She watched, trying to decide what to do. The two men seemed to agree on something and they both disappeared down Central Park West in the direction of Times Square.
Evie retrieved a legal pad from a drawer and began to write, beginning with the overheard conversation over a week ago and ending with her discoveries of this evening. Not knowing whether all these events were connected or whether they had any meaning at all, it nevertheless felt therapeutic to write everything down.
The process of remembering and writing also brought anger and anxiety. She felt her body heat rise and opened the bedroom window. This time when she looked out, there was only the usual street traffic.
When she finished, she tore off the pages from the pad and slid them, along with the clipping from the magazine and the handwritten note, into a file in her briefcase. On impulse she checked her front door again to confirm that it was locked and then poured a glass of wine and headed for the steamy comfort of the shower. She left the glass of wine on the bathroom counter, dropped her clothing to the floor and stepped behind the glass door. As she stood in the spray of hot water, she remembered her discovery upon returning to her apartment last Saturday after grocery shopping. Her door had been unlocked. Had one of those men been in her apartment? Could they have taken something or left something?
As she toweled off, the buzzer sounded, indicating that the doorman was trying to reach her.
“Yes?” she said into the intercom.
“There’s a gentleman here who would like to speak to you. Says his name is Benjamin Myers.”
“Who? I have no idea who that is. Did he say why he wants to see me?”
“No, just that it’s important.”
14
Please ask him what he wants.”
She stood in her towel, listening to empty air and waiting for her doorman to do his job. After a few seconds, he said, “He has your wallet. Says he found it outside the building on the street corner.”
Oh my God! No wonder I couldn’t find it! Did I somehow manage to drop it?
“Can you just … won’t he just give it to you? I can’t come to the door right now.”
“Okay, I’ve got it. He said he saw your identification badge, liked your picture and decided he wanted to meet you.”
“Well, please thank him for returning my wallet and …” Should I have him check the contents? If this man Myers had stolen anything, he wasn’t going to admit to it and anything that was missing might have been taken before he found the wallet, so she abandoned the thought.
“Now he’s asking for a reward,” said the doorman. “Since you won’t meet him, he wants money.”
“What happened to old-fashioned decency? No, there’s no reward. Oh, okay, pull out a ten for him and send him away.”
“Yes, maam. And I’ll send your wallet right up with the porter.”
“Thank you very much,” she said. Although she recognized him, this was not a doorman she knew very well and she wasn’t that impressed with his inquiry skills.
I’ve never in my life dropped my wallet out of my bag. How could I have … and he said this Myers person found it outside THIS building, but I didn’t have it when I was in Starbucks. She found her leather bag and examined it. No holes or openings. Wait! It suddenly occurred to her that when that person bumped into her on the sidewalk, someone could’ve stolen her wallet from her bag before she noticed. If that was a setup and that person was somehow connected to the men she saw on the street corner, its contents may have lead them to her building. It could’ve been one of the two men who dropped it on the corner. Should she call the police? What would she say? She didn’t know anything for sure and she had her wallet back. And, she didn’t want to make false accusations, but the whole situation was dubious.
She dressed quickly and answered the door, after confirming that it was the porter. He handed her the wallet through the crack above the chain and she tipped him. A hurried glance through the folds convinced her that the contents were intact and she returned it to her bag.
Now that her adrenaline was pumping again, her next objective was to log on to the firm’s network and plug the character string she found in Alan’s email into the password field of the third and fourth Project Neon files. If that string of characters was a valid password for one or both of those files, it might not be valid for too long.
She connected her laptop modem to the telephone jack in the kitchen and booted, but some problem with the telephone line prevented the modem from connecting. The firm’s reluctance to go wireless sometimes plagued its associates. After a few failed attempts to connect, she left the computer and lights on in the kitchen and collapsed into bed.
The telephone rang, interrupting her descent into sleep, but when she picked up the receiver there was nothing but a dial tone. Finally, sometime after two o’clock a.m., sleep came.
When she sat up in bed Saturday morning, the memories from the night before rushed over her. She thought about the two men and walked to the window from which she had watched them. The street was starting to fill with parents and children and errand boys and delivery people. No one was pausing in the street. No one was looking up at her building.
After a quick breakfast and a flurry of unpacking, she settled down at her kitchen table with her laptop and rebooted the modem. While it was attempting to connect, she changed into a pair of old blue jeans and a snowy-white sleeveless t-shirt. When she returned to the kitchen, she saw the same error message that indicated that there was still a telephone line problem. She would go to the office. A knock on the door made her jump. She walked over to the door and asked, “Who’s there?”
“It’s Ralph, Love,” came the answer.
“Oh, Ralph. Just a minute.” She unlatched the lock and opened the door. When she saw him, she rushed toward him and threw her arms around his neck. He hugged her back and then gently dissolved the embrace with a concerned look on his face.
“Is something wrong? Are you okay?”
“Yes. I’m fine. I’m just glad to see you.”
Ralph didn’t look convinced, but he dropped his inquiry. “You look great,” he said. “I hope that means you tallied some extra sleep.”
