by Andrew Gross
Hauck remembered him as he saw him three or four years ago. In April’s car.
Evan.
It was his first day back at school after the incident. The local papers had picked it up. A couple of school officials came out and watched as he and his granddad made their way to the parking lot, making sure there were no reporters badgering them.
Hauck wanted to make sure too.
The boy had done well. He had snapped a couple of photos that might one day be used as evidence. He was a chip off the old block. His mom would have been proud.
Hauck didn’t know what had made him come here. Other than it made him feel close. Still attached. Mindful of his promise. He hadn’t forgotten. He wouldn’t.
See, I wasn’t just passing through, he said.
The boy climbed into a silver Volvo wagon and his granddad drove away.
Hauck had an urge to follow him. But he just put the car in gear and remained there.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It took some time for the picture of Dani Thibault to begin to come together.
Merrill had hoped it might all just be a big waste of his time. A bit of overcaution on her part that would calm a few fears but ultimately lead nowhere.
It wasn’t.
Hauck tapped on the office phone, deciding whether to call her.
Thibault had lied about where he had gone to school. He had lied about having served in the Dutch army, assigned to a peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. He had lied about his connection to the Belgian royal family too. The truth was he had dated a party-happy cousin of the queen for a couple of weeks and maybe attended a family outing or two with her where the photos that hung on his office walls were taken. The relationship fizzled out, except for the requisite gossip-column snapshots of the two of them in posh clubs that Richard Snell had located on the Internet.
For the most part Thibault’s career consisted of a few progressively more senior positions in various shady banks, managing wealthy clients’ money and setting up hard-to-pierce financial trusts. He had taken his name and part of his background from a man who had been killed fifteen years ago in France.
Who does that, Hauck wondered, but a person with something very important to hide?
These last two weeks, Hauck had learned everything he could about Thibault’s personal affairs. He knew where he got his suits in London—at Kilgour on Savile Row. He knew where he stayed while in Dubai—at the Burj, seven stars. He knew what restaurants he frequented when he was in New York—Veritas, Daniel, Spartina. He paid his bills. There were no liens or judgments against him. His e-mail traffic showed a variety of normal business and personal contacts. Nothing out of the ordinary. Maybe a bit of a kinky side when it came to Merrill. He didn’t even seem to have anyone else on the side.
And he hadn’t committed any crimes.
All Hauck found was a shadowy past that surely covered up something that the man had gone to great lengths to conceal. Even from Merrill. Why was it up to Hauck to destroy him? He wasn’t with the police any longer.
We don’t do this kind of work, he had said to Foley. Mess with people’s lives.
This time we do.
He opened a thick folder filled with photos he had compiled of Dani. Some were from Greenwich Magazine at charity events. He and Merrill. A few were from the Shiny Sheet in Palm Beach. The Garden Club Ball. Page Six in the New York Post. He didn’t exactly shy away from publicity.
He thumbed through a few contact sheets a friend of his who worked for Fairfield Style had sent over. A gathering for the state’s attorney general on Ron Tillerson’s yacht. “Merrill Simon and financier Dani Thibault.” Saturday polo matches at Conyers Farm. Thibault had some horses. The two of them looked happy, in love. Holding hands.
It was her choice, what to do with what they had found. Her call.
This wasn’t exactly the kind of work he had signed up for when he changed careers.
He picked up the phone and dialed Tom Foley to let him know what information they had. Let his boss decide how to take it to Merrill. Her ex-husband was still a very important account. It was still a new job for Hauck, and the whole thing was a bit uncomfortably politically charged. The receptionist at Talon’s New York office put him on hold.
He opened the folder and slid the photos back in.
One, near the bottom, caught his eye.
It was at the Conyers Farm polo gathering. A Patrons of Greenwich Library literacy thing. A bunch of the usual types Hauck had dealt with over the years: men in blazers and green pants, the women in expensive sundresses and large hats.
