“Hey, Mouse. What brings you out? I thought you only left Long Beach for hurricanes.”
“We’re in Point Lookout now. But, yeah, I don’t get in to Manhattan much these days.”
He was older, thinner, and, surprisingly, exuded a touch of good health, as though he might have been eating right and exercising occasionally.
“So what’s the draw?” I asked.
“I heard about this party last week and figured I could pick up something juicy. So what are you working on?”
“Gee, what can I share with you that won’t interfere with my loyalty to Virgil Becker? Hmm. I’ve got it. Nothing. Nada. Not a thing.”
“Come on, then, ask me a question.”
“Then you’re going to expect me to trade and I’ve got nothing for you,” I said.
“Go ahead. Ask. Maybe I’ll give you a freebie.”
“Okay. Tell me about our host. He’s a big hire and Virgil hasn’t let me run a background check on him. What’s his story? Can I trust the guy?”
“Come on, we’re eating the guy’s food. I can’t talk about him here. I got some standards.”
“All right. Here’s one for you. Al Mitzner to Daiwoo to run interest rates.”
“Nyah. He turned them down a month ago.”
“True. They just upped the ante.”
“Did they really? No shit. All right, that’s good. So I definitely owe you one. Ask me something again. Only, not about Nealis. I can’t talk about him.” The Mouse actually looked over his shoulder, as though Nealis might be there listening in on our conversation.
“There’s a rumor that the firm’s in play. What can you tell me? Who’s the buyer?”
There was a flash in his eyes that looked like fear. “Don’t fuck around, Jason. I said I’m not talking about that.”
“I’m talking about a hostile takeover of Becker Financial, Mouse. Not the latest hire. Stay with me.”
He waved his hand as though erasing a blackboard. “Really, I can’t say much. These people are very hush-hush.”
“So you’re letting me down twice in a row? That’s not like you, Mouse. It would be rough if word of that got around.”
He gritted his teeth and smiled, as though something somewhere was hurting really bad but he wasn’t going to admit it. “I’ll tell you one thing, then we stop talking. Okay? It’s a family thing. That’s all I’m gonna say. Look at the family.”
“Here you are,” Skeli said, taking my arm in hers and giving me a slight squeeze. “I now know more about the price of blown glass on the art market than I would have thought possible. But I am a certified Friend of Doc Pettis and will be on his referral list. I’m done. When can we go?”
“Let me introduce you to someone,” I said, but when I turned around the Mouse was gone. “Sorry, he was just here.”
“Who?”
“Just a guy,” I said, looking for him in the crowd. But the Mouse had run.
We ditched our empty glasses and I took one last look around for the waitress with the crab cakes. No luck. We wound our way back to the entrance and I slipped one of the Japanese ballet dancers a five for the return of Skeli’s raincoat.
I held the coat up for her to put it on—a bit of harmless chivalric sexism that my ex-wife had taught me early in our relationship—and found myself looking through the double doors at the party just as a shift in the crowd revealed two men deep in conversation at the far end of the room. It was much too far to make out what they were discussing, but there was an intensity to the conversation that combined anger and fear. The Mouse was shaking a finger in the face of the hawk-nosed young man I had seen with Jim Nealis outside his office just a few days ago. Despite the admonishing finger, it was the Mouse who looked frightened and the other man who was angry. He did not like whatever he was hearing. If I’d been Mouse, my first concern would be that this guy might get mad enough to just lean over and bite that finger right off.
16
The last time I had been to Chilton, the grand estate across the bay from Newport where Virgil had grown up, I had arrived with revelations that did almost as much damage to the emotional fiber of the family as the collapse of the old man’s bogus empire. It had been necessary, but I wasn’t sure that I would be welcomed back. Virgil’s mother, Livy, had been distant when I called, but she had agreed to see me. That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to be waiting for me with a twelve-gauge pheasant shooter.
I took I-95 all the way, despite the traffic and the rain. The ferry from Orient Point to New London would have avoided all the worst tie-ups, but would have cost me hours that I didn’t have. And the rain would have prevented me from enjoying the view on the ferry ride anyway. I traded stress for time. That rarely pays off, but being home early for the Kid was the greater goal.
The road to the house was unassuming, not much more than a break in the trees with a discreet sign announcing the name of the estate, and another that heralded the security company who watched over the place. I noticed that Livy had changed providers since I was last there—the previous company had been less than reliable.
The gardens needed work. The flower beds around the circular drive were brown and barren. The boxwood needed a haircut. The grass had been recently cut, but whoever they’d hired had skimped on the edging and the weeding. Clumps of crabgrass and dandelions had sprung up in spots. The house, a hotel-sized stone structure designed to resemble some nineteenth-century architect’s vision of a Medici castle, needed a face-lift or, at the very least, a power wash. I’ve always been skeptical—cynical, my ex-wife would have said—about people who need to live in a monument to their own wealth and power, but I felt sad looking at the fading beauty. The place had belonged to Virgil’s mother’s family and been passed along for many generations. She’d had a bad marriage to a man who had conned the world. He’d taken her as he had his investors. Much of the money was gone, and what was left she had bet on Virgil.
