“But I lost my entire savings,” she heard herself saying in her imaginary courtroom testimony. “I’m a victim as much as anyone.”
Her imaginary attorney rolled his eyes; the imaginary prosecutor thundered. “So you would have us believe, Ms. Usher. But where, Ms. Usher, are the millions you have hidden away, the millions you were paid for filing false reports with the SEC and the IRS and for helping Mr. Larrimer steal nearly three billion, THREE BILLION dollars?”
Her imaginary attorney was on his feet. “I withdraw the question,” said the prosecutor quickly. But the damage had been done.
* * *
Lorraine Usher would have given anything to stop all those letters from going to all those clients. But some had already been received and opened and read. Those to more distant addresses were still arriving or would arrive soon. Pauline’s letter arrived six weeks after it had been mailed. It was addressed to Jean-Baptiste and had been sent to him while he was still alive but had arrived after he was dead. The envelope had been addressed by hand, and so the police assumed it was a personal letter and forwarded it to Pauline, who was listed in their records as Jean-Baptiste’s next of kin.
“What kind of letter is it?” said Louis, trying not to appear too interested.
“It’s a peculiar letter,” she said. She read it to him.
“May I see it?” He read through the letter. “Do you know anything else about this person?” he asked.
“Nothing,” said Pauline. “It’s strange, isn’t it?”
“A little.”
Louis looked up Lorraine Usher and found her listed among Larrimer’s victims.
“Why would she write such a letter?” said Pauline.
“I don’t know,” said Louis.
“Maybe she was an accomplice and she’s trying to cover her tracks.”
“Maybe,” said Louis. “She seems like an obvious suspect. But she seems a little too obvious to me.” He thought for a moment. “According to reports, she lost one hundred fifty thousand dollars. But the minimum you needed to invest with Larrimer was two hundred thousand. So he made an exception for her. Which he probably wouldn’t have done if she were an accomplice. You see? It makes her name stand out. Maybe she’s angry and desperate, and now she’s in trouble. Writing this letter was a big mistake.”
“Why?”
“Well, you thought she might be an accomplice.”
“That’s just me,” said Pauline.
“No. It’s a reasonable conclusion. I’d bet that’s how the SEC will see it. And others too.” Louis didn’t elaborate on who the others might be. “They’ll think, she worked in his office for who knows how long. She must have known something.”
“Unless?”
“Well, unless she didn’t. Smart people can see wrongdoing and not recognize it. If they’re not criminals, they’re not looking for criminal behavior. She trusted this guy, maybe even admired him. He probably paid her a nice salary, bought her flowers on Secretary’s Day, gave her a Christmas bonus. He made an exception so she could invest in his business, which she must have seen as a favor.
“She sat in this guy’s front office every day. She took his phone calls, made his appointments, met his clients, typed up his correspondence, his reports. Whether she knew what he was up to or not is almost irrelevant. She knew the circumstances of his life. She knew him.”
“Do you think I should write her back?”
He paused and thought. “No,” he said finally.
“Why not?”
“Well, you know I’m going to visit Jennifer and Michael in Washington.”
“Yes.…”
“I think maybe I’ll stop in and see Lorraine Usher on the way.”
XVIII
LOUIS DID NOT ELABORATE on who else besides the SEC might think that Lorraine had been St. John’s accomplice. He didn’t want to alarm Pauline, but he was certain that among the many innocent people who had had their money stolen, there were a good many villains as well. Louis had noticed on the Web site, for instance, that the EisenerBank had lost all its money to Larrimer, and since the bank was in Zurich, it seemed likely that many of Eisener’s clients had a serious interest in hiding their money, and an equally serious interest in getting it back when it went missing. They were probably not engaged in the sort of business that allowed them to write off their losses.
Lorraine Usher’s doorbell rang at eight-thirty one Sunday morning. She looked through the curtain and saw a man, sixty-five or seventy maybe, not tall but trim, with unruly white hair drifting above his head. He stood with his back to her, looking out at the street. When he turned to face the door, it was as though his blue eyes locked on hers, even though there was no way that he could see her watching from behind the curtain. She let him knock again before she opened the door.
“Yes?” she said. She left the storm door latched. And her right hand rested on the baseball bat she always kept leaning against the wall just out of sight.
“I’m Louis Morgon,” said the man, “and I’ve come to speak to Lorraine Usher.”
“What’s it about?” she said, not admitting that she was Lorraine Usher.
“I got one of the letters Miss Usher wrote about Larrimer, that is, my friend Pauline Vasiltschenko did. It was sent to her brother, Jean-Baptiste Vasiltschenko, who—”
Lorraine opened the door. “Oh, God,” she said. “That poor man. Please come in, Mr. Morgon. Please.” She held the door and Louis stepped inside. “I’m so sorry about his death. I met him once—Mr. Vasiltschenko. He seemed like a lovely person.”
“Yes,” said Louis. “He was.”
“Did his sister lose her money?”
“Some,” said Louis.
“Is she all right?”
“She misses her brother.”
“How awful.” Lorraine wiped tears from her cheeks. “Did you lose money?” she asked with trepidation in her voice.
“An insignificant amount,” said Louis.
