Saving Jason

by Michael Sears

  6

  I needed to swing back and check in with Virgil once more—without Nealis in the room. He was frowning at his computer monitor, but waved me in.

  “Did you speak to Devane?” he asked.

  “I did. As you said, she’s on it.”

  He nodded distractedly. “I’m worried.” We both knew he meant that he was worried about a hostile takeover, not a minor compliance problem. But it was unlike Virgil to allow himself to worry—and even more unlike him to admit to it.

  “I’ll do what I can,” I said, trying to sound confident.

  He plastered on a resolute face, which I didn’t buy into at all. “I know you will.” Then he seemed to realize that, in coming back, I might have my own agenda. “Sorry. You wanted to talk to me. I’ve been distracted. What is it?”

  It didn’t pay to be careful with Virgil. He respected directness, not diplomacy. “It’s the new hire. What do we know about him?”

  He grimaced. “Why? You don’t like him?”

  I laughed. “As a matter of fact, no, I don’t.” Top producers, myself included, were rarely known for their social skills. Nealis had made an effort, but I was skeptical. “But that’s not relevant. A hire that important? I should have had a chance to do a background check.”

  Virgil looked at the ceiling at the far end of the room and sighed. “What can I say? You’re right? But the firm is growing. A year ago, you and I could have discussed this at leisure. I don’t have that luxury anymore. There are too many problems calling for my attention all at once. And one very big one.”

  “All the more reason to delegate.”

  “That is a skill that I am still developing. It does not come naturally to me.”

  “Same here,” I said. The transition from trader to manager had been rocky—even before the avalanche.

  He acknowledged the similarity with a small nod. “There are sharks and whales, Jason. Nealis is a shark. I’ll have to watch him, I know. He’s hungry. But he is a very big shark and just what we need here. His production will spin off benefits across every department. He thinks big. Two years from now, I hope I have a team of ten just like him.”

  I felt a sharp pang of regret for the passing of the small firm, where I had instant access to the CEO, and the knowledge that my contributions were as important as any other’s. My role wouldn’t shrink in a larger firm—it could be even greater—but the culture would change. We would no longer be a tribe of brothers, following a single trusted leader, but a more powerful empire of competing factions. Politics would have to be factored into every decision—or at least every investigation. All egos bruise, and bigger ones more readily than others.

  “I’ll be discreet,” I said.

  “And find out who’s giving me migraines, will you?”

  “Aye, aye, Captain.”

  7

  While waiting for the elevator, I heard a door open and the sound of two voices. Nealis and another man. A strong Long Island accent. Baldwin or Massapequa, or if not the South Shore, then middle island like Coram or Ronkonkoma. A voice neither usual nor unusual in Wall Street environs, but rare on the executive floor. I stepped back and craned my head to see around the corner. The two men in the waiting area were still talking. They were standing very close, well inside each other’s intimate space. I felt a twinge of guilt, as though I were spying on some private moment.

  The second man was younger than Nealis with black hair so well-oiled it was phosphorescent, like the wings of a grackle. His face was narrow, all planes, with a prominent nose and chin. He wore a charcoal chalk-stripe suit with a brilliant white silk shirt and a lavender tie. I saw the flash of gold cuff links—polished orbs the size of walnuts.

  I ducked back behind the wall a split second before the elevator emitted a loud ping. The doors opened. The moment I stepped in, I hit the button for the lobby.

  “Hold the elevator,” Nealis called.

  My wires are permanently crossed when it comes to buttons that open or close the doors. When the elevator panel uses those arrows that look like Cyrillic parentheses, I am lost. I stabbed and the doors stayed open.

  “Hey, thanks,” the well-dressed young man said as he entered the car.

  I stared up at the floor counter as the numbers flicked by. Some elevator rides are interminable. There was something menacing, or just plain wrong, about him, but I couldn’t tell if I was just imagining it.

