“Chief Westwood,” Bannister said. “I apologize for being late. Things are a little . . . out of the ordinary, as I’m sure you understand.”
Justin said that he understood completely and he introduced Reggie. He was surprised at the difference in Bannister’s demeanor from the night that he had found Evan Harmon’s body and called in the murder. He was far more calm and collected now, which wasn’t really surprising. But he was also much more commanding and assertive. He no longer seemed like the kind of guy who’d immediately come running a hundred miles when Evan Harmon called.
“I hope Carl and Hud are being helpful.”
“Yes,” Justin said. “Extremely so.”
“What can I help you with?”
Justin glanced over at Reggie, so she told Bannister what she needed. She wanted a record of Evan Harmon’s travel over the past fifteen-month period, everywhere he went and who he went to see. She also wanted the same information for any of the associates at the firm who might have traveled to Canada, California, Russia, South Africa, and South America. She also asked for records of any business transactions that had been done with the LaSalle Group in Providence.
When she was finished, Bannister smiled evenly and said, “Of course. Would you mind telling us what you’re looking for specifically? That might make it easier for us to give you what you want.”
“I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way, Mr. Bannister. We’d like all the information in as complete a form as possible. We don’t want you sifting through it or editing it for us.”
“Absolutely. I wasn’t trying to interfere. I simply thought it might help us be more efficient.” He looked up at the ceiling for a moment. “Let me see . . . This will take some time—”
“We need this as quickly as possible,” Reggie told him. “What would be the delay?”
“Well, the records aren’t kept in the same place or by the same person. The travel plans, for instance, are made by each assistant individually.”
“You don’t use a central travel agent?” Justin asked.
“No, we don’t,” Bannister said. “And Evan’s assistant will certainly have a record of some of his specific meetings but not every one. Evan did a lot of that himself.”
“That—that’s right,” Fenwick chimed in. “He was kind of a con-control freak for his schedule.”
“But I’ll talk to Evan’s assistant and see what she’s got.”
“And her name is?”
“Lisa.”
“Lisa what?”
“Are you going to want to talk to her?” Bannister asked.
“Is that a problem?” Justin said.
“No, not really. It’s just that she was so devastated by what happened. She really hasn’t been functioning very well, and I don’t know how she’d hold up to any kind of interrogation.”
“This is hardly an interrogation,” Reggie said.
“You know what I mean,” Bannister said quickly. “I didn’t mean that pejoratively. She’s just very fragile right now. It’s why we’ve given her some time off.”
“Not a problem,” Justin told him. “But I do need her last name for my records.”
“Schwartz.” This was Carl Matuszek who chimed in. “Lisa Schwartz.”
“Thanks,” Justin said. “Now how about the LaSalle transactions?”
“Now that might be a different matter,” Bannister told them. When Reggie asked why that might be, he said, “Because there are questions of privacy. We can’t simply open up our clients’ financial transactions.” And before Justin could get a word out, he went on, “Or our transactions on behalf of our clients.”
“We can get a court order,” Reggie said.
“I’m not sure that you can,” Bannister said. “But you’re certainly free to try. It’s not that we don’t want to do everything possible to help catch Evan’s killer. Lord knows, we do. His death is the worst thing that’s happened to this company and possibly the worst thing that’s ever happened to me personally. But this company is also Evan’s legacy, and I fear that releasing those kinds of documents could do us great harm.”
“Totally understood,” Justin said. “I don’t blame you.” He continued as Reggie stared at him in amazement. “And I think we’ve taken up enough of your time. If you’ll just give us your cards so we can get in touch with you again and figure out how to get the travel info we need.” He rose and took a business card from each man. Reggie hesitated before rising, too. As they were being escorted out by Bannister, who was going on again about the tragic loss of Evan Harmon, Justin saw a secretary working away expertly on her computer. He stopped as he passed the young woman’s desk and said, “Excuse me just a second.” He turned to Bannister and said, “Sorry, this doesn’t have anything to do with Evan, but . . .” Turning back to the assistant, he said, “We’re completely redoing our computer system at the police station. In fact, they’ve asked me to put together a recommendation for all of the various forces on the eastern part of Long Island. What kind of system do you use? We all want to be linked wirelessly.”
