by James Conway
She walks and jogs quickly along Ninth, moving north, constantly checking over her shoulder. She slips in and out of several galleries between Tenth and Eleventh in Chelsea, pretending to look at the art while thinking the entire time about the envelope in her bag. She opens her phone and tries to call Drew, but it’s dead. She didn’t charge it after meeting with the police last night, and the charger is back in her apartment. Abandoning the galleries, she heads back east toward the hotel, but although it’s past 9 P.M., she decides she isn’t ready to go back. She doesn’t want to be alone and she doesn’t want to be with anyone. At 23rd she takes the 1 train uptown to Times Square. She walks north and west through the nighttime tourist clutter. It’s after ten o’clock when she enters Joe Allen on 46th Street. The post-theater crowd is just beginning to congregate, but she’s early enough to get a seat at a small corner table facing the door, near the bar.
She orders a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and wonders what has become of Drew and begins to convince herself that he’s been killed. She waits for the waitress to bring her wine before opening the envelope. The contents are exactly what Deborah described: photocopies of the second passport, the news clippings about the father’s suicide, the travel itineraries, the photos, including one of Salvado and three bearded men smiling in front of a Russian bank. But seen together, spread across the small table, the affect is chilling.
As Miranda looks back and forth at Rick Salvado’s doppelganger collage she is overwhelmed by the sensation that she is in the presence of something worse than death. There is nothing as devastating as the death of a child. But this is different. Not nearly as personal or painful, but crushing in a different way because to her it represents the death of hope for humanity. In her hands are the words and images that one sees assembled by the media after a grand and deadly event—Oswald posing with the carbine, Mohamed Atta jumpy and pixilated on an ATM security camera, McVeigh’s yearbook pic—only this hasn’t yet happened.
This dread feeling has pulsed beneath the surface of her thoughts since Drew called her the night Danny Weiss died. She immediately felt it, but didn’t want to believe that someone she knew could be involved with this scale of evil. And worse, that she would be one of the few trying to prevent it. Now she feels and believes it all.
At eleven-thirty she places fifteen dollars on the table, stands, and departs. On Seventh Avenue she turns south, looking for a Kinko’s. Soon she realizes that’s not going to happen at this hour, so she settles for a bodega on 31st Street with a copy machine. Inside she makes a second set of the Salvado documents, folds them in half, and places them in her handbag. Then she walks the remaining eight blocks to the Chelsea, feeling more alone and numb than ever.
Inside she asks the woman at the front desk for another room key and an envelope. From her bag she removes the copied documents, refolds them, and slides them into the envelope with the room key. On a piece of hotel stationery she writes the room number and these words:
The bald man took Deborah today after she gave me this information.
I have tried to reach you, but my phone is dead.
I love you and hope to see you soon.
On the outside of the envelope she writes his name: Drew Havens. She hands the envelope to the woman and says, “My husband is supposed to meet me later. Please call my room if he comes, but if he happens to arrive while I’m out, would you please give him this.”
Before closing the door, she hangs the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the knob.
As if that’s going to stop anyone.
She turns the bolt lock and latches the chain. For good measure, she grabs a straight-backed chair from the desk near the TV and wedges it against the inside door handle, just as she used to do when she lived in the walkup on East Sixth, before she was married. Before she was rich.
After testing to make sure the chair is secure, she leans against the door and exhales. She looks at her watch. It’s after midnight, but it feels much later. It feels as if she’s been walking the streets of the city for days.
If I don’t hear from him by the morning, she decides, still leaning against the closed and locked door of her room, attempting to regulate her breathing, I’m going to give the second envelope to the police.
When she’s satisfied with the locks and the chair brace, she walks to the desk and takes her phone out of her bag. On a whim she tries once more, but it’s indeed dead. She reaches for the hotel landline, telling herself, I’ll call him all night if I have to.
The voice comes from the hall outside the bathroom and sucks the air out of her lungs. “What is it about this freaking hotel with you and your ex?” She drops the phone and stares at the blank wall. She doesn’t turn. The bald man, she assumes, come to take her wherever he’s taken Deb. “I mean,” the voice continues, “sentimental value aside, this place, it really is kind of a shithole.”
She cocks her head to the side. She recognizes that voice. When she turns, she sees not the bald man walking toward her, smiling, but her husband’s oldest friend from the fund, Tommy Rourke.
14
New York City
After midnight and they’re still searching.
Still on a park bench with a laptop and dozens of pieces of evidence yet no definitive answer. They’re still using Havens’s computer and Weiss’s software. They know that it might give away their location, but they don’t care. Technically, it’s already Friday.
At 12:18 they get an alert that reveals more details on the sixth trade: NYCRE, short, out of Toronto with links to Berlin and Philly.
“New York City Real Estate,” he tells her. “Salvado, of course, has a major long, and has been on the cable circuit recommending a buy on it. Not in any great numbers, but enough to make him amazingly popular with the Trumps and Donald Brens of the world.”
