I was surprised when I walked inside. Mr. Gelb had aged more than I had dared fear.
He saw me looking at him.
“The years slip away, Danny, but the fudge always stays young.”
I had started a tradition with him, and I wanted to continue it. I gave him fifty dollars. Kids who came in unaccompanied by an adult would get free fudge from that fifty dollars. Mr. Gelb was good at recognizing the ones who could least afford it.
We talked for ten minutes. I took a piece of fudge and left.
I walked and had this feeling that a giant play was unfolding in front of my eyes, but all I could see was a fog so thick I couldn’t see where I was or how to get anywhere.
I tried getting a cup of coffee, but that didn’t clear up my mind.
Betsy was gone when I drove home.
I went to the telephone and called Ari.
“She’s great,” Ari said. “I mean Jennifer. The woman is wonderful. She and Jennifer get along. She’s like a grandma. Jennifer won’t leave her side. She’s teaching Jennifer to bake and to work in the garden. That’s behind the house so no one can see us. And Jennifer said she wanted to build her own water mill.”
“You need anything, Ari?”
“We’re doing fine. Can I do anything to help you solve this?”
“Maybe.”
“The reason I ask, Danny, is that it’s very quiet here and Jennifer could stay with the woman without me.”
“I’ll keep it in mind.”
I hung up. Betsy returned not long after and smiled at me.
“I’ve been in the library and have tracked down some very interesting information about the Directors in our little bank. You want to hear it now or wait for Cromwell? He might be able to add to it.”
“No,” I said. “I’m desperate for information. Tell me now.”
We sat at the kitchen table.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Betsy and I sat across from each other. She was waiting for her tea to cool and I was carefully sipping the steaming hot coffee in my Congressional mug.
She took a sip and put the cup down.
“This is either a most amazing coincidence, which I seriously doubt, or some kind of plan. It might be innocent. But I learned as a cop to be allergic to coincidences. They happen in movies, not in real life.”
“What’s this coincidence, Betsy?”
“All right. So we have the Bank of Waterbend. We have Otto Chance as the Chief Operating Officer. We have the Board of Directors. Mr. Meadows was on the Board when he was alive. The other Board members are Jimmy Moore, Tim Crane, and William Benedict.”
“I’ve met Chance and the three living Board members.”
“Tell me, Danny. What are the odds that, including Meadows, all five of those people graduated from the same business school with an M.B.A. and all of them were at the school at the same time? Crane was in a class below the others, but they all knew each other.”
“It’s not a coincidence I like,” I said. “But what does it mean?”
“I don’t know. It could simply be friends giving jobs to friends. That is perfectly innocent.”
“Except that one of them has been shot.”
“Yes. Except for that.”
We sat there thinking. There was a knock on the door. I opened it up. Cromwell, who had had a losing battle with the rain, stood soaking in front of me.
“Shake yourself off, Cromwell.”
He ignored me and came inside.
I got him some coffee. He was shaking. I brought a towel so he could wipe his dripping hair.
When he looked faintly human, he said, “I love trying to track down dirt on bankers and lawyers. It’s like a bonus.”
Betsy said, “I...”
I held up my hand to stop her. I didn’t want her to talk about the men all going to the same business school before we heard what Cromwell had to say.
Cromwell is no dope. He looked at Betsy and then he looked at me. He knew we had some information. But Cromwell was a careful man. He waited until there was silence, and then he continued.
“I have background information on all the Board of Directors. Do you want to hear it?”
“In abbreviated form,” I said. “Leave the full information with us.”
Cromwell nodded.
“I’ll start with Otto Chance. Like all of them, he was born in Suffolk County. He had a singularly undistinguished career at Yale. He got in because his father had gone there. I’d give the man credit for graduating, but I take it when he went if you got in you had to swing from the chandelier with the Dean’s wife to get kicked out. Anyway, when he finished he came back here, worked for his father for a year. His father owned a big farm on the North Shore. Then our Otto went to West Calhoun University in upstate New York. It was there that he got an M.B.A. Remember the name of the University. You will hear it over and over again.”
I looked at Betsy.
Then I turned to Cromwell.
“Excuse me for interrupting, Cromwell. Betsy also learned about West Calhoun. But I have a strange question.”
Cromwell looked up. He liked strange questions.
“Where did Zachary Stauffer go to college?”
“I assume you mean Junior.”
“I do.”
Cromwell looked through his notes.
“Ah. Yale. At the same time as Otto. But no further education. He didn’t get an M.B.A.”
“Did he attend West Calhoun without graduating?’
Cromwell looked at me. “I don’t know. I will find out.”
“Please. And do go on.”
“Otto graduated and came here. His father got him a job at the Bank. He fired people and replaced them with members of the current Board. The old ones were gone one by one, but since it was done one at a time rather than a wholesale slaughter, nobody much noticed it. Over a period of two and a half years, the Bank got rid of its old guard and hired its current Board of Directors.”
