by Eric Rill
Two drinks later, having eaten only some soggy pretzels and having told the loudmouth beside her, in no uncertain terms, to cool it, she signed her tab, leaving a generous tip, courtesy of Leo Rigby, and weaved down the corridor toward the elevator. She fumbled with her card key, inserting it with the magnetic strip facing in one direction and then the other—cursing whoever had invented them, making regular hotel keys obsolete. Finally the green light came on and she heard the familiar click. She entered the room. A fruit basket rested on the table with a form letter from the manager, welcoming her. The light in the bedroom was on. The top drawer of the night table was open. Her laptop was gone.
28
Angela had been stuck in Grant’s apartment, afraid to go out. She still hadn’t heard from anyone in the state attorney general’s office. “They’re going to hang you out to dry,” Grant said as he browsed the front page of the Columbus Dispatch. “That’s the only reason I can imagine why they haven’t contacted you.”
“I didn’t exactly leave a forwarding address,” Angela said, putting her coffee mug down between a basket of well-toasted bagels and a fruit bowl. “Do you think I should call over there?”
A loud buzzer sounded. Angela jerked forward.
Grant stood up and rubbed Angela’s shoulder. “I’ll get it,” he said, and then walked down the hallway into the living room. He drew one curtain open a few inches. A man dressed in a dark blue suit stood on the porch. Ordinary folk didn’t dress that way in the Bottoms except maybe on Sunday, and that wasn’t until tomorrow. Grant hesitated for a moment before letting the drapes fall back in place and opening the door.
“I’m looking for Angela Ferraro,” the man said.
“And you are?” Grant asked, not budging from the center of the door frame.
“Clancy Howell. And I take it you’re Nick Grant,” he said.
Grant nodded. “How did you find her?”
“Is she here?” Howell asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll check,” Grant replied.
Howell looked past Grant. “This place doesn’t exactly look big enough to need an intercom to track her down.”
“I said I’d check,” Grant repeated. He pushed the door closed, leaving the man on the stoop, and returned a minute later with Angela behind him.
“How did you know I was here?” she asked.
“This won’t take long,” Howell said, now standing inside the doorway. “I just want to discuss trial strategy.”
“Let’s get it over with,” Angela said, her arms folded over her chest.
“Would you leave us for a few minutes, Mr. Grant?”
“He stays,” Angela said.
Howell leaned back against the wall. “Angela, why didn’t you stay put at the Langham? We had you covered.”
“Is the trial still set for the end of June?” Grant asked.
“Angela, we had a strategy session a few days ago. If it comes out that you’re a police officer, Pascale will know we’re onto them. The state attorney general’s office feels we’ll lose everything we’ve all fought so hard for.”
“What are you saying, Mr. Howell?” Grant asked.
“The AG’s office would like you to go through the trial. Chances are you’ll get acquitted and you can change back to your old name.”
“Are you crazy?” Angela shouted, breaking loose from Grant’s arm. “I agreed to bail because you made it sound easy—and because I was a jerk—but I don’t plan to carry on this charade any longer.”
“You’ll have complete exoneration, Angela. And, of course, a big promotion.”
“You don’t get it, Clancy. I’m not going to be your patsy!”
“Angela,” Howell said sternly. “The request comes directly from the AG.”
“I don’t care if it comes from the president of the United States!”
“I wouldn’t be so—shall we say—final about it,” Howell warned. “This is about more than us. We’re just hired help.”
“Yeah? Well, so is everyone in government—hired by the people—to serve them, not the other way around. Now, I want you to find some way to get me out of this thing.”
“Mr. Howell, I’m sure there must be a way to get this taken care of without causing anyone any embarrassment,” Grant interjected.
“It’s not that easy,” Howell said, his eyes still riveted on Angela. “The AG wants us to launch an investigation into her bank account at Columbus International. Of course, if we can go through with the trial, I’m sure we could get her to close the file.”
