“Garth Montgomery is either trying to get out of the country, or needs to move from wherever he’s hiding now—maybe Mexico or South America—to somewhere else. Somewhere new. He needs documents to do it, probably a passport. And his daughter is helping him. How long was she in this guy’s house?”
Walt shrugged, thinking back to the morning he followed Avery to the Park Slope neighborhood. “Maybe twenty minutes.”
“Did she have anything when she left?”
“Just her purse, same as when she entered.”
Walt walked to the nightstand and picked up his drink. “Put somebody on the guy. Keep tabs on him twenty-four/seven.”
Oliver nodded. “Already on it. Tell me about the cemetery.”
“The cemetery?”
“Yeah. When you followed her to Green-Wood Cemetery.”
“Not much to tell. She took a slow stroll through the grounds. I stayed at a good distance. She approached a grave site, hesitated for several minutes before she actually stood over it. Then she dropped flowers and hurried away. Whose graves were they?”
“Annette and Christopher Montgomery. Her mother and brother.”
Walt stared into his rum. “That’s sad.”
“Her mother died while we were investigating Garth Montgomery. Had a heart attack after he disappeared and all the details about him came out, including his fifteen-year affair with a woman half his age. We thought the death of his wife might cause him to surface, but the son of a bitch stayed in hiding. Can you believe that? Didn’t even go to his own wife’s funeral. A real son of a bitch, this guy. We’ve been watching Claire Montgomery for three years now. She visits Green-Wood Cemetery every year.”
“Every year?”
“She comes to New York every summer. Usually flies American and stays for a day or two before heading home. The only reason that we’ve ever been able to come up with for her trips to New York is to visit Green-Wood Cemetery. But this year, she changes things up. She drives instead of using the airlines. And she hasn’t used her credit card once since leaving LA. She paid for two weeks at the Lowell using a cashier’s check. She’s trying not to leave any trails. We’re convinced she either sees her father on these trips, or is in contact with him some other way. The trip to André Schwarzkopf’s brownstone is the first piece of concrete evidence we’ve managed in all the years we’ve followed her.”
“What happened to the brother?”
“Who?”
“Her brother. What happened to him?
“He died in a sailing accident. Claire Montgomery and her brother took out the family yacht, a sailboat that bore her name—the Claire-Voyance. A three-million-dollar boat daddy bought for her twenty-first birthday. They ran into bad weather a couple of miles off the coast of New York. The boat sank. She lived, but barely—the Coast Guard pulled her near-drowned and hypothermic body out of the ocean. Her brother died. She visits his grave every year.”
“Shit,” Walt whispered under his breath, taking a long swallow of rum.
“What’s the matter?”
Walt thought back to his confession earlier in the night. His stupid, bumbling, rambling confession, and his explanation of the survivor’s guilt that came with making it through the shooting that had taken his partner’s life. He spoke as if his situation were unique, as if Avery could never understand the feeling. She surely did.
“Nothing.” Walt offered a drunken wave. “Just sounds like a shit situation.”
“When are you seeing her again?” Oliver asked.
Walt walked over to the desk in the corner, where papers were strewn across the surface. “Tomorrow. She wants to check out all this Cameron Young stuff to see if any of it can be used on her show.”
“Good. Make sure the meeting happens. And if you get a chance to get into her hotel room, take it.”
Walt didn’t like the implications of what Oliver was suggesting.
“On what pretense would I end up in her hotel room?”
“Come on, Walt. Use those icy blues of yours. We’re off the record on this one. Get creative.”
Oliver reached into the breast pocket of his sport coat and pulled out a thin, square, metal box, which he placed on the foot of the bed.
“I’ve got a dozen agents who would kill to be in your current position. But I went all the way to a tiny island in the Caribbean to recruit you. You’re the only one with the Cameron Young connection, and we need to exploit it.”
Oliver checked his watch. “Forty-eight hours. I want another update.” He walked across the hotel room and opened the door, then turned before he left. “Good work this week, Walt. This little arrangement is already paying dividends.”
The door closed and Walt stood in the quiet of the hotel room. He stared at the small box Jim Oliver had left on the end of the bed. He walked over and picked it up. The brushed metal container was flat and thin. He unclasped the front lock and opened it. Inside were four small, circular devices that looked like silver-oxide batteries. He lifted one out of the seated felt and turned it over to find a 3-M decal covering the pad of tape on the back. Remove this decal, Walt knew, and the tiny listening device could be stuck just about anywhere.
PART IV
Evidence
CHAPTER 35