Thibault, wearing a white linen blazer and open white shirt, was caught in conversation with someone who seemed slightly familiar, behind dark sunglasses, his back turned to the camera but his profile clearly visible. It was an outtake, cropped from a larger shot. The two of them never even knew it was being snapped.
Hauck was about to stuff it back in the file when it hit him with a jolt just who the man Thibault was talking to was.
He put down the phone.
It made the next step with Thibault no longer Merrill Simons’s call.
It was a face Hauck had seen in the papers and on TV. Very much in the news. He flipped it over, his antennae buzzing like crazy, looked for the date. June, last year.
It would have been meaningless back then, the two of them talking.
But now, with the Dow dropping a couple of thousand points, with one of Wall Street’s biggest firms toppled, a close friend from his past brutally killed, Hauck fixed numbly on the forgotten photo, his blood on fire.
The man caught with Dani Thibault, looking away, was April Glassman’s husband, Marc.
PART II
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
It was two in the morning and James Donovan was scared.
For weeks, he’d shut his eyes this time of night and listened to his wife’s steady breathing. He’d looked in on Zachy, his four-year-old, asleep in his room. He’d gone online, checked his positions. The Alt-A’s collapsing. Volumes drying up. Until he couldn’t take it anymore. Felt like he was about to explode.
Then he’d leashed up the dog and gone downstairs in the dead of night for some air.
He’d done something terribly wrong. Now he didn’t know how to take it back.
Tonight, the sharp breeze off the East River blew right through his parka. Remi, his white bichon, looked up at him as if she wanted to head back inside. James wasn’t ready yet.
He didn’t know what to do.
The first check he’d taken had been for 1.6 million dollars. Deposited into an account in the Cayman Islands he opened in his son’s name. He’d waited until the funds were in his hands. The next one was for 2.3. Life-changing money. Given what was going on in the markets, money he’d never have been able to duplicate. Not with the mortgage securities markets gone to hell. With the firm talking about no bonuses this year. Or next. With the stock slid all the way to six.
They were prepared to give him five million! How could he turn that kind of security away?
At first, it had been easy. Like with all sure things, it was easy to lure yourself in, justify it. Hard to pull yourself out.
It had made sense. For his family. Buddies of his, people he had gone to B-school with, they made that in a crappy year. Lapping up homes in the Hamptons. Shares in private jets. Renting villas in the Caribbean. Fancy wine cellars.
Why not him?
Besides, the firm was basically tapioca now. Tanking. He was just part of the picture.
But then everything changed. That guy from Wertheimer, in Greenwich. That changed the whole effing thing. Every time James thought of him he broke out in a clammy sweat.
They killed the guy’s whole family.
He led Remi farther up the block on the leash. He noticed the black SUV parked up the street from his building. The windows were blacked out, but still he thought he saw a face, the same face, one he’d seen before, watching.
Was he going crazy? Hadn�
��t he seen the same vehicle yesterday? As he came home from the office. The same man behind the glass. Hadn’t he been there the day before, when he and Leslie had snuck out for a bite? He’d asked the doorman. Hadn’t noticed it before. Manny just laughed and said, “Probably driving some big shot in 225 over there, Mr. Donovan.”
Yeah, some big shot, Manny. James wondered if the guy from Wertheimer had ever felt someone tracking him.
Or he could just have been making it all up. Driving himself nuts. He tugged on the dog. C’mon, do your thing. He felt like he was running on amphetamines. Like his brain was about to explode.
James knew, really knew, it was too late. Too late to undo everything. You’ve made your bed, Jimbo. You wanted it both ways. Now he just had to see it through.
If he came clean, he’d be fired on the spot. Probably prosecuted. Serve jail time. At the very least, he’d be banned from the business for life. What else did he know how to do? Christ, he was just thirty-two.
No, the better option was to simply see it through. Take the rest of the money. This thing with Marc Glassman just had him spooked.
He glanced at the parked SUV again.
