by Trixie More
She had to be daft. Besides, he liked men, and she liked...well, that was it, wasn’t it? She didn’t know exactly what she wanted.
She glanced down and had her answer. Was he hard? The tips of her breasts felt tight. Apparently, she’d found something she liked. Something she would never have.
Sophia glanced away. The door at the end of the hallway opened, and Tom Kretlow stepped out of the bathroom, flicking the light off. His sneakers made little flapping sounds as he walked. Tom’s face was unhappy until the moment Doug could see him. Then he was all smiles. Sophia’s stomach tensed and she wished now that she’d skipped the pizza as she’d intended.
“Well, what are we talking about, kids?” Tommy asked.
“Not much,” Doug said. “I’m still not sure why you’re here, Sophia.”
Sophia focused on her mission. “I want you to look at a picture and tell me if you know anyone in it.” She dug her cell phone out of her purse and brought up the photo of Marco Camisa Senior and his stack of poker chips. Doug came closer to the counter where she sat and gently took the phone from her. His hands were broad, the fingers thick and blunt, the nails clean and short.
Doug lifted the phone and studied it. Tommy came up beside him, looking over Doug’s shoulder, one hand braced against the wall behind Doug’s head.
Sophia almost laughed. Just friends, my ass, she thought. Telling Marley would be fun. Doug flicked a glance at her and she caught her breath. It was as if he knew what she was thinking and it hurt him. That could NOT be possible. Men like Doug Lloyd didn’t get hurt feelings, they barely had any feelings to begin with. Uber-rich, competitive in business, and criminally inclined—no, she’d best keep that in mind. Ruthless. Her mind whispered, rapist.
“I know this is Marco Camisa,” Doug was saying. Beside him, Tom had that unhappy expression again. Doug looked at his friend, and Sophia studied both men carefully, looking for any sign of recognition. It was very possible that if they did know someone in the photo, they wouldn’t want to tell her.
“What about the other people at the table?”
Doug swiped at the screen, increasing the zoom. “This looks like Mike Nuri,” he said finally. “Hard for me to say, though. The last photo I saw of him was taken twenty years ago. I never knew him personally.” He swiped his finger to the left, head bent as he concentrated. Between his brows, a deep furrow formed quickly. His nose was broad, flaring above a thin upper lip. His brow bone left his eyes in shadow. What was it about this man’s face? All the pieces of it were ordinary, were unflattering from some angles and yet, she found herself unable to look away.
He lifted his head and looked her straight in the eyes. She could see him thinking. His head twitched the smallest bit. “I don’t know anyone else,” Doug said.
Tom took the phone and scrolled around the photo. “Nobody there, I know.” He shrugged and handed it back to Sophia.
“So, who are they?” Doug asked.
“Nuri and MacDonald are both in that photo,” she said.
“So why ask us?” asked Tom.
“There are several other people in the picture as well. I’m just trying to understand how broad this might be.” She watched the men. It was a bullshit answer but Tom seemed to accept it. Doug, on the other hand, had a more speculative expression.
“Does my case tie into another case you’re working?” he asked.
Tom looked startled and swiveled his head to stare at her.
Sophia gathered her wits. She didn’t want to share all of this right now, she didn’t know if she could trust either of these men. And oddly, it wasn’t Lloyd, the convicted criminal, that had her guard up. It was his friend, Mr. Nice Guy, that worried her. It seemed he went out of his way to be non-threatening, maintaining the name Tommy, being smoothly social, modulating his expressions. None of that meant anything but still, she thought him manipulative. After all, it took one to know one.
“So does it? Tie to something else?” Doug asked again.
“Is there anything else you can think of that might help me look into the death of Colton Gerrimon?” Sophia asked. “Why don’t you start from the beginning?”
Doug settled onto the stool across from her. Tom remained standing.
“When I got out of prison, after being inside for two years, we’d lost seventeen million dollars. We had only a couple million left in the company coffers. So I started going over the books.”
Tom turned to the refrigerator and got out three beers, then passed them out.
