Too Close to Home

by Andrew Grant

“I understand about Jimmy and the wine, but let me just circle back to the original deal for a second. The idea was that shares in your buddy’s company would rocket because they were set to beat a Chinese rival to a big government contract?”

  “Not quite. There isn’t a government contract. The networks buy the equipment for themselves. But the government decided to prevent them from buying it from the Chinese. My buddy’s company was the only other game in town. They were set to win by default.”

  “And this government ban was down to security concerns?” Old habits die hard.

  “That’s what my buddy told me.”

  “But if his company couldn’t deliver for any reason, and the Chinese company was the only alternative, what would happen then?”

  Hendrie shrugged. “I don’t know. We didn’t talk about that.”

  “Maybe the Chinese could get back in the frame?”

  “I guess.”

  “Did the share collapse hurt your buddy’s company, do you know? Did it damage its ability to deliver?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know. My buddy won’t return my calls. He’s blaming me for tanking the shares, because I asked Jimmy for the loan. I don’t want to make things even worse now by mentioning him. I just want the truth to be known about Jimmy.”

  “I guess those things are hard to balance. How about this? Talk to my lawyer friend.” I passed him Roberto di Matteo’s card. “Even if you still want to do your own defense, Roberto can give you some guidance. He’ll know what you can safely say, and what you can’t. Give him a call. Tell him I sent you. He won’t charge. You’ve got nothing to lose.”

  “Maybe I will.” Hendrie slipped the card into his jeans pocket. “I’ll definitely think about it. And if I do call him, your name’s Paul?”

  “Right. Paul McGrath. Or just tell him you were speaking to the janitor at the courthouse. He knows who I am.”

  Everything I know about my father suggests he’d been a shrewd businessman. By all accounts he was never one to leave a dollar on the table when he didn’t have to. And every dollar he owned, he put to work. Every dollar, that is, except for the ones tied up in the brownstone in Hell’s Kitchen that I’d inherited along with all his other assets when he died.

  My father never lived in the house. He never lived in the city. If I’d known he owned property there when I was a teenager, I would have campaigned night and day to move. I loved Manhattan. I was drawn to it, compelled to spend as much time as possible in the place, and I hated the drive back to our family home in Westchester. It was only later that I really understood that my father would never have left that house, regardless of how relentless my nagging would have been. Because my mother had died there, giving birth to a sister I never saw. I was only three at the time and my mother’s absence was a fact I grew up with, no different from the existence of gravity or that it got hot in the summer. But as a kid, and even as a teenager, I didn’t recognize the sentimental bond that tied my father to that spot.

  I don’t know when he bought the brownstone. I guess I could have found out by deciphering his accounts—he was notorious for keeping paperwork way past the statutory limits—or by asking Mr. Ferguson, the lawyer who was now overseeing his businesses. More important, I didn’t know why he bought the place. It seemed out of character, seeking ownership of an asset that wasn’t integral to one of his companies or central to making more money. I’d heard the theory that the property came as a sweetener in some other deal. That did seem possible. My father was old school. He never disposed of anything he came upon that might be useful one day. He had no shareholders, so there was no need to worry about manipulating balance sheets or finagling ROIs or any of the other smoke-and-mirror indicators that all the Wall Street types are obsessed with. This was the trait that brought him into conflict with Alex Pardew. When he finally accepted that I wasn’t ever going to join him at the boardroom table, he brought Pardew into the company as a partner. They signed an agreement that when my father decided he was ready to retire, Pardew would buy the company based on a valuation formula stipulated up front. Only it seems that Pardew didn’t do his due diligence. The company had way more assets than he expected, which meant he would need way more money than he’d anticipated to meet his obligation. So he hatched a scheme to fraudulently reduce the company’s value. Ironically enough the scheme came to light, according to the police, in a dispute over the brownstone.