James dragged Remi into the lobby. Carlos, the overnight attendant, waved, mopping the floor. Third time he had seen him this week. He must be wondering…
Upstairs, James unleashed the dog, took off his parka, flicked on Bloomberg. He took a glimpse at the overnights from Asia. Downward pressure again. The spread was like a spike driven into his heart. He grabbed a Dove bar out of the freezer and went back down the hall. Looked in on Zach sleeping. It was after three now. In two hours he had to get up and cover his trades.
How had he let his life fall apart?
In the bedroom, the light was now on. His wife, Leslie, sat up in bed and watched him come in. She’d noticed changes in him for weeks. Clamming up. Shutting her out. Not wanting to play with Zach.
James was sweating. His face was empty. He could no longer hold the tide back. He sat down, and she crawled up beside him worriedly and took his hand. He didn’t know what else to do except clasp on tight to hers.
Could he tell her?
Could he ever admit what he’d done?
“What’s going on with you, Jimmy?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Thanks for coming in, Ty.”
Hauck sat across from Tom Foley at San Pietro, a block from Talon’s Fifty-fifth Street headquarters. Foley had ordered a Belvedere vodka on the rocks with olives, and Hauck, who never drank during the day, asked for a beer. He had brought with him the file he’d assembled on Thibault and needed an okay before proceeding. Foley suggested lunch. The leather booth in the back gave them some privacy from the lunchtime crowd.
“Cheers.” Foley tilted his glass. “Here’s to staying afloat in the storm. Funny”—the Talon director chuckled—“some of the guys and I were just tossing out a few ideas, Ty, where we think you can be useful to the firm.”
“I’d love to hear about that”—Hauck took a sip of beer—“but I wanted to bring you up-to-date on Merrill Simons. You asked me to keep you informed.”
“Oh, right, of course…” Foley nodded, seeming almost distracted. He took a second sip of his vodka. “Shoot.”
“I know she’s a friend of yours,” Hauck said. He opened his satchel. Leaning forward, he told him what he and Richard Snell had put together. Thibault’s falsified background. His phony degrees, military service. His overstated claims about the Belgian royal family that bordered on fraud. The dead man’s identity he had stolen. Which brought up deeper things. “The guy’s a fraud, Tom. Maybe a whole lot worse. I’m sorry.”
Foley put on his glasses and paged through the file. He winced at some things and shook his head. “The prick. Knew it was too goddamn good to be true. Have you told her?”
“No. I thought I’d run it by you first.”
“She’s going to be crushed,” Foley said. He went to take a drink. “Maybe it’s best if—”
“Tom.” Hauck put his hand on Foley’s wrist. “There’s more.” He took out the photograph he had found of Thibault with Marc Glassman in Greenwich and slipped it on top of the file. “You see who that is?”
Foley squinted above his glasses, and when it registered, the composed Yankee demeanor almost cracked. “Sonova effing bitch!” He rubbed his hand across his mouth. “Where was this taken?”
“In Greenwich. At Conyers Farm. At a charity polo event, last summer. Listen, Tom…” Foley seemed to be trying to calculate just what this meant. “Alone it doesn’t prove anything. It could’ve occurred in a hundred ways. They may have been talking about what to feed the goddamn horse. But I checked around a bit. Glassman didn’t have any connections to Greenwich Polo and I can’t imagine he was part of Dani’s regular crowd.”
Foley nodded, pursing his thin lips in concern. “Anything else that ties the two of them together?”
“Not that I’ve found. Yet.”
“What about anything criminal in Thibault’s past?”
“Criminal,” Hauck asked, “or suspicious?”
“Something firm, Ty.”
Hauck shook his head. “Other than raising a substantial sum of money on an overstated relationship to the Belgian royal family and falsifying his identity…But I think this is something the FBI or Interpol might well show an interest in too.”
Foley placed the photo back on the pile. “Doesn’t prove anything, you know?”
“No.” Hauck nodded. “Not in itself. But there’s still an un-solved homicide in France. And I think maybe all those folks whose money he’s representing might want to know who he is.”
Foley gulped down the rest of his vodka and motioned to the waiter for another. Hauck shook his head. “I’m fine.”
