Swimming with Sharks (54 page)

Alex peeked into the hallway through the narrow crack. One of Sergio’s guys was searching the offices, but Luca di Varese was standing directly in front of the door, languidly smoking a cigarette. They called out to each other every now and then, but Alex couldn’t understand a word. It hadn’t occurred to them to look in the bathrooms yet, but they would certainly do so very soon. Alex forced herself to think. Sergio and Monaghan suspected that someone was still in the building, but they didn’t know where—and that was her lucky break. She folded the printouts and put them into the waistband of her jeans. She needed to get out of the bathroom somehow without anyone noticing. She scanned the room, and realized in desperation that there was no escape route. It wasn’t hard to guess what Sergio would do to her once he captured her.

“Three minutes past eleven,” Henry Monaghan said quietly. They watched three men walk along the hallway and disappear into St. John’s office. The men came out carrying several bags about twenty minutes later. They had taken everything in the desk as ordered, but they had apparently neglected to check the computer. Sergio and Levy could be seen walking toward the elevator just before midnight. The time of the next recording was 3:16. Sergio and Monaghan stared at the screen spellbound when a person with a baseball cap and a dark hooded sweatshirt stepped from the staircase into the hallway and looked around.

“Alex,” Sergio said in a hushed voice and automatically clenched his hands into fists. His own words sounded like derisive laughter in his ears.
Don’t worry. I have Alex under control.
Alex knew about the secret accounts, and she was in possession of those damned e-mails from St. John’s computer. She was one step ahead of him, and she might take everything to Kostidis if he didn’t get to her in time.

“She was in his office for seventeen minutes.” Monaghan lit a cigarette and exhaled the blue smoke. “We must have missed her by just a few seconds.”

He stared at the screen. Alex stopped, looked around, and then turned left.

“Hey,” Monaghan said with a grin, “she’s still here!”

Sergio reached for his cell phone.

“I’m going to kill her,” he said flatly, dialing Luca’s number. “I’m going to kill that whore with my own hands.”

Henry Monaghan flung open the door to the women’s restroom and flipped the light switch. The room was immediately drenched in bright fluorescent light. Luca di Varese and the other guy walked past him and searched each of the eight stalls while Sergio waited in the hallway. One of the doors was locked, and Monaghan bent down to look beneath it. The stall was empty. His gaze wandered upward, and he was furious. Alex Sontheim had led them by the nose like fools! She’d climbed up the stall wall and lifted a panel in the ceiling. It was fairly easy for a somewhat fit person to crawl to a different room through the heating and ventilation shafts. It was pointless to send someone after her. She had probably escaped to a different floor. Monaghan turned around and walked out.

“Nothing?” Sergio asked.

“She escaped through the ceiling. But we’ll get her.”

“How?” Sergio’s eyes were as cold as ice. “It’s almost four thirty! I don’t feel like being seen with a corpse.”

Monaghan chewed angrily on his cigar, but then broke into a grin.

“It would be best for you to go home now,” he said. “I have a perfect solution to our problem.”

“And what would that would be?”

“I’m going to call the police now,” Monaghan countered in a good mood. “I’ll cut the surveillance tape and—voilà—we have evidence that Sontheim shot St. John between 3:16 and 3:36.”

Sergio stared at the stocky man, and then he nodded slowly.

“Yes,” he said, “that’s a great idea. In addition to my guys, the cops will also be after her. No one will care about MPM’s bankruptcy in all of the confusion. But I want to get to her first, you understand?”

The NYPD received a phone call at 6:14 a.m. A dead body had been found at investment firm LMI. Just a few minutes later, the first patrol cars arrived at the scene. By six forty-five, the entire building was buzzing with police officers and detectives. They examined Zachary St. John’s disfigured corpse and watched the surveillance tape that showed Alex entering St. John’s office at 3:16 a.m. and leaving it again twenty minutes later.

“Do you have any idea who this woman could be?” Detective Munroe asked the company’s head of security.

“I’m not sure,” Monaghan replied and scratched his head, “but she reminds me of Alex Sontheim, the head of our M&A department.”

John Munroe jotted something on his notepad. He was tall, red-faced, and had thick, reddish-blond hair. He had been working in the NYPD’s homicide department for fourteen years and had seen his share of corpses. At first glance, it looked like suicide, as the man on the top floor had the weapon in his hand. But could that woman have shot him
and put the gun on him to make it look like a suicide? Vincent Levy, LMI’s president, arrived in the meantime. He was shocked, but composed, and he easily identified the person on tape.

