Stephen Frey (27 page)

I
n a seventeenth-floor corner office overlooking the sprawling Tysons Corner Mall in northern Virginia, an automatic e-mail registered on Scott Trajak's personal computer at Online Associates. If Trajak had received the message instantly, as he was supposed to, he would have notified his contact immediately and Bo wouldn't have made it back to the Hancock estate that evening. As it was, Trajak had fallen ill with a bad spring cold and had taken the day off to recover from a burning sore throat and nausea. To knock himself out he'd taken a double dose of powerful cold medicine, and so he didn't hear his cell phone or his home computer—both of which were connected to his office computer—alerting him that an unauthorized user had inspected the RANSACK file at Warfield Capital.

Not until tomorrow morning would he understand what had happened.

CHAPTER 18

P
aul sat slouched in Jimmy Lee's study chair, a bottle of whiskey and a half-full glass on the desk before him.

“How much have you had?” Bo asked, standing near the door. Paul hadn't looked up as Bo opened the door and walked into the room.

“What do you care?” Paul's voice was subdued and his speech slow.

Bo's eyes flickered over the honey-hued liquor behind the black-and-white Jack Daniel's label.

“You're here to gloat, aren't you?” Paul asked, reaching for the glass. His natural confidence seemed shattered, as if today had been a very bad day.

“What are you talking about?”

“Don't toy with me. I'm sure you've heard about the breakin at Reggie Duncan's headquarters. It's being broadcast over every radio and television station in the country, even as we speak.” Paul took a long swallow of whiskey. “But you probably didn't need to hear it from a newscaster, did you?” he asked, peering at Bo suspiciously over the rim of his glass.

“What are you talking about, Paul? What's going on?”

Paul nodded. “Okay, I'll play your little game.” He slowly lowered the glass to his lap. “Late this afternoon a joint task force of the New York City Police Department and the FBI announced that several nights ago they'd apprehended a man trying to escape after breaking into Duncan's headquarters. The man was carrying sensitive information he had stolen from Duncan's offices.”

Bo crossed the study to stand in front of the desk. “Go on,” he said.

“I'm sure you know the rest.”

“Go on!” Bo demanded.

Paul swirled the ice in his glass and took another sip. “When they took the guy down to the precinct for questioning, they found a name scribbled on a piece of paper in his pocket. The name was Ray Jordan—my campaign treasurer.” He shook his head. “The guy made bail an hour later. The person who came to the precinct tried to use a check drawn on one of my campaign accounts to put up the bail money. When the cops wouldn't take the check, he produced cash on the spot.”

“Have you talked to Jordan?”

“Jordan denied knowing anything about what was going on.”

“It's obvious that you've been set up.”

Paul clapped slowly several times, spilling whiskey in his lap. “Of course I've been set up, little brother, but it doesn't matter. I've already been crucified by the press and the public. The damage is done. I'm Tricky Dick all over again. Reggie Duncan will be the party's nominee.”

“Why Reggie Duncan?”

Paul chuckled. “Very good, Bo. Playing this one all the way out. Acting like you haven't heard that Ron Baker has dropped out of the race and pledged his support to Mr. Duncan.”

“I haven't had time to listen to anything today, Paul. I've been trying to hold our family's fortune together.”

Paul glanced up. “What are you talking about?” he asked, his head wobbling slightly from the alcohol he had been consuming for the last two hours.

“Warfield Capital had a liquidity crisis at seven o'clock this morning. Stillman shut us out.”

“I don't believe it.” Paul sat up in his chair and placed the glass back on the desk, a stunned expression on his face.

“Believe it. We failed on a fifty-million-dollar bond transaction with Stillman last night and they spread the word around Wall Street that we weren't good for our bids,” Bo explained. “At that point the market shut us out across the board. Reuters and Bloomberg were screaming about our problem by seven-fifteen and it was a very long day.”

“How could that be?” Paul whispered. “Aren't we worth ten billion dollars or something? How could we fail on a fifty-million-dollar transaction?”

“Your friend Frank Ramsey put Warfield into some very bad investments. They lost value quickly over the last few months and depleted our capital reserves in the process.”

