Due Diligence: A Thriller

by Jonathan Rush

  “He’ll know you’ve called. If he’s there and he wants to be by himself, let’s let him do that. Maybe he needs a little space.”

  “I’ve got to get some fresh clothes,” said Rob.

  “Can it wait until tomorrow?”

  “I guess so.”

  “Then go tomorrow,” said Emmy.

  40

  The Louisiana Light due diligence review meeting was scheduled to kick off in the Sixth Avenue offices of Grayson, Arpel, Madden & Lamb, Louisiana Light’s lawyers, at one o’clock Monday afternoon. The lawyers and accountants would present their findings. So would the investment bankers, who would also run the meeting. Their main interest was to make sure the lawyers and accountants didn’t put any language into the final report that would give the Louisiana Light board a reason to reject the deal.

  Pete Stanzy and Phil Menendez took Sammy Weiss for backup on detail. The minute they walked out of the war room, Cynthia and Rob shut down their computers. Neither of them planned to stay around. Once Sammy was back from the meeting, they knew, the work was going to start again. The due diligence report had to be finalized by the following morning, which meant they were probably going to be working all night.

  Particularly since the Herald still hadn’t published the story.

  Rob waited for Cynthia to go and then called Emmy.

  “They didn’t print it.”

  “I know,” said Emmy. “I saw.”

  “I’m going to call that journalist. Where are you now?”

  “At work.”

  “You want to grab lunch? I’ve got a couple of hours.”

  “Oh, honey, we’ve got a working lunch with Fay.” Fay Pride, the editorial director at Lascelle, was famous for her so-called working lunches. According to Emmy, they consisted of drink, food, and work. In steeply descending proportions.

  “Can’t you get out of it?”

  “I shouldn’t, Rob.”

  “You don’t love me, that’s why.”

  “On the contrary, my darling.”

  “You’re all sweet words.”

  “I’m an editor.” Emmy laughed. “I’ll see you tonight?”

  “I doubt it. They’re at the review meeting. When they get back, it’s all going to start. Actually, I should go by my apartment and pick up some clothes. Might be the only chance I get.” Rob thought for a moment. He could call the journalist from there.

  “Did you hear back from Greg, by the way?” asked Emmy.

  “No.”

  “Well, I’m sure he’s fine. He just needed some space.”

  “Yeah, it’s always the same,” said Rob. “You give ’em your apartment and they don’t want to know you.”

  “I’ve got to go,” said Emmy.

  “Sure. I’m just talking.”

  “See you tonight.”

  He rang his apartment, on the off chance that Greg hadn’t gone to work, and got through to his own answering machine. Then he rang Greg’s cell phone. The phone rang and went to voice mail. Rob hesitated, then didn’t leave a message. Then he wondered whether he should have, so he texted Greg to let him know he was on his way over, just in case Greg was at the apartment after all.

  He left the office. Outside it was breezy, cool, but the sun was shining. It was good to be outside, out of the war room and away from it all. He started walking.

  Less than ten blocks. It didn’t take long.

  * * *

  Rob knocked. Along the corridor, a door opened and Mrs. Angelou put her head out.

  “Hello, Mrs. Angelou,” said Rob.

  Mrs. Angelou stared at him for a moment. Then she smiled. She waved her hand slowly. Rob waved back. Mrs. Angelou nodded and disappeared.

  Rob knocked again. Then he put his key in the lock and opened the door.

  The place was a mess. Greg, he thought. He went in. Then he stopped. It wasn’t just a mess. The DVD player was gone. And DVDs. He looked around more carefully. He didn’t move. The apartment had been burgled.

  He became aware of something else. Music was coming from somewhere inside the apartment. He listened. It was coming from around the corner. From the bedroom.

  The radio? The radio was on.

  “Greg?” he called.

  The music kept playing.

  Rob didn’t want to move. He really didn’t want to move.

  “Greg?”

  Rob pulled out his cell phone. His mouth was dry now. He called Greg’s number. There was no ring. Thank God.

