Deadfall

The copilot stepped in from the cockpit to give the instructions to belt up and tell us the travel time. There was an attendant—a young Indian woman in traditional dress—who asked if we wanted coffee before takeoff. I wasn’t ready for my three cups of black joe quite yet.

I had called Mike from the car, using James Prescott’s phone. He was as startled by the situation as I was, and didn’t like being excluded from the field trip.

The copilot pulled up the steps and secured the cabin door. As soon as he did, the pilot steered the plane onto the short runway.

“How long had you known Paul Battaglia?” I asked.

Chidra put her finger to her lips, as though to shush me. “Let’s wait till we’re airborne. I can’t hear you over the sound of the engines.”

She exuded confidence. Charm, too, but mostly she had a presence that suggested a woman who was supremely sure of herself.

The plane lifted off—seemingly without effort. A few lights dotted the suburbs of northern Westchester and Connecticut as we banked and turned left over Long Island Sound, on our way across the middle of the country. But mostly, it was dark below and above us, whatever stars there were occluded by a gray haze.

“You asked me something?” Persaud said, when we leveled off at altitude.

“I’m interested in how long you knew Paul Battaglia, and how you met him.”

“I’ve been aware of him for a very long time,” she said. “Through his work. Of course I’d shaken his hand at benefits and fund-raisers and the like, but he wouldn’t have remembered that.”

It was a stock answer people gave all the time. I had expected better from her.

“He actually had an eye for beautiful women, Chidra. I’m sure you would have caught his attention.”

Now I was wondering about the fact that Battaglia hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring the night he was killed. Chidra Persaud was practically half the DA’s age—but she was entirely his type. She didn’t wear a wedding ring either.

She readily accepted the compliment. “I didn’t meet him formally until six months ago, in the early spring,” she said. “Through my lawyer, actually. I believe he’s a former colleague of yours.”

“Who would that be?”

“Charles. Charles Swenson,” she said.

“Good man,” Prescott said, accepting a glass of orange juice from the attendant.

I didn’t know Swenson well. He’d been an early disciple of Paul Battaglia but left the office long before I’d joined the staff. He was a well-respected member of the white-collar-crime defense bar, who did most of his work in federal court.

“Swenson helps you with your business dealings?” I asked.

“My company has lawyers in-house, Alex. Charles helps me when problems bubble up from time to time.”

I didn’t like weasel words. I preferred straightforward responses.

“Were there bubbles lately, or something more tangible than that?” I asked. “Did the matter involve my office?”

“Yes, it was the reason Charles introduced me to Paul Battaglia.”

“Legal problems, is that what you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Of what nature?” I asked.

“As you would imagine, it’s quite difficult to manage all the aspects of an international business,” Persaud said. “Most of our clothing is made in India, where I own several factories.”

“Based there because of the cheap labor?” I asked, taking a stab at her—which I knew was unnecessary the moment the words came out of my mouth. I’d had a short, intense lesson in the global fashion world working on Wolf Savage’s death. It might prove useful today, but I didn’t need to step on her already.

“No, Alex,” Persaud said. “Because India is my home, where I started the company. Because I wanted to employ people in areas of my country where industry is scarce.”

“It must be very hard to oversee things with all the travel you do,” Prescott said, unlatching the lock that held his seat in takeoff and landing position, swiveling it to face us.

“That’s necessary, of course,” she said. “I’m the face of the company, which is—as you certainly know, Alex—rare for a woman at this level of enterprise.”

“Very impressive,” I said. “And then, you take time off for pleasure, like these hunting trips.”

“They relax me. I need some release from the intensity of my work, just as I assume you do,” Persaud said. “I grew up with a Holland & Holland as my closest friend.”

She must have noticed my puzzlement. I didn’t know what Holland & Holland was.

“The world’s best gunmaker,” she said. “By appointment to Her Majesty, the Queen, and many royals before her. The first accessory I remember owning—long before jewelry and fancy shoes—is a .375 H & H Magnum, but I’ll get to that.”

“Go on,” I said.

“We’re growing so fast—in Asia, on the Arabian Peninsula, in Europe, and here in America—that I’ve tried to staff up my executive wing so I can have men and women all over the world who are capable of covering my back, capable of thinking for me, capable of earning my trust.”

I had forty lawyers in my unit, who stood to profit only by doing justice. I understood the qualities Chidra Persaud was seeking in professional colleagues.

“What legal problems have you encountered?”

She waited for the attendant to lift our trays and set our places with china and silverware, in anticipation of the breakfast service, before she spoke.

“The British have a very complicated tax structure,” Persaud said, “especially for a foreigner doing business there. Charles Swenson says we’ll come out of this fine, but it’s important you know that my company is being investigated there, in the UK.”

“On tax issues?”

“There’s an allegation of fraud, actually,” she said, adding two sugars to the coffee that had been placed in front of her. “Corporate tax fraud.”

“Here, also?” I asked, glancing at James before speaking again to her. “I’m surprised you two haven’t met before.”

“Charles Swenson has guided my hand for years, in all sorts of legal matters,” Persaud said, managing a smile at each of us. “None of them setting us on the wrong side of the law.”

I started sipping my first cup of coffee as soon as it was set down on my tray.

“I met with him seven or eight months ago, in New York, at the suggestion of my legal team in London, to make sure he knew what was going on.”

“Tax matters,” I said, “would be something for James’s office to deal with.”

“Oh, no,” Persaud said. “I’m not facing any charges, any investigations in this country. In fact, I wanted Charles to know that I thought Tiger Tail had been targeted by thieves—that we were losing vast amounts of product between our factories and the shipments that arrived in our foreign markets. That’s far more important to me than bogus tax issues.”

“Ah, so you think you’ve been the victim of a crime,” I said, hoping my facetious tone wasn’t clear to her.

“Precisely that, on a very large scale. The shippers we’ve been dealing with or some mob operation unloading our product at the docks, from container ships,” she said. “I can’t put my finger on where the problem is yet, but I’m sure trained investigators can help.”

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