“I know. I’ll see you in the office,” she said, and hung up the phone.
Already he felt better, knowing that Yvonne would be there. It was her rare absence that made Sol appreciate what a useful creature Yvonne was. He couldn’t imagine existing without her. She ran his life. She typed his correspondence; she answered his phones; she told him when to go to the dentist. She made dinner reservations and booked flights and proofed legal agreements. She bought Marion’s birthday and anniversary presents every year. She reminded him to say something nice when someone in the office had a baby or got married. Sol paid her more than most of the junior associates, but she was well worth it. Yvonne had access to more information than anyone: every client file, every e-mail, his calendar, even the password to his voice mail. She was his vault. Next to Marion, she was the most important woman in his world.
Yvonne was the only person, other than Sol, who knew that Sol had two sets of just about everything, from his calendar to his accounting log to his address book. There was the set that would be found if anyone was to subpoena him, and then there was the set that only he and Yvonne knew existed. Around 90 percent of the content overlapped—on any given day it might be 100 percent—but it was the other 10 per-cent that really mattered. After-hours meetings with Senate Finance Committee members, the numbers and content of offshore accounts, wire transfers to government officials, all existed within the margins of this 10 percent.
As he passed through the tollbooth on the bridge, Sol realized he hadn’t wished her a happy Thanksgiving.
SATURDAY, 10:02 A.M.
The room was uncomfortably hot, particularly for November. A knob had broken off the radiator and it was spitting out steam like an angry teakettle. Paul glanced around, hoping to open a window, but there wasn’t one; instead, there were four walls and a low ceiling all painted a leaden gray, the slapped-on kind of paint that was standard issue in government offices. He wondered if this was in fact the kind of place where interrogations happened. He had never been to the New York Attorney General’s office before, but he imagined that some unpleasant meetings had taken place in this room. He hoped this would not be one of them.
Paul gripped Merrill’s hand. He was aware that his palm was beginning to sweat and he was crushing her fine knuckles, but he couldn’t let go. He was grateful she was there. She had been quiet on the cab ride over. He couldn’t tell whether she was angry; she seemed only contemplative, the surface of her face betraying nothing. Maybe she was just tired. They were all tired. Even King seemed spent. That morning, he had turned around and headed home after only two blocks, his ears flopped like wilting lettuce. Paul was thankful: he didn’t have the energy or the time for a long walk in the park.
The door opened, revealing Alexa and two men, all dressed in jeans. As he stood to greet them, Paul wondered if the custom-made button-down with his initials on the cuff was a mistake. He had tried to spiff himself up a little bit, showering and shaving for the first time in days, just to feel human again. But the last thing he wanted was to come off like an arrogant hedge fund guy. The loud purple check of the shirt hadn’t even occurred to him until now; he had just grabbed the first clean one off the hanger. Now it seemed louder than the siren that was wailing in the street outside. When had he started dressing like this? He had forgotten. Now it was all cable-knit sweaters and Ferragamo loafers. There were still a few Brooks Brothers shirts in the back of his closet, but he never wore them. Why would he, when the custom-mades fit so well?
“Thanks for coming,” Alexa said, closing the door behind them. The sound of the siren muted, then drifted away into silence. “Do you all know David?” The taller of the two men nodded and extended his hand. “And this is Matt Curtis, our friend from the NYAG’s office.”
David cleared his throat and pulled his chair back on the carpet. “Please take a seat. I know, this is moving at light speed here, and we’re all just sprinting to catch up. Matt has been incredibly generous with his time, and so has Alexa, of course, but basically, you’re all here because of me. So this started because I tried to open an investigation into RCM. As an ancillary matter, I was also poking around into RCM’s feeder funds, Delphic included. I was closing in when Morty Reis’s death was announced and everything spiraled out of control.”
“When did you start the investigation?” Paul asked. He had been wondering this ever since David had called him a few weeks ago.