“Have one,” Foley said, raising two fingers. He rested his forearms on the table, gold cufflinks showing through his sleeves. “Listen, Ty, I’d rather, if you can see it our way on this, that none of this had to come out.”
Hauck fixed his eyes on him, surprised.
Foley shrugged. “I mean, it’s clear Merrill should know her boyfriend’s a piece of refuse. But the rest…” He tapped the photo. “This other thing…”
“This other thing what, Tom? Marc Glassman brought down a Wall Street bank. His family’s murder is still an open homicide. Thibault’s got a murky past, is deep in certain financial circles, and is seen together with the victim. To me it’s a bit more than ‘this other thing.’”
Foley took in a breath and nodded. He rubbed his palms together in front of his face. “I want you to listen to me, Ty. We didn’t put you on here, give you all this money, so you could continue thinking like a cop. You’re not representing the town of Greenwich anymore. You’re representing us. Wertheimer’s gone. The Treasury’s carving up whatever meat is left on the bone and selling it off. Other than that fancy building, their only real asset is their retail brokerage operation. It’s still second only to Merrill Lynch. You have any idea who’s in line for that?”
Hauck stared at Foley. Now he did.
“Reynolds Reid. That’s who. Who also happens to be, other than the United States government, our largest account! See how it’s all fitting in, Ty? And our job is to protect the interests of our accounts now, not the people. Not investigate wrongdoing. That’s the government’s job.” His boss stared at him directly. “Now I know I asked you to check out this guy—for a friend—and you did. You did it well. But that’s it now. That’s as far as it goes. You’ve got no proof he’s done anything wrong. So he’s caught talking to a guy at a public venue whose luck happened to go the other way. You going to look into everyone Marc Glassman might have talked to? I bet if you checked out where these pictures are from, they’ve got him yapping to twenty people like Thibault that same day.”
“Tom, this is a guy who’s gone to great lengths to camouflage his past. Only people who do that are people with something to hide. At the very least, we have to look into who he is.”
�
��No.” Foley shook his head with a frozen stare. “No. At the very least, we do what we can to make sure our client sees through a very important deal. If rumors start to fly that this trader dude was dirty or compromised in some way, if people start looking into this Wertheimer thing and then it gets mixed back up with Merrill, the CEO’s ex-wife, or us…” The second round of drinks came and Foley winked at the pretty bartender who brought them over, then looked back to Hauck, his gaze tight. “You’re a partner here now. Not a cop, so I don’t expect you to act like one. So your priorities are ours. After the sale goes through, maybe then, in a couple of weeks…a month. Then you can rattle the cage a little harder. We’ll look at it again. How’s that?”
“And what about Merrill?’
Foley inhaled a deep, conflicted sort of breath, then shrugged. “This isn’t something she has to know about right now. Trust me. A month. String it along. We’ll see then. You see what I mean?”
Hauck wet his lips, a bitter taste in his mouth. It felt uncomfortable, soiled, even rolling over what Foley had proposed. In his past life…
But maybe things had changed. Accepting the job and the money. Maybe he had to get used to that. New priorities. After all, nothing had been proven. Hauck felt himself nodding, fighting the urge that he was going against everything he was made of inside.
“Good.” Foley smiled and gave a pat to Hauck’s shoulder. “A couple of weeks, a month.” He lifted his new glass, the color coming back to his complexion. “Now if that’s all done maybe we can shift the subject to you, Ty…and how we see you fitting into this organization.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
The idea that Talon might use him as a kind of spokesperson appealed to Hauck, against his better nature, on the drive home.
Maybe it was helped along by a couple of beers.
His boss had talked about taking advantage of Hauck’s reputation for independence, uncovering money launderers and even a corrupt senior state senator, and thought that would go well with some of the government contracts they were after. While Hauck had shied away from any publicity after his last big case—the killing of a federal prosecutor from up in Hartford—the story had become front-page news and had brought an end to the career of one of the state’s most powerful politicians as well as put a stain on the legacy of one of its wealthiest tycoons.