One of Our Own

by Jane Haddam

  “Why all the banks?”

  “My guess would be FDIC insurance,” Cary Alder said. “This isn’t a sophisticated woman. Her savings strategy was idiotic. When she started, she probably got three percent for her trouble. These days, she probably doesn’t get one. But she wasn’t looking to make a ton of money. She was looking to be safe. FDIC covers the first quarter of a million of the money you’ve got in the bank if the bank goes bust. She’s got her money parceled out so that if there’s a crash, she’ll still be solvent. The FDIC insurance will cover big chunks of it.”

  “And she’s got enough money so that you’re never going to be able to force her out of that apartment,” Gregor said.

  “Right. So we stopped trying. Once we knew what the score was, we just decided to live with it. Except Hernandez couldn’t live with it. He kept coming across these people who needed bigger apartments. He wouldn’t stop nagging at her about it. So she didn’t just take us to housing court, she took us to regular court. She took him to court. She got a restraining order against him. She got fifty thousand dollars out of us at one point because we didn’t keep him away from her. Anyway, as soon as I saw her out there in the hall, I knew he’d been at it again. So I called him and had a fit. I got him on his cell phone, so I suppose he could have been anywhere at the time, but she was here.”

  “And you did talk to her,” Gregor said.

  “Absolutely,” Cary Alder said. “I let her into the office and did my best to calm her down. We’d managed to go a couple of years without ending up with her in any kind of court. I’ve got two enormous building projects, both luxury projects. I’ve got loans. I’ve got lines of credit. Ending up in court means you end up publicly exposed. Ending up publicly exposed means all kinds of people start looking into all kinds of things. A luxury building project is a balancing act. I didn’t want to fall off the high wire.”

  “Are you on a high wire?” Gregor asked.

  Cary Alder ignored this. “If nothing else happens to you, you get the inspectors,” he said. “There are hundreds of building and construction regulations in this town, issued by half a dozen different departments, and some of those regulations contradict each other. There is no such thing as being entirely in compliance. Which means the city can bring down your project any time it wants. So you stay under the radar.”

  Gregor tried the hummus with the cilantro in it, just to know. It was awful.

  “Anyway,” Cary Alder said again. “I let her in finally, and I talked to her. I must have talked to her for over an hour. She was livid and she was fed up and I don’t really blame her. She was also handing out ultimatums. Which she could have made good on, by the way. You know what else happens when you don’t fly under the radar? If some jerk decides to take you down, he’s likely to take a lot of your people with you, even people who haven’t done anything really wrong. Then the mess gets bigger. And bigger.”

  “I take it there’s quite a lot of mess going on there to get bigger,” Gregor said dryly.

  “I had the Aldergold in my desk,” Cary Alder said. “I gave it to her as a kind of appeasement. I had to explain it to her. She didn’t know what it was. I tried to stress that she could use it to come into one of these places and have dinner or whatever. On Alder Properties.”

  “Would they have let her in?”

  “Sure. If you’ve got Aldergold, they let you in. And they treat you like anybody else with Aldergold. If they don’t, they get fired. They might have stuck her in a back booth out of sight, but they would have let her in and they would have served her.”

  “So she took the Aldergold and then what? She went away?”

  “I put her in a cab and paid for it,” Cary Alder said. “It was dark by then, really dark. And that’s the last I saw of her. I don’t know what happened after that. I don’t know how she ended up in a garbage bag. I don’t know how Hernandez ended up dead in her apartment. Hell, I don’t know how Hernandez ended up in her apartment at all. And if she had a gun, it’s news to me.”

  Gregor took an olive. It was a Kalamata olive. There was nothing you could do to ruin an olive. It was just fine.

  “Well,” he said. “Here’s one thing. If Hernandez is the one who put Marta Warkowski in the garbage bag, she couldn’t have shot him. And if she shot him, he couldn’t be the one who put her in the garbage bag.”