“About two months ago. I think Alexa told you, but I started with an inquiry into an accounting firm, which was funneling business into RCM without being properly registered as an investment adviser. It struck me as strange that one of the world’s largest hedge funds would be doing business with this two-bit accounting shop, so I took a harder look at RCM itself. At first, I thought we were dealing with insider trading. Something was illegally boosting RCM’s performance, but I figured that was probably just a few rogue guys getting greedy inside an otherwise legitimate fund. Honestly, it took me a while to wrap my head around the idea that the entire thing was a Ponzi scheme. Fraud on that massive a scale involves many, many more people than just the guys inside RCM. It’s widespread system failure; outside law firms, accounting firms, feeder funds, even the SEC.”
Paul leaned forward to interject, but then pulled back, restraining himself. Keep your mouth shut, he told himself sternly. Keep your mouth shut and let them do the talking. Merrill, he noticed, was much better at this than he was. She was sitting still but alert, her face betraying nothing. They made eye contract for a fleeting second and her lips flickered in a small smile, as if to say, It’s okay. We’re all right. Instead he gave David a quick nod.
“So now I’ve got a huge investigation on my hands, but no support from my office to pursue it,” David continued. “In fact, I was getting pressure to drop it altogether. At first I thought I was just being paranoid, that my appeals were probably just getting lost in a bureaucratic black hole. But then the pushback became overt. Things got so bad that I called Matt, who’s an old friend and at this point, one of the few people in the world that I trust.”
Matt smiled tightly at Paul, and leaned into the table in acknowledgment. He had a pad in front of him, and Paul fought the impulse to try to read the scribblings on it upside down. A few words were underlined and in caps. Paul wondered if that was good or bad.
“The long and the short of it is that some very senior folks didn’t want me poking around. When I continued to do so even against their recommendation, they started fighting dirty. I was suspended from the SEC yesterday morning on an indefinite basis. Everything in my office is gone—my files, my desktop, everything. I have no access to the building. So now Matt here has got three cases on his hands. There’s the case against RCM that I was building, which I’ve handed off to him. There’s the secondary case against the funds, like Delphic, that were heavily invested in RCM, and also the accounting firm and the attorneys who looked the other way. And then there’s what we’ve been calling Case Three.”
David took a breath and sat back in his chair. He had been twirling his pen in between his fingers with perfect dexterity, but he stopped and placed it in front of him on the table. There was something cool about him; this surprised Paul. Government lawyers were rarely cool. David had tan skin and slightly silvered hair. He was tall, maybe six foot two or three. He had a charismatic smile and a firm handshake. The kind of guy women went crazy for. The kind of guy who should have been in television maybe, or advertising. Alexa was smitten, that much was clear. Though they were treating each other with only professional courtesy now, Paul could feel a palpable electricity between them.
Paul shifted in his chair. “So Case Three . . .” he prompted.
“Yeah, Case Three. The last few days have felt like a moving target, but right now that’s our major issue. Case Three is the case against the SEC. The one thing that everyone can agree on at this point is that someone at the SEC was bought off. Most likely by someone at RCM, or at Delphic.”
Paul
frowned. “Why do you say Delphic?”
“Here’s the problem,” Matt said. “Yesterday, a colleague comes to me with a story that is nearly identical to yours. He claims that there’s an insider at Delphic who’s already talking to someone in our office. Not only that, but this insider has hard proof that Delphic was in bed with the SEC. That there’re wire transfers to an account in the Cayman Islands coming out of a Delphic corporate account into an account of someone inside the SEC. My colleague didn’t have much more information than that because it’s not his case. But he heard about it because it has apparently been elevated all the way up to Robertson. When the AG gets involved, word gets around.”
“Sorry.” Paul shook his head. “You already have an insider, someone at Delphic?”
“Who?” Merrill injected, sitting forward. “Bring them in now, to talk to us. Maybe between Paul and this other person we can piece together what actually happened at RCM. And if someone at the SEC is to blame, too, let’s just get it out on the table. I think we could all use a little clarity at this point.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that,” Matt said, looking nervously at David.