“Interesting,” I said although I still couldn’t find any sinister activity. I didn’t like people getting rid of innocent and hard-working people just to hire their friends, but as far as I knew it wasn’t criminal. And Otto wouldn’t have just fired them. He would have made their job so miserable, sending them on flights to meaningless meetings, giving them schedules that were as inconvenient as possible, and overwhelming them at work so they would quit.
I nodded again at Cromwell, inviting him to continue.
“Meadows, and the others as well, had the same trajectory. In Meadows’ case, he was born in East Hampton, went to a State University, and then on to Calhoun. He evidently was the most successful. The people I interviewed loved him. More than one told me he was so honest he was in danger of giving bankers a good name.”
“Maybe honest didn’t fit in with this group,” Betsy said.
I nodded.
“Go on, Cromwell.”
“Same stories. Tim Crane went to college in Rochester and on to Calhoun. He has an undistinguished record. No one thought he would challenge Einstein in a brain contest.”
“And Benedict?”
“An interesting man,” Cromwell said. “A small college in North Carolina. The family moved to New York and he ended up at Calhoun where evidently he met the others. He is definitely the least admired of the group. Three people told me they think he deliberately tried to cheat them. They complained to Otto, but, as you’d guess, nothing happened.”
“How many years have all of them together been here?”
“Eight.”
“Am I missing something, Betsy?”
“I don’t understand banks,” she said. “It sounds maybe a bit odd, what with them all going to Calhoun, but I’m not sure what it means. I couldn’t take any of this to an A.D.A. or get any kind of a warrant to investigate a criminal activity. The Bank is successful. They may not be kind people, but they seem professional.”
“You have an idea, Cromwell?”
“Sure. I think Meadows’ death, and the death o
f his wife for that matter, is personal. It has nothing to do with the Bank and everything to do with Meadows. I’d say, keep it simple. One of the other members of the Board wanted him dead. Maybe Meadows had an eye for the guy’s wife or sister. I read this as a story of anger and revenge.”
I looked at Betsy.
“We have no evidence of that. We have no evidence of anything.”
“I can feel it,” I said. “Zachary Stauffer is involved. He needs money. Maybe he gets some of them to approve a huge loan. Meadows complains because the Mayor has no collateral. But everyone thinks his father will come through in a financial emergency, so they give him the huge loan.”
“Can we find records?”
“Ah,” Betsy said. “Maybe it’s off the books. Hidden away. There’s that old boy conspiracy.”
“And Meadows complained, so one of them hired a hit man?”
Betsy nodded. “It’s the only story I’ve heard that makes any sense at all.”
I leaned back in my chair.
“I think I had better go see the Mayor’s father.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I drove out to Southampton. It was a nice ride. Soon the masses from New York City would move here or become weekend inhabitants.
I got to Gin Lane.
It is easy to imagine the wealthy residents of the area standing on these eroded beaches at sunset. Maybe they would follow the British colonial tradition and sit on their verandas on a warm afternoon with the sun blazing and the comforts of the past providing a cushion against the concerns of the present. They would slug down their daily dose of gin.
I tried to imagine these houses and these beaches as stops in the flourishing Hamptons effort to evade Prohibition.
Sadly, the origin of the name “Gin” is much duller. A gin in the English of a bygone era was an enclosure. Almost four centuries ago, there was such a gin built along here to prevent herds of animals from wandering away.
I found Zachary Stauffer Senior’s address. There was a buzzer at the front gate. I buzzed, and my car was let inside.
A butler met me. He told me that Mr. Stauffer was in the backyard engaging in his daily exercise.
“Won’t you follow me?” he asked.
I was impressed by the politeness. Of course, I didn’t have a butler so I didn’t know if it was common.
“Certainly.” I smiled at him. It was like a politeness class in kindergarten.
When I think of a backyard, there’s maybe a fence, trees, a doghouse, a swing perhaps, maybe a pool. This backyard was the size of Holland.
Way off in the back, Senior, shirtless, was chopping wood. His home had a high hedge around the whole of the yard. There was what looked like a newly-delivered, very large pile of wooden planks in one corner. He was evidently planning to build a deck or a tree house or some shed. The mornings were cool, and he seemed to relish the time to work with his hands.
I introduced myself to him. He nodded. He figured he didn’t need an introduction, and he was right.
“Please allow me a few more swings,” he said. “I try to stay in shape.”
He finished, put his shirt back on, and walked with me to the house.
When we got there, he turned to me and said, “I’d like to give you a tour.”
I had seen my share of mansions and understood that the building was a core piece of the identity of many of the owners.
“That would be very kind of you.”
He smiled again. “I was sure your first question would be how much the house cost.”
“I thought you might not want to talk about it.”
He spread his hands. “This little bungalow cost forty-three million dollars. I have four standing offers, the best one for fifty-two million. Unless you want to go higher.”
I smiled. “Maybe next month.”
“The house is on eleven acres. It was built in 1916, just before America entered the Great War. Of course, there is an 8,000 square foot guest house in back, as you probably saw.”
I had.