  Another thing that made the house unusual, with respect to my father, wasn’t its value—it was a gold mine. It was that the gold mine hadn’t been exploited. When I first looked around the property I couldn’t believe the architectural features just waiting to be torn out and converted into cash. And I was very glad they hadn’t been. Everywhere I looked there were throwbacks to a previous era with materials and finishes that are unattainable now. The range and variety of wood the original builders used were staggering, and it was installed and crafted using skills that are lost to the ages. It was the same story with the tile in the bathrooms and the marble in the entrance hall. Although those features look tame and restrained in contrast to the extravagance of the top floor—the entire level is devoted to a grand ballroom with a sprung floor and panoramic views of the Hudson.

  I’d never imagined myself as a homeowner. I had no objection to the principle of the thing. It just never seemed to be in the cards for me. I left home when I was eighteen and I’ve lived all over the world, but only in two kinds of accommodation. Army barracks, and hotels arranged by my old unit—the 66th Military Intelligence Brigade—when I was sent out to infiltrate a target organization. If I’d been asked even a few weeks ago, I would have said I was as likely to own a house as I was to leave the army and come home to Manhattan. And I guess I’d have been right, only not in the way I’d have expected.

  When I first came back to the city I stayed in a series of hotels. Then after a while I figured, the brownstone was there, so I might as well make use of it. There’s no point in paying Manhattan hotel rates when you own a house that’s just standing empty. Detective Atkinson—the NYPD’s point man on my father’s case—had encouraged me. And so had John Robson, another MI veteran. Our paths had crossed briefly when we were both in the service. He wound up getting sent on a mission to Azerbaijan that I was originally slated for, but missed due to a last-minute reassignment. Which was lucky for me, as it turned out. Robson encountered some moral challenges in country. His view of the best way to navigate them didn’t mesh well with his CO’s. Long story short, Robson was rewarded for his contribution with a Big Chicken Dinner—a Bad Conduct Discharge—and I can’t hand on heart say the outcome would have been different if I’d been in his shoes. There was no contact between us for years after that until we bumped into each other again here in the city, unofficially on the trail of the same guy. We found that we worked together well. He was the closest thing to a friend I’d had in years. And given that I’d inherited a house with half a dozen spare rooms, it made sense to let him use one.

  The brownstone was structurally perfect when we moved in. All the utilities were hooked up, as well, but we did encounter one drawback. There was no furniture. Not a stick. That wouldn’t be a problem for long, I’d thought. It would be one of the benefits of civilian life, surely? There’d be no torturous requisition forms to complete. No cranky quartermasters to smooth talk. I’d just go to the store and pick some things out. So I tried that. I tried it at three stores, in fact. And the answer I got was the same each time. The fastest delivery on anything that wasn’t grotesque was twelve weeks. Which to me sounded like eleven weeks, six days too long. So I walked out.

  I figured I could take some furniture from my father’s house—I couldn’t stop thinking of it that way—up in Westchester, but there was a problem with that idea, too. After my father died, I promised his housekeeper, Mrs. Vincent, that she could continue to live there as long as she liked. It was the least I could do. Mrs. V
incent had moved in with us a few weeks after my father was widowed. She’d been the one who’d cooked for me. Made sure I always had clean clothes. Helped me with my homework. Made strawberry milk shakes to help mend my heart, every time it had been broken. Put an arm around my shoulder whenever I needed sympathy. Gave me a kick in the ass whenever I needed motivation, which was more often. Covered for me when I missed my curfew. And refused to condemn me when I announced I was joining the army. She’d been the most constant adult presence in my life growing up, given the amount of time my father dedicated to his businesses. She’d been more of a mom to me than my biological mother ever had the chance to be. And she’d lived in the house way longer than I had. It felt more her home than mine, so it wouldn’t seem right to plunder the place for my own convenience.