  We reached the lobby and I held back a sigh of relief, but as the doors opened, the voice behind me said, “Excuse me.” It sounded more like “Skooz me.”

  “Yes?”

  He examined me closely as though memorizing, rather than recalling, my features. “Yuh Jason Staffud, ahn’t yuh?”

  “I am.” I felt like I had been challenged. I waited for him to announce his name.

  “See yuh.” He walked out onto John Street and turned the corner.

  His casual farewell was much too forced. An act, but a good one. Was it menace that I had sensed? Or fear? But why would he fear me? A chance encounter in an elevator? Not worth examining.

  That was a deadly mistake.

  8

  It was time to find out who was trying to buy Becker, and I knew where to start.

  “Richard Hannay’s line.”

  The woman had a voice just like the lady on the BBC World News on PBS. I loved that voice. Still, it wasn’t the response I had expected when I called that number.

  “I’m sorry. Do I have a wrong number? I was looking for Dr. Kimble.”

  Richard Kimble was one in a list of aliases used by a whizbang computer genius who had helped me out in the past. He was in hiding from various branches of the U.S. government, who collectively believed that he had hacked into high-security systems for the purpose of assisting the Taliban. He had been set up, and a lawyer whom I had recommended was busy trying to demonstrate that fact to Homeland Security, the Justice Department, and the NSA. He was a very good lawyer. I knew, because he was also my lawyer. In the meantime, my genius was maintaining a low profile, living on the far edge of civilized society. And using an app on his notepad to disguise his voice.

  “Dr. Kimble is no longer reachable through this number.”

  “This is Jason Stafford calling. Is there someone else there who could help me?”

  “One moment, please. Would you repeat the following phrase for our voice recognition software? ‘It is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend.’”

  I did it without stuttering. The man I had known as Richard Kimble—and other aliases—had become a friend, and had forgiven me for risking his life.

  The BBC news lady said, “Thank you. We have verification. Would you like to speak with Mr. Hannay?”

  The lightbulb went on. The Robert Donat character from Hitchcock’s The 39 Steps.

  “Yes, I would. I would really love to meet with him, if that’s possible.”

  “Is this a secure line?” she asked.

  It was a recently purchased prepaid smartphone. “As clean as can be,” I said.

  “Hang up and stand by for a text.” She was gone.

  My phone gave a little chirp and I opened the message.

  1145A-W4X6

  No tricks. No magic decoder needed. Eleven forty-five a.m.—forty minutes later—at West Fourth and Sixth Avenue. The basketball courts in the Village across from the IFC movie theater. I could buy him lunch at the Minetta Tavern.

  I rode the express train up two extra stops before getting out, crossing over the platform and taking the second downtown train back to the West Fourth Street station. No one was following me. I hadn’t expected to find anyone, but meetings with Richard Kimble, aka Benjamin McKenna, and now aka Richard Hannay, always produced more than a touch of paranoia in me.

  At 11:42, I came up the subway stairs and walked along the fence next to the courts. I was early, but Han
nay would want it that way. He would already be in the area, watching my back and his. When he thought it was safe, he would approach.

  There were two half-court games going on. The downtown game was the more intense. Despite the fact that we were only two weeks into baseball season and the temperature was more like March than mid-April, they were playing shirts versus skins and both teams were sweating.

  “You Jason Stafford?” a young voice said.

  I turned and saw a hard-faced preadolescent in a black hoodie and black jeans that rode so low on his hips I was surprised he could walk. The laceless sneakers that completed his outfit probably cost as much as my suit.

  “Who’s asking?” I said.

  “You Jason Stafford.” It was no longer a question. “Man say you give me twenty bucks if I deliver you a message.”

  “Bullshit,” I said.

  “Saaayy?” he said in an aggressive whine.

  “He said I’d give you ten.”

  He grinned, unashamed, and proud of his attempt to fleece me. “Don’t hurt to try. Looks like you won’t miss it, neither.”