  Then he heard it.

  His heart almost stopped. Greg’s phone was ringing around the corner, where the music was coming from.

  Rob didn’t want to go around that corner. More than anything in the world, he didn’t want to go around the corner.

  He stepped forward through the littered, burgled room. Fear and dread physically weighed him down, as if each of his feet were made of lead.

  He got to the corner. He was breathing heavily. His pulse raced, he was clammy.

  He looked.

  Greg lay facedown in the bedroom doorway, dressed in jeans and an old sweater, a huge dark stain on the carpet beneath him.

  41

  His cell phone rang.

  “You have to answer that?” asked the cop.

  Rob shook his head, looking at the number. It was Sammy Weiss. “I’ll turn it off,” he murmured.

  There were two detectives with him. They had introduced themselves as George Nabandian and Steve Engels. Engels had short dark hair and looked about Rob’s age. Nabandian was older, rounder, and almost bald, with a thick mustache. There were other cops around as well, more coming all the time. Rob and the two detectives were standing in the corridor. Over their shoulders, Rob could see one of the cops looking around his apartment, dressed in white coveralls and a mask. From time to time, he caught the flare of a camera flash through the door.

  Mrs. Angelou was staring at them from her doorway. The cops had already told her to go inside, but she kept coming back.

  “She’s probably scared,” said Rob. “She’s a little demented.”

  “It’s all right, lady,” yelled Engels, as if that would calm her. He turned back to Rob. “So, this is your apartment?”

  Rob nodded. “I spend most of my time at my girlfriend’s. Greg was—”

  Someone pushed past them, coming out of the apartment. The detectives took Rob a little farther down the corridor.

  “What were you saying?”

  “Greg’s a good friend…” He was distracted by someone else going into the apartment.

  The two detectives waited.

  “Umm … what was I saying?”

  “Greg was a good friend.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. We went to law school together. He split up with his girlfriend last week. I told him he could use the apartment until he found his own place. See, he was living with her, in her apartment…”

  “You have his girlfriend’s name, Rob?”

  “Sure. Louise … Louise … Jesus, I’ve forgotten her last name.” Rob shook his head. He’d gone blank. “I’ll remember it. Give me a second.”

  “You got the address?”

  “Yeah. It’s down in the Village. Umm … Effers!”

  “What?”

  “Her name. Effers. Louise Effers.”

  Engels was writing in his pad. “All right, Rob,” said Nabandian. “That’s fine. We’ll check it out. Now, coming back to Greg, you say he moved into your apartment. When was that?”

  “That was Saturday,” said Rob. “I was at the office, so he picked up the key from Emmy—she’s my girlfriend. I called him up on Saturday night to see how he was doing.”

  “He was here?”

  “I guess so.” Rob frowned. “I called on his cell phone, but he said he was here. He was having trouble with the blind in the bedroom.”

  “And then? When did you talk to him after that?”

  Rob thought. “I didn’t. That would be the last time I talked to him.”

  “On Saturday n
ight?”

  Rob was staring at the ground.

  “Rob?” said Nabandian gently. “That was the last time you talked to him? Saturday night?”

  “Sorry. Yes. That was the last time. It would have been … it was sometime after eleven. I got back to Emmy’s after work and I can remember thinking it was kind of late to call him. But I said I would. I guess you can check the exact time from my phone records, huh?”

  Engels glanced up at him from his pad.

  “What did he say when you talked to him?” asked Nabandian.

  “Not much. I just asked him how he was and how he was settling in.” Rob shrugged. “Like I said, he was having trouble with the blind. See, there’s this blind in the bedroom that doesn’t work, I mean there’s kind of a trick to it. I can show you. You want me to show you?”

  “Not now,” said Nabandian quickly. “It’s all right. We’ll check it out.”

  “Okay.”

  “You said you asked how he was settling in.”

  “Yeah. That’s right.”

  “And then?”