“You son of a bitch!” Angela screamed.
“It’s not me, Angela. You know if there was anything I could do…”
Angela turned toward Grant. “Nick, you were right. They’re going to hang me out to dry.”
“And Mr. Grant, the AG has her staff looking into your possible involvement with Angela,” Howell added, watching for a reaction.
Grant grabbed Angela’s arm and stepped in front of her. “You’re way out of line,” he said, raising his voice. “And you’ve just overstayed your welcome.”
“That’s not the response I was hoping for,” Clancy Howell said. “I came here to help.”
“Help who?” Angela shouted. “All you want is to protect your goddamn bureaucratic ass! You can rest assured this is one woman who isn’t going to help you do it. Now, as Mr. Grant requested, get the hell out of here!”
29
Nick Grant looked down from his scaffold on the ninth floor of the south tower at the giant trees beginning to sprout buds out by the ravine. He wiped his brow on his shirt, then turned around and dipped his squeegee into the now-stale water, arcing it across the window in a fluid motion. He reached into the back pocket of his jeans for his chamois and got rid of two streaks in the upper left-hand corner. Then he pressed the yellow button on the control panel. As the steel cage lumbered to his right, toward the center of the building, Grant dug his chest into the steel safety bar and looked down at the cement courtyard. It had been almost a year since he had taken the job—or, as he always thought of it, the therapy. The freedom of being suspended high above the ground with only the birds as occasional company had given him a lot of time to think—and heal. He had been clean for several months, but he knew that was no guarantee for the future. Even though the time he had spent as a window washer had been therapeutic, he felt any more time on the job would be counterproductive. He needed to give real life a try and see if he could cope. He pressed the green button for the last time, and the cage moved slowly back up to the roof.
*
Nick fished his wallet out of his jacket pocket and paid the taxi driver. Other than the long walk through the Bottoms and over the bridge to the Langham, he hadn’t been on the other side of the river since the previous summer. He climbed the stairs to the second floor of the Excelsior Hotel. It was ten after six. Lawrence Grant’s secretary was gone. Her desk was bare except for a stack of files and a jarful of butterscotch candies. Nick scratched the cellophane wrapping off one, popped it in his mouth, and knocked on the open door.
Lawrence Grant looked up from a report he was reading and took off his glasses. “Nick, what are you doing here?” he asked, standing up and slowly walking around his desk. Nick stared at his father’s outstretched hand for a moment, then reached for his shoulders, brought him closer, and hugged him. Grant backed up. “What a wonderful surprise,” he said, his face flushed. “A wonderful surprise,” he repeated. He pointed to two leather chairs in front of his desk. “Let’s sit down over here.”
Nick eked out a thin smile, sat down, and crossed his left leg over his right. “I need a favor,” he began in a subdued voice.
“Have you given any thought to coming back to work? I think that’s what you need to get back on track,” Grant said. “You certainly can’t be happy doing that Mickey Mouse job you have.” Virgil Parks had kept him informed about Nick’s comings and goings on a regular basis. In return, Grant had been tossing a few crumbs Parks’s way, like Oh
io State football tickets and a free room now and then when he had a woman he wanted to be with and didn’t want to trudge all the way out to his apartment.
Nick straightened up in his seat. “Are you offering me a job here in the executive office?”
Lawrence Grant’s facial muscles tightened. He knew he could never give his son a job at the head office, where he would surely discover the inexplicable greed that had made him partners with the Pascale family. “First, you’d have to start with your old job and get the Crown back up to the standard it was in before you left.”
“How bad is it doing?” Nick asked.
Grant reached for a folder on his desk, opened it, pulled out a daily report, and put his glasses back on. He slid his finger down the page. “Occupancy is down to sixty-four percent,” he said, removing his glasses. “That’s more than a ten-point drop.”
Nick smiled. “If I can get it up to eighty, do I get the job over here?”