Sobieski turns away, closes her eyes, then looks back at Havens. “The others make some sense. They’re at least remotely linked, but this . . . I don’t get it. It’s a total outlier. Who gang-shorts some of the most consistently valuable properties in the world?”
Neither knows specifically who, but they both know the general answer: someone who thinks it’s going to come crashing down.
“The account is listed under a different name in Philly,” Havens says. “But all that means is it’s the same middle man; just a different junky.”
“Stealing the identities of junkies,” Sobieski notes. “That’s a first for me.”
“Disposable income, disposable people.”
Sobieski, who had been fading, inches closer to him on the bench. “Anything on the trader?” For instance, they both think, is he alive?
“Looking now.”
While Havens searches for more on the Toronto trade, for anything on the whereabouts or condition of the trader Michael Loewen, Sobieski takes out her phone and begins to type a text for Michaud. She won’t dare speak with him, but though he probably knows all about Toronto, she thinks she should make sure. You never know. Maybe they missed it. Maybe they can get to Loewen in time.
Or not.
“Toronto, eight-eighteen P.M.,” Havens reads, off a wire service report. “Man found strangled in alley in financial district . . . name not yet released, but witnesses claim he was an employee in a nearby building.” He looks up from the glow of the screen and stares across the park, toward the thinning traffic on Sixth Avenue. The wind has picked up, lifting leaves and the day’s trash in a lazy swirl. The park is empty.
“What if you told your boss everything we know, right now? About me, and Weiss, and Salvado?”
Sobieski looks at him and rolls her eyes. “Sure,” she says sarcastically. “Tell him that the fugitive employee who has twice defied him is basing her indictment of one of the world’s most influential and beloved investors on the findings of one of his bitter ex-employees who also happens to be wanted for mur
dering one of his coworkers?”
“What do we have to do to get past that?”
“Figure it out. Come up with a motive. Evidence. Something that points to his next step.”
“You think other people are tracking this in your agency? Or other agencies?”
Sobieski sighs. “Presently there are fifty-one different government organizations, many brand-new and flush with 9/11 dollars, charged with tracking the movement of terror-related money. In a perfect world they’re omnipresent and omnipotent, all working together, exchanging leads and information, but my view of the world skews a little darker.”
They stare back at the screen, each with the knowledge that there’s only so much a computer can do. That, at some point people have to take action. But how? Where?
“What about your boss?” she asks. “Why don’t we find him and squeeze him?”
“Salvado? We can try, but if he’s in his town house, he’ll be protected like a head of state, and if we don’t have this completely figured out and we’re caught, nothing will stop them from carrying out whatever they’re up to.”
“Why are you doing this?” Sobieski asks. “You made a fortune with Salvado. You must have everything. Why did you decide to go after him?”
“I wasn’t going after him. I was looking for the truth. But not in a superhero way. I was looking for an explanation for some irrational movement going on in his fund, and . . . for the mess my life had become. I put him up to it, but Danny Weiss is the one who found this, the seven trades. He’d still be alive if I hadn’t raised the red flags. The thing is I didn’t put him up to it because I sensed an injustice, because I have a profound sense of right and wrong. I did it because of ego, more than anything. Which makes me guilty of something.”
“So you’re doing this for Weiss?”
“I’m doing this because I came to live a greedy, self-absorbed life. I’ve made millions along the way, but I lost my wife, and my daughter and my friend are dead, because I was obsessed with numbers and patterns and the culture of profit.”
Sobieski considers this and decides she has nothing to say. She has little patience for the greedy. The laptop screen kicks into energy-saving mode and goes dark.
“What about you?” he asks. “With your training I bet you could’ve joined a fund or one of the big investment houses. Why’d you choose to be a cop instead?”
She stands. Even though they have no plan, no agreed upon next step, she’s ready to move. “I chose to do this,” she says, “because my father ruined our life; because he worked in finance and he was a lot worse than you.”
They walk west across the park.
“Where is your ex-wife now?” asks Sobieski.
“Good question.” He looks at his watch—1:39 A.M.—and stops at a newsstand shuttered for the night, on the northwest corner of the park, where Sixth meets 42nd Street. “She was supposed to call. I’ve been calling all day but can’t get through. Can’t even leave a message. I’m thinking maybe she’s spooked. Maybe after seeing me again she had second thoughts and decided that this wasn’t worth it, that I was just gonna drag her down again.”
“You believe that?”
“She said she wasn’t going back home.”
“Then,” Sobieski presses, “where?”
“Another good question.” Havens looks across the park at the squared-off shadows of the library, silhouetted by the lights of the Pan Am building farther east. He doesn’t believe that he spooked her at all. Instead he believes that the other night was the start of, if not new love, then at least redemption. He recalls Miranda’s last words to him, “I’m fine, Drew. I’m in a good place,” and it finally occurs to him. Finally words make more sense than numbers.