  I grinned back. At least he was an honest pirate. I handed him a ten. “What’s the message?”

  “He say you can buy him a coffee at Caffe Reggio, if you want.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “For another ten, I can take you there.”

  Caffe Reggio was a block away on Macdougal Street. A very short block.

  “I’m tempted to take you up on it, just for the entertainment value,” I said. “But, no thanks. I’ll try and find it on my own.”

  He shrugged elegantly—a well-practiced gesture—turned, and walked away, his legs bent and slightly spread to keep his pants from sliding any farther south.

  I took another look around to see if I could spot Mr. Hannay—or Richard Kimble. The sidewalk held its usual midday cross section of Village denizens. Students and hustlers, housewives and poets, aging gays, and blue-suited businessmen on their way to lunch at Il Mulino or Babbo. If he was one of them, he was well disguised, but then he was always well disguised.

  An espresso at Caffe Reggio is not the same thing as the Black Label burger at the Minetta Tavern, but the space was so small and intimate that it guaranteed privacy. It was also another survivor in a city that seems to remake itself every night. A walk through Greenwich Village was always a shock, finding old haunts that had survived, or poignant reminders of places long gone, like the sign for the Village Gate—once one of the great jazz clubs of the world—which still hangs over the CVS pharmacy that took over the space twenty years ago.

  I took my double espresso to the table farthest from the counter and sat facing the door. The front page of the New York Post looked up at me from a nearby chair. U.S. Attorney Wallace Ashton Blackmore of the Southern District of New York, long rumored to be seeking the nomination for mayor of New York, had made a splash again. “THREE YEARS!” There was a picture of Himself, both fists raised over his head. I flipped to the story inside. Blackmore was “outraged” that too many federal judges were handing out “all-expense-paid vacations” to Wall Street felons, but justice was finally to be done. My friend Matt Tuttle’s three-year sentence was today’s excuse for sounding off. Skeli and I had been there for the sentencing hearing and had seen Matt’s wife collapse as though skewered with a lance.

  I closed the paper and flipped it over so I wouldn’t have to look at it. The back page was only slightly disheartening. The Yankees were already in last place and the season was only two weeks old. I put the paper on the next table and leaned back in the chair. I waited.

  I did not have to wait long. A tall, stooped man with long more-salt-than-pepper hair pulled back into a shoulder-length ponytail came in and went straight to the counter. He was wearing a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and a pair of baggy green corduroys. He looked like a college professor from Central Casting. Maybe the sociology department.

  “Cappuccino,” he said, “and put it on that man’s tab,” indicating me with a quick nod. He had a long Sam Elliott mustache that was completely gray.

  He came over and pulled the other chair around to my side of the table, so that we were both facing the room. Three black-clad German tourists shared a table out on the street, but, other than the staff of two behind the counter, we were the only people inside.

  “I’ve always liked this place,” he said. “It will be a shame when it finally shuts down.”

  “Is it closing?” I said. It had been there for close to ninety years.

  “Well, eventually. Right? This is New York. Nothing lasts forever.”

  “Hmm. Fraunces Tavern,” I said.

  “No fair. That place has burned down, blown up, been rebuilt and remodeled, closed and reopened more times than you can count.”

  “Since 1762. It says so right on the menu.”

  “Marketing.”

  It was dark inside the café, and I could barely see the artifice in the man’s appearance. He was still in his early thirties, but with the hair dye and artificial stoop, he looked closer to fifty.

  “How often do you have to recolor that ’stache?”

  “I carry a touch-up kit in my briefcase.”

  “How’s the shoulder?”

  Four months earlier, he had been shot while helping me on an investigation. It wasn’t a serious wound, but he hadn’t been able to go to a hospital because he was very much on the run.

  “I had it looked at when I was up in Toronto last month. It’s healing.”

  “You were in Canada?”

