by Robert Pobi
Three separate FBI teams were shuffling around the apartment—almost thirty people—and Lucas could feel the uneasy quiet that comes from fighting an invisible enemy.
Lucas was not happy to be there and it must have been obvious by his expression because Whitaker said, “If this is too much for you, we can go.”
Chawla had already left, which was good because Lucas didn’t want to deal with him right now.
He gave his first lie of the day with “I’m good.” But the air outside had to be a lot nicer than in here—even with the new ventilation hole in the wall. “Who was this guy?”
Whitaker flipped through her notes and Lucas wondered if anyone in the bureau had any memory retention whatsoever.
“Ran a hedge fund, Makepeace Capital.”
“What was their market share?”
“A little over sixty…”—she looked up—“billion.”
“In what?” The bomb had blasted a hole in the floor, tearing through the carpet and marble, exposing joists like denuded ribs. There was a nice little Seurat—or at least what used to be a nice little Seurat—on the edge of the hole, charred and half gone. There was a bloody footprint on the floor beside it.
She held up her phone. “All I have is the Google stuff—we’re waiting on the SEC and the CFTC for more. But the guy was a known commodity. Power player for almost forty years. Started with Goldman Sachs before breaking out with his own fund. When he started, he was heavily invested in aviation and aerospace, and he bolstered these with arms manufacturers. Then he got into tech stocks while everyone else was still investing in phonograph needles, and rode the dot-com boom of the early nineties from a $300 million footprint to $2.5 billion, back when that word meant something. He cashed out before the bust and diverted his energies to emerging industrial nations, large-scale agriculture in particular. In 2007, he switched focus to clean and renewable energy, which helped his clients avoid the toxic subprime mortgage burnout, then moved them back into food production. His latest push was for water futures.” She looked up. “What are water futures?”
“When the world runs out of water, we’ll have to buy it from guys like Makepeace.” A pigeon flew in, and landed on the arm of the sofa. “Did he have anything to do with Horizon Dynamics?”
Whitaker shrugged. “I don’t know—the SEC will give us anything his books can’t. Whatever we can glean from his hard drive is technically ours—the lab boys pulled his computer out of the bedroom wall in there,” she said, pointing at a hole through the living room paneling. “But a full summary of his accounts will take a few hours.”
“I know he wasn’t on the guest list—I’ve gone over that already.” Lucas ran back through her summary. “Agriculture? They use ammonium nitrate in agriculture. Horizon Dynamics is in environmental risk assessment and the reclamation of depleted ecosystems, which fits. And arms? We found C-4 at the hub on Eighth. And in his humidor.”
“So is this what you would call a positive development?”
Lucas looked around the apartment. “Not for Mr. Makepeace.”
“He was a dot-com guy—which fits with Chawla’s narrative.”
Lucas realized that she was adopting his us-versus-them mentality, and he wasn’t sure it was the right approach—one skeptic on their team was enough. “Did he always work at home?”
“A couple of days a week—his wife said he had become a bit of a homebody in the past few years. He was trying to smell the roses a little more—her words, not mine.”
“We need a list of every single person he has dealt with, or thought about dealing with, from the day he hung out his shingle.”
“That’ll be covered under the umbrella of our warrants.”
Makepeace had had two visitors that morning—a UPS deliveryman and a guy in a blue suit who sported short-cropped blond hair that would have looked at home in the Addams Family. He had arrived with a big manila envelope and left without it.
Two of Chawla’s people had interviewed the UPS guy—he had arrived about twenty seconds after the big blond guy and left thirty seconds before—and he did his best to give them a summary of his visit. He was pretty shaken by the realization that he may have driven around with a bomb in his possession. They traced the delivery, and it had merely been an envelope of proxy forms for one of the corporations Makepeace dealt with. He said that the big guy in the suit had stood there in silence while Mr. Makepeace signed for his envelope, then sent him on his way. Apparently the big guy in the suit had made him uncomfortable—menacing, was how he had put it.
