by Andrew Gross
Hauck nodded. “Six years.”
“And why did you leave?”
The last thing Hauck wanted to do was to take him through his personal history, certainly that particular history, wrapped up in Norah’s tragic death and 9/11. He tried to steer things back to the case. “I was transferred to the NYPD’s Office of Information—”
“Under Marty Rouse, I think,” Foley said.
Hauck looked at Foley. So he knew. Rouse had been police chief then. “Yes, under Chief Rouse.”
A waiter handed out menus and took them through the specials. When he gave them a moment to think, Hauck put down the menu and leaned forward. “Look, Mr. Foley, I don’t mean any disrespect. You said you were familiar with my case and had something urgent that would be of interest to me…”
“Very urgent.” Foley leaned forward. “And quite worth your while. However, not directly related to the case.”
“So why are we here?”
Foley smiled. He adjusted his wire-rim glasses on the bridge of his nose and clasped his hands. “Because the Talon Group has had its eye on you for some time, Lieutenant. And if you can find something you like here, I’m about to offer you a pretty lucrative job.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Maybe I’ll have that beer after all…”
Hauck’s head spun all the way back to the office later that afternoon. More like he’d downed a couple of killer martinis, not just the two beers he’d allowed himself.
The rest of that day, he did his best to focus on work. Munoz was having trouble contacting Raines, but what pissed off Hauck even more, the story of Sanger’s gambling had somehow been picked up by the local press. He’d promised Wendy Sanger he’d try to keep a lid on that.
He’d failed.
Still, Hauck’s mind kept finding its way back to the meeting he’d had with Foley. It had been a long time since Hauck had thought about changing his life. It had a seductive appeal. He felt distracted all day, both intrigued and agitated.
He thought about who he might possibly tell.
Only one person came to mind.
During a lull, he closed his door and punched in Warren’s number.
“Twice in two days!” his brother answered, surprised. “People will start to talk! Listen, I’m fine, Ty, if that’s why you’re calling. Really, I am.”
“Warren, something’s come up.” Hauck pivoted quickly. “It’s important. I took a look around my life for who I could talk it over with. Yours was the only name that came up. Pretty pathetic, huh?”
“I’ll have to find a way to see that as a compliment.”
“I could drive up. I free up around six.”
“Here? Not a chance. If you promise not to bounce me off of the pavement again, put a steak on, and grab the beers, I’ll shoot by.”
“Yeah. Shoot by.”
Hauck had just gotten home when Warren knocked on the door.
“Truce?” he asked, putting up his palms in a defensive position.
“Truce,” Hauck agreed, and they bumped elbows like when they were teenagers after playing one-on-one or tussling on the floor.
Warren stepped in and took a familiar look around. “Feels just like home…”
“Ought to.” Hauck pointed. “Your ashes are still in the bottle cap over there.”
“It was you, wasn’t it, who said not to bother tidying up?”
Hauck tossed him a can of Heineken Light. “Beers first. The steak comes later.”
Warren threw himself in the chair next to the fireplace and stretched his legs on the old wooden trunk Hauck used for a coffee table. He loosened his tie and popped the tab. “Shoot.”
“I had a meeting today. Some honcho from a large security firm invited me to lunch. The Talon Group…”
“Everyone knows Talon.” Warren nodded, impressed.
“I thought the guy had some information on my case, which is the only reason I met with him. But that wasn’t what he had in mind.”
“And what was that?” his brother asked, taking a long swig of beer.
“He offered me a job.”
Warren sat up, surprised, bringing his legs in from the table. “Go on…”
“They want to open an office up here in Greenwich. I guess a lot of their corporate clients are based in town. They’re looking for someone local to handle the investigative side.”
Warren nodded judiciously. “So just how much are they offering?”
Hauck met his gaze. “Two hundred and fifty grand.”
“Whoa!”
