The Murder Book

CHAPTER 22

I got on the computer, typed in "Paris Bartlett" as a keyphrase on several search engines, and came up with nothing.

Next, I tried "Playa del Sol" and its English translation: Sun Beach, and co

I stuck with it for hours, felt my eyes crossing and broke for a midnight sandwich, a beer, and a shower before returning to the screen. By 2 A.M., I was fighting sleep and nearly missed the article in a three-year-old issue of The Resort Journal elicited by yet another try at Playa del Sol. This time, I'd logged on to a pay service- a business-oriented data bank that I hadn't used since last fall, when I'd considered selling a lot of municipal bonds. I clicked my assent to pony up by credit card and continued.

What I got was a rear-of-the-magazine piece entitled "Seeking the Good Life on Distant Shores: Americans Looking for Foreign Bargains Often Find Themselves on the Losing End." The article recounted several real estate deals gone sour, among them a construction project down in Baja named Playa del Sol: high-end condos peddled to American retirees lured by American-style luxury living at Mexican prices. Two hundred units out of a pla

No comment from the president of Playa Enterprises, Michael Larner.

Recalling the obscure business journal references that had come up on my first search for Larner- magazines not in the Research Library's holdings- I looked for anything else I could find on the former Achievement House director and came across several other deals he'd put together during the past five years.

Larner's specialty was real estate syndication- getting moneyed people together to buy out incomplete building projects that had run into trouble. High-rise apartments in Atlanta, defunct country clubs in Colorado and New Mexico, a ski lodge in Vermont, a golf course in Arizona. Once the deal was inked, Larner took his cut and walked away.

All the subsequent articles had the rah-rah tone of paid ads. None mentioned the Mexican debacle, Playa Enterprises, or the Playa Del Sol Company, Ltd. Larner's corporate face was now the ML Group.

No mention of the Cossack brothers, either. Or any of Larner's fellow venture capitalists, though showbiz and Wall Street affiliations were implied. The only other ML staffer named was Larner's son, Bradley, executive vice president.

Using "ML Group" as a keyphrase, I retraced all the search machines and obtained the exact same articles, plus one more: a two-year-old stroke job in a glossy rag titled Southwest Leisure Builder.

Centered amid the text was a color photo: Larners, father and son, posing on a bright day in Phoenix, wearing matching royal blue golf shirts, white canvas slacks, white smiles.

Michael Larner looked around sixty-five. Square-faced and florid, he wore wide steel-framed aviator's glasses turned to mirrors by the Arizona sun. His smile was self-satisfied and heralded by overly large capped teeth. He had a drinker's nose, a big, hard-looking belly, and meticulously styled white hair. A casting agent would've seen Venal Executive.

Bradley Larner was thi

Bradley Larner looked like a kid forced to sit for yet another obnoxious family snapshot.

An accompanying picture on the following page showed Michael Larner in an ice-cream suit, blue shirt, and pink tie posed next to a white-on-white Rolls Royce Silver Spirit. To his father's right, Brad Larner perched atop a gold Harley-Davidson, wearing black leather.

The caption read: Different generations, but the same flair for the Ultimate Ride.

The Playa del Sol link meant "Paris Bartlett" was likely an envoy to Milo from the Larners.

Warning him off the trail of Caroline Cossack.

Because the Larners and the Cossacks went way back.

The families had something else in common: big deals that often went bad. But all of them managed to stay on top, maintaining the good life.

The Ultimate Ride.

In the Cossacks' case, inherited wealth might've provided a nice safety blanket. Michael Larner, on the other hand, had bounced from job to job and industry to industry, leaving scandal or bankruptcy in his wake but always managing to position himself higher.

That smile, teeth as white and gleaming as his Rolls Royce. A man willing to do whatever it took? Or friends in the right places? Or both.

Back when Larner had bent the rules and admitted Caroline Cossack to Achievement House, her brothers had been barely out of adolescence but already in the real estate business. Larner might have dealt initially with Garvey Cossack, Senior, but the relationship endured well after Senior's demise and found Larner working for men twenty-five years his junior. Then I thought of something: Bradley Larner was about the same age as the Cossack brothers. Was there some link, there? Something that went beyond business?

When searching for school data on Caroline, Milo hadn't gotten very far with the local high schools. Because everyone was litigation-wary and watched episodic TV and believed cops without warrants were impotent.

Maybe also because Caroline's emotional problems meant she hadn't enjoyed much of a school history. But perhaps tracking her brothers would be easier.

The next morning, I was back at the library thumbing through Who's Who. Neither Bob Cossack nor Bradley Larner were listed, but Garvey Cossack had merited a biography: a single paragraph of puffery, mostly what I'd already learned from the Web.

Tucked among all the corporate braggadocio was Garvey's educational history. He'd completed two years of college at Cal State Northridge but hadn't graduated. Maybe that's why he'd bothered to list his high school. And the fact that he'd been student body treasurer during his senior year.

University High.

I checked with the reference desk and found that the library maintained three decades of local yearbooks in the reference section. Uni was as local as it got.

Finding the right volume wasn't hard. I estimated Garvey's age and nailed it on the second try.

His graduation picture revealed a full-faced, acne-plagued eighteen-year-old with long, wavy hair, wearing a light-colored turtleneck. Sandwiched between the top of the sweater's collar and the boy's meaty chin was a puka-shell necklace. His grin was mischievous.

Listed under his picture were memberships in the Business Club, the "managerial staff" of the football team, and something called the King's Men. But there was no mention of his being treasurer. According to the Student Council page, the treasurer was a girl named Sarah Buckley. Thumbing through the three preceding yearbooks taught me that Garvey Cossack had never served in any student-government capacity.