“Tommy did his best to keep the company together while I was inside, but part of trading requires that you pay attention and act quickly when markets are moving. We buy and hold a lot of things, but what made us money was the faster trading. Over the years, Tommy handled all the day-to-day running of things, and I managed market trading. So when I went inside...” He shrugged and glanced at his friend. “The company lost that part of things.” As he spoke, Doug began to relax. He talked faster, his hands gesturing, often with the palms facing up, the top of the hands tipping away as if he was releasing a bird or a burden.
Releasing Tom’s culpability in the loss of the funds, she thought.
“Anyway, Tommy made a few investments in Colton’s funds, which we lost completely. The total was significant—two million on the initial investment, nine million in returns.”
Tom stood behind Doug, one hand on the back of Doug’s stool. He was looking at Doug as he spoke. “Did you tell her what they offered me?” Tommy looked at her. “They offered to double my money, and they did. I had almost five and a half million in my hand back in March.” Tommy looked at Doug, but Doug was studying Sophia.
“I, I just thought I should reinvest the winnings, so to speak.” Tommy looked genuinely distraught.
What did Lloyd make of his friend losing so much money? She studied Doug closely. She would have felt desperate to have lost that money. Doug seemed to be listening to his friend confess to leaving a newspaper on the subway, he was so matter-of-fact. Interesting.
“Yeah, so, I figured Tommy had been conned like I said.”
“I didn’t think I was being hustled,” Tommy said. “There was more to it, we made money and lost money. Occasionally, it paid big. The investment seemed to be working. Meanwhile, the staff at Lloyd Holdings had left, the rent on the building was insane, the payments on this place”—Tommy waved his hands around him, indicating the empty and dusty apartment—”it was draining us dry. So I put it all in. All that I could manage, and then…” He shrugged.
“Then,” said Doug, “then Colton died with the password to the server that the electronic currency was stored on. Unimaginable.”
“Still none of that points to murder,” Sophia pointed out.
“Well, tell me this, how did Nuri and MacDonald know to get out?” Doug frowned. “I checked. There were a hundred and twelve investors in this fiasco. Two exited completely in the week before he died—Nuri and MacDonald. One exited partially—Camisa.”
“How do you know this? Do you have access to Colton’s books?” she asked.
“No, I don’t. I had to piece it together,” Doug said. “It took weeks of phone calls, mostly to people who no longer want to know me. I have all my notes at the office.” He stood from the stool and walked to the door, scooping a set of keys off of the counter as he left. The door shut behind him before Sophia realized he’d just left her sitting in his apartment with Tom.
“What just happened?” she asked.
“He went to get his notes,” Tom said. His handsome face looked smug. She studied him a moment. He still looked like a college kid, his face smooth and shaved, brown hair with sun-kissed highlights, charming smile, fit body, tight clothing.
“Just like that?”
“Just like that,” he said.
“How long have you been friends?” she asked.
“Since fifth grade,” Tom answered. He seemed proud of the fact for a second, and then his face fell, a bit of age creeping in as it hap
pened. “It’s a long time.”
“It is,” she agreed. “When did you guys go into business together?”
“It’s not our business. Doug owns it; I work for him,” Tom said, raising his chin, lips pulling down in distaste. “It started with him. His family was poor, he day traded in high school. He managed to pull together enough wins to get his family a decent house and keep them fed.” Tom downed his beer. “He should have stopped there, dumb bastard.”
“How did you get involved?”
“I followed him to New York. We were just kids, barely legal to drink. Doug fought with his father and left. He wanted to work on Wall Street. Imagine? He had no degree, just the fifty thousand he’d made.”
It was notable, the way Tom tossed out fifty thousand, as if that wasn’t a year’s salary for most people. For her.
“If he was poor, what did he start with?” she asked.
“Pennies. He volunteered to handle the collections at church,” Tom said. “My dad thought it would be a good idea, God knows why.”
“Church?” That surprised her
“Yeah, both our families attended the same church. My dad was a deacon. His dad is a dyed-in-the-wool religious fanatic. Anyway, Doug embezzled the funds, sunk them in the market, got dumb-fuck lucky and doubled them. He returned the funds to the church account but kept the profits. That was the one and only time I saw him steal anything. He never needed to again, I guess.”