  “That was pretty much it. He had to get the door. Someone was knocking.”

  Engels looked up. “At eleven o’clock on a Saturday night?”

  “She’s awake all hours,” said Rob, and he nodded toward Mrs. Angelou, who was still watching from her doorway. “It wouldn’t be unusual. She thinks she has a cat.”

  The cops watched him. They had both been inside the apartment, and they had both seen enough corpses in their years on the force to know that the body lying in there had been dead for some time. Over a day, maybe closer to two. Eleven o’clock on Saturday night? Could have been around then, the coroner’s report would tell. Right now, it sounded very much as if the individual in front of them was trying to fix that time in their minds by saying the victim had said there was a knock on the door—while he, Rob, had been elsewhere. And of course there was no one who could refute that story, because the victim had supposedly told him about a knock on the door in a phone conversation that no one else had heard. And Rob had already told them to check the phone records to see when he had spoken to Greg. To a detective, that automatically sounded suspicious. Put it all together, and it sounded as if the individual in front of them had already spent some time figuring out how his alibi could be established.

  Rob shrugged. “She likes to borrow milk for the cat.”

  “So she’d be able to tell us if she knocked,” asked Nabandian.

  “You can ask her,” said Rob, “but she won’t remember. She can tell you all about Harry S. Truman, but she can’t tell you a thing about what happened ten minutes ago.”

  The two detectives exchanged a glance.

  “What about yesterday?” asked Nabandian. “You didn’t talk to him?”

  “I was working most of the day.”

  “You sure work a lot,” said Engels.

  “I’m an investment banker. I called him when I finished work.”

  “What time?” asked Nabandian.

  “Some time after five. We were going to hang out.”

  Engels looked at him sharply. “Was that something you’d arranged with him?”

  “Kind of.”

  “When?”

  “When we talked on Saturday.”

  Engels looked at his notes. “I thought you said you asked him how he was and you talked about the blind and then he had to go get the door.”

  “Yeah, well, I talked to him about hanging out as well.”

  The two detectives exchanged another glance.

  “Anything else you didn’t tell us about when you talked to him?” asked Engels.

  “Take a moment to think about it,” cautioned Nabandian.

  Rob frowned. He shook his head.

  “So you called him on Sunday,” said Nabandian. “What happened?”

  “I told you, I didn’t talk to him. I got put through to his voice mail. And today as well, before I came over.”

  “He call you back after your message yesterday?”

  “No.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  Rob frowned. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

  “But you didn’t do anything about it?”

  “Look, I don’t know,” said Rob. “I guess it didn’t worry me at the time.”

  “You didn’t think you should come over and see if he was okay?” said Engels.

  “No.”

  “Not even after he had this supposed knock on the door late on Saturday night?”

  “It just didn’t…” Rob glanced toward Mrs. Angelou. “She’s around all the time.”

  Engels watched Rob for a moment. Then he glanced at Nabandian.

  “Okay,” said Nabandian. “You know we need to check everything, Rob. Just routine, make sure we’ve got the times right. Is there anyone who could corroborate what you’re telling us?”

  “My girlfriend, Emmy,” said Rob. “Emmy Bridges. She was there when I called Greg. And at work, there’s two associates I work with. You want their names?”

  Nabandian nodded.

  “Sammy Weiss and Cynthia Holloway.”

  “You want to spell those?” said Engels.

  Rob did.

  “What bank is that?” asked Engels, writing the names.

  “Dyson Whitney.”

  “Tell me, Rob,” said Nabandian. “You know any reason anyone would want to kill Greg?”

  Rob frowned. “This is a burglary, right? There was a burglary in another apartment in the building a few months ago.”

  “Anyone get killed?”

  “No.”

  “Anyone get hurt?”

  “No one was at home.”

  “So you think this was a burglary that went wrong?” said Engels.

  “Wasn’t it?”

