JM01 - Black Maps (35 page)

Then he asked about me. As always I said little, and most of that was about work, the only story I knew how to tell—the only narrative that strung my days together and made any sense out of them.

And after that we spoke, as we always did, of Anne. Donald had been to the grave, there beside her mother’s, just yesterday. Did I remember how pretty it was on that hillside? I remembered. That old oak was bare now, but for weeks it had been a fiery red. Anne loved that tree. She used to climb it when she was a kid, on the Sunday visits she and Donald made to her mother’s grave. Did I remember that tree? I remembered. Donald had brought a big bunch of orange mums. Mums were her favorite, orange mums and pink roses. I remembered. I remembered it all.

We were silent for a while, and then he asked, as he always did, if I was seeing anyone. I told him no.

“Takes time,” he said. Then we wished each other well and said good-bye. I folded my arms on the counter and rested my head on them. My breathing was fast and ragged, but no tears would come.

Chapter Twenty-two

I was still sitting with my head on my arms when the phone rang again. It wasn’t Mike this time, either. It was his secretary, Fran, asking me to come to Mike’s office ASAP. She didn’t know what for. I put on some more clothes and caught a cab uptown.

The evening rush was compounded by rain and holiday-season traffic, and it took me nearly an hour to get to the Paley, Clay offices. Fran was at her desk, busy with a stack of documents.

“Conference room,” she said, barely glancing at me.

I went in to find Mike and Neary sitting side by side in silence, staring out at the nighttime cityscape. Neary was in shirtsleeves, his tie loose and his collar open. They were bleary-eyed and pale. There were coffee cups and a pitcher of water and glasses on the table in front of them. They looked like hell. I probably did too. It was that kind of day. Mike motioned for me to sit, and I did. Neary let out a deep breath and rubbed his face. Mike took a long pull on his water and set his glass down.

“DiPaolo called,” Mike said, “with a take-it-or-leave-it-offer. We’re going to take it.”

“Do we draw straws to see who does the time, or is it rock-paper-scissors?” I asked. Mike smiled thinly. Neary didn’t react.

“She wants three things from us,” he said. “First, we agree to lay off Nassouli. No more questions about him to anybody. We don’t say his name; we don’t even think about him too much. Second, anything we find—about who’s behind this, Nassouli’s files, anything—we turn over to her. Third, we say not a word about this to anyone or the whole deal is off—and that includes her pal Perez, out in San Diego.”

“And in exchange for this . . . what?” I asked.

“She gives us a pass, and our client too,” Mike said.

“That’s pretty generous,” I said, “especially considering the kind of hand we were playing. Why?” Mike and Neary traded looks.

“Apparently she’s got an applecart that she doesn’t want upset right now,” Mike said.

“What, with Nassouli in it? Is she saying they’ve got him? Is she vouching for him—that he’s not involved in any of this?” Mike was quiet. He looked at Neary. “What?” I asked, impatient.

“I suppose she is vouching for him,” Mike said.

Neary scratched his chin. “Yeah, she’s sort of giving him an alibi,” he said, nodding at Mike. Then he looked at me, smiling. “I mean, being dead for nearly three years would pretty much rule him out of your case, don’t you think?”

I sat back in my chair and shook my head while Neary and Metz were entertained by my surprise and confusion.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked.

“They found the body about six months ago,” Neary said, “buried in some park, way out in Suffolk County. Best they can tell, he’s been on the bench for around three years, since the time he dropped out of sight, they guess. One shot, a .32, in the head.” I was quiet for a while.

“DiPaolo told you this?” I asked. Neary nodded.

“Reluctantly,” he said. “But she told me.” I shook my head some more.

“What’s she up to? Why are they keeping such a tight lid on this?” I asked.

“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it?” Neary said, smiling. He looked at Mike.

“She didn’t want to talk about any of this,” Mike said. “And what little she did say was only to stop us pushing on Nassouli. But reading between the lines, and with what Tom has told me, my guess is that they’re into heavy negotiations with people who’re under indictment, or are about to be. I think they’re trying real hard to create the impression with these guys that they’ve got Nassouli. And, while I imagine they’re not lying about it outright, I’d say they’d very much like these folks to believe that Mr. Nassouli is being cooperative.”