Alexa’s eyes were on the carpet, which made Paul’s stomach lurch uneasily. She couldn’t even look at him.
“At first, I thought there might have been some miscommunication, and that the insider my colleague was talking about was you, Paul. I thought maybe you had come directly to someone else in our office, someone you know and feel comfortable with. It seemed unlikely to me that there would be two insiders at Delphic. So I did some digging last night, to find out what was going on. Turns out there are two of you. Insiders, I mean.” He cleared his throat. “The other person—well, it’s Carter Darling. He’s talking to someone at the NYAG’s office through his lawyer. The complicated part is that he’s apparently implicated both Paul and David as part of some scheme to get the SEC to look the other way.”
There was a moment of silence in the room. Matt’s words buzzed in the air like static electricity.
“What?” Paul stammered. Then he slammed his fist on the table, hard, startling the two women. It surprised him to hear such a violent sound but he couldn’t help it, and it felt good, as if a small and necessary valve had been opened and a little bit of steam had been released.
“Are you saying that Carter is accusing me of bribing David not to investigate RCM and Delphic? Are you accusing me of bribing David?”
“That’s insane,” Merrill muttered. She was staring at her hands, which were folded in her lap. “I’m sorry, but it’s insane.”
“They’re being set up,” Alexa said evenly to Merrill. “They had nothing to do with this. Your dad’s cutting a deal. Don’t you see that?”
Merrill looked up and met Alexa eye to eye. “Of course Paul didn’t have anything to do with it,” she said. Her voice was as steady as her gaze, but her lip was quivering. “He’s my husband.”
Alexa nodded and looked down at her BlackBerry, which was vibrating on the table. She stared at its screen for a second, before rising to her feet. “Excuse me,” she said. “I have to take this.” To David she said, “It’s Duncan.” When she closed the door behind her, the room fell still again, except for the persistent whistle of the heater.
“No one here is accusing anyone of anything,” Matt said. “We’re all on the same side here. I’m just presenting the facts as they are. We’ve got a serious problem.”
“There must be some kind of mistake,” Merrill said quietly. She had started to cry. David stood up and offered her a box of tissues. She blew her nose and then crumpled the tissue in her fist.
“Thank you,” she said. She slid the box back across the table. “Look, Dad wouldn’t implicate Paul in anything. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Matt looked at Paul uncomfortably. “It’s possible that there’s been a mistake,” he said. He shrugged, but Paul could tell from his voice that he didn’t believe that for a second. “Or some kind of misinterpretation. But as of right now, Carter Darling is cutting a deal. And that deal seems to include selling out you and David. The question is, why would he do that? Besides simply to save himself.”
“David,” Merrill said. Her cheeks were burning red, and she looked as small as Paul had ever seen her. Everyone in the room was looking at her with pity. She kept her eyes on the table in front of her so she didn’t have to look at any of them. “Your boss is Jane Hewitt, is that right?”
“Yes,” David said. “Or was. She’s the one who suspended me.”
“And she was the one pushing back on you all this time.”
“Yes, that’s right.”
“I think”—Merrill glanced sideways at Paul and reached for his hand— “I think I have to say something then.” Her face was wrought with worry.
Paul squeezed her hand hard three times. Usually, this meant I love you. This time he was thinking, Are you okay?
Before she could speak, the door swung open and Alexa appeared. She held her BlackBerry up with one hand and smiled triumphantly. The other four stared at her.
“I think we’ve got something. Duncan’s on his way over here now, with someone he wants us to speak to.”
SATURDAY, 11:01 A.M.
The Wall Street Journal offices were humming. Duncan was now accustomed to the slower pace of magazine work, and found the atmosphere overstimulating, like children’s television or the floor of a casino. Fluorescent track lighting and the omnipresent glow of double-screened monitors lit the large, open bullpen. Televisions hung from the ceilings, streaming information from multiple channels. It had the energy of a young persons’ office, though nowadays, all the young people wanted to work for blogs or online news aggregators or social media outlets that Duncan didn’t know about. Newspapers were becoming dinosaurs, too large and slow moving to keep pace with the changing environment. Duncan related. He felt like a dinosaur himself, a wooly mammoth loafing about on a glacier somewhere, waiting for the onset of the next ice age.