  3

  For some reason, it felt as claustrophobic and suffocating outside the Aldermine Cavern as in it. It didn’t help that Gregor’s phone was full of messages delayed by the Cavern’s thick walls. This seemed distinctly dysfunctional to him. Surely the kind of people who would want to spend time in the Cavern would also want to get their messages in real time. Maybe he had underestimated Cary Alder. Gregor always had some respect for people who bucked the smart phone hegemony.

  He looked around with no particular purpose for a while, wondering if he should go home or back to the detectives’ squad room or off to a place where he could plausibly pretend to be out of communication. He was slightly disoriented, or he would have realized where he was. He’d been here only two weeks ago, when they were finalizing the paperwork that brought Javier to the sisters and then to Cavanaugh Street.

  “Chickie,” Gregor said to himself.

  Then he checked the building numbers on both sides of the street and headed up the block.

  At the door to the building that housed Marshall, Burbank, Callahan, and Freed, Gregor identified himself to the doorman and asked for Edmund George. The doorman got busy and official looking at his switchboard and then waved Gregor to the bank of elevators. It was at the last minute that Gregor realized the man was armed, the distinct bulge not quite concealed under his left armpit. More and more lately, Russ’s ravings seemed less like ravings than like prophecies.

  And that was very bad news.

  Ed George was waiting outside the elevators when Gregor got to the fifth floor. Marshall, Burbank, Callahan, and Freed had that entire floor and the one above it. As usual these days, Ed looked professional, prosperous, and straitlaced. Nobody would think to call him Chickie.

  “Are you all right?” Ed asked as Gregor got out of the elevator. “You look a little stunned.”

  “I was in the Aldermine Cavern,” Gregor said. “I am a little stunned. And then for some reason, I was thinking of you as Chickie. I don’t know where that came from.”

  “It’s a blast from the past,” Ed said. “I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. I think of myself as Chickie sometimes, too. And I bring Chickie out at least once a year for Pride. Come on back. I can actually carve out half an hour. I just had an appointment cancel on me.”

  Gregor followed Ed through the maze of cubicles to the back of the floor, where the associates had their tiny little offices, then beyond that to the slightly larger offices reserved for junior partners. Ed was a junior partner. He even had a window.

  “You didn’t have to come all the way down here,” he said. “I told Bennis I’d come up to Cavanaugh Street whenever you needed me. And you should be in good shape, at least for the moment. How’s Javier?”

  “He seems to be doing pretty well,” Gregor said.

  Ed had a visitor’s chair. He kicked it out where Gregor could get to it and then went behind his desk to sit down.

  “What were you doing in the Aldermine Cavern?” he asked. “There’s something that doesn’t sound like your thing. I’d think Bennis would spit on it.”

  “I don’t think she’s that dramatic,” Gregor said. “I was talking to Cary Alder.”

  “That must have been interesting.”

  “Oddly enough, it was.” Gregor hadn’t bothered to button his coat when he left the Cavern. Now he shrugged it off and draped it over the chair. “You ever do any business with Cary Alder?”

  “No,” Ed said. “This is an old-line firm. He’s a little too—”

  “New?”

  “Crooked,” Ed said. “I’m not saying I know anything specifically, but there are people aroun
d here with connections. The word is the Feds are about to land on him with both feet.”

  “That’s what I hear, too. I think that’s what he hears, too. Do you know the case that just came up? The woman in the garbage bag, and then the man they found dead in her apartment?”

  “I know about the woman in the garbage bag,” Ed said. “It’s been all over the news.”

  “Did you know she had Aldergold on her when she was found? Do you know what Aldergold is?”

  “Aldergold is the kind of thing that makes this firm not want to deal with Cary Alder,” Ed said. “I had heard about that. But I thought the woman was supposed to be some kind of bag lady. How did she get Aldergold?”

  “Cary Alder gave it to her. It’s a long story. She’s not a bag lady and she’s not a highflier, but the police found the stuff and so we’re talking to Cary Alder. But forget that for a minute. I’ll tell you about it later if you want me to, but it’s not what has me up here. Alder said something to me that’s sticking in my head. Do you do any criminal law?”