“That’s only half of it, Warren…A bonus plan based on performance. A car. They’re even talking about the damn thing going public one day…I make a hundred and fifteen thousand dollars a year here. Even if I make chief one day—that’s, what, one seventy-five, two at the most?”
“If I recall, you’re the one who’s always talking about sleeping through the night, Ty.” He shot Hauck a cynical smile.
“I know, I know…But I’m forty-three years old. Maybe it’s time for me to take a risk like this. It’s like a new page.”
Warren tilted his beer, focused on the gleam in Hauck’s eye. “You’d have to wear a suit, you know.”
Hauck grinned. “I could wear a suit. I could wear a Big Bird suit for that kind of money.”
“So how’d you leave it with him?”
“I said I needed a little time. A week, ten days. It all came at me pretty quick. I said I was in the middle of a murder case.”
“To which he replied…?”
“To which he replied he understood, but that they had to get rolling on this pretty quickly.”
Warren bunched his lips, assenting. He put down his beer. “Want an opinion on this?”
Hauck shrugged. “I figure there’s got to be some reason I asked you here.”
“Look, I don’t know this guy Foley from Adam,” Warren said, “but Talon’s big. They’re all over the globe. Opportunities like this don’t come along every day. I guess what I’m thinking is, maybe someone else can tie up your murder case.”
“I gave my word to people.”
“This is the real world, Ty. People give their word all the time.”
“I guess I just don’t bag out on things so easily.”
“It’s not bagging out.” Warren pulled his chair closer. “It’s exactly the opposite, Ty. It’s taking a chance to grab something for yourself. This is a chance to change your life. You’re a capable guy. You deserve this. You’ve got people there, Ty. For once, why not let them see it through?”
Just for a second, Hauck let his mind drift to the thought of a fancy office, buying things he could not afford. A nicer boat. An upgrade on the Explorer. Helping out in a much bigger way with Jessie’s college fund. Years back, he’d thought of himself as one of the luckiest men he knew. He had a rising job with the NYPD, was married to a gal he loved, had two young daughters. His belief in the arc of his life had been unshakable. Did he miss that feeling? That sensation of confidence?
The answer was yes, he realized. He missed it to the core.
“I don’t know. I’ll have to think about it. We’ll see.”
“Do it, bro.” There was a gleam in Warren’s blue eyes. “Look at your face. You’re alive. Like years ago, Ty, before…” Warren didn’t complete the thought but leaned forward and tapped Hauck’s knee. “For once, you don’t have to play the knight, Ty. I know a thirteen-year-old gal who you would make awfully proud of her dad if you did this.”
“Listen,” Hauck said, “this has to stay entirely between us, Warren. You understand that? Okay?”
“Course it stays between us, Ty.” He laughed and went to take a swig of beer. “Now, can we celebrate with a meal?”
Hauck caught his arm, a warning in his stern gaze. “I mean it, Warren. Not to Ginny. Not to your golf buddies at the club. Not even to Jessie. Understood? I’ll think it over, but I need to trust you on this, Warren. Are we clear?”
“Clear?” Warren leaned back and looked
at Hauck, draining the last of his beer. “Clear as a golf ball on grass, little brother.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
That same night, a black Lincoln pulled up to the stone-pillared gates of the large estate in Greenwich. The darkened window of the car rolled down and the man behind the wheel, who was actually the passenger’s most trusted aide, leaned out and spoke into the security speaker. “Senator Casey.”
“I was told to have you drive up to the office,” the Filipino house servant said.
The “office” was a sleek stone and glass structure connected by an underground walkway to the large main house. The estate was situated on the point in Belle Haven, a promontory jutting into the sound where even the modest homes went for four to five million. And this was anything but. It had a helicopter pad, a dock that could moor a hundred-foot boat, a par-3 golf hole patterned after the famous sixteenth at Augusta. It even boasted a spectacular view of the Throgs Neck Bridge and the Manhattan skyline. It was the kind of place that anyone on the adjacent shore or passing by on the water might stare at in awe, wondering, Who lives there?
