“Not really. Guess I have always been in situations where we just used each other to get what we wanted,” Tommy said.
“I understand. It’s always been you and your ideals and your businesses. That doesn’t change overnight,” Jenny said.
“Are you willing to work with me?”
“Probably, but sounds like we have some law enforcement logistics to overcome,” Jenny said.
“Yeah, about that,” Tommy replied.
Jenny interrupted. “It doesn’t seem that difficult. This Kyle person can’t control who you or I talk to. He should only be concerned with what we talk about.”
Tommy agreed, “Good point, but he will keep looking. What happens if he gets enough for a search warrant? Are there any emails out there? Notes? And if they find enough for an arrest warrant, what would you say in an interrogation?”
“Okay, okay. Well, first, let’s call it an interview,” Jenny said.
“You may have to deal with this even sooner. I wouldn’t be surprised if either Doug or Kyle approached you, particularly when you’re in Chicago.”
“I’ll be fine. I really don’t know much. But Pat? That could get pretty ugly,” Jenny said.
“Yeah, Pat needs to know more about Kyle. He knew it could happen. Now he needs to know some specifics,” Tommy said.
Jenny thought about it and said, “I’ll talk to him, but then, that’s it. I’m not coming back to Chicago until this is over.”
“Can I come to see you at home, because . . .” Tommy’s voice tapered off.
Jenny finished his thought. “Because we are in a relationship?”
“Yes, I think that you get my level of interest,” Tommy smirked.
“Hard to miss the ‘I need you and I love you’ parts.” Jenny was obviously having a good time with this.
“So, do you want to deal with all that right now?” Tommy asked.
“I need some time to absorb it, but I’ll give you this; we are definitely in a relationship, and I definitely really like it. I believe you need me, but I’m not so sure on the last one,” Jenny said.
“I do love you,” Tommy said.
“Oh, really? Because you’ve been in love before? I doubt it.” Jenny pointed out the obvious, and it hurt Tommy a little bit.
“Yeah, with you nearly twenty years ago,” Tommy said. Jenny was sad and mad and confused. Nothing came out of her mouth.
“So, are you just going to leave me hanging here?” Tommy pleaded with her.
“Yes . . . I am going to let you hang for a while.” Jenny wanted to say she loved him, too, but knew she couldn’t. She had waited this long, and she really needed to know that this was real, not just an old fling that had resurfaced and could just as quickly disappear again. There was too much riding on it.
“Really, I put myself out there,” Tommy said.
Jenny reached across the narrow table and put her hand on his cheek and said, “You have, and I’m sorry, but you have so much going on right now. It still sounds like you just need me.”
“I do, but can’t it be both?” Tommy asked.
“It could, but I can’t be sure. When this is over and some time has passed, if you still feel the same, let me know. If not, you can just walk away,” Jenny offered.
“I’m not walking away.”
“We’ll see,” Jenny replied.
Knowing there was nothing he could do at that moment to convince her, he had to move on. “So, when can I come to see you?” Tommy asked.
“I need a couple of weeks to take care of some things, and give me a little notice this time,” Jenny said.
“I learned my lesson,” Tommy replied. They kissed and hugged goodbye, and Jenny headed out to meet Pat and his family. Tommy waved to her one last time as she passed outside in front of the window where he still sat.
Tommy planned to go back to the hotel and purchase his new favorite chair. If there was one thing that he had learned from John, it was that everything is for sale if you are willing to pay. Before heading to the hotel, he thought about the conversation with Jenny as he finished his coffee.
She was right about a lot of things, among them the fact that he could talk to Pat. There was nothing illegal about that. It might even be easier and safer than the cell phone conversations. What if they were tapping Pat’s phone? They had already recovered one of his burner phones.
