by Kaylea Cross
“You are probably wondering why I’m calling. I was wondering if I might ask you for a bit of professional advice.”
“Yes?”
“I remember that you mentioned that you run a public relations company. I recently started an information security consulting business, and I was wondering if perhaps you could share some PR pointers with me.”
Aileen resisted the irritation in her voice. When it came to her job, people often thought that she was the jack of all trades; to most, PR was PR was PR, but in reality public relations was a specialized trade just like any other profession. Aileen’s specialty was with non-profit and cultural institutions. Her clients ranged from kindergartens to boarding schools to universities to foundations, but never once had she represented an information security consulting business. She literally would not know where to start. “John, I’d love to help you, but unfortunately my specialty is in a different area. I don’t know much about information technology or computers. Heck, sometimes I can’t figure out even my own computer,” Aileen exaggerated, eager to bring this conversation to an end.
“Well, I could certainly help you there. And while I appreciate that you may not work with information technology companies every day …”
Try never, Aileen thought.
“I would greatly appreciate any kernel of insight that you could spare. Dinner will be my treat.”
How presumptuous, Aileen fumed inwardly. To think that she would agree to have dinner with a man she barely knew, but the invitation was also flattering. It was not as though men were lining up to ask her out on dates, but then this would not even be a date, but a business meal, not that Aileen would have anything valuable to contribute to the business matter at hand, but that was irrelevant, as John was clearly eager to see her, her lack of expertise on the subject notwithstanding. Come to think of it, her evenings looked pretty empty: David had said that he would be working late and had cancelled their dates for the week. Apparently, he had time to see her father: a disconcerting detail that Aileen had learned from her father when he told her that he had dinner plans with David. Lately it seemed that David spent more time with her father than he did with Aileen. “Very well,” Aileen agreed. “But don’t be surprised to leave the dinner none the wiser, as I am afraid that I won’t be able to provide much insight for your venture.”
“Oh, I think you’re being overly modest. In fact, I’m sure of it. Do you like steak?”
“Yes,” Aileen admitted. She had been staying clear of red meat for the past few months, but suddenly the idea of a splurge seemed like a good one. If she was going to sneak behind David’s back, she would do it while eating steak, not munching on some low-fat crap she had been living on for what now felt like an eternity.
“So, how about seven p.m. on Wednesday at Del Frisco’s?”
“Are you sure? Their steak is not cheap, and I do like meat.”
“Positive. I have a feeling that it will be well worth my while.”
“You said it; just don’t be disappointed if it turns out to be otherwise. See you on Wednesday.”
“Until Wednesday.”
But now that Wednesday was actually here, Aileen did not feel nearly as confident as she had been while chatting up John Carry over the phone. But then this was hardly surprising to her. The phone had always been her favored means of social interaction: engaging in flirty banter over the phone was one thing, but acting with the same cool, collected demeanor while staring into the man’s eyes from across the table was quite another.
Half an hour later, Aileen walked into Del Frisco’s. It was seven p.m. on the dot. She inwardly cursed her ingrained punctuality. It was a professional habit of hers to always be on time for client meetings, but this meeting was not exactly a client meeting. In fact, she did not know how to categorize it. Please be here, she sent a mental plea to John Carry. The reality of meeting a man she had shared an overly close embrace with while dancing at the Bostoff wedding was bad enough; the prospect of waiting for him by the bar alone was mortifying.
“Aileen, I’m so glad that you could come.” John Carry intercepted her before Aileen reached the hostess.
“Hello. I said I’d come.” Aileen smiled, instantly relaxed by John’s eagerness.
“Thank you. I promise you won’t regret it.”
“Oh, I’m sure I won’t. The steak here is delicious.”
The hostess escorted them to a window table. The dining room was crowded, and Aileen noted with a mark of approval that they were given a table that could seat four; at least John Carry was not skimping on the details.
“Would you like to start with a cocktail?”
