“You talked to Stikes? About me?”
“He was a client of mine,” Larry replied defensively.
“He was what?” The last word came out as an angry yelp, drawing the attention of other diners. She dropped her voice to a furious whisper. “You were working for Alexander goddamn Stikes?”
“I told Edward the same thing I’m going to tell you,” said Larry, bristling. “He was just a client who asked me to arrange the shipping of some goods on behalf of his clients. His company was a legitimate British business, and none of the goods were illegal or on any international watch lists. So I did nothing wrong.” He slapped both hands down on the table for emphasis. “Nothing.”
Nina was already putting the pieces together, and not liking the picture they formed. “And these clients of his: They wouldn’t have been General Salbatore Callas and Francisco de Quesada, would they?”
The answer emerged with considerable reluctance. “Yes.”
“A murderer who tried to overthrow the Venezuelan president, and a drug lord?”
“What they do for a living isn’t my business,” Larry protested. “Do postmen carry out background checks before they give someone their mail?”
“Postmen don’t pick and choose who they deliver to,” Nina countered. “You do.” She thought for a moment, still fuming. “I didn’t know about any of this—but Eddie must have, before he saw you in Bogotá. What happened?”
The waiter reappeared. “Not now,” Larry snapped before continuing with bad grace: “All right, yes, I made a delivery to de Quesada in Colombia.”
“Let me guess,” Nina cut in. “Two Incan artifacts, one of which was made of solid gold and weighed about two tons?”
“It was a hell of a job to transport, let me tell you,” said Larry almost with pride, before the glares of the two women reminded him to stick to the point. “But I made the delivery and de Quesada was impressed at how quickly I’d arranged everything, so I gave him my card in case he might put any future work my way. But I didn’t think any more of it—until Edward turned up at my hotel. With my business card. He threatened that if I didn’t give my entire fee to charity, he was going to turn the card—with my fingerprints on it, obviously—over to Interpol and have me implicated in whatever the hell was going on.”
“That would be murder, robbery, an attempted coup, and drug smuggling,” Nina reminded him. “Just to start with.”
“None of which had anything to do with me! But do you have any idea how much being accused of involvement in that sort of thing could damage my business? Obviously I was worried—and I don’t take threats lying down, especially not from my own son. So I called Stikes to see if there was anything he could do to fix the situation.”
“And … what? You told him that we were searching for El Dorado in Peru?”
A pause, Larry choosing his words with care. “It came up,” he admitted. “Stikes asked about you—I didn’t think anything of it,” he said defensively as Nina’s look darkened. “He wanted to know where you were. I assumed it was because he might want to straighten things out with you.”
While for the most part Larry did not resemble his son physically, being taller and thinner-faced, their eyes were all but identical, and Nina knew one of Eddie’s subtle expressions well enough to recognize the same on his father: He was dissembling. “But you must have known that Eddie and Stikes weren’t exactly old army buddies.”
“Not until Edward told me,” Larry insisted. “When Stikes first contacted me, he said he was actually a friend of his, and that Edward had recommended me to him for a job.”
“And you believed him? After what happened when we had dinner at your house?”
“I thought that maybe Edward was trying to apologize by sending me a potential client. Clearly I was wrong.”
“But after Eddie told you, you still spoke to Stikes anyway?” Nina’s voice became accusing. “Did you think that he might, I don’t know, make your problem go away?”
It took Julie a moment to realize what she was implying, and when Nina’s veiled meaning struck her she gasped. Larry, on the other hand, got it immediately; the reason for his delayed response was pure outrage. “Of course that’s not what I thought,” he said in a low growl. “That’s just— Christ, no, that’s not it at all! I can’t believe you’d even—”
Nina’s own anger was rising. “That’s what happened, though. People died in Peru, Larry, a lot