“Yes,” he said, his bewilderment and horror genuine, “that’s her. Alex Sontheim.”

“Was it common for Mr. St. John to spend time at his office late at night?” the detective asked.

“Yes, that’s not unusual,” Levy confirmed. “We had some trouble with an important deal yesterday. It must have kept him late in his office.”

The officer grabbed the telephone. He told his people to search for Alex Sontheim, that she was the main suspect, and then he turned to Monaghan.

“Do you have a picture of this woman?” he asked.

“I’ll get you one,” Monaghan replied, “and Detective, you should search the building. It’s possible that she’s still inside.”

Munroe shot him an unfriendly look.

“You could have told me that right away,” he snarled, rushing out to his colleagues.

“No, I couldn’t have,” Henry Monaghan muttered. Vitali had left no doubt that he wanted to get his hands on Alex before the police could question her.

Alex was surprised to see the police. Every corridor and hallway was swarming with them, along with LMI’s security staff. Escape seemed impossible. She cowered in a heating shaft above an office, still on the thirtieth floor, and waited for an opportunity to get out. Her cell phone battery was dead, and she had no way of contacting Oliver or Mark. She was frightened, exhausted, and hungry, but she couldn’t afford to make any mistakes. It was seven thirty already, which meant that she had been crawling around
these dusty shafts for almost three hours. Alex kept feeling her way forward until she suddenly heard voices beneath her. She carefully moved one of the panels half an inch and peeked inside an office through the crack. Her heart jumped when she caught sight of Vincent Levy.

“I don’t understand anything anymore! What’s going on here?”

“We caught Sontheim on our surveillance tape,” another man said, who was not visible to Alex. That must be Henry Monaghan’s voice.

“She was in St. John’s office and retrieved e-mails from his computer that possibly contain questionable information.”

They certainly do,
Alex thought.

“Are you sure that Alex killed St. John?” Levy asked.

“I have no idea,” Monaghan replied, “but if the police believe it, then they’ll do anything to catch her. Vitali wants to get his hands on her first. We need to wait for the cops to leave, and then we’ll find her.”

Alex felt her throat constricting in fear. She was trapped. She might get out of here, but only to run straight into the arms of Sergio’s henchmen.

“Oh my God, this is terrible,” Levy whined below her. “The damage to LMI is incalculable! A dead body in my firm and a manager as a murderer.”

“There’s no need to panic,” Monaghan said harshly. “I have everything under control. Schedule a meeting at nine o’clock for all of the employees on the trading floor and tell them that St. John has been shot at his desk—most likely by Sontheim.”

“Ahh, how awful, how awful.”

“Pull yourself together,” Monaghan growled. “Nothing will happen to you! The story’s great, and the press will jump on it. St. John and Sontheim were in it together and executed insider trades through their small company, MPM. Then they fell out of favor with one another when they bit off more than they could chew with their last deal. As a result, Sontheim kills her partner in crime.”

Alex could hardly believe her ears. She and Zack in cahoots?

“The police will interrogate me,” Levy whimpered, and Alex wondered how she could ever have felt respect for this man. His spinelessness and his cowardice were shocking.

“Of course,” Monaghan impatiently cut him off, “you’ll tell them that, after serious contemplation, you already suspected that they were involved in some secret side deals together. After the deal blew up yesterday, they were sure to be discovered. They got into an argument, and then she killed him. That sounds great.”

Alex felt compelled to agree with them. It certainly sounded plausible. She and St. John as accomplices, insider trading, millions lost, a fight, and one dead. They’d charge her with murder, as well as insider trading, fraud, embezzlement, and several other crimes. Levy and Vitali were clean, in any case.

“We need to go,” Monaghan said.

“What about the bank statements?” Levy asked. “Did you find anything?”

“My people in Georgetown are working on it,” Monaghan replied.

Alex waited until the two men had left Levy’s office, pushed a ceiling panel aside, and then slid down gently. She would be done for if anyone saw her trying to escape the building. She wouldn’t survive a single day in prison—just like Cesare Vitali. It was shortly before eight. She grabbed the telephone determinedly and dialed Mark’s extension. He must be at work by this hour. With trembling hands, she waited, and she almost hung up right before he answered.

“Mark!” she whispered.

“Alex,” he answered, sounding relieved, “where are you? We’ve been trying to reach you all night long. We even went to LMI, but I couldn’t open the door with my badge. There’s a rumor going around that you shot Zack!”

“None of it is true,” she said. “Listen to me, Mark!”