“Jesus,” I said, shaking my head. “And DiPaolo was afraid we were going to screw up her little charade, asking questions about Nassouli?”

“That’s my guess.”

“She’s skating on some thin ice,” I said. Mike nodded.

“Makes you think they don’t have as much as they’d like to on some of the big guys, if they’re willing to take those kinds of risks,” he said.

“Also makes you think they’re under pressure to show something for the money they’ve spent, looking for Nassouli these past three years,” Neary added.

“They came down on us pretty hard—and pretty fast,” I said. Mike nodded.

“Which is what makes me think their negotiations must be going hot and heavy right now. Timing is everything,” he said. I poured a glass of water and drank some, and then I sat back and shook my head some more.

“Don’t get too comfortable there, buddy,” Neary said to me. “And you may want to switch to coffee. We’ve got a long night ahead of us.” I looked at him and then at Mike.

“I don’t know if I can handle this much surprise at once,” I said. “What’s this ‘we’ business? Last time I checked you saw nothing in this that had anything to do with your shop. What happened? This Nassouli thing change your mind?”

“It’s one of the things that did,” Neary said.

“That and what else?” I asked.

“You wonder how Pell knew that I had helped you out?”

“I figured it was one of two things: your source in the investigation, whoever it was you asked about Nassouli, went crying to Freddy, or fat boy figured it out on his own after he found out I’d been talking to Trautmann.”

“Well, you’d be wrong on both counts,” Neary said. “Freddy didn’t figure out jack shit on his own. And I never had a chance to talk to my guy; he’s been away since Thanksgiving. According to Shelly, Pell got a message on his voice mail, around noon on Friday—an anonymous message from a pay phone in Brooklyn Heights. One call, telling him about you and Trautmann . . . and me.”

My mind raced. The feds hadn’t been watching Trautmann. Someone had dropped a dime to Pell, about Trautmann and Neary both. That meant . . . “Trautmann,” I said aloud, “working with somebody on the liquidation team.”

Neary nodded and grinned nastily. “Someone from my team, or from Parsons. We’re going to find out who.”

Mike rounded up some coffee for me, and I told him and Neary about my conversation with Faith Herman. Neither of them was surprised by her identification of Trautmann or by her delusions of driving with Jesus, though the Lincoln got a little smile out of Neary. Then we talked names.

“It’s not a long list,” Neary said. “Basically, it’s the people you met when you visited the MWB offices.” I nodded.

Mike’s brow furrowed. “Why just them? Why not look at anyone who’s there now, and who’s been on the job from the start?” he asked.

“The timing,” Neary said. “Think about it—Trautmann and John trade punches on Friday morning; by Friday noon someone had called Pell. There wasn’t much time between those events. The way I see it, Trautmann told our mole about his run-in with John, and the alarms went off immediately. The mole didn’t have to play connect-the-dots, or go snooping around looking at visitor logs. Things happened too quickly for that. I think the mole recognized John from Trautmann’s description right away, because he’d met John—with me.” Mike nodded.

“But you’re right about one thing,” Neary continued. “We can pretty much discount anyone who hasn’t been on the job from day one, or close to it.”

We spent the next ten minutes in silence, as I recalled the people I’d encountered during my visit to MWB, and made a list: Chet, the guard with the scary eyes; smart, edgy Cheryl Compton; the other two Brill guys—Bobby Coe, who looked like a park ranger, and Mitch Vetter, who looked like a wiseguy wannabe; the fat uniform on the fourth floor— Tim; arrogant, sarcastic Evan Mills—an aging preppy, Neary had called him; Mills’s three forensic accountants—Greer, the thin, fair-haired guy with glasses, Desai, the slender Indian, and Koch, the hefty Jets fan; the uniform on forty-four, whose name I never caught. Neary, independently, made his own list, and then we compared notes. They matched.

“Great minds think alike,” I said. “You know how long all these people have been at MWB?”

