After the dignitaries had dug a few symbolic shovels of dirt, to wild applause, Andrea sidled up to the low stage. She was beautifully dressed in a white dress and looked poised, but Rick could see she was nervous. Of course she was.
Reporters thronged around the mayor. Sculley they largely left alone. Finally, Andrea found her moment. She slid up to Sculley and handed him a folded sheet of paper.
Rick watched intently as Sculley looked at the note wonderingly, grinned, then took out a pair of reading glasses from his suit pocket. His brow creased.
He read the note. It was only a few sentences. His eyes lifted from the page and met Andrea’s. Then they scanned the crowd, squinting, right to left, then left to right.
And then his eyes found Rick.
Sculley’s smile faded. His expression was dead, but Rick was sure that in Sculley’s eyes he could detect something very close to fear.
66
Sculley led the way to a small white tent on one side of the stage where employees of the Bay Group were handing out glossy brochures on Olympian Tower to the media and prospective investors.
As he approached, a couple of the employees recognized him and sat up straight in their chairs. A young man got up with an awestruck smile. “Mr. Sculley, how can I help you?”
“Can I have this tent?” Sculley said.
It took a moment for his employees to understand that he wanted them to vacate the tent, but once they did, they moved quickly.
Andrea hung back. Sculley flashed her a smile and said, “Mr. Hoffman and I will have a little chat.” She nodded and let the two men enter the now empty tent.
“Shall we have a seat?” Sculley said, indicating a small card table piled high with Bay Group brochures.
Rick shook his head. “This shouldn’t take that long.”
He was struck anew by how craggy Sculley’s face was up close. He had the face of someone who’d done manual labor outdoors all his life, though he probably hadn’t since he was in his twenties. He was now over seventy.
“You look rough, lad,” Sculley said. He gestured toward the bruises on Rick’s face. “Maybe you should take it easy, you know what I mean?”
“I’m fine,” Rick said. “I’m alive.”
“We never had that sit-down, you and I.”
Rick smiled. “I get it now. You told Mort Ostrow you wanted the ‘Rick Hoffman treatment’ because you wanted to meet me in person. Size me up. And at the same time you had your thugs put a scare into me. Sort of a two-pronged approach. Because you’re a check-every-box kinda guy.”
Sculley shrugged.
“I think you knew my dad, didn’t you?”
“I certainly did.”
“You took care of his nursing home expenses for twenty years.”
“And you’ve come to thank me?”
“Actually, I’m here because I’ve finally gotten around to that Thomas Sculley piece. But the story has shifted a bit since I started.”
“Now, how do you mean?”
“My story details how you covered up the death of the Cabrera family in the Ted Williams Tunnel in 1996. How you paid people off—a policeman, the survivors, even a community activist—all to make sure nothing slowed down your progress.”
Sculley’s face was impassive. “What a grand story you’ve got there. A grand and fanciful story!”
“Not so fanciful. Fortunately, my dad left records of the payoffs he made for you.”
“Mr. Hoffman!” he thundered with a joyous smile, as if Rick had told him a wonderful joke. “Now it sounds like you’re threatening me! Shaking me down!”
“Not at all. I’m a journalist with a story to finish. Call it the ‘Rick Hoffman treatment.’”
Sculley stared at him for a long moment. “Let me ask you something, Mr. Hoffman, and it’s something I’ve always wanted to ask a journalist. What motivates you?” He squinted and tilted his head to one side. “Really, what motivates you? Why would you choose to be on the sidelines, watching the action? Why does a clever man such as yourself choose to be in the audience and not in the ring? This I’ve never understood.”
Rick smiled. “When I was in college, a famous journalist came to give a talk, and one of the students asked him the very same question. What motivates you? And the journalist said, ‘I’m just a guy who wants to know how the story ends.’ I’ve always liked that answer.”
“You’re an odd duck, Mr. Hoffman.”
“So let’s talk about those payoffs.”
Sculley snorted. “Payoffs? Do you know who had to be paid off to make the Big Dig happen? Everybody! Anyone with a complaint got bought off. The government bought air conditioners and soundproof windows, even new mattresses for homeowners in the North End who hated all the noise of the construction. Must have been ten thousand palms were greased. This is the way of the world, laddy. You didn’t come here to ask about that.”
“Then let me put it more pointedly. Your empire came with a body count. How the hell do you sleep at night?”
Sculley’s face flushed. “Do you have any idea how that tunnel has transformed this city? Boston traffic used to be a joke, a national punch line. Driving through downtown at rush hour used to take half an hour. Now it takes three minutes. Traveling to the airport is seventy-five percent faster. The Big Dig was the largest and most complex and most technologically challenging construction project in the history of this country.”
