by Mike Cooper
Interesting, that he felt a need to defend himself. Ganderson wasn’t quite the taipan he wanted to be.
“Well, here we are. You said frog, et cetera.” I waited.
“The story’s out.”
“Story?”
“The three dead guys? That you were supposed to be solving? Before the entire world put the puzzle together?”
“Oh.” I nodded. “Well, it was always going to be hard to keep secret. There’re still a few smart people left in real journalism.”
“Not real reporters,” he said. “Blogs and crap like that. But it’ll be all over CNBC soon enough.”
“How’s it playing?”
“What you’d expect. A few coincidences and Drudge is already talking Earth Liberation Front.”
“Huh?” Ganderson was making less sense than usual. I noticed a discreet minibar tucked behind the driver’s seat and wondered if he’d been drinking.
“You know what I mean. Left-wing terrorists.”
“Okay.”
“And that’s the responsible media.” Drudge? But he didn’t let me interrupt. “It’s just what you’d expect everywhere else. Most of the liberal news is making it sound like Akelman, Sills and Marlett were the bad guys, and the killer was doing the world a favor.”
“Well, I wouldn’t go quite that far—”
“Damn right not.” Ganderson patted his suit jacket. “I’ll tell you one thing, the bastard better not come after me. I’ll blow the fucker out of his boxers.”
Jesus Christ. “You’re not carrying, are you?”
“Fuck yes, I am!” He pulled out the .45 he’d lent me at the range, laser sight and all. “Me and every other banker I know. We’re not going down easy.”
He must have had a hell of a tailor, to disguise that monster under his arm.
“Put that away.” I’d begun to think the most dangerous place in Manhattan was the inside of this car. “Let’s not have any accidents.”
“I’m ready for the son of a bitch.” Ganderson grinned but reholstered his cannon.
The Rover trundled along. I still didn’t see what was so important. “What do you want me to do? Go after the reporters?”
“Let’s have a status update. How close are you?”
“Following some leads. Look, I know you want the guy ducttaped and on your doorstep yesterday, but it’s going to take time.”
“We need to get out ahead of this.” Ganderson drummed his fingers on the door’s windowsill. “If the perp walk happens tomorrow morning, that’s one thing. If it’s going to be next week, I need a whole different media strategy.”
“I’m not exactly scheduling Amtrak arrivals.”
Ganderson nodded. The Rover slowed for a light, then started up again on the green. The interior was remarkably quiet.
“Media strategy isn’t my area,” I said. “But what if you suggested it’s Muslim extremists? Lakshmi-al-Jazeera or whoever the hell. Say it loud enough and some wannabe radical cell will claim responsibility, just for air time. That buys you a couple of days.”
“Why would al Qaeda care about investment banking?”
“Well, they probably got wiped out like everyone else in the crash.”
“Oh, for—”
“Or how about…isn’t loaning money with interest contrary to the Koran? But who cares? It’s not like TV pundits need actual facts to work with.”
“Hmm.”
I considered telling Ganderson about the attack on Clara, but professional habit kept me quiet. It never does any good to let clients into the process. They already think they’re smarter than I am; there’s no need to give them chances to prove it. Anyway, given his current mood and the fact that she was the source of the stories, the further away he stayed, the better.
“Motivation seems important, though,” I said. Time to move the ball downfield. “Is it possible the killings have nothing to do with terrorism at all?”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe someone’s taking out players to rig the game.” He looked at me blankly. “For money,” I said. “To screw up the markets in predictable ways. To trade on.”
“That seems unlikely.” But his expression—what I could see of it, illuminated only by the signs and headlights we passed—was thoughtful.
“Just an idea.”
“Tell me what you have so far.”
And we went round that mulberry bush for a while. I don’t know why. Do they demand updates from their accountants, checking while the ledgers are reconciled? Do they call down to their factories, asking how the lines are running? You’d think CEOs, of all people, would understand how to delegate, step back and let the experts get their jobs done, but no.