A uniformed maid in her forties welcomed me, told me that I was expected, and led me to a glass conservatory that I had not seen on my last trip. I found Livy sitting in a padded white wicker chair surrounded by tall potted palms. A book with a blue cover was spread on the end table beside her. She was gripping her usual glass of clear liquid, her long, thin fingers wrapped tightly around the glass as though it were the lifeline that still might rescue her from sinking under the unrelenting weight of life.
“Mr. Stafford. How good it is that you have come to visit. Wyatt and I are left too much to ourselves these days. How have you been?”
I played along for a bit, keeping the tone light and conversational. I was in a hurry, but I wasn’t going to let her brand me as rude. Rude was beneath her, and therefore could be safely ignored. I needed her.
“And how is Wyatt?” I asked.
“You may ask him yourself. Wyatt!” she called over my shoulder.
I turned and saw that, beyond the grove of palms and a pair of shoulder-high grassy plants in ceramic tubs, was a cleared area that looked out on the harbor. Wyatt had been sitting there all along. In front of him was an easel with paints and the kind of folding field table that artists in English cozy mysteries all seem to have. I stood up and met him by the grasses. He declined to shake hands, but he was more polite and less aggressive than at our first meeting.
“I’m Wyatt,” he said. I saw that, despite his recent activity, he did not have so much as a spot of paint on his hands or clothes.
“Yes, we’ve met,” I said. “Jason Stafford. Nice to see you again.”
“Mother says some people have trouble remembering names, so it is polite to always announce your own name. I don’t have that trouble. Do you?”
“I do pretty well in that regard. I must have gotten it from my father. He was a bartender and remembered everyone.”
“Is he dead?”
“No. Retired.” Wyatt’s directness
didn’t bother me. Asperger’s doesn’t often recognize the sensitive nature of some questions. It was a symptom, and once accepted it was invigorating. Anything might pop out next.
“How’s your son?”
“Doing well, thank you.”
“Has he had any seizures yet?”
Seizures. Another monstrous aspect of autism that the Kid and I had to look forward to.
“None. Not everyone gets them, I’m told.”
“No. I did. But he’s still very young. Too young to masturbate.”
“Uh. Yes.” I was doing my best to keep up my end, but the mention of my son and masturbation in the same sentence was a bit of a hurdle.
“They started with absence seizures. Do you know about them?”
Absence seizures were sort of a mega version of tuning out. The Kid tuned out less than he had a year earlier, but there were times when he was simply unreachable.
“Yes, I do. They frighten me.”
His eyelids fluttered for a moment. “I need to paint.” He turned away abruptly and returned to the easel.
I took a seat facing Livy and found her beaming at her son.
“You have no idea what an effort that was for him,” she said with incalculable pride.
“Maybe I do.”
She turned to me and let herself search my face for a moment. “Yes, maybe you do. You have surprised me before and now you’ve done it again. Kindness, I find as I get older, is really quite a rare thing.”
“My son is on the spectrum,” I said.
She bridled slightly at that, sitting straighter as though challenging me physically. “Wyatt is very high functioning.”
I ceded the point. It cost me nothing. “He is indeed.”
“How is Virgil these days?”
“You two don’t talk?” I was surprised.
“Virgil always tells me that he’s ‘fine.’ He is under considerable pressure, and though he is by far the strongest of my children, I don’t entirely believe him.”
“He is under pressure, but I don’t know anyone better able to handle it. He’s a rock.”
“You’ll excuse a mother who objects to hearing her son described as an inanimate object. When he was a child, Virgil was very close with his father. He rebelled, as young people do, but he returned. I think he took his father’s unveiling very hard.”
This was a version of Virgil that I had never seen. The father had been one of the biggest crooks in history, a cold and distant parent, and he’d cheated on his wife. It was hard for me to think that anyone would have felt any sorrow at his demise—but I wasn’t his son.
“Virgil has a problem,” I told her. “Someone is orchestrating a hostile takeover. If it works, he’ll be out without much to show for all his work saving the place. I’m trying to help him, but I don’t have much to go on.”
“Impossible. I control the single largest block of shares. I can assure you that I have no intention of selling.”
“Or voting with the opposition?”
“I find the suggestion offensive.”
“Someone whispered in my ear that the family was behind it.”
“Who?”
“Nobody you’d know. But he’s usually right.”
“Not this time.”
“What about Morgan or Binks? Could they have reason to see the firm taken over? Or to see Virgil taken down?”
She wasn’t put off by the question, but she took a deep slug of the vodka before answering. “Morgan is capable. She is a very angry woman. But she is in prison and will remain there for another two years—at least. James isn’t able to control his own life, much less conspire with others. He is unreliable.”
