by Andrew Gross
Afterward, Ginny’s sister held a reception for everyone up in New Canaan, where Hauck saw his father step into the bathroom, put his hand over his face, and sob.
Two days later, Hauck received a call he didn’t expect.
From a woman who identified herself as the personal assistant to Richard Scayne.
“I know you’re mourning the death of your brother, Lieutenant—but Mr. Scayne is hoping you might be able to come by the house. Today.”
The house, as she called it, was situated on a promontory jutting into the sound off Glenhaven Point. Hauck gave his name at a security gate and was told to drive up an expansive circular driveway to the main house. It was glass and brick, modern. Sort of in the style of Frank Lloyd Wright.
Probably was Frank Lloyd Wright.
A similarly designed structure was connected to it off the circle. A middle-aged woman wrapped in her coat met him on the front steps.
“I’m Helen Dryer, Lieutenant.” She held out her hand. “Thank you for coming. Mr. Scayne asked me to bring you into the main house.”
Hauck followed her up the stairs. “As you may know,” she said, “Mr. Scayne has been in ill health. He may no longer resemble any of the public images you have seen of him.”
Hauck nodded. “I understand.”
“It’s very unusual that he asked to see you. He’s not met with anyone other than his closest advisers in several weeks. I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to have one of the staff do a security check. Mr. Scayne is quite particular about that…”
A man in a suit politely ran an electronic wand over him. He passed the test. Then she walked him into an expansive glass-walled living room with sleek modern chairs and what Hauck thought was a Brancusi bronze. A tall picture window ran the length of the room, overlooking the sound like a giant movie screen, maybe fifty feet long.
“Please bring the lieutenant over here,” called a raspy voice.
Richard Scayne sat in one of the square white leather chairs. Scayne—or a fraction of what Hauck recalled of him, like his assistant had said. His hair was thinned and white; the round, ruddy face sunken. The once-imposing frame looked almost frail in his blue hospital gown.
An IV was connected to his arm.
He waved for Hauck to take a seat, his limbs blue, twiglike. Hauck sat down in a matching leather chair across from him.
“Sorry about the security check, Lieutenant.” He chuckled. “You’re probably wondering what a man in my condition has to careful about…” The laugh broke into a hacking cough, his assistant making a move toward him. Scayne waved her off. “Habit,” he said, regaining his voice. “Just plain old habit. Nonetheless, I wouldn’t want anything we might discuss here to find its way beyond these walls. Helen, you can leave us now.”
“Let me know if there’s anything you need, sir,” the assistant said on her way out.
Scayne turned to Hauck. “Loyal woman. Funny, in life, Lieutenant, who ends up taking care of you. If this were a social call, I would ease into our conversation slowly to let you admire the view.”
“Million dollars.” Hauck nodded, impressed. The water, the towers of the Throgs Neck Bridge. The outline of the Manhattan skyline towering behind it.
“Fifty million.” Scayne snorted. “But I’m afraid it’s not a social call. I’ve no doubt you’re wondering just why I asked you here. I know my name may have come up in recent times…”
“Yes, it has.”
“It’s because I know something about dying, Lieutenant Hauck—dying for all the wrong reasons…”
He might have been talking about a variety of people: Sanger, Kramer, Freddy.
But Hauck sensed he was referring to Warren.
“My condolences, regarding your brother. I’ve had to bury one myself. A son too. It can make a man hard.”
Hauck nodded.
“Funny thing about violence…,” the old man said. “It has a way of misdirecting you from the interests it actually serves…”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean.”
“You think you know what happened, don’t you? You think it was me. That I somehow ordered these events. Had these people killed. Because I was unwilling to put myself before a trial.”
Hauck didn’t respond.
“You think I pressured my friend, the senator, who had engineered some favorable business terms for me, to enlist your brother—who owed him a few favors too—to take care of things…And that he brought in his client the Pequot Woods. Things that claimed the life of that attorney and then his friend in order to cover it up. Then your colleague, Munoz—I think that was his name—which I soundly regret. And ultimately, your brother…”
“If I could prove it”—Hauck stared at him—“we’d be having this conversation from a room with a decidedly different view.”
“Well, you’d be wrong, Lieutenant,” Scayne said. “Dead wrong.”