“Oh, my God.” Paul reached for the Jack Daniel's and refilled his glass. “Are we going to make it?” he stammered. “Will Warfield survive? I mean, is it critical?”

“Yes, it is, and I honestly don't know if Warfield can survive. I have implemented several emergency measures and raised over half a billion dollars in cash, but Ramsey made several huge investments that are totally illiquid, including a two-billion-dollar transaction with a firm down in northern Virginia. We have tens of millions of dollars worth of hedge maturities coming due every hour. We could run through that five hundred million very quickly if people gang up on us.” Bo paused. “I'm very interested in that northern Virginia firm, Paul.”

Paul took a long swallow of whiskey and looked away.

Bo leaned over the desk. “What has been going on at Warfield Capital for the last year? I know now that I wasn't sent to Montana because you and Jimmy Lee were worried about me screwing up your campaign. I know that was a red herring.”

“I have no idea what you're talking about,” Paul said, defiant to the end.

“Tell me, Paul!” Bo shouted. “What has been going on?”

Paul slumped down in his chair again.

“Paul!”

“It's so complicated.”

“Tell me,” Bo demanded once more, teeth gritted.

Paul gazed at his glass for several moments. “Politics is all about information, Bo.”

“Everything is about information, brother. Now talk.”

“Jimmy Lee wanted to make certain I won the election,” Paul mumbled. “He wasn't going to take any chances.”

“So?”

“So with the cooperation of certain influential people he erected an information-gathering system. We collected all kinds of nasty skeletons.” Paul took a long swallow of whiskey. “Several people who were going to run against me in the primaries didn't because we had very damaging information on them. Through back channels we made it clear to them that we'd release the information if they tossed their hats into the ring. We didn't want them to have a chance to even get started.”

“What about Baker and Duncan?”

“We had information on Baker too,” Paul replied. “That's why he dropped out of the race today. We had evidence of him visiting child pornography sites on the Web, and we knew that his wife had an abortion, which would be devastating for a conservative platform candidate. We told him we'd use all of that against him. We let him in the race up until now because there had to be somebody real running against me or we wouldn't get any publicity. The press wouldn't pay any attention because they'd figure the race for our party's nomination was over, and the other party would get all the ink. We knew the information we had on Baker was so damaging that he'd drop out as soon as we laid it on him. We were right.”

“Jesus Christ. What about Duncan?”

Paul shook his head. “We have nothing on Reggie Duncan. We never figured it would be necessary to have anything on him because we thought he'd never have a chance to win. He was an afterthought until today. He's black, for Christ's sake. When we did look we couldn't find anything. He's clean.”

“Who are the ‘influential people' who helped you and Jimmy Lee?”

“I don't know.”

“Tell me!”

“Jimmy Lee and Teddy handled all of that,” Paul said, his voice low. “Jimmy Lee didn't want me knowing. I was introduced to a man named Joseph Scully, but he's my only contact.”

Scully. The same name Frank Ramsey had mentioned. “Who did Scully represent?”

“I don't know. I told you, Dad didn't want me involved in all of that.”

Bo moved around the side of the desk so that he was standing beside his older brother. “You're finished, Paul. It's over.”

“Yes,” Paul said softly. In the top drawer of the desk—slightly ajar—he could just make out the pictures of Melissa's ashen face, and the polished wooden handle of a .38 caliber revolver. “It is over.”

“You will resign from Warfield Capital's executive committee effective immediately,” Bo continued, “and you will sign a binding document agreeing to give me complete authority over the fund as well as all business matters related to our family. It will be irrevocable. Catherine will sign the same document. You will make certain that she does. Do you understand?”

Paul was silent.

“Paul!”

“You'll still have to deal with Ramsey,” Paul observed. “He's got his share of the Warfield pie. It's a minuscule piece, but he'll always be a problem.”

“I doubt it. Frank Ramsey is gone.”

Paul looked up. “Gone?”

“Ramsey called in sick early this morning. When I got to his Fifth Avenue apartment building, Ramsey was leaving, suitcase in hand.” Bo eyed the bottle on the desk. Suddenly he had a strong yearning for alcohol, any alcohol, even sour mash whiskey. He ran the tip of his tongue along his lower lip. “I have alerted the authorities that I want Ramsey apprehended.”

