The Garden of Betrayal (36 page)

He pursed his lips, refraining from comment.

“Drink?”

I started to refuse and then realized how badly I needed something—my nerves were ragged.

“Scotch, if you have it.”

A panel in the wall folded down silently, revealing an illuminated bar beyond.

“Johnnie Blue? On the rocks?”

“Fine.”

He poured for both of us. I settled on the leather couch, and he took the end chair next to me.

“Cheers.”

We touched glasses and drank. The ritual felt forced, and I had the sense he was delaying. Delay was unlike him. Walter believed in frontal assaults.

“I want to begin by apologizing,” he said. “I was wrong to fly off the handle at you last week. I’m sorry if I’ve caused you any distress, personally or professionally.”

“You were upset,” I said, concealing my surprise. I’d never heard Walter apologize before. “It’s perfectly understandable.”

“You’re kind to say so, but it wasn’t. If there’s anything I can do to make it up to you, now or later, just say the word.”

Curiosity about his change of heart took a backseat to heaven-sent opportunity.

“I appreciate it. Truth be told, one of the reasons I came here tonight was to ask for a favor.”

“What favor?” he asked, a touch of the usual wariness returning to his eyes.

“There’s a guy named Karl Mohler who worked at Dean Witter sometime in the mid-nineties. The SEC investigated him for churning but let him off the hook. I want to know who his lawyer was.”

Walter seemed fully alert.

“Why?”

“I can’t tell you. That’s another part of the favor. And the last is that I need the answer right now. Please.”

He stared at me for a long moment. Just when I felt confident he was going to balk, he picked up the phone on the end table to his right and dialed a number. Something strange was definitely going on, but as long as it kept working in my favor, I wasn’t inclined to ask questions.

“Susan,” he said into the phone. “Get hold of Pete Ricken for me.” He glanced at his watch, and I checked mine as well. It was six-thirty. “No idea. Try him at the office first. If he doesn’t answer, try his home and then his cell. I’ll hold.”

We sipped scotch in silence for sixty seconds. Pete Ricken was the chairman of the SEC.

“Pete,” Walter said curtly. “Thanks for taking my call. I’m hoping you can do something for me.… Right. Your people investigated a man named Karl Mohler for churning a few years back. He worked at Dean Witter at the time. I’d like to know who represented him.… No. Your guys gave him a pass.… If the information were publicly available, I wouldn’t be calling you, would I?” There was a longer pause, and when Walter finally replied, each syllable sounded like a rock bounced off a metal pole. “Let me make sure we understand each other, Pete. You help me and I help you. If not, my entire community reverses its position on your merger with the Fed. You understand?”

It was vintage Walter hardball, made potent by the fact that Ricken and his agency were so vulnerable. Everyone in the industry had known for years that the SEC was woefully incompetent, a fact Congress and the general public had become aware of only in the wake of the recent market collapse. Ricken and the career bureaucrats who worked for him were engaged in a frantic backroom struggle to avoid becoming an unloved ward of the vastly more capable Federal Reserve. The hedge-fund community had supported Ricken thus far, happier to be under-regulated.
Their reversal might tip the scales. I was more than a little surprised that Walter would push so hard on my behalf. Whatever mojo I had was running strong.

“Mohler,” Walter repeated, his tone more genial. “M-O-H-L-E-R.” He looked to me for confirmation and I nodded. “Exactly.… Of course … I’d be happy to help her out with that.… You’re welcome.” His voice hardened again. “And Pete, I’d like that information tonight, within the hour. You have my number.”

He hung up and snorted.

“His wife wants to be a trustee of the Kennedy Center. Wait until he finds out that the minimum trustee contribution is half a million a year.”

I laughed.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.”

He fiddled with his glass, swirling his ice cubes, and the sense I’d had before came back stronger. There was something on his mind, but he couldn’t figure out how to get to it. His uncharacteristic indecision gave me the opportunity to put a few questions of my own.

“I heard you were in Washington this past weekend. You learn anything interesting?”

He took a pull at his drink and nodded.

“The Saudi data came out of the CIA and was distributed to the Senate Select Committee a few months ago. CIA analysis jived with yours, but they graded it unverifiable and downplayed it.”

“So, why’d Senator Simpson run with it?”