“She’s at the Chelsea Hotel.” He turns and immediately starts walking toward Seventh and a south-bound cab.
“Where?”
“The Chelsea. We used to go there to get away, even after we were married.”
Sobieski, jogging to keep up, asks, “She left a message?”
“No, I just know.”
15
New York City
She looks at the door, latched and blocked. Deduces, He was here first. Then, No way you’ll make it out.
“Where have you been? I’ve been waiting awhile.”
Miranda stares at him, “This figures. The only person besides Weiss whom he trusted is the bad guy.”
“I always liked you, Miranda. Too bad your husband chose the wrong time to become human.”
“What do you want?”
“Cooperation. Cooperate and you will live. If we wanted you dead right now, we wouldn’t be having this little talk.”
“What . . .”
“For starters, where is your husband?”
“Ex. You remember we’re divorced, Tom. Drew said you were the only one at the firm who looked out for him after we split up, after we lost Erin.”
“Can you think of a better time or way to gain his trust? So where is he?”
“Go to hell. I don’t know.”
He strikes her hard across the cheek with the back of his right hand. She stumbles back against the desk and stares at him. “I. Don’t. Know.”
“I know he’s called you and that he visited you in Katonah. I also know you’ve been with Salvado’s wife. Now, where?”
“He called because he found Weiss’s body and he had no one to turn to. He came to Katonah for one night because he had nowhere to go. Last we spoke—and check my phone if you want, because it’s dead—last we spoke he was on his way to Jersey to pursue some lead to implicate Salvado. When he never called back, I assumed something happened.”
He shrugs. “If it hasn’t, it will. He’s in over his head. In fact, he’s proving to be a convenient scapegoat.”
“Drew?”
“Jealous employee. Numbers freak loses his sanity after his daughter dies and his wife leaves him. Kills a coworker and then tries to bring down his boss, his company, and more.”
“He’s ten times the man you’ll ever be.”
He smacks her again. This time she doesn’t flinch. “You forget where I’m coming from,” she says, glaring at him. “I’m not one of the firm’s pieces of arm candy who makes her money and moves on after the divorce, looking for her next victim. I’m a woman who lost the love of her life and her daughter because of you bastards. The only thing I want I can’t have, so go ahead and kill me. Because without him I’ve got nothing.”
Rourke stares at Miranda. He reaches in his jacket and pulls out a pistol. A Glock. “Okay,” he says. “Get up.”
16
New York City
“We’re looking for a guest. Miranda Havens.”
It’s a different clerk from the woman Miranda spoke to a half hour ago. This one, a man in his sixties, in early for the start of the 2 A.M. shift, has never heard of her.
“You know the room number?”
Havens shakes his head. “No. She’s my wife.”
The man looks at Havens and Cara Sobieski and shrugs. He’s seen kinkier over the years.
“She’s here, right?”
The man looks at his computer. Doesn’t say yes or no. “It’s late. I guess I can call the room, but I can’t give you the number.”
Havens nods, but isn’t optimistic. “I just tried her cell and she didn’t pick up.”
The clerk holds up his hands. “This is what I can do.”
“Fine. Sure. Thanks.”
The clerk dials and they wait. Clearly no one is picking up. The clerk holds out the still ringing phone. What now?
Havens tries a new approach: “Look. I was here two days ago. You can check my name in the system. Havens. Like hers. I have ID. I have my wedding picture with her.”
The
clerk squints, thinking, You carry a wedding photo of your ex? “Sorry. But they have rules. Otherwise people would be breaking into rooms all the time.”
Sobieski leans on the counter and speaks for the first time. “Listen, this is important. We received an urgent message to meet her here.”
The clerk moves his reading glasses toward the tip of his nose to get a better look at her. “You a cop?”
“I’m a federal agent.”
“You have ID, a badge?”
Sobieski reaches into her back pocket, then remembers that her badge was last seen in the back pocket of a dead man on a Berlin sidewalk. Shit. She looks at Havens. Now what?
A woman shuffles out of the back room and walks behind the counter. She’s wearing a brown suede jacket and a yellow beret. To avoid additional work she makes a point of keeping her head down and ignoring Havens and Sobieski. It’s after 2 A.M. She’s off duty and wants to go home.
“How about this,” Havens pleads. “You take us up there. We go together and you open up the door and we take a quick look inside just to make sure everything’s okay.”
“I don’t know,” the male clerk says to the female clerk. “What do you think?” She still doesn’t look up, but she does grab the computer monitor and tilts it her way for a better look. Only when she sees Miranda Havens’s profile on the monitor does she look back at Havens. “What’s your name again?”
“Havens. I was . . .”
She raises her hand to shush him. “I have something for you.”
They all watch as she turns and removes the large envelope from the mail slot behind the counter.
He opens the envelope with his back turned to them and holds up the room key for the others to see. “Let’s go,” he says to Sobieski, moving toward the elevator.