  “Pro bono, but some,” Ed said. “Not on Cary Alder’s level. The firm gets involved in some of that kind of thing. You can’t help it when you’re dealing with people who make lots of money. Making lots of money makes people truly stupid.”

  “I can bet. Alder said to me, sort of as an aside, that when there’s a big money case like that, when everything starts going south, it isn’t just the top guys who get hit. A lot of their employees get hit, too. Get arrested, I think he meant. And prosecuted and put in jail. Even if they weren’t necessarily doing anything illegal.”

  “Ah,” Ed said. “Well, you got that wrong just a bit. They’ll have been doing something illegal, they just won’t necessarily have known it was illegal. Money cases are not like murders.”

  “I wouldn’t expect them to be.”

  “Financial law is a rat’s nest, in a lot of ways. Remember some time back, when Martha Stewart went to prison? You read the newspapers, you’d think she went to jail because she engaged in insider trading. But she didn’t. They couldn’t convict her on insider trading. What she went to jail for was telling her stockholders that she expected to be acquitted of insider trading.”

  “And that was against the law? Even though she was right?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Okay,” Gregor said. “Things have changed a bit since my day.”

  “It’s stuff like that that makes all the complications,” Ed said. “Let’s go back to Cary Alder. What I’ve been hearing is bank fraud, connected to some building projects he’s got going. That almost certainly means he’s got a connection at one or more banks. Each of those connections has to be high enough up in the hierarchy to approve a loan, and with enough clout to hide the transactions that need to be hidden. That could be one of the top guys, and sometimes it is, but it also could be somebody a couple of rungs down the ladder. In that latter case, the people above that connection are going to be on the hook at least partway, because the Feds expect them to know. But you’ve also got the people right below the connection. Almost certainly one of them is going to have done the actual physical moving of the money, and that’s going to be a crime even if the guy who did it had no idea he shouldn’t have been doing it. His boss said to do it. He did it.”

  “Right,” Gregor said.

  “The same is going to be true at Alder’s own company,” Ed said. “I suppose Alder could be altering documents and sending falsified financial statements with his own two hands, but I’d bet not. He’s got somebody, maybe even several somebodies, doing something like inflating his rent receipts, maybe, or overestimating the market value of his holdings. Remember the savings and loan debacle? I think we’re talking about Reagan. A guy would come in and take out a mortgage to buy property for a hundred dollars. A few weeks later, another guy would come in and take out a mortgage to buy that property from him for a thousand dollars. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth until there was some two-acre little sand plot mortgaged for millions of bucks, and then the scammers would disappear. Well, every time they did that flip, there was some second assistant bookkeeper actually doing the paperwork. And that guy got charged along with the rest of them.”

  Gregor thought this over. “So Cary Alder has a second assistant bookkeeper on the hook somewhere.”

  “He does, and whoever he has in with him at the banks probably does, too.”

  “And what happens to the second assistant bookkeepers when the case blows up?”

  “Depends on what the second assistant bookkeepers did,” Ed said. “And what they did and didn’t know. And just how furious the prosecutors are.”

  Gregor sighed. Second assistant bookkeepers. Bank fraud that the banks participated in. He didn’t believe that Cary Alder had himself stuffed Marta Warkowski into a garbage bag, and he didn’t believe he had gotten Hernandez to do it and then shot Hernandez in Marta Warkowski’s apartment. In fact, Gregor had the impression that not only did Cary Alder know the Feds were about to land on him, but that he wasn’t trying very hard to get out from under it. It didn’t make any sense.

  “You ever see a man who’s about to be hit by a freight train and just doesn’t care?”

  “I know enough about Cary Alder to know you don’t want to get too involved with him,” Ed said. “What I know may be secondhand, but everybody says the same things, and my guess is that means the things are true. He’s a liar. He’s a cheat. He’s a con man. And he is going to go down, sooner rather than later.”

