Stephen Frey (25 page)

Bo nodded slowly. Here was confirmation of what he had suspected. Meg wasn't safe. None of them were.

“I'm so scared, Bo.”

“It's all right. Nothing's going to happen to you. I've asked Sheriff Blackburn to help me. He's here for you as well. He's come all the way from Montana.”

“John is here?” she asked, trying to lift her head.

“Yes,” Bo said, easing her gently back down on the pillow. “Katie is here too. But please try to rest, Meg. That cut on your head is serious.”

She pulled him close. “I have to tell you something, Bo.”

“What?” he asked as she pressed her face against his neck.

“It's about Michael.”

“Michael Mendoza?”

“Yes.”

“What?” Bo's eyes narrowed. “What is it?”

“Michael made a pass at me the other night,” she gasped, her voice unsteady. “When you came into the foyer and I was standing there on the staircase, he had just tried to kiss me. Thank God you showed up when you did.”

Bo pulled back and gazed into her eyes. “I can't believe it.”

“I couldn't either.”

Bo stroked her hair, careful not to touch the bandage covering one side of her forehead. The blood was pounding so hard in his brain that Meg's face was blurring before him. “Get some sleep, sweetheart.” He saw that she could barely keep her eyes open. For a few moments he continued to stroke her hair. Finally her eyes flickered shut and her breathing became regular. When Bo was certain she was asleep, he pulled the covers carefully up to her chin.

“I'll stay with her, Bo,” Katie whispered, approaching the bedside. “John needs to talk to you.”

He nodded and joined Blackburn in the hall outside the bedroom. “What is it, John?”

“I've got some news for you.”

“Yes?”

“Remember you asked me to get an identification on that John Doe we pulled from the accident in Montana that night? The guy who was in that car that flipped over?”

Bo nodded.

“His fingerprints came back. His name was Dale Stephenson.”

CHAPTER 16

C
atherine smiled pleasantly at the young man behind the hospital's front desk. “I'm here to see Michael Mendoza,” she announced.

The man continued tapping casually on his keyboard a few moments longer before finally looking up. “Michael who?”

“Mendoza. Michael Mendoza. He is a United States senator from Connecticut.”

“Michael Mendoza?”

“Yes,” she answered, quickly becoming exasperated. “He was admitted to this hospital early Sunday morning. He was flown here from Connecticut by medevac helicopter after being involved in a serious accident. I'm here to see him. He is a very close friend of our family.”

“You must be mistaken.” The man shook his head. “There's no one at this hospital by that name. Perhaps Mr. Mendoza was taken to another hospital here in Manhattan.”

Catherine leaned over the counter and checked the computer monitor sitting on the desk in front of him. “How do you know, you didn't even check?” She straightened up and pushed her long hair over her ears triumphantly.

The man gazed at her intently for a few moments, then nodded. “As you like.” He exited the word-processing program, then tapped Mendoza's name into his computer and waited several seconds. “Nope, no one here by that name.”

“But he
was
admitted here early Sunday morning.” She understood that people were trying to keep Mendoza's name and any word of the explosion out of the newspapers. “Correct?”

“No, he wasn't,” the man said firmly. “If he had been, I'd see it on the screen. I can access admittances up to a year ago right here from the desk. I'm afraid you've made a mistake.”

Catherine took a deep breath, trying to remain calm. “You look tired. Have you been here all night?”

“Yeah, I've got the graveyard shift this week.” He glanced at his watch. “Two o'clock to ten o'clock. Fortunately I've only got thirty minutes left.” He rubbed his eyes. “Then I can go home and get some sleep.”

“Well, thanks for your help,” she said appreciatively.

“Sure. Sorry I couldn't give you more information.”

“That's all right.” She smiled warmly, then turned away and headed back to the parking lot. He was lying. There was no doubt in her mind.

Half an hour later Catherine spotted the young man coming out of the emergency room area. Duffel bag slung over his shoulder, he walked between two ambulances, lights still flashing. “Hello, there,” she called as he reached for the driver's-side handle of his beat-up Chevy Chevette.

He looked up quickly, hand over his chest. “Jesus, you scared the hell out of me.”

“I'm sorry.” She moved in front of him and alongside the door so he couldn't open it. “I didn't mean to.”

He glanced around nervously. “What do you want?”

“Tell me where Michael Mendoza is,” she demanded.

The man rolled his eyes. “I told you several times. No one by that name was checked into the hospital early Sunday morning.” He attempted to open the car door, but Catherine refused to move out of his way.