“We do like our guests here, Mr. Ryle. You will see those of us lucky enough to live on Gin Lane go back and forth to make fools of ourselves on the lovely grass courts at the Meadow Club. And we might enjoy some food and a swim at the Bathing Corporation. My wife does this, at least. I prefer to remain on the property.”
Where it was safe. Where his identity never came into question.
We walked to a window overlooking the backyard again.
“We have our pool over there, and the guest house has its own pool.”
“Why the pools with the ocean right next to you?”
“My beach is fine, but there are some areas here that are not. Anyway, the people who come here sometimes like to, how shall I put it?, relax by themselves apart from the eyes of the world. They want the ease of swimming in a pool as well.”
“What was the other building? The one on the right?”
“That is a barn. We have a spa and tennis courts as well.”
We climbed to the second floor.
“There are seven bedroom suites. And there is a Cyprus-wood paneled library over here.”
He opened the door.
“I could use a library like that.”
“I’ll show you two of the more luxurious bedroom suites.”
I realized I would be very uncomfortable living in a house like this.
“Come on, let us walk downstairs. The breakfast room is there. And I didn’t show you the staff quarters. The staff deserves privacy, don’t you think?”
“Absolutely.” I wouldn’t have a house like this or staff. I wasn’t meant to be rich.
“We can go to the guesthouse. There’s a great view of the ocean from there.”
And so we were back outside.
He wanted to talk with me but was delaying doing so by drawing comfort from the only thing he had that provided the comfort.
I just stood there staring. The ocean is the ocean. The sound is pleasant, and watching the waves is hypnotic. It was like a hydroelectric machine. The waves pounded the shore and seemed to provide energy to my body.
We walked over by the lily pond. I look down at the fish.
“Come,” Senior said. “Let’s go to the rose gardens. That is my favorite area. I walk in them every day just before dusk.”
We stand among the gardens and looked at the water.
I saw the revetment made of rock. It was there to preserve the shoreline.
We walked into a dining area where we were served tea and an assortment of cakes that were probably shipped over from some prince in a foreign kingdom.
After a while, Senior stared at me.
“You realize, of course, that you have quite a reputation, Mr. Ryle. I’m afraid there are a large number of people who dislike you. No. That is not precise. They are wary of you. They think you’re too smart, too quick. They are wary about what you have inherited from your father. They are used to being in control and they don’t like it when someone comes along who makes them feel uneasy.”
“I’m not unhappy with those feelings, Mr. Stauffer. It gives me an edge when I deal with people.”
“That’s very perceptive, Mr. Ryle. Perhaps you can do some perceiving for me.”
“I’ll try.”
“Tell me why you came here.”
I let me eyes stare directly into his.
“It’s about Junior.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“I have heard that you don’t provide any funds for him.”
“Do you know what he intends to do?”
“Make a run for the presidency.”
“Yes. George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Zachary Stauffer Junior. It falls trippingly off the tongue.”
“You don’t think he should do it.”
“I think he’ll make a fool of himself and his entire family.”
“And yet he seems to be getting money from the Directors at the Bank of Waterbend.”
“So I’ve hear
d. Mr. Ryle, your eyes widened when you named the Bank. Why is that?”
“You’re the perceptive one, Mr. Stauffer. I think there’s some nasty business going on there, only I don’t know what it is.”
Stauffer sighed.
“I have a dilemma, Mr. Ryle. I don’t want Junior to get hurt or to hurt us. But I feel guilty about not helping my son. I imagine you have some experience in the complications of father and son relationships.”
“Indeed I do. Perhaps you can help him by redirecting his interests to a place other than politics.”
“I’ve tried, Mr. Ryle.”
“Do you know what’s going on at the Bank?”
“They’re plotting something. At least I think they are.”
“Someone mentioned to me that they might be shifting assets to help Junior’s political career and hiding those assets from any bank examiners and the public.”
“That makes sense to me, Mr. Ryle. The truth is that I am simply confused. I would be very grateful if you could protect Junior’s interests here insofar as those interests are lawful.”
“I won’t help him escape justice, sir.”
“No. I thought you wouldn’t. Within your moral bounds then, might I seek your help? I can afford a lot of help.”
“I may need some help later. Right now, let me see what I can do. I won’t crack open my moral code for him, sir.”
Instead of answering, Zachary Stauffer Senior stood up and shook my hand.
I had the distinct feeling that it was the handshake of equals.
I drove away from the house not quite knowing which direction I was going to take.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Al Flanagan had to meet someone near the Mall, so he called and wanted to know if I wished to meet him for lunch at Ben’s. Since this was a kosher restaurant, I wondered about what Al might choose there, but I shrugged and ignored my thought because the food was so good.
“I’ve got a few questions,” I said.
“And so do I.”
I parked in the Sears parking lot and walked over to the plaza where Ben’s was located. I passed a bank on the corner of the plaza and thought again about the puzzle I was facing.
It was early, so Ben’s wasn’t too crowded. The co-owner, who was overweight, was a good advertisement for his restaurant. I had once asked him how he got into the business since he was Italian. He had worked in a deli as a kid in New York and grew to love the food.
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