“Not all of them.” Neary checked his watch. It was close to eight. He pulled out his cell phone and made a call. “Hi, Kevin? It’s Tom Neary.” He listened for a moment and chuckled. “Yeah, yeah, it’s still fucking miserable out there. Anybody working late tonight?” He listened some more. “None of the Parsons people either? Thanks, Kev. I’ll be in later on.” Neary looked at me. “We’ve got the place to ourselves.”

“I’ve got to bring our client up to date,” Mike said. “I only hope he hasn’t unraveled completely.”

It was still raining, and traffic in midtown was still a mess, so we got on the subway. It was damp and close and it smelled like a wet sock, but it was fast. We stood near the door and hung on as the train rumbled and swayed southward.

“Your management know the latest?” I asked Neary.

He nodded. “Yeah, and they’re praying it’s not one of our guys. They don’t want to say anything to Parsons or the client until they know for sure. They’ll let me play it out, as long as I do it quickly and, above all, quietly. Of course, they want me to check in every five minutes or so.”

“Everyone wants quick and quiet,” I said. “My client is up against a Thursday deadline, and I’m thinking these guys—the mole, at least— may want to close up shop soon.”

He looked at me, puzzled. “Why?”

“For one thing, they seem to be in a big hurry. The day after my run-in with Trautmann, my client got hit up for cash—a nice chunk of change. They’ve given him only four days to collect it. In the other case I know about, they gave the guy a full week.” Neary looked unconvinced. I continued. “And that call to Pell—it was panicky and way too cute— not the kind of thing Trautmann would do. He would know better; he’d know to lay low.”

“You think the mole got jumpy and made the call on his own?” Neary asked. I nodded. “If that’s the case, we better find him quick, or Trautmann may not leave us anything to find.”

We rode the elevator to the third floor, where Neary stopped at the guard’s desk. Kevin was a heavyset, fiftyish guy with a thick head of white hair and a beefy face. He was working his way through a fragrant pastrami sandwich and a copy of
Newsday.

“We’ll be on four. You’ve got my cell number. Give me a buzz if anyone comes in,” Neary said. Kevin looked at him for a moment without expression, and nodded.

“Sure thing, Tom,” he said. We didn’t sign in.

The reception area on four was dimly lit and empty. Neary used his card key and held the metal door for me. The floor was in darkness except for the corridor that ran around the building’s central core. Even on carpet, our footsteps seemed loud, and all the building noises, the clicks and whirrs and rumbles, were sudden and startling. I followed Neary around some corners to a locked door. He had the key. He flicked a wall switch, and lights blinked on overhead. We were in the small, windowless room, lined with shelves, that the Parsons people had called the project office. It smelled of dust and paper and the remains of someone’s lunch. Neary disappeared for a moment and returned pushing a swivel chair. He took off his coat and suit jacket.

“It’s a dirty job,” he said, and he took a big white binder from a shelf.

We spent over two hours going through binders full of weekly time sheets, and when we’d finished we’d established starting dates for everyone on our list. Six names came off because they hadn’t worked the job long enough, and there were four names left: Cheryl Compton and Mitchell Vetter, from Brill, and Evan Mills and Vijay Desai, from Parsons.

“Any of these names jump out at you as being more or less likely?” I asked him. He shook his head.

“Could be any of ’em,” he said.

“Even Compton?” Neary shook his head again and ran a big hand over the back of his neck.

“I’d like to think otherwise, but I’ve been doing this long enough to know better.” He put the last binder back on its shelf. “You have a plan in mind?”

“I have something. It might be reaching to call it a plan.” Neary looked at his watch.

“Maybe some food will encourage it,” he said.

And it did. I bought him dinner at After the Heat, an all-night barbecue place in the meatpacking district. We had ribs and potato salad and corn bread, some wicked pecan pie, and a lot of strong coffee. And while we ate, and afterward in the nearly empty restaurant, we developed something like a plan. It was not perfect, not by a long shot. It was inelegant and unsubtle and had no shortage of risk. But its faults were offset, at least in part, by the fact that it wouldn’t take a lot of time to set up or carry out. Since time was something we had little of, that was a big plus.