Paul covertly slid the desk drawer shut, aware that Bo might be able to see inside from where he stood. Then he reached for the bottle and pushed it toward Bo. “Go ahead, little brother.”

“No.”

“Come on.” Paul produced a glass from another desk drawer, placed it in front of Bo, then poured whiskey until the glass was half-full. “Don't you want to celebrate your victory?”

Bo's eyes shifted to Paul's, requesting clarification.

Paul smiled sadly. “Just a little more than a week ago you were tucked away safely in Montana with no influence on the family at all. I was the alpha son and you were nothing. Now you control Warfield, the family, and me. You are going to permanently remove me from Warfield's executive committee and I have lost my bid for the nation's highest office. What I have been living my life for since I was ten years old. You've won and I've lost.”

“Let me remind you that only a short time ago you tried to remove
me
from Warfield's executive committee.” Bo picked up the glass, brought it to his lips, and inhaled. Saliva flooded his mouth. Like Pavlov's dog, he thought.

“Drink, Bo,” Paul said softly. “Have a taste.”

Bo inhaled the fumes from the glass again.

“It all goes back to that night, doesn't it? The night of my thirtieth birthday.”

“It goes back further than that,” Bo assured Paul.

“The night Melissa died,” Paul continued.

“The night you killed Melissa.”

Paul shook his head. “You killed her, Bo.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Paul pulled the top drawer open, removed the two photographs of Melissa, and dropped them beside the bottle. “I was passed out that night, Bo. I was so drunk I couldn't stand up. I couldn't have killed her.”

Bo snatched the pictures and stared at the image of Melissa's dead face, then at Paul's hands wrapped around Melissa's neck.

“Why would I have taken pictures of myself killing her?” Paul asked. “You know I wouldn't have. You know that's ridiculous.”

“If you didn't take them, how did you get them?”

“They were delivered to Bruce Laird's office. He brought them to me.”

“He saw them?”

“The envelope was still sealed when he gave it to me. There was nothing inside but the pictures. No note, no return address, no nothing,” Paul explained. His eyes narrowed. “Why did you kill her, Bo? So you'd have something to hold over me at that critical point when you really wanted to ruin my life? Did you hate me that much growing up?”

“Oh, I hated you,” Bo admitted calmly, “but not enough to kill someone.”

“But now it's over for me anyway,” Paul rambled on, intoxication overtaking him, “so you killed Melissa for nothing.”

“Shut up.”

“Just like you killed Teddy and Tom.”

Bo put the glass back down on the desk. “You've gone insane, Paul. Your world is crumbling around you and you've lost your mind.”

“Why would I take those pictures if I killed Melissa?” Paul asked again. “It doesn't make any sense. You, Melissa, and I were the only ones at the playhouse that night.”

“You've lost your mind.”

“You always knew that Dad cared more for Teddy and me. You knew it and you hated it, didn't you?”

Bo hesitated. “Yes, I suppose I did.”

“Down deep you've always wanted to be the one who ultimately had control of the family. Always wanted to be the one who ended up with everything,” Paul continued. “Even now that you know you're adopted. Probably even more now.”

Bo shook his head. “You killed Melissa and you know I had nothing to do with Teddy's or Tom's death.”

“I don't know anything of the kind,” Paul said, standing up suddenly so that the desk chair fell over behind him, clattering loudly to the floor. He reached into the drawer, grabbed the revolver, and aimed it at Bo, both hands clasping the handle tightly.

Bo slowly backed off several steps, then froze. “Put that thing down. Somebody might get hurt,” he said, watching the pistol shake in Paul's hands.

Paul brought the gun higher, aiming it at Bo's chest. “That's the idea.”

Bo inched forward.

“Stay where you are!” Paul warned. “I swear to God, Bo, I'll shoot you.”

“You don't have the guts.”

“I detest you,” Paul hissed, bringing the gun even higher. “I don't know why they adopted you.”

Bo gazed down the barrel of the revolver, pointed directly at his face now. “I'm sure you do detest me, but you detest yourself more.”

For several moments Paul stared at Bo, then his upper lip began to tremble and in one swift motion he brought the barrel to his own right temple. “Damn you, Bo.”

“No!” Bo shouted, lunging forward as Paul pulled the trigger.