“That’s what they say.”
“Did a few poor souls die because of the Big Dig? Son, a hundred men died building the Hoover Dam. A thousand men died building the Erie Canal. Four hundred Chinamen died building the transcontinental railroad. How about the Panama Canal? One of the greatest engineering feats in history? Thirty thousand men died building it. Ambitious projects always cost lives, son. That’s the truth. Have you ever visited the great pyramids of Giza?”
Rick shook his head.
“They’ll take your breath away, they will. But nobody who sees them sheds tears for the thousands of men who died building them. A pharaoh had a vision, and that’s what remains. His vision. Do you know what would happen if they tried to build the pyramids today? There’d be a goddamned environmental impact review and a board of grievances and we’d have nothing more than a shelf full of pretty blueprints. The world is full of small men who want to tie the great ones down.”
A woman popped her head into the tent. Sculley held up a hand, palm out, and she immediately left.
“When small men get in the way of big things,” Sculley went on, “which d’ya think must go?”
“Small men. Like my father, you mean?”
Anger flashed in Sculley’s face. “That was a decision he made.” Then he gave Rick a basilisk smile, a snake regarding a mouse. “Do you know what the difference is between a man like your father and a man like me?”
“Why don’t you tell me,” Rick said acidly.
“Small men are always waiting for their opportunity. Great men seize the opportunity. Great men say yes to life. They’re not naysayers. Every day you face the decision—do you say yes or do you say no? Do you seize the opportunity? Your father left you three million dollars? The curse of the small bequest. Not enough money to do things with. Just enough money not to do things with. So the question for you is, What could you do with thirty million?”
“Just yesterday you tried to have me killed and now you’re offering me thirty million dollars?”
“I think I’m good at taking the measure of a man, up close and face-to-face. You’re ballsy. You’re sharp. But the question is, do you have the kind of spirit that says yes to opportunity? Thirty million, a man with imagination can do a thing or two with that kind of coin. Dream a little, my son. You can do anything you want with it. Set up your own news-gathering organization. Buy your own office building. You can choose to be one of the big apes, or you can b
e a microscopic louse nestling in their pubes. Which will it be?”
He placed an arm on Rick’s shoulder, his eyes boring in. “You know, there’s a saying in my business: Those who can, build. Those who can’t, criticize. So my question for you is, What kind of man are you? Do you want to be one of the big boys, the ones who build something great? Or the ones who just want to pull things down? Because it isn’t too late for you. A new day, a new decision. You’ve got the chance to take the money, ride the whirlwind, and do something special. Will you take it. Are you that man?”
“Not really, no. I’m just the guy who wants to know how the story ends.”
A man stepped into the tent and Sculley put out his palm again, eyes flashing with anger.
“I said, leave us,” he barked.
The man didn’t move.
Rick saw the man in the blue FBI windbreaker, Special Agent Donovan, standing at the tent’s opening. Rick nodded and smiled and held up one finger, asking him to wait a minute.
“What the hell is this?” Sculley said. But he now seemed to understand. He turned and stared at Rick.
“I can’t finish my piece without some sort of response from you,” Rick said. “It’s sort of a policy of mine.” He took out his iPhone and unlocked it. “Otherwise, it’s all ready to go. And I mean, go live.”
Sculley’s face had gone deep red. “I don’t believe you.”
“I’ll just say that Mr. Sculley declined to comment.”
Rick hit a phone number, and when Dylan from Back Bay answered, he said, “Just as I wrote, Mr. Sculley declined to comment. We’re ready to rock ’n’ roll, Dylan. Go for it.”
“It’s done,” Dylan confirmed a few seconds later.
“If this is blackmail,” Sculley said, “it’ll never work. You wouldn’t dare.”
“I just did.”
“Lad, you just sealed your own fate.”
“Your fate, actually. And my friend in the windbreaker here is about to escort you to it.”
The words came from Sculley in a rasp: “You’ll never get what you want.”
“Yeah, well, I think I just did. At least I know how your story ends. Because I wrote it myself.”
One Year Later
Andrea wasn’t having any wine but wasn’t ready to tell people why.
Rick poured himself a plastic tumbler of wine from the box.
“I know it’s not up to your lofty standards, Rick,” she said.
He grinned. “Isn’t there a statute of limitations on wine jokes?”
“As far as I’m concerned, you’re still fair game.”
The party was crowded with Geometry Partners staff and donors and potential donors. The occasion was the opening of Geometry Partners’ new Somerville location, which was called the Leonard Hoffman House, underwritten by an anonymous gift of one million dollars. There were Geometry Partners posters on the wall (DO THE MATH; KNOW THE ANGLES; IT ALL ADDS UP).