Grant hesitated for a moment, then offered his hand. “It’s a promise,” he said, knowing it was one he would never keep.
Nick moved off his seat slightly and shook his father’s hand. “You won’t be sorry,” he said, holding on for a few extra seconds.
“You look like you’ve put a couple of pounds back on,” Grant said. “Are you feeling better?”
“Much, much better,” Nick said. “How have you been?”
“What was that favor you wanted?” Grant asked.
Nick took a deep breath and said, “I have a friend who’s in serious trouble. And I know you have connections at the state attorney general’s office.”
“I was one of Millie Landry’s biggest contributors last election,” he said, puffing out his chest. “And I’m hosting a fund-raiser for her down in the ballroom next Friday.”
“Could you arrange an appointment for me?”
“What kind of trouble is your friend in?” Grant asked.
Nick looked down at the Persian rug for a moment and then back up at his father. “I really can’t tell you.”
“This had better not embarrass me, Nick,” Grant said. “I don’t want to burn my bridges.”
30
Salvatore Massimo stood in front of the window in Jonathan Craven’s office, looking at a Henry Moore sculpture beside him. He still didn’t get how the amorphous bronze depicted a mother and daughter, nor could he understand why his uncle had let Craven spend almost a million dollars on it. But Jonathan Craven claimed it added prestige to the bank and impressed many of the clients whom he gouged with excessive fees. And besides, he would remind Massimo, the sculpture had more than doubled in value.
“Sorry, Sal, I was tied up with one of our big fish,” Craven said, closing his office door. “He’s about to give us a fifty-million-dollar discretionary account to trade in the commodities market.”
“What do you know about commodities?” Massimo asked.
“Not a lot. We farm it out to this firm in Chicago and rake off half the commissions. And these guys know how to churn an account,” Craven said, referring to how a broker with a discretionary account can make more trades than necessary in order to pump up commissions. “But you didn’t come down here to talk to me about my customers.…”
“I was actually on my way back up to Cleveland and thought I’d stop by,” Massimo said. “Had some business to do down in Cincinnati.” Massimo had been staking out Nick Grant and the girl when his uncle’s consigliere called. One of his moles inside the Bureau had just called him to let him know that the broad who was working the case was heading down to Cincinnati for a meeting at the Federal Building. He had instructed Massimo to hang around and see what he could find out.
Massimo had been waiting by the parking entrance when Maggie Parks drove her fancy car into the parking structure at eleven o’clock. He had pulled in behind her and followed her up to the third level. He didn’t have to trail her up to the ninth floor. He already knew where the Cincinnati field office was located. Instead, he returned to street level and got a space in the front row of an outdoor lot across the street. He grabbed a couple of burgers and some greasy fries to go from a dump next door and waited in his car. At five-thirty, the nose of Maggie’s Mercedes poked through the exit across the street. Massimo dropped his Kindle on the passenger seat, revved up the engine of his Chrysler 300, and fell in behind her as she zigzagged through the traffic toward I-75. He followed her as she pulled her Mercedes sharply to the right and barreled down the Sharon Road exit to a nearby hotel.
Massimo had waited in the parking lot, watching through the large glass window while she checked in. Then he parked his car behind the hotel, went into the restaurant through a side entrance, and grabbed a table by the open door. He watched as she returned to the lobby and went into the lounge. He dropped a five-dollar bill on the table for his coffee and went out to the front desk. “I’m looking for a colleague—Maggie Parks,” he said to the young girl behind the front desk.
“Yes, sir,” the girl said, looking up from her computer screen. “She checked in about half an hour ago.”
“Could you tell me what room she’s in?”
“We can’t do that, sir—for security reasons,” the girl explained. “But you can call her room. The house phone is over there beside the door to the restaurant.”
“I just called. The line’s busy,” Massimo said. “This is FBI business.”
“May I see some ID, sir?” the girl asked, her face flushed.
