The Insider (24 page)

The only catch was that Oliver would have to identify and entrap the lamb. It was a small price to pay for freedom—and for what he thought at the time would be the ability to remain at McCarthy & Lloyd—so he had readily agreed. Over the next several months Oliver had lured Jay West into the ambush.

Since the meeting in the Park Avenue apartment in March, two things had nagged at Oliver. It was apparent to him that O’Shea had no idea how intricately involved McCarthy was in the situation—no idea that McCarthy had originally hired Oliver with a mandate to engage in insider trading. O’Shea had never even asked about McCarthy’s possible role in the situation. Oliver had been forced to give O’Shea the names of his information sources—the four insiders—but he had never volunteered that McCarthy was in on the ground floor.

McCarthy had explained after the meeting in the apartment that Oliver was never to reveal his involvement, and that if Oliver did, he would go to jail. Keeping McCarthy’s name out of the subsequent discussions with O’Shea had been a no-brainer capitulation for Oliver: stay free versus go to jail. An easy choice, except that it irritated Oliver when, a few weeks after the initial meeting with O’Shea, McCarthy suddenly began acting as if he really hadn’t known what was going on. As if he had convinced himself that he was innocent. Just Oliver Mason’s victim.

McCarthy’s transformation from coconspirator to innocent bystander annoyed Oliver but wasn’t particularly important beyond its effect on his psyche. Something else troubled Oliver a great deal more. At the March meeting, and in all subsequent discussions, O’Shea would never reveal how he had uncovered the insider trading on the arbitrage desk. Oliver had asked about the origin of the discovery several times, but O’Shea would never come clean. In addition, O’Shea never brought anyone else from the office with him when he and Oliver met, nor would he be specific about the “others” he kept referring to who had worked on the initial investigation. This lack of disclosure bothered Oliver so much that he checked to make certain Kevin O’Shea actually was an assistant U.S. attorney in Manhattan. He was, but the haziness surrounding what was going on first irritated Oliver, then frightened him more and more.

Now, as Oliver walked past the Children’s Zoo on the east side of Central Park, he couldn’t shake his depression, which was deeper than ever. A sensation of dread had enveloped him since the morning, as if he’d just awakened from a nightmare. He spotted Tony Vogel and David Torcelli standing at the appointed place and moved toward them, wondering if it was too late to lead that life on the run.

“Hello, David.” Oliver shook David Torcelli’s hand firmly, forcing himself to seem untroubled. In addition to the general malaise he found himself mired in, he’d been specifically worried all day about how tight-lipped O’Shea had been the previous night concerning the investigation of Abby’s murder. But he didn’t want to show any sign of weakness to Torcelli or Vogel. They had no idea what was going on, and it had to remain that way. “How are you this afternoon?” he asked.

“Not so good, Oliver.” Torcelli sat down on a wooden bench overlooking Wollman Rink. The rink was tucked into the southeast corner of Central Park, in the shadow of the Plaza Hotel. During the winter it would have been crowded with ice skaters, but now it was open to in-line skaters. The men had originally agreed to meet at the Plaza suite McCarthy & Lloyd rented, but at the last second Torcelli had decided it would be better to meet on neutral territory. Over the last twenty-four hours he had become extremely careful.

Tony Vogel stood beside Oliver. Torcelli motioned for him to sit down beside him on the bench, and Vogel obeyed with the speed and loyalty of a military aide.

During the five years of the insider-trading ring, Oliver had always been the unofficial leader of the group. Suddenly allegiances seemed to have changed, he noticed. “What’s wrong, David?” Oliver knew exactly what was wrong, but he played the game anyway, wanting to delay the confrontation as long as possible.

“I told David how you reacted when we met last week up there.” Vogel gestured over his shoulder at the Plaza looming behind them, providing the explanation for his new leader.

“Tony told me you wouldn’t even listen to what we had to say. That you wouldn’t consider what we wanted.” Torcelli was a huge man, six and a half feet tall, with a barrel chest and a tough Brooklyn accent. “I was very disappointed, to put it mildly.”