Evan was buzzed on grape juice and cookies, and when he wasn’t playing Minecraft he was careening through the party, knocking into guests, and spilling drinks.
Thomas Sculley was in federal prison and would be for another ten years. Eight with good behavior. Alex Pappas was in prison as well but would be out much sooner. He’d struck a plea bargain with government prosecutors: an eighteen-month sentence in exchange for full cooperation. For spilling all. Rick wasn’t surprised that Pappas had made a good deal for himself.
But he didn’t particularly care. After the Thomas Sculley exposé was published and was picked up by forty news outlets, Rick found himself weighing several job offers, including one from a nonprofit public interest website that funded investigative journalism projects and another from The Wall Street Journal. Eventually he went with the investigative journalism website, which gave him the flexibility to do his pieces in Boston. His current project was an investigation into corruption in the process by which the FDA approved pharmaceuticals.
It felt peculiar becoming a father—a stepfather, actually—stepping into the role instead of being promoted to dadhood through the usual system. But at the same time it felt right.
The house on Clayton Street was too badly damaged to be salvageable. Rick split the insurance proceeds with Wendy. Between the cash left over, after the Geometry Partners grant, and his salary from the nonprofit, money wasn’t a problem.
The reporter from Back Bay magazine approached them, a young woman named Lindsay who looked twelve, wearing a bulky cable-knit sweater and heavy tortoiseshell glasses. “Is now a good time to do this interview?” she said.
“Sure,” said Andrea, “but maybe we should sit down a little later. There’s a lot to get into in terms of our success rate, measured along a bunch of different axes, and—”
“You know what?” Lindsay said. “I only have nine hundred words so I’m not really going to be drilling down so much. It’s kinda more of a lifestyle piece about one of Boston’s Power Couples.”
“Okay,” Andrea said.
“Awesome. So you guys just got married, right?”
Andrea showed her the wedding ring. They’d done the deed only a month earlier, at city hall.
“So how do you guys do it all? That’s what I want to know.” She turned to Rick. “Your article on Thomas Sculley just won the George Polk Award for investigative journalism, right? And then there was your piece about kickbacks in the defense industry.” Looking at Andrea, she said, “And you guys have a little kid and Geometry Partners has got to be more than a full-time job. Plus it’s expanding so fast, right, with locations in Washington, DC, and New York City? How do you do it? What’s the trick?”
Rick and Andrea exchanged glances.
“The trick is,” Rick said, “there’s no trick.”
Acknowledgments
I’m grateful to a number of people for their generous help in researching this book. For help with various medical details: my brother Dr. Jonathan Finder; Dr. Amy Goldstein of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh; Dr. Carl Kramer; Margaret Naeser, professor of neurology, Boston University School of Medicine; Eileen Hunsaker of the Aphasia Center at Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions; Dr. Joan Camprodon; and especially Dr. Mark Morocco. For legal matters: Allen Smith and Nick Poser. On public relations: Doug Bailey and George Regan. On renovating the old family house: Bruce Irving; and Doug Hanna and Eileen Lester of S&H Construction.
On the Big Dig, Sean Murphy of The Boston Globe was a huge help; thanks as well to John Durrant of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Timothy Finley of Semke Forensic, and especially Gary Klein of Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates. (Some particulars of this mammoth project were changed for fictional convenience.)
Eight-year-old Henry Buckley-Jones was a precocious and patient interviewee. Thanks as well to Harry “Skip” Brandon of Smith Brandon, Jay Groob of American Investigative Services, Lucia Rotelli, Bill Rehder, Bruce Holloway, and Declan Burke. For help with technological details: Jeff Fischbach, Mark Spencer of Arsenal Experts and Kevin Murray. On forensic accounting, Eric Hines of the StoneTurn Group. Zachary Mider of Bloomberg News provided intriguing information on secretive nonprofits. My gratitude once again to Clair Lamb, Karen Louie-Joyce, and the irreplaceable Claire Baldwin. At Dutton, my thanks to Amanda Walker, Christine Ball, Carrie Swetonic, Stephanie Kelly, and especially Ben Sevier. I’m grateful for the loving support of my wife, Michele Souda, and our daughter, Emma J. S. Finder. Thanks most of all to my agent, Dan Conaway of Writers House, and my brother Henry Finder.
About the Author
Joseph Finder is the New York Times bestselling author of eleven previous novels, including Suspicion, Vanished, and Buried Secrets. Finder’s international bestseller Killer Instinct won ITW’s Thriller Award for Best Novel of 2006. Other bestselling titles include Paranoia and High Crimes, both of which became major motion pictures. He lives in Boston.
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