“Insignificant?” said Lorraine.
“A small amount. I don’t care about the money.”
“No?”
“But I do care about Larrimer and his criminal behavior. What he did to people, to Jean-Baptiste and Pauline Vasiltschenko. Did you lose money, Miss Usher?”
She paused a moment. “I must tell you, Mr. Morgon, my attorney has instructed me to direct anyone who contacts me to the SEC. I have no intention of interfering with the SEC’s investigation, and to the extent that I have done so, I am sorry. I regret having sent those letters; it was a mistake to do so.”
“I agree with your attorney. I think it was a mistake to send those letters. To be honest, I’m not at all interested in the SEC’s investigation. I don’t think it will amount to much of anything. They will be looking for scapegoats. And you, I imagine, will be high on their list of candidates.”
Lorraine stiffened. She was about to ask Louis to leave when a large orange cat emerged from behind the living room couch and planted himself between them. The cat, Arthur, stared at Louis with his glittering green eyes as though taking his measure. Louis watched for a moment, then stooped and patted his own leg. Arthur walked over and rubbed against him.
“Well,” said Lorraine, as if Arthur had changed her mind for her. She sat back down. “What is it you wish to speak to me about?” She gestured toward the couch. Louis sat down, and Arthur jumped up beside him and stepped onto his lap.
“I am not with any agency—official or otherwise,” Louis said. “I am here completely on my own initiative. Half-cocked initiative, my friends would say. Have said,” he corrected himself and smiled. “But I’ve been thinking how nice it would be to find St. John Larrimer and turn him over to the law. I don’t intend to exact any sort of revenge. I only want to—how should I say this?—‘guide’ him into the hands of the law and then to … compel the law to deal with him.”
Lorraine looked at Louis with astonishment. “Guide him?”
Louis stroked Arthur; Arthur closed his eyes an
d purred.
“You intend to do this by yourself?”
“I can’t possibly do it by myself.”
“No, I wouldn’t think so.”
“And I have to confess, I have no idea how it might be done.”
“I see,” said Lorraine, not seeing at all.
“That’s one reason I’ve come to see you,” said Louis.
Lorraine’s eyes grew wide. Louis expected her to bring up her lawyer again. Backing away from the affair entirely was the most prudent course of action and what anyone—lawyer or friend—would have advised her to do. What she said, though, was “would you like some coffee or tea?”
“A cup of tea would be very nice,” said Louis.
Lorraine went to the kitchen and returned a few minutes later with a pot of tea and some scones and jam on a tray. She had used the time to think over what Louis had said so far. “How do you mean to find Mr. Larrimer?” she said as she poured the tea.
“Well, as I said, I don’t know yet,” said Louis, “although I suspect finding him will be easier than getting close to him. Or his loot.”
“And why are you doing this?”
“Well, I don’t think the SEC will—”
“No, no,” she said. “No. You already said that. Why are you thinking of doing it? Why you.”
“The answer is long and complicated and probably boring,” said Louis.
“Then what’s the short answer?”
Louis gave her a sharp look. “Pursuing crooks is sort of a hobby of mine,” he said. He wanted to put a stop to her questions.
Lorraine did not look away as he expected she would. She met his eyes and held them. Lorraine Usher had just been betrayed by St. John Larrimer, to whom she had devoted the better part of her professional life. She was alone and without employment prospects or any other prospects she could think of. She was in trouble with the FBI and the SEC, to a sufficient extent that she had had to ask her brother-in-law, Bruno, a tax analyst and attorney in the New York City housing authority, to act as her lawyer until she could get out of this mess.
“As it happens, I’m looking for a hobby,” she said.
“I beg your pardon?” said Louis.
“I’m … looking … for … a … hobby.” She spoke the words as though she were speaking to a foreigner. She did not smile.
XIX
LORRAINE TOLD LOUIS EVERYTHING SHE knew about Larrimer, Ltd.’s operations. That the FBI had taken her notes seemed to make little difference; most of the crucial information was in her head. She told him about Jeremy Gutentag, who had run the trading room and who seemed to have vanished from the face of the earth.
“Did he, this Gutentag, know what Larrimer was up to?”
“I don’t see how he could not have known. He oversaw all the trading.”
“That doesn’t necessarily mean anything. But what can you tell me about him?”
“He grew up in England, but he looked to be Indian or something. A nice-looking boy. Very polite and very well-spoken. Smart. But he kept to himself. He came from London. He was thirty years old. He went to Oxford University and the London School of Economics. This was his first job.”
“How long had he been working for Larrimer?”
“Six years.”
“Was he well paid?”
“He was very well paid.”
“But his name is not on the list. He didn’t invest with Larrimer?”
“No,” said Lorraine. She frowned as though realizing the implication for the first time.
“Where did he live?”
“His address was the Carlton Plaza Hotel.”
“For six years?”
“I always wondered about that. I asked him more than once whether he didn’t want to get an apartment. ‘No,’ he said. ‘There’s no need.’ He seemed to me to be someone whose life was mainly lived somewhere else.”
“Somewhere else?”
“Well, he didn’t seem to have much of a life in New York. He was either at the office or at the Carlton Plaza.”