“I understand,” Oliver agreed quietly, glancing at a young woman who seemed too interested in their conversation as she walked past. He waited until she was out of earshot. “I should have listened more carefully to what Tony had to say.”

Torcelli and Vogel looked up from the bench in unison, surprised by what they had just heard.

“We’ve always operated as a loose democracy,” Oliver said. “Perhaps we should revisit the issues now.”

“R-Right,” Torcelli stammered, wondering why Oliver had suddenly changed his mind and what his angle was. “As a compliance officer, I’ve made friends over the years with some of the government people downtown. I keep hearing from them that something is going down at McCarthy and Lloyd. Something very big and very bad.”

“Like what?” Oliver asked unsteadily. He couldn’t keep receiving bad news and hope to keep himself together.

“That’s the odd thing,” Torcelli answered, looking around furtively. “They don’t know. People at the highest levels are involved in some sort of investigation, but no one is talking. No one knows. My contacts suspect some kind of insider-trading investigation, but they don’t know for certain.”

Oliver glanced at the petrified expression on Vogel’s sad face. “What do you think we should do, David?” Suddenly Oliver didn’t want to be the one in charge. Suddenly he wanted to hand the reins over to Torcelli.

Torcelli put his hands behind his head and tried his best to give the impression that he was taking control.

He sensed that Oliver was ceding power. “First, we need to stop all trading. Don’t use the Bell Chemical or Simons tips.”

Oliver and Vogel exchanged a quick glance. They hadn’t talked about Jay West’s inadvertent interception of Vogel’s call to the phone in the Austin Healey. And obviously Vogel hadn’t told Torcelli about it.

“Okay. I won’t.” Oliver noticed Vogel’s shoulders slump with relief.

Torcelli would have gone ballistic if he had known that Jay West had rooted through the glove compartment of the Austin Healey and probably found the envelope with Bell Chemical’s name written on the page inside, Oliver thought. But Jay had purchased the Bell and Simons shares, even though he must have been suspicious. O’Shea had been correct in his analysis the previous night in Milton, Oliver realized. Jay West had been willing to do anything to get his million dollars. Oliver swallowed hard and glanced down at the pavement. All Jay was really going to get for his trouble was a twenty-year stay in a hotel room with steel-bar walls.

“Good,” Torcelli said enthusiastically, happy with Oliver’s unexpected acquiescence. “I think we should shut down the operation altogether.”

“I see no alternative, either,” Oliver agreed submissively.

Torcelli leaned forward and motioned for Oliver to come closer. “And I think we should put an end to the life of William McCarthy. It’s time to collect what’s ours. I don’t trust him further than I can throw him, which isn’t very far.”

Oliver gazed at Torcelli, blood pounding in his ears, wondering how the hell life had so quickly spun out of control.

Torcelli’s eyes narrowed, and a tight grin turned up the corners of his mouth. “I’ve already spoken to someone who is willing to help us.”

Oliver nodded almost imperceptibly. He’d always figured that none of the other insiders would have the stomach for murder. Torcelli had proven him wrong.

Oliver sat at one end of the screened-in porch of his Connecticut mansion. He sat in the dark, in a comfortable upholstered chair, looking out over meticulously manicured rose gardens illuminated by a half moon, sipping his fifth gin and tonic of the evening. Before meeting Torcelli and Vogel in Central Park, he had spent the day on the arbitrage desk receiving congratulations from half the trading floor as the share prices of Bell Chemical and Simons skyrocketed. Another bidder, a European conglomerate, had emerged as a second suitor for Bell, and Bell’s stock price had doubled in the last twenty-four hours. Simons stock was 50 percent higher than the price at which Jay had purchased its shares a week earlier, and rumors were swirling through the markets that a second bidder was about to make a higher tender offer, which would send its stock price sailing into nosebleed territory.