The thought of Owen working here made Duncan smile. Owen had been Duncan’s protégé during the early days at the New York Observer. He was like a puppy: endearingly untrainable, endlessly energetic, always with his nose in something. “You’re either going to end up in jail, or winning a Pulitzer,” Duncan used to tell him. “Maybe both.”
They had stayed in touch over the years. They met for drinks before industry dinners, grabbed the occasional diner hamburger or dive-bar drink, and every once in a while Owen would introduce Duncan to whichever young thing he was dating that month. Owen still deferred to Duncan for periodic professional advice, though he had long since established himself as a star journalist. This was the first time Duncan had ever asked him to return the favor.
All around the bullpen, journalists were talking on the phone, clicking away at their keyboards. Still, Duncan spotted Owen immediately. He always stuck out like a sore thumb. Even after a decade at the Journal, Owen still looked as though he belonged at Rolling Stone. His reddish hair hung shaggily around his eyes. He wore cowboy boots and a Marlboro Man belt buckle. Duncan wondered, not for the first time, how he got anyone to take him seriously.
“Come sit,” Owen said, after the two men embraced. He pulled up a couple of chairs around what Duncan gathered was his desk. It was by far the messiest on the floor. “Sorry for the short notice. There’s someone I want us to talk to together, so I thought this was the easiest way to do it.”
“Listen, you’re helping me here. I really appreciate this, especially given the holiday.”
“Please, you know me. I don’t do holidays,” Owen said enthusiastically. It was true; Owen had worked nearly every day that Duncan had known him. “Holidays are for the weak.”
“So what have you got for me?”
“Sol Penzell,” Owen said, leaning back, his hands folded behind his head, “is Carter Darling’s lawyer. He’s the signatory on all the Delphic offering docs, you know, the stuff they file and send out to investors. And his firm
does business with RCM, too. The two of them and Morty Reis are thick as thieves. Anyway, he was my first thought when we talked. I’ve wanted to do a piece on that guy for God knows how long. Never got enough on him, though. Runs a firm called Penzell & Rubicam. Firm’s more like a lobbying firm than anything else. They do a lot of high-level brokering work, connecting high-profile corporate folks to government, that kind of thing. They have some pretty slippery clients.”
“Like who?”
“Remember that DOJ investigation into Blueridge, the private security company that allegedly was stockpiling automatic weapons down in Texas to sell overseas? There was a big brouhaha about it in the media. Some military people came forward and said they were selling weapons to Afghan resistance fighters.”
“That was last fall, no? Whatever happened?”
“Nothing happened. And Penzell is Blueridge’s lawyer. Go figure. Here’s another one: BioReach, the world’s largest agribusiness? I’ve got a friend who’s a journalist for National Geographic. Leslie Truebeck. Very cool lady. Nice legs, too. Anyway, she’s doing a piece on corporate humanitarian efforts in East Africa. BioReach is the big story over there; they’ve been partnering with the World Bank to distribute free grain to farmers. They’ve gotten a bunch of positive PR for it. Long story short, Les does her homework and ends up finding an exec at BioReach who talks off the record. He admits the company’s been cooking its books. And worse still, they’ve been purposefully giving out grain that can’t reproduce. So anyone who takes the free stuff cuts down their fields—which is irreparable, basically—and then the next season finds that the grain won’t grow back. So now they are hooked on BioReach’s grain. Pretty nasty idea, right? Hooking aid recipients on your product? Sort of like big tobacco. Anyway, Les starts to write the article, but she never finishes it. Want to know why? Because the exec disappears. Not just from her radar; I mean, literally. The guy disappears. No one’s seen him again. Not even his wife.”
The Darlings Page 29