“Do you think that somewhere else may have been London?” said Louis.
Lorraine guessed it was, but she didn’t know. “He was from London, but I don’t think he had any family left. I don’t think he went there in the six years he was here. Even though he had been here for six years, it was always like he had just arrived. And like he was just about to leave. But I don’t know for where.
“Maybe living in a hotel just suited him. I once had to pick up some papers there. He was surprised when I showed up at his door. He had me wait in the hall while he got the papers. ‘The next time, Miss Usher, call first and I’ll meet you in the lobby,’ he said. He was polite, but firm about that.”
Lorraine told Louis what she knew about the rest of the trading room staff, but that wasn’t much. They were mostly young business school graduates. They had mostly kept to themselves. And now they had all retained lawyers and gone into deep seclusion.
She was still able to recite most of the client list from Aaron to Zylinski. Louis stopped her when she mentioned names he knew from reading the accounts—individuals or corporate names. He was particularly interested in banks and other financial institutions. Of course in most cases she did not remember many specifics. But some accounts revealed peculiarities about Larrimer’s transactions, and she offered those peculiarities to Louis to the best of her recollection.
She knew now that there was evidence in the files of accounting inconsistencies including the backdating of trades. Larrimer was not actually buying or selling securities, so by dating his buys and sales to his advantage, he “documented” his exceptional returns. His trades had been verified as legitimate by his accountants, Robert Feather and Sons in Greenwich, Connecticut. Larrimer had explained away the backdating to Lorraine as a result of his having neglected to enter the purchase or sale when it was actually completed. Lorraine had had no reason to doubt any of it, until now. She gave Louis the accountant’s contact information.
She also gave him Larrimer’s social security number, credit card account numbers, and whatever she knew about the banks through which Larrimer had conducted his business transactions. “I suppose Mr. Larrimer will have moved the money somewhere else.”
“He will,” said Louis. “Even the offshore banks will have changed. But the old banks and especially those he owes money—mortgages, loans—could be useful. You never know.”
Lorraine also had the addresses of St. John’s various properties around the world. She had a good idea, she thought, which one he would probably prefer as a hideout. “Les Saintes … Terre-de-Haut,” she said.
“Where is that?”
“Guadeloupe,” she said. “He loves it there.”
St. John’s whereabouts did not seem to concern Louis. “Not yet,” he explained. “Eventually. But not yet.”
“But won’t he get away if you don’t get him soon?”
“It’s unlikely,” said Louis. “He’s lived grandly for a long time, hasn’t he? That’s not an easy habit to break. Plus he’s got no experience at hiding. Anyway, we’re not going to ‘get’ him. Someone else will have to do that.”
Lorraine was a fount of information. Louis had already filled one yellow pad with notes and was starting on the second. He could decide later what was of value and what wasn’t. It was possible that she was deliberately misleading him, that she was still on Larrimer’s payroll, still running interference for him, but Louis doubted it.
“Tell me about Larrimer himself,” he said.
“What about him?”
“His life—friends, family, whatever comes to mind.”
“Well, he never talked with me about his personal life or included me in it. I met his children a few times and only saw his wife a couple of times. In all the years I worked for him, he never invited me for lunch or for anything else. Never. He said, when he hired me, and then more than once after that, that it was better that we keep our relationship strictly business. Now I see why. Still, th
ere was stuff you couldn’t help knowing. He was not punctual; he was unpredictable and undependable. He wasn’t always where he said he’d be.”
His wife, Carolyne, had apparently had a similar experience. After they had been married a few years, she discovered St. John had been having an affair with a wealthy client in Los Angeles. Carolyne had thought he was on a business trip when, she learned by accident, thanks to an errant phone call, that he had in fact been holed up in the client’s Beverly Hills mansion. After that St. John moved to the Park Avenue apartment. Seven-forty Park Avenue, where all the big shots live. Carolyne took the two boys and moved to Greenwich. St. John paid her a huge settlement along with alimony and child support.
“Was the divorce nasty?” Louis said.
“It wasn’t. She said what she wanted, and he paid.”
Carolyne bought a real estate business. As far as Lorraine knew, St. John and Carolyne had little to do with each other after the divorce.
“Maybe,” said Louis.
“But he stole her money.”
“Yes, maybe. But he also gave her plenty. You never know,” said Louis. “It might be useful to both of them to have her on that list of victims. And what about the lover? Is she on the list?”
“I never heard her name, but I think she must be. There were a few clients from Beverly Hills. One of them, Mona Liebling, may be the lover.”
Louis studied Lorraine’s face. “I have to ask you an indelicate question. I hope you will forgive me. Were you in love with St. John Larrimer?”
She did not hesitate. “At one time I think I was. When I first started working for him, the business was exciting and there was something exciting about the travel and meetings, the fancy office suite. But then I realized one day, it wasn’t romantic at all, and he seemed small and boring.”
“Small?”
“In spirit,” she said. “He did not seem to care about others. Except for his boys. He loved those two boys, at least when they were little. But everyone else…? I don’t think he loved anyone. He drank a lot. He didn’t have much of an imagination.”
The Capitalist Page 7
