Two Jakes (3 page)

He
remembered the fisherman’s wallet. The apartment and car would be sanitized but
people kept important information on their person: locker and safety deposit
numbers, even computer passwords. Using a penlight he went through the billfold
and was mildly surprised to find several crisp $100 bills, which he happily
pocketed. There were a half-dozen credit cards. One in particular stood out.

“I
thought this guy was a struggling journalist.”

“That’s
what they told me,” Keitel said. “Why?”

“He’s
got a Titanium American Express card.”

“So?”

Garza
didn’t bother to explain. Christian left money matters to him. He wouldn’t know
a Titanium card meant its owner had a net worth of at least $10 million. He
pulled the card out of its sleeve and read the name. Confused, he scanned the
driver’s license.

“Son
of a bitch.”

He
reached for his cell phone.

***

Luke
Goldfarb had a problem most 14-year-old boys only dreamed about. The three
girls on the adjacent blanket were topless. That wasn’t the problem. Unlike his
grandparents, who looked like raisins after 30 years in Miami Beach, Luke, down
from New York for a visit, was turning into the world’s largest blister. He
needed the umbrella that was back in the condo. His grandparents were out
shopping for Hanukkah. Before the girls took off their bikini tops, Luke’s
thoughts had revolved around homemade sufganiyot – jelly donuts. Now all he
wanted was to plant that umbrella like the Marines on Iwo Jima.
I love you,
Nana and Gramps, but I hope the engine falls out of your Escalade.
He took
a few deep breaths, thought about the Knicks to quell his erection and started
to get up. Just then, the girls also stood and headed toward the ocean. Luke
followed. Soon all four were standing side by side waist deep.

“Look
at that,” one girl said. For a horrible moment, Luke, embarrassingly aware of
his excitement, thought he wasn’t in deep enough. But then he followed her
finger and saw something dark silhouetted by a wave. It was big.

“Probably
a dolphin,” he squeaked, unforgivably. He had never spoken to a half-naked
girl, let alone three. “Maybe a sand shark,” he was able to croak.

Luke
thought that they would scurry to shore. He would stand his ground to impress
them, although he did feel a thrill of fear. But these were Florida girls and
edged out toward the object. It didn’t look like a fish. A log? He was about to
tell them to be careful when the wave rolled the object right into the girls.
All erotic thoughts were blown out of his mind as they screamed and ran. He
swore later that the tits on the middle girl, the one with the large, dark
aureoles, “twirled” in opposite directions like a New Year’s Eve party favor.
It was sight Luke Goldfarb would remember the rest of his life, second only to
the naked, bloated, almost faceless corpse now bumping gently against his hip.

CHAPTER
2 - A PLATINUM REFERRAL

Three months later, New York City

The
phone warbled just as Scarne placed the last book into his London Library
Cabinet. He ignored it and began arranging photo frames and plaques on the
shelf, even though he knew Evelyn would eventually switch them around to her
liking. Without his objection. In his relationships with women Scarne had long
ago decided what few battles were worth waging. Decoration wasn’t one of them.
She had put her foot down about the antlers and now ruled the roost. The phone
kept trilling. It was her choice of ring tone, too, and sounded like a Parisian
ambulance. He
would
speak to her about that. Why didn’t she answer it?
Then he remembered she’d gone to buy last-minute office supplies. He reached
his desk just before the answering machine picked up.

“This
is Jake Scarne.”

“Mr.
Scarne, my name is Sheldon Shields. Don Tierney suggested I call.”

Sheldon
Shields? The name sounded familiar. Scarne pulled his laptop closer and sat
down. He looked at the caller I.D. on his phone console:
Shields Inc
.
One of those Shields? He began to Google.

“What
can I do for you, Mr. Shields?”

“I
may have something for you. Don said you can be trusted and have imagination.”

“That
was kind of him.”

Scarne
glanced at his computer. Sheldon Shields was the older brother of Randolph
Shields, chairman of one of the nation’s largest media companies. Good old Don.
The gift that keeps on giving.

“The
matter is rather delicate. Are you available to meet with me today?”

Scarne
preferred meeting clients in his new office suite, which offered a stunning
view of Rockefeller Center and the twirling skaters 20 stories below.
Montpelier arm chairs flanked the Burford dresser that served as a magazine
table in his waiting room, and the desks, tables and bookshelves in his office
and conference room were in British Traditions style. Dark green carpets,
maroon accent pieces and nautical paintings completed a décor meant to impress
clients and hint at high fees. There were still boxes lying about, but they’d
be gone by the afternoon.

“Let
me check my calendar, Mr. Shields.”

Scarne
had barely begun riffing through a
Golf Digest
for sound effect when
Shields said, “Any chance I could buy you lunch at the Federal League?”

Excellent
chance, Scarne thought, the home field advantage of his office receding at the
prospect of dining at one of the city’s premier social clubs. Besides, a
Shields was a Shields. Not easily impressed. Or worried about fees, for that
matter. They agreed to meet at 1 P.M.