There’s no way, he thought, that they could have tapped the early conversations with Pat. They would have arrested both by now. Tommy thought about his visits home. It would be hard to detect what he did unless Doug followed him all that way there. He usually left his personal cell phone on and in Chicago. He didn’t use his credit card in town, but he had used it to buy the train tickets, and that could have been to see Jenny. He thought he was okay.
Tommy concluded that the biggest risk for trouble was Pat being interrogated, but there was also the murder, and now things with Jenny.
It was suddenly too much. Tommy loved to be in control, and he wasn’t on so many fronts. The one thing that he could control was what he put in his body. It was the weakest of rationalizations for popping a couple of pills while he waited at the L stop. He wasn’t exactly sure what they were.
He ended his weekend alone in a stupor courtesy of whatever it was that he had swallowed.
34
Tommy forced his eyes open on Monday morning, but he couldn’t even complete a thought in his head, much less a sentence, until almost noon when the effects of the pills had mostly passed. He headed to the Loop knowing that Jenny had talked to Pat on Sunday, so Tommy was sure Pat would be more alert and ready for new modes of communication.
Tommy set himself and his computer at the cafeteria-style bakery and restaurant on the block between Pat’s office and that of McKinstry. There was a decent chance that he would catch Pat or run into some traders and collect some market intelligence. If nothing else, he would have time to lament about how stupid it was to take whatever combination of pills he had the previous night. Unfortunately, things continued badly when John was the first person he recognized.
“Thought maybe you would head back to Montana,” Tommy said as John walked past with his order to go.
“I’ll be here for a while. I want to stay close. Not that you would have anything to do with it, but there’s a lot going on in the market,” John insinuated.
“I know. I can still read about it,” Tommy said.
“And follow it on your computer, I see,” John added.
“Yeah, so?”
“Didn’t mean anything by it. You take care and be careful.”
“Is that some kind of threat? Who tells a guy to be careful?” Tommy demanded.
“No physical threat from me. You just need to be careful to not end up in prison over this by messing around in the market.” John’s tone was warning, nonetheless.
“Thanks, but you have more to worry about than me,” Tommy threw back at John, who simply turned away and headed down the street that led to the McKinstry office.
Tommy knew that John’s attorney’s office was in that direction, too. He thought about following John, recalling the woman in the office who Susan had previously mentioned. Tommy knew John was working with someone, and maybe she was the partner who made the other half of the eighty million, but he decided to stay put. Shortly thereafter, Pat strolled through the door. Tommy rose to greet Pat before he could react and gave him a big hug, like they hadn’t seen each other in twenty years. “Pat!
How are you?” Tommy pretty much yelled.
Pat looked only mildly startled and said, “Great. How are you?”
“Do you have a minute? Can we talk?” Tommy asked.
“Uh, actually, I’m just picking up a sandwich and I have to get back to the office. Maybe we could schedule something,” Pat suggested.
“Yeah, great,” Tommy said. “Do you have a card? I’ll call you about meeting later this week.”
“Sure. See you then,” Pat said.
P
at paid for his food and got out of there as quickly as he could. The conversation was painful, awkward, and inappropriately loud. As he walked back to his office, he pulled his phone out of the pocket of his light fleece, having felt a slight tug as Tommy hugged him. There was a post-it note clinging randomly to the phone which contained a letter and number combination: CASB800LT6SMT8. Pat stared at the message for a moment and then realized it meant to close all short positions out and buy 800,000 units at less than six dollars each and sell at more than eight dollars each. He headed back and placed the orders immediately.
Tommy sat at the same table, refilling his coffee, supplemented by periodic muffin and scone purchases through early afternoon. He had several more conversations with old acquaintances who were now at McKinstry, plus a couple of other competitors and industry attorneys. More than enough for Doug and Kyle to try to sort through.
Tommy walked out of the restaurant and stopped to zip up his windbreaker. It was misting out, and the wind was starting to whip between buildings. The light spray of rain coalesced into much larger drops and fell from the elevated train as he jaywalked across the street.
