Page 25

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

With the help of Polly and the Pink Panthers, I find Harm three days later in, of all places, Nashville, Tennessee.

Or should I say Buzz? Or Buzzy?

Harm Bergkamp now goes by the name—get this—Buzzy Berg. He works on low-budget horror films, using local breweries and abandoned buildings as locations. His movies are universally terrible and three steps below what we used to call “straight-to-video.” I tried to watch one called Bed, Bloodbath and Beyond , but I’m not good with gore and that’s pretty much all the films offer.

I use the Belmond name again, this time saying that the family is interested in financing a film. That kind of offer clears a schedule, though I don’t think Buzzy is all that busy. Buzzy isn’t Bizzy, if you will. I’ll let that alliteration stay a moment.

Buzzy tells me to meet him at the Gaylord Opryland Resort. What he doesn’t tell me is that the Gaylord is the largest noncasino hotel in the world. Yes, the world. I looked it up before I got here. It has nearly three thousand rooms and over three million square feet of space, all located—I kid you not—under a giant glass sphere overloaded with foliage, so you feel as though you’re trapped in the world’s largest terrarium. I wish Molly and Henry were with me, but they decided to stay a few extra days in Spain and who could blame them?

I meet Buzz by an indoor riverboat—I don’t know or care where it goes. Even though his purple hair and nose ring have been replaced by a shaved head and one hoop earring, I recognize the man right away.

“Buzzy Berg,” he says with a floppy-fish handshake.

“Samuel Pierce,” I say. It’s a favorite alias for obvious reasons. I didn’t use Sami Kierce with him because way back when he knew my name and might possibly remember it. For a moment, he hesitates, and I imagine that there is a flicker of recognition in his eyes. He still gives me a big smile and leads me on a path under an indoor waterfall.

I notice Buzz has a very prominent limp. He didn’t have that when I knew him.

“We are just prepping for a scene,” he tells me.

We is Buzzy and a guy with a ZZ Top beard holding a camera who Buzzy introduces as Dale. Dale doesn’t pay me much attention, and I return the favor. My attention, my full attention for a moment, is on the “dead” woman on the bed drenched in blood, the knife sticking out of her chest. I turn my head away fast. Buzzy notices and chuckles.

“I do all my own props and special effects,” he says. “Good work, right?”

“Yes,” I manage. Then I say, “Where did you hone that skill?”

“Everywhere. It’s my first love.” Then: “Take five, Dale.”

Dale doesn’t have to be told twice.

“Tell me more about that,” I say.

“About what?”

“How you started in the business. How you honed your craft.”

“I’m from Holland. You can probably hear my accent.”

“Not much of it,” I say. And that’s true. He sounds almost American now. “How long have you lived in the States?”

“Oh, gosh. More than twenty years now.”

“And before that?”

“Europe. I started as a production assistant, if you can believe it. Worked my way up.”

“Where in Europe?” I ask.

“Oh, all over. But that was a long time ago. Your timing is great because I have some close Hollywood friends who want to star in my new horror rom-com Romeo and Ghouliet . Especially since my last film won the Gore award. You probably know it. Anyway, I don’t like to name-drop or anything, but I’ve been talking to Lenny DiCaprio.”

“Lenny?”

“That’s what his friends call him. I mean, come on, you don’t think his friends call him Leonardo, do you?”

Buzzy chuckles.

“I thought they call him Leo,” I say.

That stops the chuckles, but he recovers. “No, no, Leo is what his public friends call him. See, when you get to know him—”

I need to move this along. “Your real name is Harm Bergkamp, isn’t it?”

The smile flickers. “Sure, of course. Who in the business uses their real name? Did you know Vin Diesel is really Mark Sinclair? Michael Caine was Maurice Micklewhite? Judy Garland was Frances Gumm? Gumm. Can you imagine The Wizard of Oz with Frances Gumm as Dorothy? Doesn’t Buzzy Berg sound better?”

“It does,” I agree, though it sounds like the name of a Hollywood agent.

“Right, exactly. It’s a good name. You want something in this life, you have to envision it. Buzzy Berg is the name of a big movie producer. So I envisioned it, I repeated it, and”—he spreads his hands—“here we are, Mr. Pierce.”

“Kierce,” I say.

“Pardon?”

“My last name is Kierce. Like Pierce but with a K . And my first name is Sami.” I spell it for him. I see something cross his face, like maybe five percent recognition. I push on. “We knew each other twenty-two years ago. In the Costa del Sol of Spain.”