“What about rape? Did you see him rape Ed Walker?” Sophia kept her face bland, but her ears were straining for the sound of keys in the lock.
Tom Kretlow leaned against the back of the stool and folded his arms across his chest. The sunny-surfer charm was good and gone now. He stared at her.
“You’ve got a lot of nerve,” he stated flatly.
Sophia nodded. “I do.”
Tom continued to stare at her. His Adam’s apple dipped. “He was stoned.”
Why did he answer her question? Sophia worked to control her face. No surprise, I expected as much, she repeated the words that she should be thinking to get her face to look bland.
“So? Lots of people get stoned,” she said.
Tom glanced away. His jaw clenched. When he looked back, he seemed to be torn. His chest lifted, and she heard him exhale deeply.
“He was tricked,” Tom hissed.
Sophia was amazed, but she schooled her features. Tom was practically confessing to being a witness. “I don’t see it. I’m not buying you can trick a man into raping another man, even if he’s high.”
Anger flared in Tom’s face. “This is my best friend you’re talking about, lady. It’s none of your business.”
“Anything criminal is my business. Why don’t you tell me why you’re still friends with a rapist?”
“He’s not a rapist!”
“He raped Ed Walker. Come on, you can’t tell me he didn’t.”
“I wasn’t there.”
“The hell you weren’t. You know what happened that night. You can clear this whole thing up right now.”
Something flashed in Tom’s eyes. Something...crafty, like he just had a nasty thought. She held her breath. He was going to do it. He was about to toss the man he loved under the bus.
“He wasn’t just high. He’d taken G.”
“GHB?”
“Yeah, we were all taking it that day. Doug was high on it, relaxed...” Tom’s eyes focused off in the distance as he spoke. Sophia watched Tom’s face relax, become almost wistful. “He was gorgeous then.” Tom flicked a glance at her but was soon lost in the past again. “It was a hot day and we were all at some house on the Island,”
“Long Island?”
“Yeah. Some trader that had become friends with Doug. He made it, you know? He wasn’t working on Wall Street, he never did. Enough money was earned day trading from our apartment that he started to have friends in high places.” Tom dropped his arms. “I did the networking. Doug never was any good at it.”
Tom cleared his throat. “There was a guy at the party that was hot for Doug.”
“Wanted to have sex with him?”
“Yeah, but Doug—he wasn’t that way.”
“What way?”
Tom’s mouth turned down, and he tipped his head to the side. “Not the kind to just have sex with anyone.” The crafty look flashed in Tom’s eyes again. “Anyway, I guess the guy thought Doug just needed a push, that eventually it would come his way. Then in walks this kid, a pool boy of all things. He’s beyond beautiful.”
“All men at the party?”
“By then? Yeah. Mostly all gay that day. A couple of chicks, friends, you know, not many.” Tom seemed to remember where he was, and Sophia cursed herself for asking that last question. “Anyway, he urged Doug on...”
“Walker?”
“God, no! The kid was straight out of a hayfield. Walker had no clue what was going on. No, but it didn’t take much prodding to convince Doug the kid wanted it. Anybody would have been attracted to Walker back then. He had this look about him...”
Sophia’s stomach clenched. This had been a bad, bad idea. She didn’t want to know this. It felt like she was spying on Ed. Tom was spilling words like they’d been locked up inside him and busting to get out.
“He was so...predatory.”
“Walker?”
Tom shook his head. “Doug. When he gets relaxed like that. When he’s high. When he gets loose, there’s all this sexuality that comes out. He’s focused and confident, just like always, but when he turns his attention on someone that way...” Tom looked down, a slight flush high on his cheeks. “Anyway, they goaded him into it. You could get him to do almost anything back then if you convinced him his old man would hate it. They told him he’d be getting back at his father, other stuff, and then it...just happened.”
Something in the story bothered her. It didn’t add up. Why would a gay man have to goad another gay man into sex with someone else? “Did the plan work?”