She smiled, flattered that he’d picked her to talk to, and told him the system they were using.
“Mac or PC?” he asked.
“PC,” she said and shrugged as if that wasn’t her choice but what could she do?
He thanked her. Then he turned to Bannister and said, “You know, I forgot to ask you one thing: how involved is H. R. Harmon with the company these days?”
“He’s not particularly involved.”
“That’s funny. At Rockworth, they told me that one of the reasons he left was to spend more time working with his son.”
“Well . . . he has an office here, if that’s what you mean. But he’s hardly involved in our day-to-day operations.”
“Even now? I would have thought he’d be very involved right now, making sure that things hold together.”
“I’m . . . I keep him apprised of anything important, of course.”
“So you’re in touch with him?”
“Yes. But this is hardly his top priority right now.”
“Of course. That’s only natural.” Justin smiled kindly. “Thank you. And I’m glad to see you’re doing so much better than you were the other night.”
“It still seems like a dream,” Forrest Bannister said, “a nightmare, really.”
“I’m sure it does,” Justin said. “But the good thing about dreams is that everybody wakes up sooner or later.”
“What was that all about?” Reggie asked. She waited until the moment they were out of the lobby and stepping onto the sweltering midtown sidewalk. “Suddenly you’re Mr. Easygoing? Mr. Personality? Mr. Hey, Everything’s Fine? What the hell—”
“Don’t worry about me. What’s with you and platinum, all of a sudden? He said the word, and I thought you were going to jump out of your chair.”
She scowled. “I know. I’m sorry. It’s just . . .” She made another face, scrunching up her mouth, then said, “The weirdest story of the year: Some state troopers in Texas found an overturned truck—there’d been an accident—and hidden in the back of the truck were platinum bars. A lot of them. Worth a few million dollars.”
“You’re kidding. What happened?”
“Nobody knows. It’s not my case; I had absolutely nothing to do with it; I just read about it, and other agents were talking about it. The bars were unmarked, so not traceable. And even the driver wasn’t traceable. He had a fake ID, there were no dental records, no prints. The truck had been stolen and we couldn’t get any lead on that, either.”
“Didn’t anyone claim the platinum?”
“No. That’s what’s so crazy. There doesn’t seem to be any theft involved—no one’s stepped forward to say it belongs to them.”
“Any idea where the truck was headed?”
“Into Mexico, apparently. But that’s not much of a help.”
“How could I not have heard of this? When was it?”
“About ten days ago. I don’t kn
ow—a few days before Harmon was killed, that’s probably why you didn’t notice. It was big in Texas, I’m telling you. It made the paper here, a little story in the News. I saw it. I don’t think it even made the Times.”
“If the stuff was stolen, why wouldn’t someone want it back? And if it wasn’t stolen, why go to all that trouble of hiding it and trying to smuggle it? I mean, if that’s what they were doing. It doesn’t make sense.”
“I know,” she said, “and I’m sure it doesn’t have anything to do with this. It’s just I hear the word ‘platinum’ and my ears perk up.”
“Well, you hide it well. Every person in the building probably saw your ears perk up.”
“All right, so I don’t have a good poker face. But can we get back to your major suck-up job on Bannister? What were you doing?”
“Were you watching him?”
“Bannister? Yeah.”
“Did you see his face when we asked him about the travel records and the travel agent?”
“Yes.”
“He was lying. He was lying his head off the whole time.”
“I agree. So what good does it do to let him get away without giving us any of the information we need?”
“He’s never going to give it to us. And it’s not going to be easy pressuring them. They’ll have lawyers swarming all over us.”
“So you just give up?”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said. “We’ll get what we need.”
“How?”
“We’ll steal it,” Justin said.