Senator Oren Casey had been here many times. For parties attended by some of the most influential people on Wall Street. Fund-raising galas at a thousand dollars a head. Or just for “business.” The senator was one of the most influential people in the statehouse. When someone needed something done—bills brought up in committee, licenses granted—things generally ran through him. Over the years, he had been courted many times by Washington to run for higher office. “An honest man can feel no pleasure in the exercise of power over his fellow citizens,” he always said, quoting Jefferson.
But privately, for thirty years, in his heart he laughed at the lie.
The Lincoln wound down the long drive leading to the house and came to a stop in the circular roundabout. The senator didn’t wait for his door to be opened. He wasn’t a fancy man and that wasn’t his aide’s job anyway. He bundled his overcoat against the breeze and waved through the glass to the old man who stood in the doorway.
Richard Scayne waved back.
They had known each other for decades; their fortunes had merged as their empires grew. The son of a Waterbury mill owner, Scayne had always been a bear of a man with round, thick shoulders and coarse laborer’s hands. Piercing blue eyes that could read a man like an X-ray.
Over the years, the senator had smoothed the way for many lucrative arrangements for him, always, at first blush, to the benefit of the state. Securing the way for Datacorp, Scayne’s “back office” data division, to buy their corporate headquarters in Stamford. Tax credits for relocating a large block of workers for their turbine factory up in Waterbury. Scayne even had a minority position in TRV, the consortium that ran the Pequot Woods, and retained a small but lucrative piece of the casino.
Casey thought it a shame to see what was happening to him now.
Not just the cancer, which had eaten away the man’s once-powerful presence. But the fact that he was under indictment by the state’s liberal attorney general. Caught up in this Iraq corruption mess. Under house arrest. A man who had brought more jobs to Connecticut than all the casinos strung together. His turbine plant in New London alone employed over fifteen hundred people.
The door opened and the two longtime friends embraced. Casey said to Scayne, “You know Ira.”
“Of course.” The billionaire nodded, extending his hand. “Ira.”
Scayne’s face was now gaunt, no longer robust and jowly. His formerly orange hair was white and sparse, his shoulders narrow. His usual machinist’s grip was half its normal strength. He’d fought the cancer like he’d fought every battle in life, to win—not just to win, to mow it down. To stampede over interference. This time, it didn’t seem as if God had gotten the memo.
The aide in the tweed golf cap nodded dutifully. “Mr. Scayne.”
“We’ll just be a minute, Ira,” Casey said, indicating for him to remain outside.
The two men went into Scayne’s office, a two-story glass and beam structure that looked out on the Long Island Sound. Casey couldn’t help but notice the black tracking donut secured to the old man’s ankle.
“Helluva risk coming here like this, Oren,” Scayne acknowledged. He glanced down at the donut. For the past year, Scayne had been under house arrest. “Of course, there’s not much chance anymore of me coming to you.”
“Don’t worry about it, Richard.”
Casey plopped himself on the large leather couch, Scayne in a chair across from him, exhaling as he lowered himself down. “Don’t ever get ill, Oren. God’s way of paying me back for all my sins.”
“In that case, I can look forward to an equally uncomfortable demise.” The senator smiled.
“Two peas in a pod?” He lifted his leg, the donut dangling. “Where the hell do they think I can go anyway? I can barely make it to the fucking toilet to take a pee.”
He reached forward to the large Noguchi coffee table and picked up a couple of brochures. Casey saw that they were the annual reports of companies Scayne either owned or had interests in. Datacorp. Apex Turbine. The NHL’s Nashville team. One by one, he tossed them back on the table.
The last was a product brochure from SRC Electric, which he made a point of tossing in front of Casey’s eyes. “Suppliers of the Nova 91.”
“Who would have thought a bunch of goddamn generators could bring the two of us down?”