The bluntness of the old man’s statement took Hauck by surprise. Scayne drew his IV stand closer. “What I’m going to tell you, Lieutenant, I’ll say just once. Do you understand? If you repeat it, I’ll deny it. If you try to prove it—be my guest. It’ll suck you up like a cat in a cyclone—and like your friends, it will not spit you out.”
“You’re the one who asked me here, Mr. Scayne.” Hauck nodded, agreeing.
CHAPTER NINETY-TWO
You think you know how the world works, don’t you, Lieutenant?” Scayne looked him over, sizing him up. “Because of what you do. But I assure you, in many areas—the areas that count—you have no idea.
“It was like an IPO over there, those first years of the reconstruction in Iraq. Everything was plated with gold for people like me. Every deal was on a cost-plus basis. You know what that means? The higher the cost, the higher the profit. No fixed price. No termination to the contract. Who wouldn’t want a piece of that, Lieutenant? You just had to get it done…”
“And that just took a little money under the table,” Hauck said. “Some may have found its way to the military procuring staff who approved those kinds of decisions. Some to the reelection fund of your friend, the senator.”
“My job was to please my shareholders. And this was the most profitable piece of business we could find.”
“You mean more like pillage…” Hauck shook his head.
“They were auctioning off the country. All it took to play was some well-concealed payoffs to the right people.”
“Yes. I won’t deny it. They were auctioning off the country,” Scayne said. “So we raised our hand.
“Don’t look at me so judgingly. Those people needed things. Without them there would be no country. And we could give it to them. Sewers, schools, plants. So yes, I put half a million dollars into the pot and got two and a half billion in return. Most profitable thing I’ve ever done. Businesses need power, Lieutenant. Houses and schools need light. Two hundred and fifty thousand Nova 91s. Quite a production line. Where the hell else were they going to go?”
“Maybe our government?” Hauck said, angry.
“This was too fucking big to be left to the government!” Scayne’s blue eyes came alive. “Government isn’t able to get this done.”
“Why did you ask me here, Mr. Scayne? You bought yourself a cushy deal. Business went up. Until things fell apart. Some military procurer went out and bought himself a Lamborghini, got the Government Accountability Office on his back. Blew his brains out. And you didn’t want to spend the rest of your life in jail…”
“That’s not what it was…” Scayne shook his head. “Maybe that’s what it seems like. If they had left it up to us, the lights would’ve gone on. The water would have flowed. Maybe everything would have been different. But they didn’t want those things…”
“Who?” Hauck asked. This was all making him angry. What was the man trying to get off his chest?
“Who do you think I’m talking about? The people who make the policy of this fair land. In this case, the Coalition Provisional Authority. All this rhe
toric about wanting the Iraqis to stand up…They wanted to strip the country down to dust first. A nation of millions, Lieutenant, and only fifteen thousand of them were ever put to work. All the work went to the ‘consultants,’ Bechtel, KBR, Carlyle…”
Hauck noticed a new glimmer in the man’s eyes.
“Why did you ask me here, Mr. Scayne? I’m a policeman. Five people are dead. You want to atone for past sins, call the New York Times.”
“I asked you here to tell you why David Sanger died,” Scayne said. “Why your brother died.” He shook his head. “They never wanted the Iraqis to take control. They had the whole thing planned out. We would take control. JP Morgan. Bechtel construction. Starwood Hotels.” Scayne grinned at Hauck. “Why do you think they called it the fucking Green Zone? They even had fucking McDonald’s coming in…That was our big vision. Straight from the head of the CPA.”
Scayne leaned forward. His bony fingers picked up a glossy booklet from the coffee table. He pushed it across the table to Hauck.
It was some kind of promotional brochure. SRC Electric. Nova 91s. “The leader in portable power today.”
“One of my firms,” Scayne said.
Hauck randomly flipped through. Floods. Hurricanes. Blackouts. Pictures of satisfied families and companies.
He came across something slipped inside.
It was an 81/2 × 11-inch black-and-white photograph. The inside of some kind of large warehouse. Massive shelves stocked with crates. Hundreds of them.
Maybe thousands.
Hauck was able to make out the name emblazoned on the crates.
Nova 91.
