Dollar Down Read Free

recovered enough to make a
peep."
    She was a long way from shaken, but I sensed a tremor
of uncertainty in a psyche that was accustomed to being in
control. She bit at her lower lip.
    "Before you tell anyone else, or go to the police,
    Ms. —"
    "Call me Sabine. You're in the firm now."
    "All right, I'm Mick. I want to go back and see if I can
learn anything about what they did there."
    "I'll drive you."
    "It might take me a long time to look the place over. It
might also be dangerous. Even if no one is inside, there could
be someone watching. Your face could end up in a photo album
that you don't want to be in."
    "I'll wear a scarf over my head."
    "I don't think it'll help."
    "Whether it does or not, I do insist. For personal as
well as professional reasons, I'm extremely concerned." Sabine
stood and found her purse. "Since technically I am your
supervisor, that is, responsible for your employment, wouldn't
it be better to start with a spirit of cooperation?"
    Considering my financial status, yes it would. Sabine
was a good driver. We arrived in less time than it took the taxi
last night. A quick look in the study made the rest of the search
anticlimactic. The notebook computer was missing, but nothing
else was disturbed. I did find an address book, which I slipped
into my pocket.
    Sabine had gone upstairs to check other rooms. She
made a little gasp and quickly turned her back to me when I
walked in on her. She had something in her hand.
    "You startled me." She looked over her shoulder.
    "Sorry, I found this." I showed her the notebook. "It
might have something interesting in it."
    "And I found this." A faint blush colored Sabine's
cheeks as she held out a gold bracelet. "It's mine. I had loaned it
to Trevor to decipher this." She pointed to Arabic script
engraved on it. "He was studying the language, and..." Her
cheeks darkened further. "You not only startled me, I guess it
looked like I was stealing."
    "Not if it's yours."
    "Of course."
    We continued searching and discovered nothing but a
stack of laundry and a collection of rare vinyl
records—thirty-threes, forty-fives and even seventy-eights of Josephine Baker,
Bessie Smith, Earl Fatha Hines and people I'd never heard of. If
for no other reason, I wanted to find Trevor and sip a fine
vintage while we listened to musical history together. Should
be nice.
    By the time Sabine and I got back to the Winchell office,
his secretary had located Trevor's elder brother, who hadn't
heard from him in five or six months. She also had a list of
twelve people with whom Trevor had been in frequent
contact.
    Sabine and I compared them with the names in his
address book. There were two matches. One was a woman
whom Joelle identified as Trevor's romantic interest. The other
was Diego Cervantes. Trevor had his name underlined.
    Sabine said a Cervantes had sat in on the initial
briefings as a member of the Orimulsion client team, but he
wasn't part of the follow-up. The phone number was to a hotel.
Cervantes had checked out five days ago.
    The firm had photographs of the initial client team, five
men including Cervantes. He was good-looking. I guessed
five-feet-ten and a hundred fifty or sixty pounds. A man that size
could be either thin and flaccid or lean and dangerous.
Cervantes didn't look flaccid.
    After we checked the photos, Sabine asked to look at
the data I'd copied from Trevor's computer. We found a folder
whose files were garbled, either trashed or encrypted.
    "I want to make two copies of this. I'll keep one and
give one to our systems administrator. This office has an
encryption standard, which is probably what Trevor used. If he
did, the administrator can help us." Sabine reconfirmed our
dinner engagement and went back to work.
    I checked with Petroleos de Venezuela to find out what
Diego Cervantes' job was. He didn't show up in the company's
management structure. Maybe he'd changed employers. I
called Jorge Gavizon, an investigator in Caracas I had worked
with while I was at