“We’re not down yet.” Casey met the sick man’s eyes. “I’m looking into the assignment of a new lawyer. They may appoint a new head of the office up in Hartford. Not such a rabble-rouser. One more sensitive to the good you’ve done for the state. I’m busting as many balls as I can. In the meantime, there is one pesky wrinkle that’s come up.”
“Wrinkle…”
“Not to worry, Richard. You’ve got more pressing things to occupy yourself with.”
“Just as long as we understand each other, Oren…I won’t be spending the last time God gives me on this earth in a courtroom watching a bunch of meddling legislators undo everything I’ve done. I’ll use what I have, Oren, whoever I have to bring down. No reason for us not to be seeing things clearly between us now.”
The senator smiled. “You make it very hard not to root for the cancer to get you first, Richard.”
“I tend to think of it as motivation, Oren. I won’t be participating in any trial.”
Casey stood up. He took along the SRC brochure. “I think that’s all I came to hear. From your lips. No reason to take up any more of your time.”
“You mentioned a wrinkle…”
“I’m taking care of it. Some pesky local policeman. Sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong.” He waved it off. “Thinks it’s all about some gambling issue. At the Pequot Woods. We’ve got it covered.”
Scayne pushed himself out of the chair too. “You, if anyone, know how to handle that sort of thing.”
The senator took a last view of the sound and moved toward the door. “I truly wish you the best, Richard. We’ve logged a lot of miles together over the years. It would be a shame to see it all undone at the end…”
Scayne took his arm. “Just remember—if I go, you go, Oren. I’m sorry to say that, but at this stage, that’s the best guarantee I have. So go do what you do best—put the pressure on. Bust some balls. Just so you know that in the end, I won’t be party to any trial.”
They walked to the door and opened it; the man in the tweed cap stood up.
“Thanks for driving him down, Ira…I think we said all we had to say.”
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
The next morning, Freddy Munoz leaned against the table across from Hauck’s desk. He had finally made contact with Raines, pressed the security man for a copy of the video he had shown Hauck implicating Sanger.
“And…?” Hauck pushed back skeptically in his chair.
“He actually said, ‘What tapes, Detective? I don’t recall showing the lieutenant any specific tapes.’ Smug piece of shit! He said, ‘W
e have a virtual mountain of security footage here. You’re welcome to come and look through…’ I don’t like that guy, Lieutenant.”
“You’ve always been a pretty fair judge of character,” Hauck said.
“He did mention something else,” Munoz said. “He asked if you liked the postcards he sent you. He said that those he could get you copies of any time you liked. You have any idea what he’s referring to, LT…?”
Hauck’s blood had already started to burn. Now it was bubbling over into a full-blown simmer. “I know. Listen, I want you to find someone for me, Freddy. There’s a card dealer up there. Around fifty, maybe a little older. Thick glasses, salt-and-pepper hair. He was the one with Sanger. Start with Personnel…”
CHAPTER SIXTY-TWO
Annie Fletcher was at the computer. It was after eleven and she’d taken a shower to wash off the grime of the kitchen, applied a layer of lotion to her legs and hands, poured herself a glass of wine. This was the first moment she had had all day.
She was typing out an e-mail to her son.
CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE
Freddy located the dealer. He came into Hauck’s office carrying a faxed file.
His name was Paul Pacello. He had worked for the Pequot Woods since it first opened. Most of the staff was local—a key part of the casino’s original agreement with the state. But Pacello was a career croupier. He’d had stints in Tahoe and on the Gulf Coast. Twenty-eight years behind the tables.
Just a month ago, he had put in his notice and retired.
How had Raines phrased it when Hauck had asked about the dealer? We dealt with that situation privately.
Freddy placed a grainy faxed likeness in front of Hauck, who nodded without hesitation. “That’s him.”
The man in the video dealing to Sanger, using the false shuffle. Kramer’s supposed accomplice in the scam.
“Where do we find the guy, Freddy?”