“Look, I'm Catherine Hancock Bristow,” she said, “Jimmy Lee Hancock's daughter.”

The man looked up, eyes wide. “Oh? God, you are,” he said, suddenly recognizing her.

“Senator Mendoza was injured on our family estate early Sunday morning. I know for a fact that he was brought to this hospital.”

The man puffed out his cheeks, uncomfortable with his situation. “Well, yes, he was.”

“Is the Senator still here?”

The man checked the parking lot again carefully. “I'm not supposed to talk about this. I could get into a lot of trouble.”

“I won't tell anyone how I found out.” Catherine dug into her pocket, produced a thousand-dollar bill, and held it out. “Now, is he here?”

The man gazed at the bill longingly. “No, he isn't.”

“But he was admitted?”

“Yes.”

“And?”

The man's eyes flickered around the parking lot one last time. He started to say something, then stopped.

Catherine reached down, took the man's hand in hers, stuffed the bill into his palm, then closed his fingers tightly over the money. “Now, tell me where he is.”

B
o stepped onto the Lexington Avenue subway train from the platform at Grand Central just as the doors closed. This was the No. 6 train and it was headed north toward Harlem making all local stops. Bo reached for an overhead handle, checking each face carefully as the train lurched from the station. The Lex line platform at this station served both the local and express tracks, and at the last second he had darted away from the express train's open doors and across the platform to the closing doors of the local. He'd felt a little foolish for making the mad dash and to be suspicious of even the elderly lady huddled in her seat at the far end of the car clutching her purse, but at this point he couldn't be too careful. Only fifteen minutes ago, in his office at Warfield, he had found out that Harold Shaw, CEO of the American Financial Group, was missing from his Long Island home.

Satisfied that no one in the train car was overly interested in him or trying too hard to look as if they weren't, Bo struggled toward the front of the train as it thundered ahead, grasping handles as if he were swinging from tree limb to tree limb. When he'd made it to the front of the swaying car, he pulled back the door, stepped out onto a small platform to a deafening roar, yanked open the door of the next car, and hauled himself inside. He repeated the process once more and made it to the lead car just as the train was pulling into its next stop, at Fifty-first Street.

Bo stood at the back end of the car and watched four passengers board. As the train began to pull out of the station, Bo made his way forward. “Hello, Jack,” he said loudly over the sound of clattering wheels, sitting down beside a white-haired gentleman in a gray suit—the last person to enter the car at Fifty-first Street.

“Hello, Bo.” Jack O'Connor was a tall, barrel-chested, fifty-four-year-old Irishman who headed global commodities research for Stillman & Company, one of Wall Street's largest brokerage houses. During his thirty-two-year career at Stillman, O'Connor had worked in several areas of the firm, including its corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions departments. A native of working-class Queens, he had dedicated his life to Stillman and was now a senior member of its six-person management committee. He was the only member of that committee without an Ivy League degree.

“Thanks for meeting me on such short notice,” Bo said.

O'Connor answered gruffly. A financial analyst by training, he was accustomed to letting his numbers do most of his talking. “You said it was important.”

“It's very important.” Bo checked the car once more. “First of all, let me say that my family appreciated you and your wife attending the funeral on Saturday.”

“It was an honor to be invited and to sit so close to the front of the church.” O'Connor raised both eyebrows. “Frankly, I was surprised at that.”

“My father was always fond of you. He always knew you to be a man of integrity. So do I.”

“I appreciate that. Having a relationship with Warfield Capital has helped my career immeasurably,” O'Connor said. “For a poor boy from Queens to be the point person for the Hancock family is incredible. Honestly, without it, I wouldn't be where I am today.”

Over the last twenty-five years, first Jimmy Lee then Bo had directed tens of millions of dollars of business to Stillman through O'Connor. Bo had also consistently purchased huge amounts of securities—both stocks and bonds—using O'Connor's trading floor. “I do business with people I trust,” Bo said. “You are one of those people.”

O'Connor looked down, surprised by Bo's directness. “It seems like it's always been your family doing things for me. I've often hoped that there would be an opportunity for that to go the other way.”

Bo nodded. Jack understood what this meeting was about, and he had just opened the door. Now it was time to fill him in on the details. “I appreciate your willingness to help.”

“What do you need?”

When the train was deep into the Bronx—cars elevated above the streets now that it had made its way out of Harlem—O'Connor leaned back, shut his eyes, and ran his hands through his snow white hair. “I don't know if I can do this, Bo.”

“I've never asked you for a favor, Jack. The family has never asked you for a favor.”