Aileen almost blurted out that she would stick with water, which was what she had been doing in her relentless weight loss crusade, but then changed her mind. This morning, the scale had showed her the lowest number ever, and she thought that it was time for a little break. “I’ll start with an apple martini.”
“Sounds excellent. I’ll have the same.”
“So, John, how can I help you?” asked Aileen after the waiter had taken their orders.
“Well, Aileen, it is really quite simple. I have been an information technology professional for almost fifteen years. It has always been a dream of mine to branch out on my own, and now I am finally ready to go out and do it.”
Aileen frowned. “Ready to go out and do it? I thought that you already had an IT company?”
John smiled apologetically. “I might have exaggerated a bit. I do have a company, that is on paper, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten. It turns out that the whole business of getting clients is much more complicated than I anticipated.”
“Do you at least have a website?”
“I’m working on it.”
Aileen’s frown grew deeper. Either this John Carry character was not giving her the whole picture or he was a complete imbecile, and he just looked too intelligent to be an imbecile.
“Perhaps I should be completely honest with you …”
“That would be a good start.”
“It is true that I have always wanted to start my own business, but my decision has been … how should I put it … a bit precipitated. You see, I got laid off from my job.”
Aileen felt an immediate pang of remorse. The poor guy had come out on a limb, springing for a swanky dinner at Del Frisco’s in hopes of getting some pointers from her, and there she was, giving him a hard time. She would tell him everything she knew, and she would pick up the tab.
“I’m so sorry, John. I didn’t mean to sound condescending or anything. Please, go on. I think there are a few things that I’ll be able to help you with after all.”
“This pretty much sums it up. I’m still job hunting, but there seems to be nothing out there, so I thought I’d try to get my own business going instead.”
“And what company did you work for before?”
“Oh, just a mid-size IT company. We pretty much offered services to clients across all industries. Of course the big firms that have their own IT departments would never hire us, but the smaller firms that outsourced this sort of thing did. I’ve worked on systems for small financial firms, marketing agencies, and even some non-profits.”
“Non-profits? I think I could help you there. Non-profit organizations are my specialty; I could recommend you to my clients. But first we need to get the basics set up.”
Over dinner, Aileen proceeded to explain the importance of having a company website and gave John ideas on affordable advertising such as reaching out to the local newspaper and contacting the local Chamber of Commerce representative, for which Aileen happened to have the contact information. To her, these pointers were the basic postulates of a marketing plan for a successful business, but to John Carry they seemed to be pearls of wisdom, a reaction that Aileen found very flattering.
When Aileen reached for the bill at the end of meal, John refused to hear of it.
“I invited you, Aileen, and I intend to take care of the check,�
� he replied solemnly. “I may be out of a job but I have not sunk so low as to be forced to forsake my manners.”
Aileen blushed. “Thank you, John. I only hope that the information I gave you will be helpful enough to cover the cost of this dinner.”
“Oh, I am sure it will be. But to me, that is irrelevant.”
After John settled the bill, he helped Aileen with her coat, and they headed toward the exit.
“Thank you for a wonderful dinner,” said Aileen once they were standing outside.
“Thank you, Aileen.” John paused, suddenly looking hesitant. “I don’t suppose you would be free to see me next week?”
“Why ever not?”
“I thought that your boyfriend might object.”
“My boyfriend? I have lots of male clients,” Aileen replied gaily. “If my boyfriend were to object, he would have been driven mad with jealousy by now. But he seems to be too busy with his own affairs to pay me much mind, but somehow he always finds time to see my father.”
“Your father?”
“Yes, my father, the famous Cornelius Finnegan.”
“The state attorney general?”
“That’s right. I might as well put it out on the table since that’s the question everyone asks me when they meet me for the first time.”
John coughed embarrassedly. “Oh, excuse me. I didn’t mean for it to come out like that. I was merely trying to point out that it’s a good thing that your boyfriend is getting along with your father.”