Like congregations paying homage to the pope, traders from other areas had filed past Oliver’s seat to kiss the ring. He gulped down what remained of the gin and tonic—mostly gin—and poured himself another from a pitcher sitting on a small table next to his chair. He had accepted their adulation with the knowledge that very soon he would be viewed no longer as a god but as a fallen angel—or the devil. Sometime the next week, after Jay had been arrested and carted away, Oliver would be fired. Not accused of anything illegal, but simply accused of a lack of control. No one would ever know that he had made most of his money on the arbitrage desk over the past five years illicitly, but that didn’t matter. All that mattered to him was that he would be gone, shunned into a life of lounging around the house in his bathrobe, watching talk shows and soap operas, while the rest of the world passed him by and Harold Kellogg laughed. Shunned into what he knew would be a haze of alcohol and drugs in which he was solely dependent on Barbara, because no Wall Street firm would touch him after this. He was to be shunned into a life of quiet desperation by someone in Washington whom he had never met, a nameless, faceless son of a bitch who was going to allow Bill McCarthy to go completely free because the president wanted to keep receiving those wonderful contributions. Contributions made from the money Oliver had earned McCarthy on the arbitrage desk. He took another swallow of gin.

“Oliver.” Barbara stood in the porch doorway, silhouetted by a light from inside. “Why are you drinking so much?” she asked tentatively, inching a few steps out onto the porch.

“None of your damn business,” he answered sullenly.

A tear trickled down one cheek, and she muffled a sob. “Why do you hate me?”

Oliver flinched and took a huge gulp of alcohol. She was right. He did hate her, though he wasn’t really certain why. He’d asked himself that question many times, but he’d never come up with a satisfactory answer. Perhaps it was because she seemed to whine about everything these days, or because she was always trying to get him to pay more attention to her. Or because her face so resembled her father’s. Or because she reminded him of a time in his life when things seemed simpler, all his goals still within reach. Whatever it was, the hatred had become intense. “Go to bed,” he mumbled.

“Are you sleeping in the guest room on the second floor again tonight?” Barbara no longer attempted to hide her sobs.

“Go to bed,” Oliver snarled.

“Are you sad because Abby is dead?” She hadn’t wanted to ask the question, but she couldn’t help herself. The possibility that Abby’s death was somehow connected to Oliver had occurred to her as soon as she heard the news.

Oliver looked up at her dark form. “How did you find out about that?” he asked, his voice wavering. He knew reports of Abby’s murder hadn’t yet hit the newspapers.

“My father told me. He has contacts.”

Once more Harold Kellogg was playing God. “Get out of here.”

“It wasn’t because he knows about you and that girl. I’ve never told—”

“I said get out!” Oliver roared.

“I want to help,” Barbara cried. “I don’t care what you’ve done with her.”

“Leave me!” he yelled, hurling his glass at her.

The glass shattered on the floor behind Barbara, but still she held her ground. “Please.” She was sobbing uncontrollably now, choking on her tears.

“I’m not going to say it again!” Oliver rose from his chair and stepped toward her.

That was enough. Barbara turned and raced away into the house.

Shaking, Oliver sat back down in the chair. After staring into the darkness for several moments, he reached beneath the chair, picked up a .38-caliber revolver, and put the barrel to his head. Just one of the gun’s six chambers was loaded. He put his finger on the trigger, shut his eyes tightly, and squeezed.

Barbara raced up the stairs to her bedroom, dropped to her knees in front of her wardrobe, and yanked open the bottom drawer, pushing aside several sweaters until she found the envelope. She picked it up and gazed at it as it shook wildly in front of her. The very next day she would deliver it. She had nothing to lose now.

CHAPTER 22

Jay struggled to bring his hands to his eyes, but the motion was difficult because he was jammed so tightly into the freezing, cramped space.
Maybe this is what hell is like,
he thought as he finally managed to depress a tiny button on his watch and check the time in the eerie blue light of the liquid crystal display. It was almost four o’clock in the morning. The loud music and voices had faded away an hour earlier, and as far as he could tell, the pub was empty. However, he was still reluctant to crawl out of the duct and down into the men’s bathroom of Maggie’s Place. While using the pub’s bathroom that afternoon he had noticed the vent. It was then that the idea had occurred to him.