  “And all of that may be true,” Gregor said, “but I don’t think he’s a murderer. I don’t even think he paid a murderer. And that puts me in a very uncomfortable position.”

  TWO

  1

  Tommy Moradanyan was coming down the stairs and through the living room when the landline started ringing. He was carrying five Dr. Seuss books and a copy of Winnie-the-Pooh. He threw the books on the couch as he headed for the phone. He looked at the caller ID and came to a full stop. If his mother had been home, there would have been no question. He would have let the call go to voice mail. But his mother was not home.

  Past the living room and through the door, Javier and his sister, Charlie, were sitting on another couch, flanking Pickles on each side. They had another book, which they were holding open between them. Every once in a while, Javier would point to the book and say something in Spanish. Sometimes it was Charlie who would point to the book and say something in English. Pickles was sitting up and staring at the pages, looking alert and intelligent.

  Tommy dropped down and picked up. He had grown too tall to stretch out his legs comfortably under the coffee table. He thought the knobs of his knees looked like bowling balls. He thought the big house was too quiet around him.

  “Russ,” he said, when he got the phone to his ear.

  Tommy hated landlines. In spite of caller ID, they gave you too little information.

  Russ was quiet on his end. Tommy could understand that.

  “Russ,” Tommy said finally. “Mom’s not home. She’s not going to be home any time soon.”

  More silence. Then, “You’re there by yourself?”

  “I’m babysitting. I’ve got Javier and Charlie. Oh, and Pickles. We’re reading Dr. Seuss books.”

  “By yourselves. With no adults.”

  “I’m fourteen.”

  “I know you’re fourteen. Have you at least got the doors locked? Have you got the windows locked? Have you got any means of defending yourself if there’s a break-in?”

  In the family room, Charlie turned a page and Javier nodded sagely. Tommy liked looking at them. He didn’t know why, but they made him feel both safe and hopeful.

  “It’s like a different world,” he said. “Them in there. Next to you in here.”

  “You’re not answering my question.”

  Tommy twisted around and tried to get comfortable. It was impossible. “I don’t know if the windows are locked. Do we lock the windows? I’ve never thought a
bout it. The door’s locked if Mom locked it when she left. As to defending myself, the last time there was a weapon in this house it belonged to you, it was under your bed with three others, and the police came and took it away. I remember that day. They were friends of Mr. Demarkian’s and they were as nice as possible under the circumstances and they still gave me PTSD.”

  “You should have let this go to voice mail,” Russ said. “I had a message I wanted to give your mother. I suppose you can give it to her instead, but if you do, it’s going to cause problems.”

  Tommy got up and started to pace. Charlie was sleepy. She had leaned into Pickles and closed her eyes, letting the book fall out of her hands. Javier looked a little sleepy, too, but he was holding on to the book even tighter, and pointing to things, and talking a little to himself.

  If Tommy gave his mother a message from Russ, there was a good chance that she’d finally make that phone call that would mean Russ couldn’t call here again. Tommy was beyond amazed she hadn’t done it already. He also knew he didn’t want it to happen.

  “Mom’s gone out with Mrs. Demarkian,” he said. “I don’t exactly know why. Something about blue-colored aluminum foil—”

  “Is she decorating the house? Has your mother got the house all tarted up for Christmas? It’s like putting a neon sign on your heads, here we are, come and get us—”

  “Stop it,” Tommy said. “Mom doesn’t decorate the house anymore. She hasn’t decorated the house since, you know, you—”

  “Thank God something worked out right with that.”

  “She just went out,” Tommy said. “It wasn’t planned. Mrs. Demarkian was here bringing stuff from Ohanian’s and they just decided. Call back in about three hours and leave the message yourself.”

  “I can’t just call back in three hours. My schedule isn’t in my control. In case you didn’t know.”

  “I know, but I can’t help it. I’m not going to give her a message for you. For some absolutely insane reason I’m going to have to live to be ninety-eight to figure out, I don’t want her cutting you off. Call back later. Or call Father Tibor and have him deliver your message. She knows you talk to him.”