I prevaricated and offered generalities, and finally Ganderson tired of the game. I noticed we were back in front of the Flagstone.
“I want results,” he said in parting. “You’ve pocketed half the fee already, and so far you’ve got shit.”
“That was just walking around money.” I scanned the block as best I could before opening the door. “Don’t worry. I’m one hundred percent on this case. Nothing else has even one iota of my attention.”
“What? That’s not—”
I cut him off by slamming the door, then moved to the curb without looking back.
The hotel bar was surprisingly uncrowded. Too expensive for the hackers, I suppose, and the Galician Cooks must have been preparing their own drinks. So it only took about ten seconds to determine that Clara was not there.
“Avalon Shrike? Sure, she was here.” The bartender remembered her a little too well for my liking. “Are you Nesbert?”
“Um.” Nesbert?
“You look like she said, but…”
I caught up. Clara was being careful, not using my real name. “Yeah, that’s right. Nesbert.” Ugh. Her little joke on me.
“She left you a note.” He pulled a folded paper from his apron pocket.
“Thanks.” I slipped him the first bill I found in my pocket—a five. His lucky night.
New lead—have to file. Sorry couldn’t wait. Call me
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been stood up—or the last time it mattered, at least. I felt annoyed, then almost had to laugh at myself.
“She leave with anyone?”
“Nope. Just up and gone.” The barkeep looked sympathetic. “Sorry, dude.”
Outside, rain had begun again. People scurried along under umbrellas, heading for home. It was late and dark and wet.
I needed a good night’s sleep, anyway.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Next morning, sunshine.
I did some isometrics and core exercises on the floor beside my futon, thought about a shower, decided not to bother, and pulled a fleece jacket on over the T-shirt I’d slept in. The refrigerator yielded some old yogurt, a half head of green leaf lettuce, and a Japanese red-bean bun. Good enough.
The bachelor life is nothing to boast on, really.
When I finally got around to turning on my many cellphones, I had three messages. All from Clara.
“I thought this was the hotline! Answer the damn phone, already. I’m sitting on news here.”
Okay, okay. I glanced at the number—it matched what she’d given me three days ago, check—and hit redial.
“What’s up?”
“Where have you been? It’s nine-thirty—I’ve been outside here for two hours.”
“Another power breakfast. Outside where?”
“Simon Faust’s building. They won’t let me in, and now there’s a WNYJ truck setting up. Some beauty queen moron from NewsFlash Six is going to scoop me.”
“Simon Faust.” It took a moment. “Neon Rain Capital?”
“Of course.”
“Sorry, he’s not in my Rolodex. I don’t think I can help with an interview.”
“No.” She sounded impatient. “He’s next.”
Talking to Clara, I was always two steps behind. “Next?”
“Jus
t rumor, but everyone seems to have heard it this morning. The Banker Buster’s got him in his gun sights.”
“Shit.”
I hadn’t heard that nickname for the killer, either. The Street just moved too fast sometimes.
But Faust? He made sense. Neon Rain was infamous for buying up GM debt at its nadir in 2008, right before the government stepped in and bailed out Detroit. With federal guarantees, the bonds shot back up. Faust went in at pennies on the dollar, and sold at eighty-seven cents six months later—an almost pure transfer of taxpayer dollars from Uncle Sam to Neon Rain’s accounts. That put Faust right up into the megayacht class of billionaires, briefly made him every congressman’s favorite whipping boy for soulless Wall Street greed, and brought in some eight billion from eager new investors.
Then he went all bullish on the euro, and lost damn near every penny. Widows, orphans and college endowments across the country were flattened. If the Banker Buster did shoot him, the cheering would be audible in North Dakota.
“So who says he’s the next target?”
“Everyone. No one. You know how rumors fly on Wall Street.”
“Exactly. Some dope makes a joke on the squawk box, and suddenly it’s the lead headline on Bloomberg.”