“Yes. I did. Quantity if not quality. Everything okay in London?”
“Brilliant. Family crisis averted.”
She admired Ralph. He was freshly scrubbed and his hair was gelled back, as was his preference. He wore a pale green linen shirt and a pair of brown crepe slacks, alligator belt and brown loafers.
“Want to go shopping?”
“I can’t today, Ralph. I’m working.”
“Okay, but you bloody well have to eat. Let’s have lunch in that little Italian café we like on Madison. What is it?”
“Bartolli’s.”
“Yes!”
“Okay. I owe you a celebration anyway. But give me time to change clothes.”
“You look lovely.”
“Oh no, Ralph. I can’t go out with you, dressed in these old jeans. You look too good. It’ll just take me a minute.”
“Okay, Love,” Ralph selected a New Yorker magazine from a stack beside Evie’s sofa and assumed a lounging position.
She stopped by the kitchen to try the modem connection once more. After a few seconds, the familiar message glowed on the screen. I’ll go to the office after lunch. She shut down her computer, packed it in its carrying bag and slipped into the bedroom to get dressed.
Five minutes later, Evie appeared in the doorway in a pair of cotton tan slacks, a form-fitting navy jacket-style Ralph Lauren shirt and a pair of Bruno Magli sandals. She was supplementing the remaining cash in her wallet when the telephone rang. After picking up the receiver, she said “hello” several times, but was met with silence, then a series of clicks.
“Prank call?”
“Or wrong number.” She hung up. “Similar thing happened last night,” she said almost to herself, but shrugged it off.
The sun was high in the sky when they sat down
at an outside table at Bartolli’s and ordered chilled Caravella Limoncello Originale D’Italia, a citrusy liqueur. Evie ordered the asparagus ravioli special and Ralph ordered a penne with vodka sauce. Through her sunglasses, Evie watched the passersby over Ralph’s shoulder as they talked. She had been conditioned by recent events to be watchful, although the only people she knew to watch out for were the Starbucks Man and his partner.
“You should consider meeting Nathan,” Ralph was saying. “He asked about you again. Ya’know he is an Assistant U.S. Attorney and quite attractive.”
“I can’t see myself on a blind date.”
“No, sweetheart, not blind … you met him last April. Remember that day we all met for drinks in SoHo?”
“Ummhmmm.”
“Nathan was there, remember?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Well, any interest?”
“I don’t know, Ralph. Maybe. Hey, did you hear any more about that bribery investigation?”
He looked puzzled.
“You know,” she looked around and whispered, “Senator Arbeson.”
“Ahhh. Rumor is he eighty-sixed the evidence.”
“What?”
Got rid of it somehow. They dropped the charges due to lack of evidence.”
“I thought you said they caught him red-handed?”
“Well, the blighter has lots of mates. One of those buggers apparently helped him make the evidence or witness disappear.”
Evie lost herself in her thoughts momentarily.
“You’ve got to occupy your mind with something besides work. We’ve got to get you out,” said Ralph.
“I went out with a man I met on a plane recently.”
“Oh brilliant! You didn’t tell me. Who is he?”
“He’s a technology executive for a French company—”
“Bloody Hell! Not another Frenchman! Didn’t you get that French thing out of your system with Julien?”
“No, he’s American. From San Francisco. Works out of the company’s Los Angeles office.”
“Are you going to see him again?”
“We’ve only been out once and I think it … I don’t see it going much further.”
“Why? I can see it in your eyes. You really fancy this bugger.”
Evie blinked and continued, “He lives over twenty-five hundred miles from me. How could it possibly work?”
Ralph stared at her, frowning and shaking his head. “Give it a chance. Maybe there’s a reason to have a go. Even long-distance. At least long enough to see if the relationship has legs.”
“You know, I’ve done that long distance thing once already. It doesn’t work.”
“Across the Atlantic versus across the states.”
“He is very appealing, but I don’t know.”
“You’re just afraid of being hurt again.”
“Absolutely right.”
“Swallow that fear. C’mon. Straightaway, with your next bite of ravioli. As Elbert Hubbard said, the greatest mistake you can make in life is to be continually fearing you will make one.”
“Who’s Elbert Hubbard?”
“I have no idea, but he was a smart bugger. Don’t you think, Love?”
“There’s something to that, I have to admit,” she smiled. “I have accepted a second date. We’re going to a charity ball this Saturday.”
“Brilliant! Wear red. It will make him crazy.”
Evie smiled and gestured at the waitress for the check.
She arrived at her office, laptop in tow at around three o’clock p.m. After powering up, she typed the string of characters, from memory now, in response to the PRIVATE PASSWORD prompt for access to “Neon Three.” To her chagrin, she received the message INCORRECT PASSWORD and the prompt re-appeared. She checked the case and content of the password. Then she repeated her attempt with “Neon Four.” INCORRECT PASSWORD. Was this ever the correct password to either of these files? If it was, who changed it and why?
