined he was thinking the same thing as her. Were these the same Russians who had been chasing them halfway across the world?
‘Uri heads up one of the Russian gangs based in Miami,’ continued Ty, clearly enjoying having them hanging on his every word. ‘They run drugs, whores, credit card shit, you name it. He went down a year ago for extortion, a little bit before Mike. Uri moved in on Mikey and offered to protect him.’
‘What did Uri want in return?’ asked Josh.
‘Shee-it, dawg, what you think?’ said Ty. ‘The money, of course. Everyone heard Mikey talking about hidden loot, so Uri would have offered to protect him for a cut of it.’
‘And Asner agreed?’
Ty laughed again. ‘Hey, maybe Mike suggested it. He told me he knew of at least a dozen people who wanted him dead: rich, powerful people, just the sort who could get to you in jail. Protection from someone like Uri was just what he wanted.’
The biker shrugged.
‘Besides, he had no fucking choice. Irony was, Uri was the one who cut his throat in the end.’
Josh and Sophie exchanged a look.
‘Why?’