  We were left with one option. The camping store. We picked out air mattresses and sleeping bags for our bedrooms, which might sound incongruous for a house that was worth north of thirty million dollars, but they were luxurious compared with many places the two of us had slept in. We found a pair of lawn chairs for the lounge, which was harder than it sounds because Robson is so tall. He’s at least six feet eight, though I’ve never heard him confirm the actual number. We finished up with a folding table and chairs for the kitchen, so we’d have somewhere to eat. After that we purchased a small dorm room–style fridge for milk and a microwave to warm up the carryout food it was fair to assume would play a major role in our futures. Our only other appliance was a fancy kettle with adjustable temperature settings that Robson had brought with him. He was obsessed with tea but had been banned from using the kettle at the last hotel he’d been bunking at. He showed me a note they’d stuck to it following an unannounced safety inspection, labeling it an unrecognized appliance and stating that further use would constitute grounds for eviction.

  Robson was in the lounge when I got home. He was wedged into one of the lawn chairs with his long legs stretched halfway across the room, one ankle over the other. He was drinking tea out of a disposable cup and reading a thriller about an ex-MP who’d left the service and become a wandering vigilante. It was the third one he’d gone through in a week. I was starting to think I should try the series myself.

  “So, did you bait the trap?” He set his cup on the floor next to two other empties.

  “Nothing to it.” I lowered myself into the other chair.

  “Good.” He closed his book, slipping one of di Matteo’s cards between the pages to keep his place. “Let’s hope we get a bite soon. It would be nice to wrap this Pardew thing up once and for all. You could get some closure for your dad. And then maybe you could stop mooching around the courthouse all day long. We could hit the road. Have some fun.”

  “The courthouse isn’t so bad.” I stretched my back, struggling to find a comfortable position on the flimsy fabric. “It keeps me out of mischief.”

  “More like it gets you into mischief.”

  “Good mischief, though.” I turned to look at him. “Seriously. It’s all right down there. Maybe you should join me sometime.”

  “And this sage recommendation is based on what?” Robson steepled his fingers. “My world-renowned love of ill-fitting municipal uniforms? Or has my secret addiction to budget cleaning products somehow come to light?”

  “Don’t knock it till you try it.” I paused for a second. “It’s surprising, the people you meet. The things they tell you.”

  “People like your buddy Carrodus?” Robson snorted. “I can imagine the kind of things he’d like to tell me. He certainly wouldn’t welcome me with open arms. He didn’t seem very impressed with my performance as a cabdriver.”

  “Frank’s all right. He’d give you a second chance, if he knew the circumstances. Anyway, I was thinking about someone else. A guy I met today. He had an interesting story. I want to run it by you. See if you pick up the same vibe as I did.”

  “Someone else who needs an asshole thrown off a roof? That would be cool.” Robson pointed his index finger at me. “But I want to do the threatening this time. You can deal with the fence. And I’d prefer it not to be in Albany again. I hate that place.”

  “This guy didn’t want anything. But what he said intrigued me.”

  “Who was it? A lawyer? A clerk? Or are you rubbing shoulders with judges now?”

  “None of the above. He was an arsonist.”

  Robson’s nose wrinkled. “Ugh. Arsonists. I hate those guys. They’re all cowards. Is he guilty, do you think?”

  “He’s definitely guilty. He got caught, and he confessed.”

  “What did he torch?”

  “Some other guy’s house.”

  “Why did he do that?”

  “He blames the other guy for ruining him, and making him lose his own place.”

  “OK, then.” Robson nodded and leaned forward in his chair. “That sounds better. That’s something I could maybe get behind.”

  “That’s not the interesting part. The guy got ruined in some sort of stock scam that links back to a company that makes sensitive parts for telecom networks. The government just decided to ban its only rival—a monster Chinese corporation—leaving it the only player in the field. Then immediately after this is decided—it’s not even publicly announced yet—the company gets hit by these financial shenanigans and its stock value ends up in the toilet. It’s how this guy lost all his money and his house, but I’m wondering if there could be more to it than that.”

  “Like what? Boardroom bullshit? Insider trading?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Do you remember anything about Schwarz-Meiller? There was a whole module about it at Fort Huachuca. In one of the advanced courses.”

  “Vaguely.” Robson shrugged. “But that was years ago. Didn’t it have something to do with the Mossad?”