“If Channel 6 thinks there’s a story, there’s a story.”
“Where are you again?”
“Faust’s loft in Tribeca, at the corner of Halston Street and Washington. Guards at the door are keeping everyone out.”
“Is there a crowd?”
“Not really. A couple of other freelancers I know, and some passerbys.”
“Passersby.”
“What ever.”
And she was the writer, not me. “You called me three times,” I said. “Once would have done it, if you were just passing along gossip.”
She laughed. “I was hoping you’d help me get in.”
“Are those guards armed?”
“Mace, sticks, radios and handcuffs. But no guns that I can see.”
So she was paying attention, at least.
“And you’re thinking, what, I’ll just punch them out and you can step over the bodies?”
“More or less. Come on, Silas, we’ll manage something.”
I’d been planning to work on Riverton today, but Clara’s offer sounded more fun, if nothing else. “Twenty minutes,” I said. “I’m not that far away.”
On Faust’s plane of existence, there’d be several houses: a seaside monstrosity in Sagaponack, a compound on St. Bart’s, a castle on the Loire, and so forth. But he’d need a pied-à-terre in Manhattan for those nights he didn’t want to take the helicopter back to Long Island. On Halston Street he’d be a few blocks from work, two doors from Meryl Streep, and safe from striving riffraff everywhere else in the city. With nice river views over the Hudson, too.
Indeed, his address was a converted industrial building with Deco trim and beautifully pointed brickwork. Halston was actually blocked off by a pair of stainless-steel posts set in the blacktop—the kind of barrier you find at the mayor’s mansion or on alleys on Sutton Place. In theory the street was still a public thoroughfare, but wads of cash had effectively privatized it.
Two television vans were now parked in front, dish antennas raised and pointed to the sky, cables already snaking this way and that on the sidewalk. A small group eddied nearby: nannies with Peg-Perégo strollers, a pair of runners, businessmen in casual jackets. The day was sunny and clear, washed by yesterday’s rain, not too cool.
A patrol car had arrived as well. One officer was at the building’s shaded entrance, talking to the guards, who were just as Clara had described, and a blond woman who was eye-catching even at fifty yards. The other officer leaned against his door, scanning the crowd.
I gave him some distance and found Clara near the Channel 6 truck.
“Silas!”
“Hey, Clara.” Sunlight gleamed in her hair and on her aviator sunglasses. She had one of those bluetooth earpieces in place, indicator LED aglow, and a two-handed grip on her phone, rapidly thumbing in text. “Anything happen yet?”
“It’s on Fox local. Chatter’s picking up online.”
“Do you really think something’s going to happen now?”
“The police wouldn’t be here otherwise. They must know something.”
“No more than you, I bet.” I looked around. “Those uniforms are just community relations—the kind you get in neighborhoods like this. If they really expected action, there’d be a tactical van and a SWAT team. Not to mention the mayor.”
“Maybe.” She didn’t look convinced.
More bystanders were drifting in, along the periphery. I heard a helicopter, but it kept going and disappeared.
“I can see why Faust would be a nice target,” I said. “But what about the theory that someone’s actually trying to make money off his death?”
“I don’t know. All he’s done lately is get divorced.”
“Yeah, that’s right.” Celebrity-news fodder. When a billionaire like Faust decides it’s time to move on, the tabloids move in—and his soon-to-be-ex-wife had obliged in spades, being much younger, beautiful and ruthlessly determined to annul the prenup by selectively leaking discreditable stories about their married life until Faust caved. She wanted fifty million. So far she’d made public his abuse of servants and pets, the bondage room, and his racist disparagement of half the New York political establishment.
Faust was hanging tough, though.
“I think he’s mostly in cash.” Clara glanced at me. “Too many distractions for deal making.”
I could understand about distractions.
“Where were you going after last night?” I asked.
“It didn’t pan out.” She shrugged. “Sorry about that.”