She began rubbing her eyes and forehead. “You know how hard it is to pull off that kind of computer break-in?” Reggie said. She was practically yelling now. “I bet there’s maybe two or three guys in the FBI who could pull it off. And I won’t be able to get them to do it now, not on this short notice, if I can ever get them to do it. Plus, we’ll never get this without a warrant. And even you think it’s going to be impossible to get a warrant.”
“I know.”
“So what are you talking about?”
“I know a guy,” Justin said.
Justin asked Reggie to walk him up to Central Park. It was a twelve-block walk and when they got there, he steered her toward a bench in the shade. Sitting, he pulled out his cell phone and punched in a speed-dial number.
“Mrs. Jenkins?” he asked after a moment. And after another moment: “Yes, this is Chief Westwood. How are you? . . . Thank you . . . Yes, I’m sure everything will work out fine on my end . . . Listen, I’d love to talk to your son if he’s around . . . No, I know Gary’s at the station. I meant your other son, Ben. Would you mind getting him? . . . Thank you.”
“Oh god,” Reggie said while he was waiting. “This is your little fourteen-year-old, isn’t it?”
“Don’t be an ageist. And I think he’s fifteen now.”
“Jay, do you know how crazy this is? This kid can’t—”
He held up his hand to stop her. And then he spoke into the phone.
“Ben? . . . Yeah. Listen, I need you to do something for me and I need it quickly.”
He told Ben Jenkins what he wanted.
Reggie groaned aloud about halfway through the request. When Justin was finished talking, she heard something indistinct from the other end of the phone, then she heard Justin say, “That’s highway robbery.” More words from the teenager, then, “Okay, okay. You got it . . . Yes, I swear. A flat-screen TV. Yes, I heard you—thirty-two-inch screen. It’s a deal. Now shut up and listen.”
Justin gave Ben the information he’d gotten at Ascension—the computer system and the various names and e-mail addresses. He also gave Ben a list of the companies they were interested in. He made sure Ben had his cell phone and fax machine numbers back in East End. Then he was about to hang up, but he stopped and said, “Hey, Ben, how old are you now? . . . Fifteen? . . . Well, I’m going to make this more interesting for you. I’m sitting here with an FBI agent . . . yeah, an honest-to-God real FBI agent . . . and she says no fifteen-year-old kid can do what I’m asking you to do. She says the top FBI computer experts couldn’t do it. Got anything to say to that?” He listened for a few seconds, turned to Reggie, and said, “How much?”
“What?”
“Ben wants to know how much you want to bet?”
“I’m not going to bet money with a fifteen-year-old boy,” she said. And when Justin raised his eyes, she went, “A hundred bucks.”
He repeated the figure to Ben, saying, “I’m going to get in on this action, too. I’ll take you for fifty . . . Right. Get back to me as soon as you can.”
Then he hung up and said to Reggie, “Want to get a drink? I’ve got time to kill before my date.”
He gave Reggie her choice—she could drive his car back to East End or she could take the train. She chose to drive, which was fine with him. He liked the idea of a late-night train ride. The quiet appealed to him. So did the idea of actually catching a couple of hours’ sleep.
But first he had a woman to wine and dine.
He got to the restaurant a little early, went into the men’s room, and cleaned himself up as best he could. He went to the bar, told the bartender to give him a splash of bourbon and a lot of soda, and then he nursed it until Belinda Lambert walked into the restaurant.
Justin smelled her perfume a split second before he turned to see her. It was sickly sweet, and there was too much of it dabbed on. And, he would be willing to bet, dabbed in too many and too intimate locations. The whiff wasn’t overwhelming, just enough to be overdone. That’s how he would describe the rest of her: nothing too extreme, but the effect was that everything was taken just one step too far.