“It’s in my car—in my briefcase,” he said, impatiently. “I’ll just go up for a minute and have her call down and tell you it’s okay. If you don’t hear from her in five minutes, then you can call the local police,” he quipped, a smile replacing his stern look.
The girl hesitated as she scrolled down her screen. “I don’t know…”
“Look. This is important,” he said in a controlled but firm tone.
“Room 312,” she blurted out, still unsure if she should have told him.
“Thanks,” Massimo said, heading toward the elevators. “I’ll be down in a couple of minutes.”
The Do Not Disturb sign was hanging on Maggie’s door. Massimo flipped it over to Please Make Up This Room. Then he walked toward a maid’s cart farther down the corridor. A heavyset woman in a too-tight black uniform was doing the evening turn-down service in another room. Massimo knocked on the open door. “Excuse me, I left my key in my room,” he explained. “Could you let me in?”
“Not supposed to, ya know.”
“I know, and I wouldn’t ask,” he said, looking down at his watch. “But I have a friend waiting outside to take me down to see my sister in the hospital, and visiting hours are almost over.”
The maid looked up at Massimo, his kind green eyes, pleasant smile, and paper-thin arms dangling from his bowed shoulders. “Yeah, okay,” she said, squeezing herself in front of him. “Just make sure you don’t tell no one. I don’t want to lose my job—too many mouths to feed, and a lousy drunk of a husband.”
Massimo reached into his pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. “Thanks for your help,” he said as he slipped the bill into her pudgy hand.
The woman opened the door for him and then disappeared down the hall. Massimo surveyed the suite. He had seen Maggie come in with a briefcase and a laptop, but she had been carrying only the briefcase when she returned to the lobby. Less than a minute later, he struck pay dirt. He grabbed the laptop from the drawer of the night table and headed toward the service stairs to the ground floor.
“What kind of business could you have in Cincinnati?” Craven asked, interrupting Massimo’s thoughts.
Massimo explained what had happened over the last few days.
“Anything interesting on her hard drive?” Craven asked.
“Jonathan, we have a stoolie somewhere.”
“Who?” Craven asked, the blood draining from his face.
“Don’t know, but they seem to know everything about your dealings with the hotels,” he said, studying his c
ollege roommate. “There was a file called Operation Deep Sleep. Four names kept coming up—yours, Castellano’s, Lawrence Grant’s and Bernard Levin’s.”
“Jesus Christ! You think it could have been Castellano?” Craven asked.
“Unlikely. Why would he play along with them?” Massimo stayed silent for a moment. “It wasn’t you, was it, Jonathan?” he asked, his eyes fixed on Craven.
“Sal! I can’t believe you even asked me that. Of course it wasn’t me!”
“Didn’t think so, but I had to ask,” Massimo said. “I spoke to my uncle. We both figure it’s probably Grant. The feds might have been on to him and forced him into a deal to save his skin.”
“That son of a bitch!” Craven said, taking a deep breath. “What are we going to do?”
“It’s your problem, Jonathan. You’re going to have to handle it.”
“Me? I’m a banker, not a…”
“Not a what? Not a goon like us?”
“That’s not what I meant, Sal. It’s just that…I mean I never did anything like that before.”
“Always a first time. And the first time has to be by the end of the week,” Massimo said. “Otherwise, my uncle told me to inform you he may have to find another president for the bank. Sorry, Jonathan. There was nothing I could do.”
Craven knew the not-so-veiled threat meant that either Grant or he would be dead by Friday.
*
Lawrence Grant sat across the laminate table from Maggie Parks. “They haven’t contacted me since Castellano died—until yesterday.” Maggie had stood Grant up at their breakfast meeting the morning after her laptop had been stolen and had rescheduled for the following week, but the night before at nine-thirty, Grant had called her and insisted he had to see her right away. He shoved the last piece of burned toast into his mouth. “Craven wants to see me.”
“Good. Maybe they’re going to start cleaning again,” she said.