The big blond guy was the unknown—they were in the process of hunting him down. If he was a known commodity, they’d have something within half an hour. And if they couldn’t figure out who he was, they’d put out a BOLO, and the big machine of public surveillance would find him.
Lucas’s phone buzzed with Paul Knechtel’s number, the Wall Street friend he and Whitaker had visited yesterday. Lucas answered, “Dr. Page here,” and headed for the only place in the apartment not populated by FBI people—the kitchen,
“You’ve been busy since you left my office yesterday.”
“You have no idea.”
“Actually, I do. Which is why I called. I have some information.”
Lucas stepped into the kitchen and went around the island—a big slab of lapis lazuli with four sinks embedded in the top. “That was fast.” But success on Wall Street depended on having information before the competition, which meant it operated on a different kind of time than the rest of the world.
“The internet hub on Hudson that was blown up last night is insured by a company owned by the Hockney brothers. Which means they have to pony up for a $4.5 billion payout.”
“The people who own Horizon Dynamics?”
“Yes. And in the past two days they’ve lost a company that was headed for a strong IPO along with a check for $4.5 bil that is not going to make their stockholders very happy. And when it becomes known, a lot of people are going to take a shot across the Hockney bow. They’ll weather the storm, but they’ll lose a lot of blood.
“And remember when I said that the Paraguayans were in town hunting up infrastructure funding? I can’t tell you how I know, but they’re thinking about pulling up stakes and heading home. They can get everything they want from the Chinese, and the Hockneys are looking a little wobbly right now. But they’re still here, and it looks like they stayed because another financier is willing to float them the necessary funds. Again, Luke, this is not common knowledge and you can’t mention my name.”
“I won’t.” Lucas stared down at the deep blue countertop. “This other investor, what else can you tell me about him?”
“Back in the day he and the Hockneys did a lot of business. He started out as a stockbroker and handled a lot of their investments, but they had a falling-out a few years back. He’s top tier. Knows what he’s doing. You asked who would profit from wiping Horizon Dynamics off the map—he would be that guy. I’d talk to him if I were you.”
Lucas turned back to the living room and focused on the crater that extended out over Fifth Avenue. “Is his name Jonathan Makepeace?”
“How the hell did you know that?”
Lucas stared at the hole blown into the room. “Lucky guess.”
34
The Hockney brothers had offices at the crossroads of conspicuous consumption and overindulgence, just off Fifth Avenue on 57th Street. Bvlgari, Tiffany, Louis Vuitton, Piaget, Van Cleef & Arpels, and Trump Tower were all there. Whitaker parked at the curb and Lucas had to wait for a homeless man holding out a paper cup to move before he could open the door.
Security in the lobby was befitting the main terminal at Ben Gurion Airport. There were six armed guards by the entry points, their Kevlar and nylon gear at direct odds with the decor. Evidently the Hockney brothers were taking what had happened at the Guggenheim—and what had happened to the internet hub on Hudson Street—a little personally.
Lucas and Whitaker badged past the first desk b
ut had to sign in at the desk for HWE—Hockney Worldwide Enterprises. The security officer behind the second desk took his job seriously, and inspected both of their ID cards after flicking Whitaker’s badge with his fingernail. He photographed them, gave each a still-warm laminated pass, and had them speak their names into a digital registry. When they had jumped through the appropriate security hoops, he pointed them in the direction of the elevator.
The elevator was paneled in oak, accented in brass, and scented with Christmas-tree-in-a-bottle. As soon as Whitaker fingered the button, the car shot up into the building; it had no doubt been designed for people who got paid by the second.
They didn’t speak on the way up, and Lucas knew that Whitaker was sharing the realization that they were being watched. Lucas adjusted his sunglasses and, after checking his reflection in the big brass panel, ran a hand through his hair so he looked a little less like Billy Zoom.
The elevator slowed, pinged one soft chime, and stopped. The doors slid open to a woman in her twenties wearing a Chanel outfit in a big black and white houndstooth check that made her look like an optical illusion when she stood up to greet them. “Detectives Whitaker and Page,” she said.