“Oh, they get along all right. Sometimes I wonder which one of us David is really dating,” Aileen halted, cursing her uncontrolled blabber. It was the apple martinis combined with the bottle of red that followed afterwards sneaking up on her.
John smiled, not at all abashed by Aileen’s frankness. “So are you free this Friday night?”
Aileen considered her options. Her Friday evening loomed wide open, courtesy of David cancelling another one of their dates. She could spend the evening organizing some silly social event for the club with her mother, or she could do something fun. “I’m game if you are.”
“Excellent, so I’ll see you Friday.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Peter Laskin stared at the data on his computer screen: there was enough evidence to launch an insider trading case against David Muller and his sham of a charity, Phoenix Fund. Normally, Peter would have been pleased. Right now, however, he was not happy about this fact in the least. Instead, for the first time in his life, he wished he had failed at his job.
Over the course of the past two weeks, Peter had had three dates with Aileen. To be fair, their meetings were not exactly dates. Nothing of a physical nature had happened between them: Peter had not tried to kiss Aileen or even so much as hold her hand. But there had been flirtation in their conversations, and he enjoyed spending time with Aileen much more than he liked to admit. The latter realization was now causing him great conflict and discomfort.
In an hour’s time, Peter was due at Janet Maple’s apartment to share his findings on Muller with her and Dennis. Already, Peter had more than enough information on the trading activity of Phoenix Fund to prove that David Muller was acting on insider information. Phoenix Fund had been actively investing in options positions in manufacturing stocks, a strategy that in and of itself would hardly raise suspicion had it not been for the specific investment choices favored by Phoenix. The two companies that Phoenix invested in, Orion and Hudson Steel, were obscure mid-size firms that had experienced a sudden jump in earnings and stock value after winning large manufacturing contracts with Rover Industries, a major industrial conglomerate. Both times Phoenix had reaped enormous profit on its investment. Phoenix also had investments in other sectors of the market, such as the S&P index and the Dow Jones, as well as several blue chip stock and some bonds, but those were generating very modest returns. It was almost as though these additional investments were meant to act as decoys, and Peter had caught the drift right away. Granted, had he not been spending as much time with Aileen Finnegan as he had been, it might have taken him a bit longer to solve the puzzle, but with Aileen’s unwitting aid he had been able to get to the heart of the matter in no time.
The minute Aileen had mentioned that Muller was spending a lot of time with her father, Cornelius Finnegan, Peter’s ears had prickled with suspicion. Cornelius Finnegan was a very powerful man—what reason could he possibly have to spend so much time with Muller? There had to be more weighty reasons than the mere fact that Muller was dating Finnegan’s daughter. The Treasury Investigations department had a background search software that could find links between people based on common factors. The search process, however, was far from easy: the software produced many false positives that one had to sift through before unearthing relevant results, if any at all. Most investigators, including Dennis Walker, eschewed the software due to its tediousness. Peter, on the other hand, was of a different opinion. Over the years he had perfected his search skills, and there were many times when he had unearthed key evidence for investigations through the background search software. That was the tool he turned to this time as well. The way he saw it, he had three leads: David Muller’s investments in Orion and Hudson Steel stocks through the Phoenix Fund, David Muller’s connection with Finnegan, and Orion’s and Hudson’s connection to Rover. If Peter’s hunch were correct, there had to be a link connecting the three leads.
Peter’s first step had been to identify the top executives of Orion and Hudson Steel and see if there were any links between those individuals and Finnegan or Muller. The search had come up empty, but Peter had half-expected it to be so; he had simply started with Orion and Hudson because these companies had a smaller universe of executives to search than Rover. Peter’s next move was to search the backgrounds of the top executives of Rover. After the search of the company executives did not produce any results, Peter’s zeal was beginning to cool, as he began to wonder whether he had indeed been mistaken. Just to dot all the i’s and cross all the t’s, Peter did a search on the board members of Rover. His last search had been on the newest board member, Kevan Magee, and that was when Peter struck gold: it just so happened that Kevan Magee and Cornelius Finnegan had gone to the same Catholic school. Finally, Peter had the connection he had been looking for: Magee was Finnegan’s and Muller’s informant.