“He’s still in the rehab place out west?”
“He is.”
James had a vicious heroin habit. Virgil and Livy had pushed, cajoled, and begged prosecutors and judges to let him remain in rehab rather than face the courts. That plan had worked—maybe too well. He was turning into a permanent resident.
“I was thinking that it might be worth questioning him.”
“A waste of resources. As I explained, I control the trust. There is no way that any of the children could undermine Virgil without my participation. And, think what you will about my dysfunctional children—all right, family—but I would never allow it. They can all squabble as much as they need to, but I will never take sides.” She began quietly dismissive but picked up steam as she went along. She finished in a defiant roar. I believed her.
She polished off the last half inch of her drink and placed the empty glass on the end table. “Was there anything else you wanted to discuss?”
“It’s been an enlightening visit. I’m left with more questions than answers, but that’s my concern, not yours. Thanks for your time. I’ll let myself out.”
The maid passed me in the main hall, hurrying in the other direction with a fresh sweating glass of clear liquid.
The whole four-hour drive back to New York, I worried over an impossible conundrum. Could the Mouse be wrong for once?
17
You might want to pour yourself a drink,” Larry said.
I was in my armchair, staring out at Broadway. Sometimes it was a great place to sit and think. Today it wasn’t working. I pushed the mute button on the Bose remote and “One More Saturday Night” ended mid-note. “I’m not drinking these days. Just give it to me.”
“You will soon be famous again, if Blackmore gets his way. You, Virgil, and the firm are all targets of his investigation. I offered your wholehearted cooperation as a witness and he, rather reluctantly I think, agreed to a meeting.”
“I don’t see myself ratting out Virgil.”
“Neither do I. But in order to find out what he has, we have to give him a little something. Anything. Just tell him the truth.”
“Any other great advice?”
“When you hear me say, ‘Don’t answer that question,’ please don’t answer that question.”
“That seems rather obvious,” I said. I got up and put the kettle on. A cup of tea might help the brain cells to kick in and allow me to find a way through this ordeal.
“One would think, but I am constantly surprised by clients whose only familiarity with the legal system is as a defendant, and yet they firmly believe that their innate ability to talk their way out of trouble is their greatest asset.”
“I really don’t want to do this.”
“Understood. But you overpay me ridiculously to give you the kind of advice that will keep you out of jail. You should follow it, if only for the economics.”
“I will do my best.” I opened the cabinet and three boxes of herbal tea bags jumped out at me and landed on the counter. My storage method of simply jamming them in up there needed some improvement. I pulled out a few jars of dried leaves to make my own blend and squeezed the three boxes back on the shelf.
“You were a big hit with the FBI. Your file contains both the words ‘hostile’ and ‘noncooperative.’ They believe you are hiding something.”
“I don’t know why they care. This is small stuff, Larry. Compliance doesn’t even think what they’re doing is illegal.”
“It seems your good friend Special Agent Brady sold them on the idea that you are a valuable CI of his.”
“I think I resent that. I’m not a snitch. I turn over rocks, and when I find nasty bugs I pass the information on to the appropriate parties.”
“Well, when you failed to live up to expectations, they took it personally. You are now on their shit list. Congratulations. My father defended two Black Panthers accused of plotting to blow up a D.C. police station back in the early seventies and he still couldn’t get on the FBI’s hate list.”
“Did he get them off?” The kettle began to sing and I turned it off while I mixed a combination of green tea leaves with a pinch of g
ingko and some chamomile. The caffeine in the tea would give me the immediate jump start while the flower would take the edge off. The gingko was for long-term benefit. I didn’t know whether or not I believed in all that, but I liked the way it tasted.
“Yes, but that’s immaterial. They are not a forgiving institution, as a rule.”
“Another accolade to put on my mantel. As soon as I get one.”
“So are you free tomorrow morning?”
That was a rhetorical question, not meant to be answered. Of course I was free to appear before the Inquisition. “Who’s running the meeting?”
“You will be questioned by the great man himself. Wallace Ashton Blackmore, United States Attorney for the Southern District. This is an exceedingly rare occurrence.”
The challenge would be to somehow stay out of jail without putting Virgil there in my place. “What time?”
“I’ll have a car pick you up at eight-fifteen.”
“Make it seven forty-five. We’ll drop the Kid at school. He likes Town Cars.”
“Who doesn’t? See you then.”
18
I had nothing to trade except for the fact that I was innocent. Innocence is a greatly devalued asset in the criminal justice business.
I sipped my tea. Still too hot. I punched some numbers into my phone. “I’m trying to get hold of Richard Hannay. Do I have the right number?”
“Please state your name.” The voice was as neutral as could be. American. But from anywhere. There was no regional inflection.
“Jason Stafford. We’re old acquaintances.”
“Please state the nature of your business.”
“Just put me through. Or have him call me.”
“Sorry. I didn’t catch that. Please state the nature of your business.”
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