After
hanging up, Scarne went deeper into the company website. Sheldon Shields held
various titles, but from what Scarne could gather played a distant second
fiddle to his somewhat notorious brother, and mainly hosted media events,
investor conferences and other social or business functions. Sheldon also ran
the grandly-named
Shields Foundation for Investors
, a unit that produced
print and electronic investment newsletters. Scarne himself was often solicited
for them and now recalled Sheldon’s name on S.F.I. promotional flyers. Since
annual subscriptions started at $1,000 – money better spent on a new set of
golf clubs – the solicitations went into the circular file.

Randolph
Shields held the real power in an organization that had grown exponentially
since 1923 when their grandfather, Cornelius Shields, published
Shields
,
the nation’s first pure business magazine. The broad-based conglomerate now
owned a dozen other magazines and newspapers, two cable television stations, a
movie studio and some of the priciest real estate in Manhattan. Not to mention
an ocean-going yacht and a Boeing 727.

Despite
his ceremonial role, Sheldon surely had access to other investigative outlets.
Scarne assumed the call involved a personal matter: perhaps something
potentially embarrassing to his brother – although “Randy” Shields, as the
tabloids dubbed him, was a hard man to discomfit. He called Tierney, who was at
a meeting. His secretary said she’d relay the message.

Scarne
went back to his shelving. The cabinet contained every book written by
Churchill. The cabinet and its collection had belonged to Scarne’s grandfather
who, despite spending much of his career trying to torpedo ships of the Royal
Navy, was an Anglophile.

“Very
great race, the British,” the old sailor once told him. “Seafarers have to be
hard. Practical, too. They kept Winston on ice until their backs were against
the wall. Trotted him out to fight. After they won they threw him aside. Better
system than ours. Some men are made for war; some for peace.”

Scarne
smiled as he looked at Volume 4 of
Marlborough: His Life and Times
, the
last section of the British Prime Minister’s million-word biography of his
famous ancestor, John Churchill, the first Duke of Marlborough. The volume was
marred by a perfectly round hole in its spine that obliterated the last three
letters of the Duke’s last name.

“People
will think it is about cigarettes,” his grandfather had said as he surveyed the
damage after calmly and carefully removing the target arrow. The shaft had
flown through the open window of his study, narrowly missing the old
gentleman’s head as he sat reading court briefs. “But I suppose I should be
grateful you weren’t using hunting points. The tome would have been ruined.”
Then, turning to the speechless nine-year-old, he promised not to tell his
grandmother if Scarne would confine his future jackrabbit hunts to the ranch’s
outer acres – as well as promise to read the skewered book. Which he did.

Not
until years later, when reading an essay by Larry McMurtry, the
Lonesome
Dove
author and book collector, did Scarne learn of the potential value of
the
Marlborough
set. There were 155 copies of a limited first edition
inscribed to the Prince of Wales, who was briefly King of England before
abdicating in December 1936 to marry his divorced American mistress, Wallis
Simpson. Scarne had immediately pulled his grandfather’s
Marlborough
from the packing crate in which it languished in a (thank God!)
climate-controlled storage facility. Sure enough, on a front page of each
volume, the inscription:
“To the King, from Winston Churchill, October 30.
1936.”

Even
after the economic meltdown of 2008-9, such an edition, albeit arrowless,
brought nearly $100,000 at a Sotheby’s auction. Scarne often wondered how such
a rarity wound up in his grandfather’s collection (although he suspected it was
obtained prior to the outbreak of World War II when his grandfather had been a
naval attaché in London). He also marveled at the old man’s equanimity in the face
of his grandson’s desecration. Scarne now kept the undamaged first three
volumes in his safe. But he enjoyed looking at Volume 4. He doubted anyone
would steal a book with a hole in it. As to the value of the marred set? Scarne
suspected that with more and more books being digitalized, even a slightly
wounded Marlborough might command six figures in the near future.

On
top of the bookcase was a silver Tiffany frame with a black-and-white photo of
Capitano di vascello Giacomo Scarne resplendent in his Italian naval dress
uniform. Next to that was a crystal frame containing a color photo of Scarne’s
parents flanking his grandmother, all on horseback. Scarne’s gaze lingered on
the faces of the young couple. What little recollection he had of them melded into
a kaleidoscope of discordant impressions: fire, cold, utter silence, urgent
shouts, men on snowshoes. Scarne could see his reflection in the glass covering
the photo. Given the diverse gene pool from which he’d sprung, he was not
surprised he looked so little like his parents. Save two features: the obsidian
eyes and high cheekbones of his half-Cheyenne mother.

The
phone rang, dissolving the half-formed memories. It was Tierney. After thanking
him, Scarne asked the lawyer if he knew what Shields needed.

“Haven’t
the foggiest, Jake. He wouldn’t tell me. Hardly know the man. He apparently got
wind of the Barnes thing at the club. He bought me a drink and I told him you
were somewhat useful.”