As he reached the other side, he noticed Doug and reactively waved in his direction, but Doug pretended not to see Tommy.
Tommy headed home, feeling like he had just put in a sixteen-hour day. The social part of work was that exhausting for him. Six conversations that probably lasted a total of an hour over a three-hour period, and he was ready for a nap. The extra pressure of the circumstances was getting to him, but Tommy was always drained by such interactions. He envied past co-workers who were energized by the interaction. More than ever, this kind of communication was a near-debilitating chore. Tommy slowed to a sloth-like pace as he thought about the next couple of weeks.
No Jenny, a lot of stress, and way too many conversations with people he had to talk to, not ones he wanted to talk to.
Without really knowing why or where he was going, Tommy had schlepped himself down to Michigan Avenue, the home of the Magnificent Mile, an unadulterated testament to capitalism. Retail businesses, the kind where you could spend thousands of dollars on a watch or a dress or almost anything, were everywhere. The retailers seemed to serve as both the economic and structural foundation for the offices, businesses, and homes that rose hundreds of feet above them.
Tommy marveled that all of these people found all of these things to buy, and it all kept churning along.
It wasn’t that Tommy was naïve to the ways of the economy. After all, he had made millions addressing environmental concerns and exploiting commodities markets, one of the most basic and cruelly-competitive institutions of the economy. He understood how things worked and had taken advantage of it, but in the end he didn’t know when enough was enough. He got capitalism, but capitalism also had gotten him.
It didn’t bother Tommy that he couldn’t buy all the nice things in the windows, but it did make him feel badly that he could hardly afford to help the guy right outside those windows asking for sandwich money.
He felt the ropes of his depression tugging at him again. If it wasn’t with him, depression was always nearby, like a fly buzzing in and out of range of hearing and not knowing whether it was gone or sitting on him.
Even before his dad died, Tommy remembered his mom being depressed, sometimes completely immobile. He knew that she had a pack of adult diapers in the closet, and he guessed that she must have used them to avoid having to get out of bed at all. Tommy was a teenager when she got like that, and he had wanted so badly to be able to help her. When he asked what he could do, all she would say was, “Can you make me younger? Can you let me redo the things that I did wrong?”
Although she never said it, Tommy thought that he was one of those things.
The few times that Tommy had seen his mom over the last ten years, she increasingly didn't like being around anyone she considered ‘young.’ But it wasn’t the normal ‘youth is wasted on the young’ sentiment. It was a true, hostile jealousy, a parasite that consumed every inch of her heart.
Tommy hoped that Florida was good for his mom and liked to think that she was getting better, but somewhere inside of himself Tommy knew that he was just hoping for a happy ending.
35
Doug and Kyle started to meet or talk daily about their respective cases. Kyle considered Doug an old-school bore and a drunk, but loved the idea of more interrogations and action that he knew Doug could stir up. Doug thought Kyle to be nothing more than a young punk, but one who understood markets, computers, and had some good hacking skills.
Doug’s own department wasn’t going to dedicate extra people, so Kyle was his only resource . . . a match made out of need, not out of respect or friendship.
They met in the second-floor precinct breakroom at a pale yellow, linoleum-covered table surrounded by four unmatched, molded plastic chairs. Every surface in the room was easy to clean, but looked like it hadn’t been for years. Doug covered the six meetings Tommy had, including surveillance photos from each one. As interesting as the idea of surveillance photos was to Kyle, he had the more exciting news.
“Even prior to your call about Jenny, I was assigned to this case,” Kyle reminded Doug.
“Yeah, I know. So?” Doug was annoyed.
“Well, I was trying everything that I could think of to trace the source of the ghost files that appeared in the transfer between John and Tommy’s two companies and the climate exchanges.”
“Well?”
“They actually trace back to George, or at least to his laptop. I can’t believe that you got his wife to turn that over. Otherwise, I don’t think that I would ever have figured it out. If he was doing something wrong, she certainly didn’t seem to know anything about it, or she never would have voluntarily handed it over,” Kyle said.