O'Connor glanced into Bo's piercing eyes, then away. “You know how much I want to oblige, but it's—”

“Is it that you don't trust me?” Bo asked directly.

“No, no, it's just that—”

“Then I don't understand,” Bo interrupted. “Your firm won't be hurt.”

O'Connor nodded. “I know,” he said softly.

“No one other than the two of us will ever know about this conversation. I assure you of that.”

O'Connor nodded again. “Yes, Bo. It's just that I don't feel right about this. This is not how I saw myself repaying your family's kindness.”

“I can't tell you everything that's happening, Jack. Believe me, it's better that you don't know, but suffice it to say that you will be doing a good thing. I know that is hard to believe, given what I've asked of you, but it's true.”

“I only wish I could talk to someone else about what you're proposing. One confirmation, that's all.” O'Connor didn't glance into Bo's eyes this time. He didn't have the courage. “I trust you, but what you are talking about is terribly drastic. It could spin out of control on you. And I don't understand why you'd want this to happen to Warfield.”

CHAPTER 17

F
ritz Peterson burst frantically into Bo's office, tie pulled down and top two buttons undone, his hair a mess.

“In the future I'd appreciate your knocking when my door is closed,” Bo chided, sipping calmly on a cup of black coffee. “And pull yourself together, will you? You look like shit and it isn't even seven in the morning.”

“We're in trouble!” Fritz yelled, ignoring the rebuke.

“What do you mean?”

“The traders over at Stillman are shutting us out. They've told my people that they won't enter into any transactions with us as of this morning. Stocks, bonds, commodities, everything. No trades, end of discussion.”

“Why not?”

“They say they have information leading them to believe that our capital reserves have been depleted, and that we're having trouble executing our buys. They claim we failed last night on a big bond transaction with them, and senior managers on all Stillman trading floors have scratched us—across the board.”

“That's ridiculous!”

“That's what I told them, Bo, but they wouldn't believe me, and you know how fast word like this spreads on Wall Street. It's viral. One minute we're a triple A credit, the next we can't even get a credit card from a guy on the street corner. Traders from other firms are already calling to find out what's going on because the Stillman traders are spreading the word to everyone about our fail on the bonds last night. Somebody from
The Wall
Street Journal
even called. We're telling people that the rumor is completely false,” Fritz stammered, “but it's getting choppy out there. We're going illiquid on the buy side, which leaves us totally naked. I can't hedge anything at this point. My ugly ass is hanging out there in the wind for everyone to see. Our people are panicking.”

“My God,” Bo whispered, checking one of his computer screens. There were already several reports on Reuters and Bloomberg citing a possible funding problem at a large family-run hedge fund. “Sell fifty million dollars' worth of gold immediately!” he shouted.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“Are we really having problems?” Fritz asked unsteadily. It hadn't occurred to him that Warfield Capital would ever face a serious financial challenge. “Bo?”

“I told everyone that Ramsey would bring down this firm,” Bo muttered to himself, picking up a file from his desk and hurling it against the far wall. “He's leveraged us to the hilt, and we're paying the price. Now that Jimmy Lee is dead we're being attacked, and we're defenseless because people have figured out what Ramsey's done. We've got so many enemies after all these years.” Bo put his head in his hands. “I knew this would happen.” He looked up at Fritz. “We've got to raise cash, Fritz.”

“Don't you know someone pretty high-up over at Stillman?” Fritz asked anxiously. Bo's shaky reaction to his news from the trading floor was causing Fritz to wonder if things were suddenly crashing in around them. He knew full well how fast financial markets turned on the weak, and he knew there would be no mercy. In these instances, people raced for cover and grabbed whatever they could get their hands on in the process. “Can't you tell them to back off? Aren't they our friends?”

“What?” Bo asked, not focused on what his head trader was saying.

“Use your contacts over at Stillman,” Fritz urged. “We've sent millions of dollars of business their way over the past few years, for Christ's sake. Call in a favor.”

Bo shook his head dejectedly. “It won't do any good. My father screwed one of their senior partners on a land deal up in Connecticut last year. Bruce Laird was the front man but the bastard at Stillman knew it was Jimmy Lee who was behind the whole thing, and he's been waiting for this opportunity.” Bo slammed his fist on the desk. “That bastard sat less than fifty feet from my father's coffin in St. Patrick's Cathedral last Saturday, and now he's dropping a neutron bomb on Warfield.”

“Bo—”

“Just sell the gold!” Bo yelled. “Get me some cash to work with. Don't stand there staring at me, get on the phones. Minutes are critical.”