At eleven o’clock, when the pub was jammed with locals enjoying a Thursday night out, he had stolen inside as inconspicuously as possible, the brim of a Red Sox baseball cap pulled low over his eyes. He had walked directly to the door of the small bathroom, entered when he was certain it was empty, closed the wooden door without sliding the small bolt lock into place, stepped up onto the top of the urinal closest to the vent, and pulled himself headfirst into the narrow opening.

He’d barely fit and was worried that someone would see his shoes. Seven feet inside the duct, the sheet metal had turned ninety degrees to the right, and he’d been unable to move any farther forward. He’d pulled his legs up as far up as possible, but there was no way to tell if he was visible. Fortunately, no one had detected him, though the bathroom had been used many times since he had crawled into the space. He’d counted the creaks of the door hinge each time it opened because he needed something to keep his mind occupied.

Jay exhaled to make his chest smaller, then pushed backward until first his feet and then all of his legs were clear of the vent. Feeling around with one shoe, he found the top of the urinal, then eased his torso and head out of the space and jumped to the floor. He shivered, stretched, and inhaled deeply. It was damn nice not to have that air-conditioning blowing in his face and to be able to take a normal breath. He hadn’t known going in whether he was claustrophobic. Though he’d come close to panic a few times, the ordeal hadn’t been as difficult as he had anticipated.

He moved to the door, pressed a hand against it, then hesitated. It was going to creak loudly. He’d heard that creak so many times this evening. But he couldn’t stay inside the bathroom all night. If anyone was left in the bar, he’d act drunk and claim he’d passed out, then leave quickly.

There was no need to worry. The pub was deserted. Stools and chairs lay upside down on the bar and tables, and the only bulbs still illuminated were a spotlight over the bar and a long thin fluorescent bulb hanging over a pool table in one corner of the place. The floor was strewn with beer-soaked sawdust, but everyone was gone. He moved quickly across the floor to the steps he had watched Patrick climb that afternoon.

At the top of the steps Jay found exactly what he had expected—a locked door. He jiggled the knob several times, then inserted one end of a straightened paper clip into the keyhole and moved it around. But the door was shut securely. From his jacket he removed a small crow-bar and hammer he had purchased at a local hardware store a block from the post office, inserted the sharp end of the crowbar between the door and the jamb, smacked the end of the crowbar with the hammer twice, and with a violent wrench broke the door open. For several seconds he stood statue-still, listening for any sounds other than his own rapid breathing and heart pounding. This was insanity. He was guilty of breaking and entering. But he had to understand the connection between this obscure pub in South Boston and McCarthy & Lloyd.

Jay switched on the small flashlight hanging from a chain around his neck, leaned inside what appeared to be a ramshackle office, and scanned it. Positioned between two windows on the far wall was a large wooden desk. He took one step into the room and heard a snort, then a heavy sigh. He extinguished the flashlight instantly, backed out of the office onto the top step, and listened to heavy breathing turn to a loud snore.

When he was confident that the person inside was asleep—or passed out—Jay moved into the office again, flicked on the flashlight, and directed the beam around the room. From the desk, which was straight ahead, he moved the beam to the left and illuminated a long brown leather couch that had clearly seen better days, and a man stretched out on it who had once been in better shape before, too. It was Frankie, the bartender. He was on his back, one shoe off, still wearing his stained green apron, arms folded across his chest and head to one side in what looked like an extremely uncomfortable position. On the floor beside the sofa was a half-full liquor bottle, cap off.

Jay doused the flashlight and listened to Frankie snore, intent upon making absolutely certain that the man wasn’t pretending to be asleep. The snores seemed too loud and too perfect.