Whitaker hoisted her shield. “It’s Special Agent Whitaker and this is Dr. Page. FBI, not NYPD.” She didn’t break character when she said, “We are here to speak to William and Seth Hockney,” in her Don’t-fuck-with-me voice.
The woman smiled and her outfit came to life as she walked around the desk. “I’m sorry, but you’ll need an appointment. They are not in the habit of speaking to just anyone and—”
Whitaker lowered her volume precipitously when she said, “Unless you want fifty agents in FBI parkas to sweep in here in about ten minutes, you get us in to speak to the Misters Hockney right now.”
The receptionist shifted on her feet, and this had the effect of changing the pattern on her jacket, as if she were a chameleon. “Please have a seat over there while I tell them that you are here.” She gestured to a bank of Herman Miller chairs that had all the appeal of airport lounge furniture, then went back to her desk and spoke a few hushed sentences into the phone.
Other than the receptionist-cum-gatekeeper, there were no other visible humans. The desk backed onto a marble wall that stretched away at right angles to points unknown, forming a wide hallway that contained architectural models in glass cases every twenty feet—miniature representations of the jewels of the Hockney empire: office towers, stadiums, ports, railway yards, and factories. But scenes from the natural world were absent—there were no mountains or forests or lakes represented.
The click of leather soles was audible for forty paces before a man turned the corner, into their line of sight.
Whitaker elbowed Lucas. “It’s the bad motor scooter from Makepeace’s lobby—the one with the Addams family haircut who scared the UPS guy.”
By the way he moved, Lucas guessed that he was the head of security or some other such functionary whose sole job was to keep the Hockneys isolated from the masses. Or people like him and Whitaker.
Without looking at—or even acknowledging—Lucas or Whitaker, he went to the desk and spoke softly into the receptionist’s ear. Lucas couldn’t hear what he said, but the receptionist’s outfit changed hue again and she glanced up at them, then looked back down at the glass top of her desk. She nodded, mumbled something, then fell silent as Lurch came over.
“Special Agents Whitaker, Page, may I help you?”
“Yes. We’re looking for someone.” Whitaker held up her phone, screen out, displaying a frame from the surveillance footage of Makepeace’s lobby. “You.”
Lurch’s expression didn’t shift when he said, “And here I am,” as if this were simply another minor inconvenience in a day full of them. “I am Mr. Frosst.”
“We’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Frosst examined her, then shifted focus to Lucas, his attention going down to the green anodized hand, then up to the bad eye behind the sunglasses. “I assume you want to ask me about my visit to Jonathan Makepeace’s earlier today.”
“Why would you assume that?”
“I’m probably one of the last people to see him alive.”
“So you know he’s dead.”
Frosst smiled, but there was nothing friendly in it. “Obviously.”
Lucas recognized a hint of either West Virginia or eastern Kentucky in his accent. He had polished the edges down, but it was still there in the way he almost added an extra syllable to every second word.
Frosst locked Whitaker in his stare. “I would like to do this in front of my employer—I was at Mr. Makepeace’s on their behalf. But I am afraid they are in an important meeting right now and can’t be disturbed. If you could come back on Tuesday, that would be—”
Whitaker took a step toward him and the man shifted his weight, reducing his profile—the instinct of a fighter. “Just make it happen. I don’t want to come back here with a warrant and drag you out in handcuffs.”
As Frosst examined her, Lucas knew he was looking for a weak spot.
She said, “I won’t tell you a second time.”
Frosst kept his cool, but the muscles beneath his jaw flexed. He held the pose for a second, and Lucas wondered if he knew what he was up against with her. But Frosst went through the calculations and decided that this wasn’t a fight he wanted. “Please follow me,” he said, all traces of his accent now erased.
Like Paul Knechtel’s office on Wall Street, everything had been chosen for impact, not subtlety. But considering that these were the flagship offices of a family that had its fingers shoved into the economic pies of every major industry in the world, the hallways had as much traffic as an abandoned Egyptian tomb—all that was missing were a few feet of sand on the floor and ancient Roman graffiti on the walls.