“Ah.” He looks at me now. Everything about him changes, but I can’t say from what. Is it fear, anger, resentment, regret—I don’t know. “Are you taping this?” he asks me.

“No.”

“I remember you now. It was, what, a few hundred dollars in another country a quarter century ago. The statute of limitations has long run out.”

“I know.”

“Are you here for revenge then?”

“No, not that either.”

“What then?”

“I want some answers. That’s all. And then I’ll let you be.”

“And if I refuse?”

“I would rather not start with the threats.”

“And I would rather not relive my sordid past. And so I’ll ask again: If I refuse?”

“I’ll do all I can to make you miserable. The people who set up this meeting. The Belmonds. You know who they are?”

“Of course.”

“I am asking these questions on their behalf, not mine.”

“On their behalf?”

“Yes. You do not want them on your bad side.”

He frowns. “How can my past have anything to do with the Belmonds?”

“If you refuse,” I continue, ignoring his question for the time being, “they’ll use their vast resources, influence, and connections to make your life miserable.”

“I don’t really understand any of this,” Buzz says.

“Tell me about Anna.”

A small smile comes to his face. “Are you sure this is for the Belmonds?”

“I am sure,” I say as firmly as I can muster. “Tell me about Anna.”

“You liked her, didn’t you?” There is a bit of cruelty to the smile now. “What makes you think I know where she is now?”

“I didn’t ask where she is now,” I say. “I want you to tell me about her. Her full name. Where she grew up. How you two met.”

“Why?” he asks.

“How about starting with how you two met?”

He leaned back. “It would make a hell of a movie, actually. But I think I’ll pass.”

“You’re right,” I say. “No one will care about an old robbery. But a kidnapping—a prominent, unsolved one—well, that’s a different story.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

He seems genuinely befuddled. He’d been locked onto my interest being personal, a search for Anna, but even with the Belmond name, he wasn’t going down the excuse/evasion route one would expect a kidnapper to take. In fact, this was the main reason why I had the Belmonds call. The plan had been thus: If he’d been involved in the kidnapping—if he’d known who Anna really was—he mostly likely would have panicked when the Belmonds called. Lenore Spikes had investigators watching him to see whether he bolted so he could be followed. But he didn’t. He clearly welcomed the meeting. That meant either he wasn’t directly involved in the kidnapping—or that he had brass balls and was playing the ultimate game of bluff.

“Just tell me about Anna.”

“We were both part of the program.”

“What program?”

“I don’t know Anna’s exact story. But they were all variations of the same thing. There was a feeder agency. They find vulnerable girls. And boys. When they arrive, a group of men—hard men, awful men—train them. And yes, I don’t really mean train. They brutalize them. Do you really need to hear all this?”

“I don’t,” I say.

“People think these girls only come from Eastern Europe or somewhere like that. That’s not true. You just want lost children, ones with no one who gives a shit about them. Ones where no one will care that they vanish. There’s more than you think. Everywhere.”

“And Anna was one of them?”

He nods. “They paired her with me. Our job was to rob tourists. Like you.”

I know it isn’t relevant to this case, but I have to ask. “Why didn’t you do that?”

“Do what?”

“Just rob me?”

“We did.”

“You know what I mean.”

He nods. He gets what I’m asking. “We had flair. Anna and me. We liked to make it more. I know that sounds cruel. I was working on my craft.” He gestures to the “dead” woman on the bed. “That’s the truth. Special effects. It was also effective. If you convince someone they committed murder… Can I add, sorry, it was fun?”

I keep my tone steady. “And risky.”

“Not really. I always came into the room fast, so they wouldn’t check her vitals. You were also drugged. I think we gave you too much. It took forever for you to wake up. I had to practically carry you out of the room. And even if someone did get suspicious, what could they do? Report us? I was caught once. Working with another girl. The police laughed. What’s the charge for faking like you’re dead?”

Osorio had pointed out something similar. “So what happened to Anna?” I ask.

“I don’t know. Eventually the girls get used up. So they let them go. Or they run. Or they end up in prison or dead.”

“She never told you her real name?”

“She said her name was Anna Marigold. She said she grew up near Penn State. That her mother died young and left her with a sister. The sister married a man who abused her every which way. She saw a chance to run away.” He shrugs. “That might have been the truth, that might have been a lie. I don’t know.”

“But that’s what Anna told you?”