In midsnore Frankie stopped, sighed, made a clicking sound with his lips and tongue, groaned, and began snoring again in the same deep, measured, back-of-the-throat way. Jay turned on the flashlight again, pointed it at Frankie, and saw a tiny trail of glistening saliva coursing from the corner of his mouth to several old shirts he had bunched together to use as a pillow. Frankie was definitely down for the count. Somehow he’d managed to climb the stairs, lock the office door, and crawl onto the couch, but it didn’t look like he was going to be much use to anyone for at least another few hours.

Jay checked the bottle on the floor beside Frankie. A fifth of premium Irish whiskey. “Shouldn’t drink out of the bar’s good stock like that, Frankie,” Jay muttered. “Somebody might be able to break into your office without your knowing.” He stood up and walked across a tattered Oriental rug to the desk. He kept one ear tuned to Frankie. If the snoring stopped or even altered slightly, he’d bolt.

The desk reminded Jay of McCarthy’s. It was littered with dated newspapers, old coffee cups, notebooks, and miscellaneous pieces of paper. Jay picked up a thin yellow sheet. On it were scrawled numbers. He flashed the beam on Frankie—still sleeping like a baby—then back on the paper. It was a receipt for liquor deliveries. Jay dropped the receipt back on the desk and inspected other papers. More receipts. He leaned down and opened the top right drawer of the desk, where he found nothing but pencils, pens, paper clips, and a box of St. Patrick’s Day memorabilia.

He knelt down and attempted to pull out the bottom drawer, but it was locked tightly. He inserted the crowbar and pried it open. The lock gave way with a splintering crack. At the sound of the crack Frankie snorted several times in rapid succession and groaned loudly. Instantly Jay turned off the light and took several quick steps toward the door. But even the crack of the drawer giving way couldn’t rouse Frankie from his single-malt slumber. Jay turned the flashlight on once more and padded back to the desk.

Unlike the rest of the office, this drawer was meticulously organized, containing a cigar box, a marble notebook, and a three-ring binder. Jay pulled out the binder and flipped it open. It was separated into two sections. The first contained nine transfer advices concerning funds wired from McCarthy & Lloyd to EZ Travel, including the one Paulie had delivered to Bullock’s drawer Monday night on the trading floor. All were stapled to plain white pieces of paper bound to the notebook rings. Jay quickly totaled the amounts on the advices—approximately one hundred million dollars.

He flipped to the second section of the binder. On these pages he found the names of several foreign banks, headquartered in Antigua, Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Saudi Arabia, England, and Ireland. The names were followed by long sequences of numbers—sometimes several for each institution.

Jay carefully removed several of the pages and put them in his pocket, then placed the binder on the desk, reached for the marble notebook, and opened it. At the top of the first page the words “Project Hall” were written. He skimmed the notebook but couldn’t decipher any of the text. It was written in a language, or a code, he couldn’t understand. Then he found what appeared to be a hand-sketched road map at the back of the book. A small square at the upper right-hand corner of the page was labeled “Richmond Airport,” and another spot was labeled “Farm.” He ripped this page out of the notebook and put it in his pocket as well. Adrenaline poured through his system. He was tunnel-visioned on the task and was aware of nothing else now, including the drunken man’s snores.

Jay picked up the cedar cigar box and opened it. Inside were several photographs of men—including Patrick— dressed in camouflage, arms around each others’ shoulders and smoldering cigars hanging from their mouths. Jay skimmed through the pictures and was about to put them back when he came to the last one. In it four men were kneeling in the foreground and four more were standing behind them. Trees towered above the men, and to one side were pitched canvas tents. Each man wore camouflage, and each held a rifle. Jay peered at the picture in the beam of the flashlight, then let out an audible gasp. Standing in the back row beside Patrick, brandishing his weapon, was Carter Bullock. Jay’s eyes narrowed. Beneath the men were scrawled the words “Donegall Volunteers.”

“What in the hell is going on?”

Jay whipped around and aimed the flashlight directly at Frankie, who held his hand up against the glare.