“You mean, did Doug suddenly realize he wanted it with everyone that night? No. The plan didn’t work.” Tom continued, so Sophia stayed quiet. “I don’t think either one of them remembers it. If it wasn’t for the video...but that’s how it went down. Doug, he was so angry when the video came out. Even if his face wasn’t in it. I remember he broke a window, put his fist right through it. He was screaming that it was consensual, he’d thought it was consensual.” Tommy looked at her, and Sophia’s blood went cold. “Anybody could see it wasn’t. Just look at the video.”
“You remember the whole thing?”
“And every day with him after that.”
“Do you have a copy of the video?”
The front door opened, and Tom startled. He shot her a meaningful look.
“Did you get the notes?” Tom called, his face regaining the charming good-natured expression. Sophia felt dirty, just watching it.
Doug walked in and dropped a laptop on the counter. He looked between the two of them.
“What’s going on?”
Something had changed. He could tell from Tommy’s posture something was off, but Sophia’s expression was placid. They were both still sitting at the counter. Doug tossed his laptop onto the dark granite and snagged the stool closest to Sophia.
“What’s going on?” He looked between them. Sophia shrugged. There was no reason that Doug should care. If Sophia found Tommy charming, what did it matter? It wasn’t like Tommy wanted to steal her. He plunked his butt on the stool. “Well?”
Sophia tapped a single fingernail against the laptop. “So whaddaya got?”
“You always answer a question with a question?” he asked.
“Do you?”
In some ways, his attraction to her irritated him. He grunted and opened the laptop. Tommy stood.
“Look, I gotta shove off,” he said.
There was something off with Tommy, but with Sophia sitting next to him and the prospect of chasing down his money, Doug was content to just let it go. If prison
had taught him anything, it was to stay out of other people’s business.
“Sure?” Doug asked.
“Yeah, I’m beat,” Tommy said. “Like I said, we’ve still got to hold things together.” Tommy rapped his knuckles on the counter and headed to the door. “Tomorrow’s another day.”
“‘Night, bro,” Doug said.
Tommy just nodded and stepped through the door, closing it quietly behind him.
The space between himself and Sophia seemed too close now that they were alone, and Doug slid his stool back to give her more room. She watched him, a small furrow between her eyes.
“Did I miss something?” He was squinting at her now. Running his finger along the elegant length of her cool, white throat was not an option, but as she tipped her chin up, he found his hands tightening into fists as if remaining disconnected from her pained them.
He cleared his throat. “I’ll take that as a no,” he said. Dropping the matter wasn’t what he wanted, but he needed to break the tension he felt even more than he wanted to know what was said between his friend and his, no, not his, not his anything. Sophia.
“Um, do you need anything before we start? Another beer?”
Her shining, espresso-dark hair slid over her shoulder as she tilted her head. She gave a little shake, all the while, her too-beautiful eyes, with their appraising expression, considered his face. He could practically feel her looking at him.
“Fine, but I warn you, once I get started, it’s hard for me to stop.” There, that got her to smile a bit and stop inspecting him like he was an alien life form.
“Do you intend all these double entendres?” she asked.
Doug shook his head. “I may be saying them, but you’re the one pointing them out.” The laptop was booting up now, so he glanced over at her. She was blushing again. He sighed.
After logging in, he started pulling up files. The words and links on the screen calmed him, lists of stock symbols and columns of numbers, with their orderly arrangement, the commas, the periods, the precision of their alignment suggested order, but beneath the precise placement, a wild fluctuation waited. If you peeled the regimented presentation up and looked to the meaning behind the numbers, there was something more akin to a wild and stormy ocean—a surge and ebb, a rhythm that could be counted on, like waves on the sea, with the same screaming wildness waiting to swamp the untempered investor and the same potential for harnessing its energy. His livelihood had more in common with sailing than it did with banking and in the same way a sailor harnessed the explosive force of the wind, Doug harnessed the vagaries of the way men flailed and stormed in the face of risk and failure, power and opportunity. He rode the waves of other men’s greed and all he had to do was stay calm during the storm and never forget which way the wind blew. On the screen, the numbers aligned in rows and Doug felt himself settle into what they told him, settle into himself.