  Engels didn’t reply. Whoever was responsible for the murder of Greg Ryan hadn’t gone to that apartment to commit a burglary. Even a cursory examination of the crime scene was sufficient to show it. The bedroom was untouched, a radio had still been playing. The bed was unused, the victim was in his clothes, so he hadn’t been asleep at the time of the intrusion. Yet in the living room, just about everything that could be moved had been uprooted or smashed, whether or not it could conceal valuables. Even the chairs at the table had been knocked over. If it was an interrupted burglary, with the victim, who had been awake at the time and now lay dead in front of the bedroom, coming out to investigate the noise, surely he would have been alerted before so much damage had been done. Which meant the murderer must have killed him, then continued to trash the room. If a burglar was that cool, cool enough to keep going after he’d been surprised and had killed someone, he’d step over the body and check out the bedroom to see what he could get from there as well. He wouldn’t just leave it.

  “We just need to cover all the bases,” said Nabandian. “Think about it again. Is there any reason anyone would want to kill your friend?”

  “I can’t think of any reason.” Rob thought. “I don’t know. He was a DA. Maybe there’s someone with a grudge. I’m just guessing. Must happen all the time, people get grudges against DAs.”

  “But you don’t know of anyone in particular?”

  “No.”

  “He didn’t mention anyone with a grudge? No death threats?”

  Rob shook his head.

  “What about you, Rob?”

  Rob looked at Nabandian in incomprehension. “Why would I have a grudge against him?”

  “No. I mean, any reason anyone would want to kill you?”

  “Me?”

  “It’s your apartment,” said Nabandian. “Maybe they thought it was you.”

  Rob shook his head. “Me?… That’s crazy.”

  “No one?”

  “Not that I can think of.”

  “No old girlfriends?” said Nabandian.

  “No debts?” said Engels.

  “No threats?”

  “No fights with anyone?”

  Rob frowned. “No. Nothing. I can’t think of a
nything.”

  “Okay,” said Nabandian. He looked over his shoulder. Behind him, a stretcher was being wheeled into the apartment.

  Rob looked as well. “Are they taking him out now?”

  “It’ll be a little while yet. You got somewhere to stay tonight, Rob? For the moment, this is a crime scene. We’re still looking for evidence.”

  “I’ll stay at Emmy’s.”

  “We’ll let you know when you can come back. It’ll probably be tomorrow. You’d better give us Emmy’s address and phone number.”

  Rob gave it to them.

  “You mind if we talk to her? It’s routine, like I said.”

  “Sure. Go ahead.”

  “Where would we find her?”

  Rob looked at his watch. “She’ll still be at work.”

  “Maybe we’ll leave it until she gets home.”

  “Can I ask one thing?” said Rob. “I’d like to tell her before you speak with her. So she hears it from me first.”

  The two detectives exchanged a glance.

  “Sure, Rob,” said Nabandian. “You haven’t spoken to her already on the phone since you found Greg?”

  Rob shook his head.

  “Okay. You know what, maybe we’ll go find her right now at work. Why don’t we drive you over there?”

  * * *

  There was a kind of kitchen that doubled as a meeting room at the offices of Lascelle Press. It wasn’t exactly the way Rob would have chosen to tell Emmy the news, with a cop standing on either side of him. Then he was asked to wait outside while they spoke with her. He didn’t know where to go, so he stood in the corridor outside the room.

  Rob couldn’t hear what was being said behind the door. When the cops asked him to step outside, Emmy had looked at him in dismay. She was in shock. She had had barely a moment to take it in.

  He looked at his watch. Almost five-thirty. He took his cell phone out of his pocket and switched it on. There were a couple of messages from Sammy. There was one from Phil Menendez as well, laced with obscenities. Sammy’s second message sounded urgent: “Rob, we’re in the war room. The review meeting went well, but there’s a whole bunch of work to do. We’re really going to be crunching here. We need you back right now.”

  Rob returned the call.

  “Sammy,” he said. “It’s Rob.”

  “What’s happening, Rob?” Sammy’s voice was even, not flustered, not punishing. Yet.