“Patrick?” Frankie muttered. He tried to rise, but groaned and fell back on the sofa. “What are you doing here? Why are you bothering me in the dead of night?” he grumbled in his thick Irish accent. “God, I think I’m going to be sick. Why the hell did you make me drink so much of that fuckin’ firewater?”

Frankie wouldn’t be difficult to evade, Jay knew, but there was no reason to stick around any longer than was absolutely necessary and give the other man the opportunity to recognize him. That possibility seemed unlikely, given Frankie’s still-inebriated condition, but the men in the pictures were brandishing very nasty weapons and he wanted no part of them.

“Patrick! Oh, God!” Frankie suddenly leaned his head over the side of the couch and regurgitated the poison sloshing in his stomach.

Almost instantly a foul stench reached Jay. He held his breath and stuffed the photograph of Bullock, Patrick, and the other men into his pocket, then put the rest of the pictures back into the cigar box. As he replaced everything in the drawer, he heard a loud banging from downstairs. The front door of the pub had been hurled open. He heard Frankie groan and fall back on the couch, then loud voices downstairs and people rushing through the bar. They must have spotted the flashlight beam from the street.

Jay bolted to one of the windows, threw up the blind and the lower half of the window, and stopped short. His escape was blocked by a row of metal bars on hinges kept tightly shut by a padlock attached to the window jamb. “Damn it!” he muttered. For the first time Jay felt his life might actually be in danger. He doubted whoever was downstairs would hold him until the police arrived. Judging from the pictures in the cigar box, they’d probably take justice into their own hands.

He aimed the flashlight on the floor beside the desk, raced back to the spot where he had been kneeling, grabbed the hammer, tore back to the window, and smashed the lock like a deranged serial killer attacking a victim. The lock was giving way, but he could hear people bounding up the stairs. They would be on him in a matter of seconds. With one final maniacal blow he crushed the lock and it tumbled to the floor. He pushed back the bars, then felt arms wrapping around his chest and instantly smelled the stench of vomit. Even in Frankie’s drunken haze he had realized that something was wrong, and he was doing his best to keep Jay from getting out the window until the others arrived.

Jay smashed Frankie’s soft belly with a hard elbow, and the bartender tumbled backward into the boots of the other men, who had just made it to the top of the stairs. Jay scrambled up onto the window ledge—just as someone snapped on the overhead light—and threw himself forward, lunging for a telephone pole rising from the sidewalk two stories below. The pole was five feet from the window and he hit it hard, wrapping his arms around it tightly like a shipwreck victim grabbing for anything that floats. The sharp smell of creosote suddenly replaced the stench of vomit.

The open window was instantly filled with the heads of two men, shouting over their shoulders to comrades within to get back down to the street. Jay was vaguely aware of the hulking forms in the window as he let go of the telephone pole and plummeted down, catching himself just before he hit the sidewalk. Sharp splinters pierced his palms and arms, but he ignored the searing pain. He let go again, tumbling onto the concrete. He was on his feet instantly, aware that his left elbow was suddenly paralyzed and that people were spilling out of the front door of Maggie’s Place only twenty feet away. He turned and raced off into the darkness, sensing the pack panting behind him like a prey animal that knows one misstep or stumble means the end.

There was no hope of reaching the rental car. It was parked in the opposite direction, only two blocks away. Even if he could evade his pursuers, the car was too close for him to circle back. He needed to put as much distance as possible between himself and Maggie’s Place as fast as he could.

He darted between two cars, raced across the street, and sprinted into a dark alley with the pack in pursuit.

In the early-morning darkness of his small living room, O’Shea sat in his favorite easy chair nursing a beer in the television’s flickering light. His eyes kept darting to the VCR’s digital clock. It was almost five o’clock. He glanced at the telephone on the table beside the chair. They had promised to notify him as soon as they had reestablished contact with Jay West after losing him Wednesday afternoon in the woods outside Gloucester. At that point they’d been confident it wouldn’t take long to find him. But it was now two days later, and they hadn’t been able to track him down.