“The bartender seemed to like you.”
“He was sweet.”
It was just about impossible to imagine anyone ever saying that about me, but I tried for a moment anyway.
“How about—you want to try again tonight? I’ll buy?”
“Sure.” She smiled.
I banked that, then looked around. “Anything else happening?”
“No.” She turned toward the television truck. “Hey, Darryl, you on yet?”
A young man poked his head from the van’s rear door, which he’d left open. He had an Amish-style fringe beard, a bowling shirt and a wired headset, one earpiece in place and the other pushed up his head.
“Taping.”
“Are you broadcasting?” I peered past Darryl, fascinated—like everyone—by the racks of electronic equipment and camera gear.
“Nah. Just another stakeout. Vivianna thought she might be able to talk her way in, though.”
The woman at the entrance, no doubt. Good strategy to send her over to the cops, rather than Darryl.
“She’s your talking head?”
“Vivianna’s smart,” said Darryl. “More than most on-air reporters.”
“Uh-huh. I can see that.” I stepped away from the truck, letting Clara follow, moving out of Darryl’s earshot—not that he’d hear much over the multiple broadcast and sideline channels he had running.
“Friend of yours?” I asked.
“We met in school. He’s a nice guy.”
“And a good contact, to be sure.” I squinted at the building’s upper story. “Let me guess—Faust’s got the penthouse.”
“Of course. Fifteen thousand square feet, four full baths, three fireplaces, and a private deck with rooftop garden. LEED certified, very green. The taxable value is twenty-one point four million.” Clara was deep into her phone.
“On the assessor’s database, are you?”
“No, the realtor that sold it to him last year. The video tour is still online.”
“I’m sure it’s gone through a tear-out since then.”
“Maybe.”
“Guys like Faust need to piss on their trees.”
“I thought you didn’t know him.”
; “They’re all alike.”
In the sunshine I was getting warm. I took off my jacket and held it over one arm. The pockets sagged, heavy from my cellphone collection.
Across the street Vivianna disappeared through the entrance, one guard taking her in and the other resettling himself across the doorway.
“She got in,” I said.
“What?” Clara looked up. “Hey, you’re right.” She quick-stepped back to the van. “Darryl? Do you have visual?”
He’d pulled out a camera trunk of ballistic aluminum to sit on, focused on the raft of controls and slider boards. He gestured meaninglessly and didn’t say anything, other hand pressing the headset to his ears. On the largest screen, right in front of his face, a low-res feed showed vague and unrecognizable shapes in a jagged bounce.
“I didn’t see a cameraman with her,” I said—quietly, not to disturb Darryl’s concentration.
“Spy tech. The audio’s easy—pinwire mic and a Nextel. But cameras have become so small recently that people have started carrying them in, too.”
“Right.” Darryl had one ear for us after all. “She’s got a filament lens inside the jacket pin. The transmitter’s on her belt. Looks like a cellphone holster if you’re not paying attention.”
“Is that even legal?”
“She tells them they’re on the record.” He shrugged. “And shows them a little microcassette recorder, twenty years old. They draw their own conclusions.”
“That seems just over the line from entrapment.”
“We’re not taking pictures for court.” Darryl worked some buttons, and the screen view sharpened. “Honestly, we’re not even taking them for on air—the video quality is too poor. But it’s nice to have a record, and this way Vivianna doesn’t have to write notes.”
Knowing what I was looking at, the picture became a little clearer. Not moving much, a shiny surface with a line down the middle and a panel to one side with a block of round buttons—just as I figured out Vivianna was inside an elevator, the doors slid open in front of her.
It was odd, watching with no sound. The scene was open and bright, with indistinct objects lurching this way and that as Vivianna walked and turned. When she stopped, it seemed to be in a living room—white everywhere, long black couches, color on the walls that must have been art, and floor-to-ceiling windows, drapes pulled all the way to either side.