  “It did. Schwarz-Meiller was a Swiss company. It was breaking the UN embargo, selling control boards for power stations to Iran. That was back when their nuclear program was barely off the ground, and they were desperate for electricity to make more heavy water.”

  “OK. This is ringing a bell. The Mossad found out about the embargo breach, but instead of assassinating the top brass like they usually would, they bought the company? And then instead of closing it down, they used it to insert sabotaged components into the Iranians’ supply chain?”

  “Right. The plan worked like a charm. But do you remember what the Mossad did before buying the company?”

  Robson thought for a moment. “No.”

  “They pulled a whole bunch of financial hocus-pocus to bring the purchase price down.”

  “That was a smart move.” Robson nodded. “Why waste money? So do you think that’s what the Chinese are doing? Taking a page out of the Mossad’s playbook?”

  “Well, we know the Chinese are targeting telecom networks, globally. There were two routes into the States. One got blocked off—their own corporation. Wouldn’t it make sense to exploit the other? The US company? As economically as possible?”

  Robson rocked his head from side to side. “Maybe.”

  “You don’t think it’s possible?”

  “I think it’s possible, yes.” He swiveled around to face me. “But I also think it’s possible that something else altogether is going on here.”

  “Such as?”

  “Listen, Paul, I don’t want to speak out of turn. But are you sure you’re not looking for reasons to avoid putting this Pardew thing to bed? Or to at least put off dealing with it? Could you be carrying more baggage connected to your father than you thought?”

  “That sounds like psychobabble to me.” I crossed my arms. “I’m fully focused. The Pardew thing is my number one priority. It’s just that with this—something smells wrong. I’d hate for something to slip through the cracks that winds up hurting people and afterward for us to know we could have done something to stop it.”


  “That’s fair.” Robson softened his voice. “I’m with you. But in the same way, I’d hate to see Pardew slip through your fingers because you were too busy looking in a different direction. Imagine him lying on a foreign beach, living out the rest of his life in luxury, instead of rotting in an American jail. Or suffering whatever other fate you might have in mind for him.”

  “He might already be on a beach.”

  “But what if he’s not? What if you let him get to one by taking your eye off the ball now?”

  “That’s not going to happen. There’s a guy out there somewhere who’s crapping himself over the missing file. He’ll call the number on the note I left, show his hand, and whatever it is he’s trying to do, we’ll burn it down. In the meantime, the share guy’s story should be checked out at least, don’t you think? What harm could there be in that?”

  “Maybe.” Robson paused. “But not by you. You can’t afford the distraction. What about Detective Atkinson? Why not hand it over to him. See if he thinks it has legs. And if it does, leave him to run with it.”

  Death and taxes. Those are the only two things people say you can be sure of in life. But if you ask Detective Atkinson to meet for breakfast, you’ll find there are two more things you can rely on. The place he’ll pick will be the Green Zebra. And he’ll be late.

  I have nothing against the Green Zebra in itself, although its hipster Village clientele wouldn’t be my first choice of people to hang out with and its food is a little too self-consciously cool for my taste. My problem is being expected to meet in the same place, over and over again. That goes against every instinct I honed over the last twenty years. Old habits die hard. But the venue was Atkinson’s call, he’s happy with it, and we’ve had no problems so far. I figured I could put up with it, despite the bizarre décor.

  The place looks like it was thrown together by a bunch of drunks, in the dark, over a lost weekend. Though it was probably designed by experts and cost a fortune. Outside, it has a temporary vibe, like it’s about to be closed down. Inside, the idea is that nothing matches. There are three kinds of floor covering, for example, so I chose a table in the quarry tile section, with a clear view of the door and the kitchen. The table itself had spindly metal legs and a top that was made of chessboards covered by a thick slab of slightly green glass. The boards were positioned at random so that none of their sets of squares lined up, which produced a weirdly disorienting effect. I was discouraged from looking at them, but still wished I’d brought some chess pieces to pass the time. I made do with ordering a coffee—plain black, nothing foamy—and it arrived just as Atkinson came through the door.