“I asked him. Him and Clifford White together, in the senator’s office. Their response was that it didn’t matter whether we had five years or twenty years or fifty years. Energy security was a problem that needed to be dealt with, as a matter of national urgency.”

“Did they own up to being the leak?”

“No. And they denied knowing this woman Theresa Roxas, or having a private relationship with Alex.”

“You believe them?”

Walter tossed back the rest of his scotch.

“I believe Clifford White would pour brandy on your leg at a cocktail party, set fire to you, and then look you in the eye and try to persuade
you that you’d been hit by lightning. The senator’s harder to read. You want a refill?”

“No, thanks.”

He got up to pour himself another. I glanced at my watch again, wondering when Ricken would call back, and how long it would take Walter to get around to whatever was really on his mind.

“Alex sent me a letter.”

I snapped my head sideways to look at him. He had his back to me.

“When?”

“Postmark was Wednesday. It arrived Friday, but I didn’t see it until Saturday lunch.”

Alex had died early Wednesday morning.

“What did it say?”

“A number of things.” Walter turned toward me, and I saw pain in his eyes. “One of them had to do with Torino.”

Torino was the fund Alex had started just out of college. I kept quiet, giving Walter time.

“Alex wrote that he’d done some insider trading. Inadvertently, at first. One of his investors gave him a tip. He bought shares and made money. It happened again. By the third time, he knew there had to be something illicit going on, but he was losing money elsewhere and needed the gain.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, meaning it. “That must have been a tough thing for him to carry around.”

Walter looked at me searchingly.

“He never told you?”

“No. The last time we got together, he mentioned that he’d made mistakes when he had Torino, but I didn’t know what he was talking about.”

“So, you weren’t aware that he was being blackmailed.”

Blackmailed. Shit
. That explained why he’d been so upset when we had drinks, and perhaps even why he’d felt that he had to kill himself. Another idea occurred to me, and I suddenly felt weak.

“Is that why he lied about knowing Theresa Roxas?”

Walter nodded.

“I have Torino’s investor list,” he said, drawing a sheaf of folded papers from his jacket pocket. “I’ve highlighted the names I don’t know
in yellow. You spent a lot of time with Alex back then. I was wondering if you might know more.”

Walter was on the hunt as well, I realized, for whoever had driven his son to suicide. I stood up, the rage strong in my breast, and took the pages from his outstretched hand. I already knew what I was going to find. It was the third name on the second page. I pointed it out to him with a trembling finger.

“Ganesa Capital. The name of the guy who runs it is Karl Mohler.”

Walter looked stunned.

“How …” he began. His phone rang. We both looked at it.

“Pick it up,” I said quietly. “Mohler’s a nobody. The lawyer is the connection to the person behind all this.”

He lifted the receiver from the hook.

“Walter Coleman.… Right.… Right.… I will. Thank you.”

He hung up and looked at me, murder in his eyes.

“Struan, Ogilvy and Cohn. They’re a Washington firm.”

“We need a list of the principals.”

“We don’t,” he said. “I already know. It’s the firm where Clifford White used to work.”

One Police Plaza in lower Manhattan is an unadorned brick box that looks like an oversized Lego plunked down between the Brooklyn Bridge and Chinatown. A couple of plainclothed cops grabbed me out of the security line after I showed my identification, taping brown paper bags over my hands and escorting me to a basement exam room. It was late, and the long, scuffed corridors were almost deserted. A male tech wearing green hospital scrubs checked me for gunpowder residue, swabbing around my thumbs and vacuuming my shirt. I cooperated passively, unconcerned: Ari had given me special goop to clean my hands with, and the shirt I’d worn earlier was long gone. I was thinking about my conversation with Walter and trying to figure out my next step. Shimon and I had discussed it on the ride downtown: White didn’t seem to have the financial wherewithal to finance an operation like Mohler’s, so either he was just another link in the chain or he had access to a hidden pool of capital. We had to persuade him to talk, but the evidence linking him to Mohler was circumstantial, which made it hard to threaten him with exposure. Shimon had demurred at my suggestion that we simply grab White and frighten the truth out of him—White had powerful political connections, and the Israelis couldn’t risk the repercussions if he subsequently complained.