***

The
“Barnes thing” hadn’t started out promising. Tierney’s firm was outside counsel
for a large Wall Street brokerage house fighting an age discrimination suit.
The broker was awash in securities violations and its regular lawyers had their
hands full. The suit was small change. Tierney knew no one would second-guess a
fast settlement. But he smelled a rat.

“Jake,
this guy applies for a job as a ‘wealth consultant,’ whatever the hell that is,
and gets turned down by a branch manager who sends him an email saying the
company was looking for someone younger and with more zest.”

“More
zest?”

“Yeah.
Talk about a million dollar word. Who the hell writes an email like that today?
My five-year-old grandson knows better. Anyway, the guy sues post haste. You’ll
love this; he also claims that the manager is a homophobe.”

“He’s
gay?”

“And
over 60. Thank God he’s not a transvestite. That would be a hat trick. As it
is, it’s a slam dunk before any jury in this city. Hell, I’d find for the guy.”

“What’s
the problem? Your client has deep pockets and certainly doesn’t need any more bad
press.”

“That’s
what bothers me. They’re just too easy a target. Something stinks. Do me a
favor; take a run at the guy. I know it’s a long shot. Can’t keep you on it
long. Two weeks, max. My client wants to settle before the rags get it.”

Scarne
thought about a lucrative month-long personal security assignment for a
visiting rock star he would have to forego.

Tierney,
who missed nothing, said, “If you can’t, don’t sweat it.”

“Don’t
be an ass, Donald.”

“Sorry,
it won’t be much of a payday, Jake.”

Tierney
wasn’t wrong about many things, but he was wrong about that.

Jackson
Barnes had recently moved to New York from San Francisco. Unemployed, he and a
roommate shared a one-bedroom in Greenwich Village. Scarne tailed him to
Rugby’s, a Village hangout. He confirmed that the man was voraciously gay. No
great detective work was involved. Barnes propositioned him. Scarne demurred,
hoping he wouldn’t be sued for bar-pickup discrimination. But Barnes was
actually a pleasant fellow, and kept talking to Scarne. After they got past the
normal prattle about the Knicks, he brought up his case. Scarne clucked
sympathetically and kept buying drinks to loosen the man’s tongue. All he
managed to do was get more people involved in the conversation. By the time he
left, he was out a hundred bucks and half the bar was telling Barnes to “sock
it to those corporate cocksuckers.”

He
next concentrated on the roomie, Byron Taliger, who had moved from San
Francisco with Barnes and was also unemployed. Tierney had run Barnes through
the appropriate databases in New York and California to see if he was
litigious. Nothing. Scarne decided to run Taliger’s name. He hit pay dirt.

“A
Byron Taliger brought a sex-discrimination suit against a local brokerage
house,” a lawyer at a San Francisco firm affiliated with Tierney’s shop told
him. “It was settled out of court. Taliger claimed he was fired because he was
gay.”

“In
San Francisco?”

“Yeah,
I know. The case was never going to a jury. The guy who fired him put something
in an email about Taliger’s ‘lifestyle.’ I kid you not. The settlement was
sealed, but a friend told me it was for a good piece of change. Out here that’s
lawyer-speak for more than $250,000 and less than a million.”

A
few more questions revealed that the brokerage in question had been accused by
the Government of insider trading. Another easy mark anxious to shove unrelated
dirty laundry under the rug. Scarne was convinced Barnes and Taliger were
running a scam. But how did they get managers to be so devastatingly stupid with
emails? The obvious answer was that the managers were part of the con. Since it
was a stretch to believe Barnes and Taliger planted them over the years, Scarne
suspected blackmail. He asked Tierney to set up a deposition for the manager
who refused to hire Barnes in New York.

The
man’s name was Alfred Webster and he appeared with both a lawyer from his
brokerage firm and his own attorney. After 15 minutes of typical deposition
background blather Tierney went for the jugular.

“Was
it Byron Taliger or Jackson Barnes who first suggested the scheme to defraud my
client with this lawsuit?”

The
mention of Taliger did the trick.

“I
want to see a lawyer.”

“You
have a lawyer,” Tierney said. “In fact, two of them.” He waved his arm to
encompass the other attorneys present, both guppy-mouthed.

“I
want a criminal lawyer.”

From
there it was easy. Alfred Webster, married with three kids in Colts Neck, NJ,
where he coached little league, frequently stopped for a drink after work and
just happened to run into Jackson Barnes. Webster occasionally, and secretly,
swung from the other side of the plate and was in bed with the suave Barnes
when Taliger burst in, digital camera in hand. SLR, 12 mega pixels, no shutter
lag. Faced with suburban humiliation, he was only too happy to entertain their
scheme. They had, of course, targeted him specifically because he was in the
position to hire people at his firm. As an added inducement, he was promised
25% of the “profits.” After all, he might lose his job for the email idiocy.