Broken Trust (Badge of Honor 13)

“Don’t be angry with her. She wouldn’t hesitate pointing out that you’re the one with a healing bullet wound.”

“Point taken.”

“Look, I made a couple calls on that Miami lawyer.”

“And you found out that he’s up to his ears in Bolivian marching powder.”

“Which is . . . ?”

“If you don’t know, then I guess he’s not. It’s cocaine, Dad.”

“That’s right. I did know that. Lord knows, there’s enough of that down there in South Florida.”

“And in South Philly. And heroin. It’s everywhere. And bad guys needing legal counsel because of it.”

“True. But, at least from what I gather, this Grosse isn’t one of them. He’s an interesting fellow, with an extremely successful practice. His firm has a high-end clientele—”

“Explaining why Camilla Rose had him.”

“Right. And he handles the very complex needs of the very wealthy very quietly. From what I’m told, it’s all aboveboard.”

Matt watched the traffic light cycle and visually cleared the intersection before accelerating through it. He glanced a second time to the right. A block up was the Union League, and, another block just beyond it, City Hall loomed.

“What, for example?”

“A lot

of his work is in creating corporations. And a lot of that offshore accounts, some established here in Delaware and Wyoming, others in the Caymans and British Virgin Islands.”

“Shell companies? Sounds like a slippery legal slope,” Matt said, downshifting to turn left in front of the Episcopal church.

“Perhaps what gets put in them, but his work establishing them, from what I understand, is entirely legal.”

Matt tugged the steering wheel to the right, and, tires rumbling, the car shot up the bricked drive to The Rittenhouse.

“Well,” Matt said, “it’s good to hear she had good representation.”

“Did you find out any more about what happened with her?”

“Not really.”

“Such a tragedy. Well, if I hear more, I’ll let you know. Be careful.”

Matt saw a valet trotting toward his door.

“Thanks, Dad.”

—

When Payne got off the elevator on the twenty-first floor of the Rittenhouse condominiums, he found there was a uniformed officer sitting in one of the two linen-upholstered armchairs across the corridor from the elevator bank.

The blue shirt, a wiry, dark-haired male who looked to Payne to be all of twenty, had taken the chair that afforded him a direct view of the door to Camilla Rose’s condo at the end of the corridor.

He had been hunched over, elbows on knees, reading something on his smartphone. But when the young officer looked up to see who was getting off the elevator, he snapped to his feet.

“Sergeant,” he announced, “no one’s gone in or out of 2150 the whole time I’ve been here.” He looked at his wristwatch, and added, “Which has been precisely nineteen minutes.”

“See anything unusual on the floor?”