“We'll have to actually deliver the securities or the commodities before anyone will pay us at this point. Firms won't take our word on anything. At least not until we've beaten back this rumor.”

“I don't care, just do what you have to do. Now get the hell out of here!”

“But, Bo, I—”

“Get out!”

Fritz backpedaled through the office, his mouth open. “Can't our house banks put together an emergency line?”

“Not fast enough to do us any good. Now get your ass back to the trading floor!”

When Fritz was gone, Bo grabbed his wallet from the desk's top drawer and pulled a small piece of paper from a compartment behind the cash pocket. On the paper was the telephone number Mendoza had given Bo just before the explosion. Bo dialed the 202 area code quickly.

A female voice answered on the first ring. “Hello.”

“Hello, is this Angela?” Bo asked, remembering the name Mendoza had mentioned. There was no answer, only dead air. “My name is Bo Hancock and I'm in charge of Warfield Capital,” he continued, his voice low. “Michael Mendoza instructed me to call this number in case of an emergency. He said you would know what that meant.”

There was another long silence at the other end of the phone.

“Hello.”

Still nothing.

“Look, I've got a big problem here, and I need Michael's help,” Bo barked into the receiver, frustrated at the lack of response. “I need at least half a billion dollars immediately to keep us afloat. Michael told me to call him if I ever needed help!” Bo shouted desperately. “We're old friends.”

“Give me a telephone number where I can reach you at any time,” the voice at the other end of the line finally responded.

As soon as Bo had finished speaking, the line went dead. He hung up immediately, then rang Frank Ramsey's extension.

“Warfield Capital, Mr. Ramsey's office,” a woman answered politely.

“Beth?” Beth was Ramsey's executive assistant.

“Yes?”

“It's Bo.” Bo checked his watch. It was ten minutes past seven. Ramsey typically made it to the office no later than six-thirty in the morning, a half hour after Bo arrived. “Let me speak to Frank.”

“Mr. Ramsey is not coming in today, Mr. Hancock. He's ill.”

“What?”

“Yes, he called a few minutes ago to let me know.”

Bo slammed the phone down and charged for the door.

Fifteen minutes later he jumped from a cab in front of Frank Ramsey's Fifth Avenue apartment building, just as Ramsey was coming out, suitcase in hand.

When he saw Bo, Ramsey flung the suitcase at him and took off across Fifth Avenue into Central Park.

“I just need to talk to you!” Bo shouted, racing after Ramsey.

Ramsey paid no attention, sprinting past early-morning joggers and people walking dogs, down toward the Friedsam Memorial Carousel, constantly checking back over his shoulder as he ran, a wild expression on his face.

Bo dodged a German shepherd on a long leash, then a woman pushing a baby stroller, straining to keep sight of Ramsey as the younger man tore past the carousel toward the lush softball fields beyond. Crisscrossing the softball diamonds were four-foot-high, temporary fences erected by the Central Park Conservancy to deter people from using the freshly seeded fields until the season began in May. Bo smiled to himself as he ran. Ramsey was headed straight into a horseshoe-shaped enclosure formed by the one of the fences.

Too late, Ramsey saw his predicament. But instead of turning back, he attempted to hurdle the fence. For a moment it appeared that he would clear the fence, but at the last second the toe of his shoe caught the top of the fence, sending him sprawling to the ground on the other side. He was up quickly, desperately trying to escape, but Bo was over the fence and on Ramsey like a big cat, pinning him to the soft turf.

Bo grabbed Ramsey by the neck and cocked a fist in the air. A year ago Ramsey had lied about Bo and a woman in a bar to get his chance to run Warfield, Bo remembered. Lied to have Bo removed from the firm and sent to Montana. “Why did you lie to Jimmy Lee about me and that woman, Frank?” he shouted. “Was it just so you could run Warfield?”

“They made me do it, they made me do it!”

“Who?”

“All of them. Jimmy Lee, Paul, Teddy,” Ramsey spluttered. “It was a setup, Bo, a charade. I'm sorry.”

“Damn you.”

“Don't hurt me, Bo,” Ramsey pleaded, holding his hands in front of his face. “I don't know anything,” he whimpered. “I swear to God I don't know anything.”

“Shut up, Frank!” Bo ordered, slowly relaxing his fist and dropping his hand. He wanted to pummel the man, but there was a much bigger picture to worry about right now.

“You were right, Bo. I didn't know what I was doing in the job,” Ramsey mumbled, shaking his head. “It got away from me. Fritz called me around six this morning and told me about the Stillman problem. Two hundred billion is so much money, but I thought we had the capital reserves. I thought I could handle it. I don't understand why Stillman shut us out. It isn't right. Scully's going to kill me.
You're
going to kill me.”