  “Your lawyer buddy set it up. My wife came up and I got to see the girls for a couple of days.” I’d met his family one day in late February. Well, almost met them. The hacker had been waiting for me at the top of the stairs to the subway station at Seventy-second Street. Before I had time to react to seeing him alive and seemingly recovered from our last meeting, he had deftly handed off a Saks shopping bag and merged with the crowd. I waited until I arrived at Virgil’s offices before opening the bag. Inside were five packs of one-hundred-dollar bills—fifty thousand dollars—and a note telling me how to make the delivery. The next day—a crowded Wednesday matinee day in midtown—I had a pastrami sandwich at Junior’s on Forty-fifth Street. I would rather he had chosen Katz’s or the Second Avenue Deli, but Junior’s was chaotically busy—excellent cover. An attractive woman in her early thirties with two young girls sat at the next table. At one point, the woman asked me for the ketchup. I passed her the mustard. We all left at the same time. As she went by, she took the Saks bag from the empty chair at my table. Inside were seven packs of hundreds. The extra twenty thousand was entirely my idea. I owed her husband that much and more.

  “How are they all holding up?” I asked him.

  He forced a smile—it looked painful. “Great. They’re tough. Like their mother. Everybody is doing well.”

  It was too transparent an attempt to self-deceive for me to comment on. “Isn’t the FBI or somebody watching them all the time?”

  “Twenty-four seven. But the feds weren’t going to touch me in Canada without an okay from the government. They followed us around while we went sightseeing for three days, then the girls went back to Buffalo and I disappeared again.”

  He said it with such a matter-of-fact tone that the story was doubly chilling. I was saved from responding with some idiotic show of sympathy by the arrival of his coffee. He took a sip and dabbed at the long mustache with his napkin.

  “Damn. I love cappuccino, but the foam always gets up in my ’stache.” He patted it with the napkin again and checked for signs that his gray dye was not coming off. Temporarily satisfied, he took another long slurp. “What have you got for me?”

  I’d made an appointment to go and talk with Virgil’s mother, but she couldn’t see me until the following Tuesday. Then I had waded through public record
s of recent buys and sells, focusing on larger block trades. I had run out of options. I needed a fresh perspective—and a bit of behind-the-scenes chicanery.

  “Find me all the buyers of Becker Financial stock. Not just the front men. From what I’ve come up with, they’re all blind offshore accounts. Law offices or private banks. I need to know who or what is pulling the strings.”

  “I may need help with something that big.”

  “Hire whoever you need. Virgil will pay this time. If there is a secretive group trying to buy the bank, he’ll need some ammo to fight back.”

  “How deep should I go?”

  “I doubt you’ll end up with the names of the real money, but get as close as you can. We’ve got nothing right now but a bad smell. I’d like to get back to Virgil with something early next week.”

  “Big job and short timeline. And I imagine he wants me to leave no trace.”

  “Impossible?”

  “No, just expensive. Will he pay in Bitcoins?”

  “He’ll pay in gold-pressed latinum, as long as he gets results.”

  “Why, I had no idea you were a Trekkie.”

  “I’m not. I was a trader. The Ferengi Rules of Acquisition are universal.” I paused. “There’s something else. Just for me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Not a priority, but get me anything you can on a guy named James Nealis. Banker.”

  “A bad guy?”

  “I’m just curious.”

  “Any chance of my getting shot at again?”

  “It’s not that kind of case,” I said with a barely hidden wince.

  “Neither was the first one,” he replied, giving me a grin aimed at my discomfort. “Ah, well, the weak in courage is strong in cunning. I will take excessive care this time around. And, listen, thanks for hooking me up with the lawyer. He’s given me and my family some hope that we might put all this behind us someday.”

  I had been paying the lawyer’s tab, with the general understanding that it was a loan, repayable if and when this fugitive became a free man again, no longer hunted. I wasn’t sure, but I had the feeling that my good friend Larry was low-balling his bills in support of the effort.