The tech completed his task, not having made eye contact. One of the two cops who’d picked me up in the lobby made a quick call from the wall phone, and then he and his partner walked me back to the elevator and took me up to the fourteenth floor. Lieutenant Wayland was waiting in the elevator lobby, looking sharp in a freshly pressed white
shirt and dress blues. Wayland dismissed the plainclothed cops and led me toward Deputy Chief Ellison’s office.

“Let me explain what’s going on here,” he said, his voice resonant with satisfaction. “I took pictures of that mess you had taped to the wall of your hotel room. We’ve got you and Detective Kinnard for making false statements to the police and criminal conspiracy to conceal evidence of crimes. I’m betting we’ll get Belko as well. Kinnard’s out, he and Belko will both forfeit their pensions, and you can forget about ever working in the securities industry again, because conspiracy is a felony. And that’s just for starters.”

I kept quiet, reserving my energy for Ellison. Silence must not have been the response Wayland wanted. He rounded on me suddenly, face inches from mine. The hall was empty save for the two of us, darkened offices on either side.

“You and your pals are in a world of hurt,” he hissed. “Your only option at this point is to come clean and pray for leniency. Am I making myself clear?”

He was clear but wrong. The last four hours had given me options he didn’t know about.

“Your boss will be the one to make that decision,” I said, shouldering past him and continuing in the direction we’d been headed.

I thought he might grab me from behind and try to bounce me off a wall, but Wayland’s new breed of cop evidently stuck to verbal intimidation. He speed-walked past me to regain his position of leadership, jaw clenched and face flushed.

Ellison’s office was at the end of the corridor. He was on the phone, so Wayland and I took seats in an anteroom with an unoccupied secretarial station, a long row of file cabinets, and a view of the East River. The chairs were hard plastic. Wayland was fidgety, cracking his knuckles and rolling his shoulders as though he could hardly wait to have at me. A light winked out on the secretary’s phone, and Wayland popped to his feet.

“After you,” he snarled.

The interior space was large and dark, the only light from a green-shaded desk lamp. The chief sat behind his desk in shirt sleeves, cuffs rolled up and tie pulled down. A bottle of Jack Daniel’s stood at his elbow, a half-full glass beside it. He picked up a folder and tossed it toward me.

“Read and sign.”

“Read and sign what?” I asked, lifting the folder from the desk.

“Official statements by Detective Kinnard and former Detective Goo about certain events transpiring at the LaGuardia Motor Court today. Your signature confirms your agreement with their recollections.”

Wayland grabbed the folder from me before I could open it.

“This is wrong, Chief. Wallace has to make his own statement first.”

“You shut the fuck up, Lieutenant,” Ellison roared, supporting himself on his knuckles as he half-rose from his seat. “Do something useful for a change. Go get Kinnard.”

Wayland looked stunned. I was less surprised, because I had a better notion of who Ellison had been on the phone with. I took the folder from Wayland’s unresisting hand, scanning the contents as he slunk away. Reggie and Joe had said what they’d agreed to say. I lifted a pen from the chief’s desk without asking and signed a brief declaration at the bottom of both statements, affirming that they were true to the best of my knowledge. Ellison was busy pouring himself another drink when I looked up. He didn’t offer, and I didn’t ask. Reggie joined us a minute later, Wayland skulking behind.

“Joe okay?” I asked quietly.

“At the hospital, resting,” Reggie answered. “He’s going to be fine.”

“Enough,” Ellison rumbled, looking at Reggie. I had the impression that he was struggling mightily not to explode again. “Back in the four-one, Irish, when you and me were probies, Sergeant Wyszynski taught us three rules about getting by in the department. You remember?”

“Do what you’re told, don’t run your mouth to citizens, and never fuck with the brass.”

Ellison knocked back a slug of whiskey from his glass and then wiped his lips with the back of his hand.

“You broke all three rules on this one. And much as it galls me to say it—because I dearly hate being fucked with—you’re going to get a pass. I’m going to buy the bullshit story you and your ex-partner told me, and I’m going to figure out how to put the best possible spin on it so everyone comes out smelling like a rose. You go back to looking for missing people, Belko goes back to fishing, and Mr. Wallace goes back to whatever the fuck he does when his friends aren’t getting killed. But only if you all swear to keep your mouths shut, now and forever.” He pointed a stout forefinger at Reggie. “Agreed?”