Belinda was wearing a dress just slightly too dressy for the restaurant. It was red and white—and the red was just a little too red—and shoulderless. Spaghetti straps held the whole thing up. It was cut low—just a bit too low—and she was not wearing a bra, so when she bent forward to kiss him hello, the tops of her nipples were exposed. The skirt was—he couldn’t help but note—too short; it didn’t quite reach mid-thigh. She wore high-heeled, open-toe shoes with so many straps Justin thought it would have taken him half an hour to put the things on. The overall impact was, he was surprised to find, sexy. She was a big girl, but she was comfortable with her body. In fact, more than comfortable. She knew how to use it and was more than happy to draw attention to it. But there was also something sad about the complete picture. She was trying just a little too hard. And there was a hint of desperation in her eyes, the way she revealed her hunger.
He flashed her his best smile and made a bet with himself that when he asked her what she wanted to drink, she’d say a glass of champagne. Either that or a margarita with salt. He thought she’d really want the ’rita on this hot, humid night but would go with the champagne because she thought it would be classy.
“Our table’ll be ready in a minute,” he said. “What would you like to drink?”
“A glass of champagne,” she said. “Is that all right?”
“For you?” he said. “The sky’s the limit.”
The dinner went about as he figured it would. He’d pegged her for a drinker and a talker when he’d met her at Rockworth and Williams, and she was definitely both. She liked to talk about herself, too, so he knew he could use her self-absorption to his advantage. He insisted she have a second glass of champagne while he nursed his watered-down bourbon, then he ordered a bottle of red wine with their meal. As they ate and she talked, Justin made sure he poured the wine, much to the waiter’s annoyance. By the time they made it to the second bottle, he’d had about a glass and a half of the St. Estèphe and she’d gone through the rest. She talked about her college days and what she’d studied and how she never thought she’d wind up working with money because she could never even balance her checkbook. Belinda talked about old boyfriends and moving to New York from Pittsburgh, and as she went on and on he began to like her. She had surprising flashes of insight and she was more self-aware than he’d given her
credit for being. So he listened attentively and nodded when he was supposed to and clucked sympathetically to show he was sensitive; and at one point he said, looking embarrassed, “You know, I hope you don’t mind my saying this, I know it’s not very professional, but you’re extremely attractive.”
She couldn’t hide her pleasure. She came back with, “I’m really glad you think so.”
He smiled shyly—or as shyly as he could manage—and gradually he was able to steer the conversation around to Rockworth and Williams and Ellis St. John. Soon she was leaning across the table and putting his hand in hers and, with her other hand, stroking his arm. He asked how people in the office were responding to Ellis’s absence, and she said no one seemed too concerned on the trading floor. She didn’t know about the big boys. All she knew was that Daniel French had come by to say that she shouldn’t worry too much about Ellis, that Mr. Berdon had heard from him and that everything was okay. It was some sort of family emergency, he’d said, and Belinda thought it was strange because Ellis didn’t have much to do with his family. Mr. Berdon had instructed Mr. French to tell her that she was doing a good job and that she should refer all of Ellis’s clients to Mr. French when they called in if it was something she couldn’t handle herself. They said that if the police questioned her any further, she should say that Ellis was away on family matters and say that’s all she knew, which was true enough because that’s all she did know.
Justin asked if she believed them—was Ellis really in some kind of family situation?—and she frowned and said, “Sure. I mean, I guess so. Why would they lie? And I’m just so relieved he’s okay. I was really worried.” But Belinda obviously wasn’t too worried right now, because she immediately brightened up and said they told her that because she was handling the situation so well the R & W powers that be decided to accelerate her bonus for the year. She leaned farther forward—one nipple was almost completely out of her dress now—and told him that they’d given her a check for fifty thousand dollars. Justin told her he was impressed and said that she deserved it. He asked her how Evan’s cats were, and was she still feeding them, and she was impressed that he remembered about the cats. He said he loved cats and even remembered their names: Binky and Esther. Belinda’s eyes softened, and he saw her melt a little bit at the thought that he’d been paying such close attention to her when they’d first met. She said she guessed the cats were fine but she hardly ever saw them—one of them never came out when she was there—but she was feeding them before and after work. It wasn’t too difficult because she lived on Second Avenue and Twenty-third Street and Ellis lived on Gramercy Park, so she could feed them when she went to and from the office.
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