“I am not going to kill you, Frank. Just tell me where the money came from,” Bo demanded, trying to assess the validity of the terror he saw in the other man's eyes. Ramsey seemed to feel his life was in genuine danger.

“I didn't want this,” Ramsey blathered. “Sure I had some problems before I came to Warfield, but I wasn't a—”

“Shut up!” Bo yelled again, grabbing Ramsey by his lapels.

Ramsey suddenly stopped babbling and stared up at Bo childlike.

“Now, tell me where the money came from, Frank,” Bo demanded evenly. “Whose money is it?”

“What money?”

“The two billion we talked about last week. The new equity into Warfield.”

Ramsey squinted, as though trying to remember.

“The day I came to see you at Warfield,” Bo prodded. “The day my father died.”

“Oh.”

“Remember now?”

“Yes.”

“Whose is it?”

“I don't know.”

Bo squeezed Ramsey's lapels, choking him. “Tell me!”

“I don't know,” Ramsey gasped. “They never told me.”

“Who are ‘they'?”

“Teddy.”

“And?” Bo tightened his grip. “You said ‘they.' ” Ramsey struggled wildly for a moment, but Bo brought one hand to his throat, cutting off his oxygen. “I wouldn't recommend trying that again,” he warned, allowing Ramsey to breathe once he had stopped struggling. “Now tell me who else is involved.”

“A guy named Joseph Scully.”

“Who is he? Who does he represent?”

“All I know is that Scully has an office on the ninth floor of the building across Park Avenue from Warfield. I have no idea who he represents. They never told me.” Ramsey shut his eyes. “I shouldn't be telling you this, Bo. I'm just a cog in the machine. I was supposed to run things the way you had and keep my mouth shut. For that they were going to make me very rich.”

“Where were you going when I pulled up in front of your building two minutes ago?”

Ramsey hesitated.

“Frank!”

“I was leaving, Bo. I was getting out. I didn't sign up for all of this. There's too much strange stuff going on. First Dale Stephenson dies in some accident out West, now Teddy and Tom are dead. Nobody's safe.”

Bo saw the terror in Ramsey's eyes again. “Why don't the assets match the liabilities?” Bo asked through clenched teeth.

“What are you talking about?”

“I've been through all of the department sheets many times, and I can't find two billion dollars.”

“Huh?”

“Two billion is missing,” Bo repeated angrily. “Evaporated into thin air. The sheet says it's supposed to be in one of our Chase accounts, but it never made it and there's no record of where it went. I called our relationship officer at Chase. He was as mystified as I was. And I don't think the amount is a coincidence. Two billion, Frank. The same amount as the new equity you alerted me to.”

“Hey, I didn't alert anybody,” Ramsey said quickly, his eyes opening wide.

“You did,” Bo said firmly, sensing an opportunity. “You told me all about it the day I came to Warfield. If you don't cooperate with me I'll let them know that you were the one who put me onto it.”

“No, please,” Ramsey begged.

“If you don't start coming up with answers, I'll make everybody understand that you've been working with me all along.”

“God, no,” Ramsey implored.

Bo grabbed Ramsey again. “Why was I sent away to Montana?”

“They didn't want you digging in the portfolio,” Ramsey replied. He was perspiring heavily.

“Who didn't want me digging?”

“Paul and Teddy. And Jimmy Lee. They were afraid you might find . . .”

“Find what?” Bo demanded.

“I can't tell you.”

Bo grabbed Ramsey by his necktie, jerked him up from the ground into a sitting position, and slammed his mouth with a right. Ramsey hit the ground heavily, groaning for mercy. “I'll do that again,” Bo threatened, grabbing Ramsey by the tie once more.

“Ernie Lang,” Ramsey moaned through blood oozing from a split lip.

“What?”

“Warfield's computer guy.”

“What about him?”

“Tell Lang to look for something called RANSACK in the network,” Ramsey gasped. “Tell him to dig deep. He can tell you much more than I can if you give him that code.”

Bo stood up quickly. RANSACK. The word Jimmy Lee had whispered in his ear just before taking his final breath. Bo had had no idea at the time what that could mean. “Get out of here, Frank,” Bo snarled. “Go back to your apartment building, get your suitcase, and get as far away from New York City as possible. Go to a small town, change your name, fade into the background forever. Forget your desire to be rich. That's the best advice I can give you. Because if you don't and you make yourself easy to find, you'll end up like Dale, Teddy, and Tom.”