The data that Peter had gathered so far would certainly provide strong evidence to prove the insider trading link between Magee, Finnegan, and Muller, but Peter would be first to admit that the evidence was far from being ironclad. It could take years to prove that Muller’s trades on behalf of the Phoenix Fund were indeed based on Magee’s tips, and it would be even harder to prove Finnegan’s involvement. If only there was a way to show evidence of interaction between the three men …
The worst part of the matter was that Peter knew just how to procure such evidence, but the fact that he had learned of it from Aileen made him reluctant to use it. During their last meeting, Aileen had mentioned that Muller was going to have a meeting with her father this Saturday. She had mentioned the matter jokingly, but there had been bitterness in her voice when she remarked that she had again been stood up by Muller in favor of her father. What matter could Finnegan possibly have to discuss with Muller on a Saturday night? Peter had wondered. When he attempted to broach the matter with Aileen, she had replied that it was business related and that she kept out of Muller’s business affairs. It had taken all of Peter’s self-control not to press the subject further.
Peter’s usual course of action would have been to share his findings with Dennis and Janet, but when it came to his meetings with Aileen, he had done no such thing. Instead, Peter had done the unthinkable: for the first time in his life he had concealed information from his colleagues. Oh, he had shown Dennis and Janet the trades that Muller had run through the Phoenix Fund, but he had said that the background search on Rover’s executives did not produce any leads to Finnegan or Muller. Deep down he knew that he was doing som
ething wrong. He did not want to obstruct the investigation, but neither did he want to help it along at the expense of his own happiness. He liked Aileen, and he could tell that she liked him too. Each time they met, the chemistry between them seemed to grow, and who knew what it could lead to eventually? From what she had told him, Aileen had been head over heels in love with Muller at the beginning, but Peter could tell that she was starting to become disheartened by Muller’s negligent treatment. Peter, on the other hand, was lavishing Aileen with attention. True, he could not compete with Muller’s riches, but he could make Aileen feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. Why should he lose what he could have with her because of some stupid investigation? He had solved hundreds of cases, and what did he get as a reward? Being called a geek by Dennis Walker, who received all the accolades for Peter’s backbreaking work behind the scenes. No, he had decided, if Dennis wanted to solve this case he would have to get his hands dirty and do the background search on Rover’s executives himself. Rationally speaking, Peter knew that his protective attitude toward Aileen was compromising his duty. In his defense, he did not intend to hinder the investigation, but he liked Aileen and he did not want to hurt her.
* * *
Alex Kingsley leaned back in his chair and propped his feet on his desk. His new job as the head of the Treasury Investigations department was turning out to be a very nice gig indeed. He got to boss people around all day, and the best part of it was that there was no one to boss him around. Aside from having to report on the department activity to Finnegan every other week, Alex did not have to answer to anyone. And this was only the beginning. Finnegan was bound to move up the political ladder, and as his trusted protégé, Alex would follow Finnegan’s trail. Who knew, a few years from now Alex could very well be the next attorney general—he certainly had the credentials for the job. The key was to keep Finnegan satisfied, and that meant not questioning Finnegan’s motives, even in Alex’s own thoughts. To say that Alex did not find Finnegan’s keen interest in the doings of the Treasury Investigations department odd would be an understatement, but at the moment Alex did not see a way of gaining from his suspicions. “At the moment” was the key element in the current state of things: a few years from now, should Finnegan fail to reward Alex’s loyalty, Alex might very well remind Finnegan of the rendered services. But for now Alex had to focus on supplying Finnegan with the requested information. And that meant keeping a watchful eye on each and every investigator in the department.