Evie abandoned sleep that night trying to fit the pieces of Project Neon into a neat package for presentation to Paul Wayford Monday morning. She spent hours thinking and scribbling, punctuated by late night wanderings for chamomile tea. The city was eerily quiet.
On Monday morning in her office, she was dialing Paul’s extension before she had even taken a seat at her desk. She didn’t leave a voice mail. After flipping through other client matters and answering some email, she noticed some standard traffic starting to flow on her floor so she grabbed her printout of the reps and warranties section of the Gerais Chevas agreement and headed upstairs to Paul’s office. When she arrived at his secretary’s desk, Barbara told her that Paul was on a conference call, but guessed that they would probably be taking a break soon. Evie decided to wait.
Barbara turned her attention back to her typing, and Evie sat in a chair adjacent to Paul’s office door. She flipped through her scribbles from the weekend. Assuming the transaction described in the press release was the one under the firm’s current stewardship, somebody within the firm was working on the $179 million sale of the statistical software division of a client called Gerais Chevas to another South American company called Romez Nuevo. The “reps and warranties” in the Purchase Agreement recruited a specific but unknown lawyer into a highly unusual performing role in the transaction that was crucial to the closing of the deal.
There was some aspect of the deal, most likely within the realm of that chosen lawyer’s tasks, that was at least controversial, but potentially unethical or worse: to promise to secure some type of project. She could show Paul the contract language and suggest to him that the wording made the project suspect—what it was and whether the lawyer was to obtain it in some clandestine manner. The fact that these documents were under such restricted access didn’t point toward an innocuous sort of lawyerly role. She could tell him that the files containing the documents for the deal were under restricted access on the system and two of them were protected by a second layer of security—password access only.
But, would that work to her advantage? These suspicions sounded speculative. Would this seem to Paul as if she was trying to invent something controversial to divert attention from her own troubles arising from the Sangerson mess?
It seemed easy enough, given the power of Paul’s position, for him to obtain the contents of the elusive Schedule B7. Viewing that document should provide some answers. Perhaps she could just raise questions to motivate Paul to investigate. She could point to the mysterious email from “Adinaldo” and relay her puzzlement over the documents. But how could she explain why she suspected that the unnamed lawyer’s identity was hers? The overheard portions of Alan’s conversation could not be proven or substantiated. The history of dialed telephone numbers on the conference room telephone had long since been replaced with more recent calls. Even the connection to Alan could not be definitely proven. The suspected closing date for the deal, September 20th, was pure conjecture and had come from surreptitious sleuthing in Alan’s office. And if it was all a mistake, if Schedule B7 turned out to be benign, what would Paul think of her then?
She thought about her conversation with Jenna. THE BROTHERHOOD. There was no way she could confide in Paul completely, especially given that he was still investigating the Sangerson matter. Her credibility was already on shaky ground and would likely remain under scrutiny.
Without solid evidence illuminating Alan’s schemes she had little ammunition with which to fight. She had already implied that Alan set her up on Sangerson. How would Paul react to accumulated accusations that Alan was setting her up? How would she explain her snooping around in files on a deal she claimed to have no part in?
Suddenly the door to Paul’s office opened and he walked out rapidly toward his secretary’s cubicle. He hadn’t yet noticed Evie. He seemed intent on communicating something.
“Barb, can you give a quick call to Alan and let him know that I won’t be able to have lunch with him today? See if he can meet for a drink at my club a
t six thirty.” He shuffled through a few items that were stacked in a tray on the wall of Barbara’s cubicle. He turned and noticed Evie as she appeared to be about to walk off.
Lunch with Alan?! He was going to have lunch with Alan? In the eight years she had been with the firm, she had never known them to have lunch alone together. Who initiated that? Could this be Paul’s planned opportunity to ask Alan further questions about Sangerson? Could she risk saying something to Paul that he might discuss with Alan? Alan would then know I’m on the case.
“Evie, did you need to see me?”
“Hmmm … Paul, I can see that this isn’t a good time. I’ll speak to you later. It’s not urgent.”
“Well,” Paul looked at his watch. “I can take a couple of minutes. What’s on your mind?”
“Ummm. Did you find out what happened with that Sangerson contract mix-up?”
Paul scratched his chin and turned to face her. “Alan was quite surprised that it went out to the client in that unfinished form, but suggested that maybe there had been a miscommunication. He defended you and took responsibility for the mishap.”
“What does that mean? How did it go out from my email address?” Easy to offer a meaningless defense.
“He had no explanation as to how that happened, but he said he may not have made instructions clear. In any event, I smoothed things over with the client and I consider the matter closed.”
“Well, that means he thinks I sent it out like that by mistake. Paul, I’m still concerned that my reputation has been—”
“Evie, don’t worry about it. The client holds no ill will.”
“Yes, I’m happy about that, but I want the partnership to know that I didn’t—”
Paul looked at his watch. “I’m leaving tomorrow morning, but I’ll be back sometime next week. Can we talk then?”
Wearing the Spider (A Suspense Novel) (Legal Thriller) (Thriller) Page 14