“That’s what Anna told me, yes. I was working with four girls at the time.”

“You mean you were their handler?”

“Use whatever term you like. It’s not accurate. But we would be running four scams at any one time. We kept it up for another six months after you left, then Anna took off for a while.”

“Took off?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Not important. Some kind of illness.”

There is something on his face when he says this. Something I don’t like.

“Anyway, maybe a year after you—I don’t remember—Anna came to me and we started up again. She hooked up with the wrong man. Or kid, I should say. He was seventeen, flashing a lot of money. The kind of guy we loved to take down. Except we didn’t know his family was connected. It all went sideways. She got beaten up. I got arrested. But this guy, his family was relentless. They went after us. She, I don’t know. To be honest, I thought maybe Anna was dead, so your visit, I mean, I guess she got away. That’s when I got out of the business too.”

We sit there a moment.

“You said she came through an agency?”

“All the girls did. It wasn’t a real agency, of course. Our economy relies on scams, you know that, don’t you? You ever watch daytime TV? Buy gold, buy insurance you don’t need. We all scam in our way. This agency used to have kiosks in malls. They’d stop people and say, hey, you could be a model. All you need is a portfolio, which could be arranged for a fee. A con job. And sometimes, they’d spot something else, someone more vulnerable.”

“Do you remember the name of the agency?”

“Radiant Allure. Funny how I remember that.”

“Is there anything else you can tell me about Anna?”

“I know what you must think of me. But there is more to it. I had my own sadistic handler. I came from an orphanage too. I thought they were sending me to film school in Spain. That’s what they told me. I was going to work as a production assistant on a real Spanish film. And when it all went wrong with that mobster’s kid, my handler told them where to find us. They held me down. Three men. Flipped me on my stomach. Two sat on my legs. The third straddled my back and held me by the hair. The fourth man…” He stops and licks his dry lips. “He had a hacksaw. He sawed through my Achilles tendon. I spent four months in a hospital. Then I moved here.”

I say nothing.

“I don’t tell you that for sympathy. You come here and tell me that you’re looking for Anna and it involves a high-profile kidnapping. So I assume you’re talking about the Belmonds’ daughter. You think that Anna had something to do with it. I don’t believe that. I’m not saying she was a saint. She wasn’t. She was a survivor and clever. But she took care of the other girls. She wouldn’t kidnap one. For all I know, you want to hurt Anna. You want to put her in prison or get some kind of revenge. And it isn’t like the Belmonds hired a random private detective. It’s you. Someone she conned years ago. And if Anna got away, I’m happy for her. She made it. And I’ll tell you something else, Sami Kierce, though you won’t believe it. She cared about you. Those cons? We ran them for a day or two at the most. She kept making excuses to keep you around. Because she was falling in love with you. I had to put my foot down. I told her we were taking too long. The bosses wouldn’t be happy. I think she was planning to run away with you. So if you’re looking for a bad guy or someone to blame, it’s me. Let her be.”

I believe him. I know that sounds crazy. But I do.

“I only want what’s best for her too,” I say.

“Then maybe don’t try to sell her out to a rich family.”

“That’s not what I’m doing,” I say. “We already found her.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She’s Victoria Belmond.”

“What?” He shakes his head and smiles. “My god, talk about the ultimate con.”

“What?”

“Pretending to be a long-lost heiress.”

“The family ran DNA tests.”

“Are you serious?”

“I am.”

“Wow.” He shakes his head, trying to comprehend. “So the Anna I knew… was like a rich heiress?”

“Something like that.”

“So why are you asking me what happened? Why don’t you ask her?”

“She says she doesn’t remember.”

“How can she not remember?”

I shrug. “Some kind of amnesia.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I don’t know.”

“So you’re, what, still trying to find her kidnappers?”

“Yes.”

Buzzy shakes his head. “I don’t know what to say.”

“If you reveal anything, the weight of this family will come down on you. If you don’t, they will indeed finance your next film.”

“That’s nice,” he says. “I’ll take the financing. I can use it. But between us, I don’t need the threats or the payoffs. Anna and I, we went through hell together. We survived. If she ever remembers, we will always have a bond.”

“You exploited her.”

“She won’t think that. Either way, tell her if she ever needs me, I’ll be there. But Sami?”

“What?”

“Let this be. Whatever she and I did, it was a long time ago.” And then, using the exact same words I heard from Talia Belmond, he says: “Let sleeping dogs lie.”