“Can you tell who he was working with?” Doug asked.
“No. I went through some emails, but I’m not likely to find anything. It took us weeks just to trace this back to him. He was very good, very thorough. In fact, he was so good that it seems strange that he forgot to delete one encrypted path that incriminated him. It’s almost like he wanted us to eventually find it,” Kyle said.
“He had to be working with Tommy,” Doug said, trying to rationalize that he had been onto something all along.
“Well, there’s hundreds, if not thousands, of emails to both John and Tommy on his work computer. Nothing on the laptop. You’re welcome to them, but I’m not looking through them. It’s a dead end.”
“And you know this based on your years of police work?” Doug asked sarcastically.
“No. Based on the fact that this guy is, was, really smart. You are not going to find anything unless he wants you to find it,” Kyle said.
“Send them my way,” Doug said.
After a few clicks on his laptop, Kyle said, “Done. What do we do now?”
“George likely didn’t get killed because he was an innocent victim. Maybe he double-crossed John or Tommy or Mark. Remember, Mark's company benefitted more than anyone from the trading scandal,” Doug said. “Or maybe someone was just worried he would eventually talk.”
“This is the first time I’ve heard you include John and Mark as suspects,” Kyle said.
“Still hope it was Tommy, but as I’ve been snooping around these guys, it gets a little more complicated,” Doug admitted.
“How so?” Kyle asked.
Doug pulled out some more pictures and tossed them one by one across the table toward Kyle. “Hell, all I need to do is hang out at the couple of coffee shops and restaurants around LaSalle near the Chicago Board of Trade or whatever hotel Tommy or John frequent. Here’s another picture of John and Tommy from yesterday. After seeing them together, I followed John because I knew that Tommy was either going to stay at the restaurant or sulk home. John met with Mark, which makes no sense to me since the only thing that John and Tommy agree on is that Mark screwed them out of any chance of saving their old business.
&nb
sp; Then, he met with some woman at the same firm where Susan Hogan works,” Doug offered.
“Who’s Susan Hogan?” Kyle asked, thoroughly intrigued.
“Tommy’s ex-girlfriend. Well, I’m guessing the ‘ex’ part as she has been out of the picture for a while as far as I can tell,” Doug said.
“This is kind of complicated and interesting to my case but probably not much help to you building a murder case,” Kyle said.
“All this fucking time I was convinced that Tommy was behind everything—market manipulating, George’s murder, killing his old partner, all of it. I was so sure.”
Doug’s hands shook uncontrollably like he was having alcohol withdrawals. It was out of frustration with himself, but it manifested the only way that his body knew how.
“Why aren’t you sure anymore?” Kyle asked with a calm that contrasted with Doug’s agitated state.
“It’s not adding up. The evidence should be apparent by now, but evidence is pointing all over. I think every one of these assholes is guilty of something. I can’t explain it. Now when I take more time to really think about it, Tommy didn’t act guilty from the very beginning. The way he reacted to me telling him that George was murdered . . . he didn’t act surprised so I took that as guilty, like he must have known. But usually guilty guys play dumb, lie, or get defensive. He didn’t do any of that.
He was interested and attentive to what might have happened. Not only that, but the dumb bastard just kept right on talking to me, God knows how many different times. Either he is innocent or one arrogant son of a bitch,” Doug said.
“Are you sure you aren’t still right about him?” Kyle asked.
“Hell, I don’t know anymore, but I am convinced someone killed George, so I don’t think it will hurt to shake things up a bit. I don’t think the man hit himself with a tree,” Doug said.
“Pardon?” Kyle said.
“Nothing. Forget it.”
“So, you need some help on the murder case? Maybe known associates of Tommy, John, and Mark? You know, any overlap or shady characters in their past. I’ll make a list,” Kyle offered.
The Squeeze Page 18