Complementing the scale dioramas of the jewels of the Hockney empire, the walls were adorned with the names of the hundreds of corporations that fell under their control, and Lucas couldn’t help making the conscious connection that he knew most of them. Evidently, theirs was a wealth that could not easily be measured. Or, more than likely, taxed.
Frosst delivered them to a door that looked like the portal to Jurassic Park—if Jurassic Park had been populated by billionaires who liked Makassar ebony and Art Deco lines.
When they walked in, Frosst made the introductions and it was obvious that the routine was part of his function around them.
William and Seth Hockney looked just like one would expect old billionaires to look. William, now pushing seventy-five, was tall and thin, with cheekbones that had probably helped him pick up nearly as many women as his wealth. He was in gray wool slacks, bespoke cap-toe shoes, and a very nice blazer. He could have been leading the von Trapp family as they ripped through “Edelweiss.”
Since William got the looks, it made sense that Seth didn’t. He was small, standing five-two in heels that were too thick, and wore a suit that did its best to mask that one of his arms was slightly longer than the other. He had a heavy-lidded stare that did little to enhance his already iffy looks. But there was no missing the intelligence behind his eyes, and Lucas knew that a lot of people had probably underestimated him.
“And what are you here to help us with today?” William’s mid-Atlantic accent was precise and effortless.
Lucas kept Frosst in his peripheral vision when he said, “I understand that you know Jonathan Makepeace was murdered earlier.”
William looked at Lucas, then switched focus to Whitaker, then back to Lucas. “Do we need a lawyer present?”
“No, but we would like to ask Mr. Frosst here a few questions—he asked that you be included in the conversation.”
William glanced over at Frosst, and apparently the look held meaning because Frosst shifted on his feet and said, “I had delivered an envelope for you.”
That did little to shift William’s obvious irritation at having to speak to the plebeians, but he knew when he was at a disadvantag
e, if only theoretically. “Please, make this brief. I am sure you are aware that we have a lot going on today.”
Whitaker made a production of pulling out her notebook. “So how long were you at Mr. Makepeace’s?” The source media were time-stamped. Frosst had entered Makepeace’s lobby at 10:13:42, leaving at 10:22:22. Security footage showed that he entered the apartment at 10:16:07 and left at 10:19:59—an inside time of three minutes, fifty-two seconds. Plenty of time to plant a bomb in a humidor if you knew what you were doing. And Frosst certainly looked like he knew what he was doing.
Lucas could see that Whitaker was gearing up to get angry, so he stepped in. “Why was he there?”
William waved it away. “As he said, he was dropping off some papers for us.”
“Would they have been in reference to the Paraguayan infrastructure fund he was about to pull out from under you?”
William had excellent poker skills, but Seth didn’t, and his jaw dropped open.
William said, “The nature of our business with Mr. Makepeace is confidential.” But he was eyeing Lucas now, and there was a lot going on behind the facade of control.
Whitaker was busy writing in her notebook as she asked, “So, how long were you in Mr. Makepeace’s apartment?”
“Less than four minutes.”
Which was the answer of a man who had paid attention. Of course the logical next question was: Who paid attention to how long they were in someone’s home? The answer was: people who planted bombs.
“Were you alone with Mr. Makepeace?”
Frosst took a deep breath. “The housekeeper was there. And a UPS deliveryman showed up while I was there. He arrived about thirty seconds after I did and left thirty seconds before.” Which squared with the story the UPS driver had told the agents who had interviewed him.
“Did you notice anything out of the ordinary?”
Frosst shrugged. “The housekeeper let me in. I met Makepeace in the living room at his desk. We spoke briefly: How are you? I am fine—that sort of stuff. Then the UPS driver showed up. Delivered a package to Mr. Makepeace. Then we both waited in the living room while Mr. Makepeace went to another room, then came back and handed the UPS man two large overnight envelopes. He waited for the driver to sign the waybill and leave. I then gave Mr. Makepeace the envelope Mr. Hockney asked me to drop off, then left myself.”