“That photograph was taken about a month ago,” Scayne said, “in a warehouse located in Amman, Jordan. There are five others in similar facilities in Cypress, Kuwait City…”
Hauck shook his head, confused.
“Bought and paid for by the U.S. government,” Scayne explained, revealing a cynical smile. “By our own taxes. Triple the list price. Paid for”—he shrugged—“just never delivered. Three years later, the Iraqi government is just getting the first shipments now…”
“I don’t understand.”
“You’re not supposed to understand, Lieutenant. You’re not supposed to know. I’m showing you why David Sanger died.
“No one really wanted them to have power. What they wanted was their society stripped down to the core. It wasn’t about business, it was policy. They wanted the whole goddamn country nothing more than a shell, a shell for our own interests to fill…”
Hauck stared at Scayne, the anger in his chest starting to coil. “You knew this all along, didn’t you? You told this to Sanger. You used it as your leverage not to go to trial.”
“Yes, I told him,” Scayne acknowledged. “I told them all—right from the start. There was no way I was ever going to trial. Not at my age. Not with what I’ve built in my life. Not for this. I’d use what I had to. Whatever leverage I had. And I did. The rest…whoever they felt they had to protect, how they chose to go about it, that wasn’t on my shoulders.”
“Sanger knew.” Hauck stared at him. “He knew these stupid generators were in some warehouse somewhere. He could expose it.”
“They wanted to put me on trial…,” Scayne said, a stonelike hardness in his voice, his blue eyes piercing. “Let ’em do it at their own risk.”
“Who?” Hauck threw the photo back across the table. “Who are we talking about here? Five people are dead, Mr. Scayne. Who’s behind this?”
“Oh, that’s one you’ll have to figure out for yourself, Lieutenant.” Scayne’s face edged into a gaunt smile. “I think you may know where you might start, but I doubt, with your brother out of the picture, you’ll have much leverage against him now.”
“Casey?”
Hauck recalled what Wachman had told him. When Hauck had pressed him about whether it was worth it, this killing. Sometimes it just depends—the government man had smiled—on what it is you’re trying to protect.
This was it. This was what they had to protect. Ten reporters from The New York Times couldn’t find it.
A pebble on a white sand beach.
Scayne shrugged. “So there it is. Now you know why that poor sonovabitch was killed. Why all of them were. Like I said, I know something about having to die for the wrong reasons…”
Scayne bent over and began to cough, lightly at first, then deepening into a raspy, gravelly attack. He grabbed for the IV. Helen Dryer rushed in. She eased him back upright in his chair.
He recovered and held up his hand.
“You bring this up to anyone, I’ll deny it. And I’d be careful, if I were you. You’ve seen firsthand what comes with having this kind of information.”
Hauck stood up.
“I’m going to sleep well, Lieutenant. When it finally comes. Contrary to what you might think. But you know what I do wonder?”
“What’s that?” Hauck looked back, the dying man’s features blanched against the chair.
“I wonder whether six months in, if it all had gone well…If drinking water ran from those Bechtel pipes and DynCorptrained policemen patrolled the streets; if our Novas actually lit those factories and schools—questionable payments or not—if you’d even be standing in front of me now.”
CHAPTER NINETY-THREE
A few days later
As Hauck approached them, Annie waved to him from along the harbor. The two of them were leaning against the railing, feeding a few gulls.
He waved back.
She was in the same short white parka as when she had come to dinner, a knit cap tucked over her ears. She took her son’s hand and pointed.
The boy turned.
Hauck saw the same dark, happy features in his face. The bright, wide-eyed smile. It was a smile that suddenly made many things clear.
Her son had Down syndrome.
Hauck looked in Annie’s eyes and smiled.
“Hey,” she said, putting her arm out and giving him a tight hug. He kissed her warmly on the cheek and hugged her back.
“Hey, you.”
She looked at him, and no matter how Hauck tried to mask it, he knew she could see the strain of the past weeks in his eyes.
“So I wanted you to meet Jared. Jared, this is Lieutenant Hauck.”
“Ty…” Hauck said to him. He extended his hand. Jared squeezed it. “Whoa!” Hauck said, massaging his knuckles. “That’s a major-league grip.”
“My mom said when you meet someone you should give them a good handshake and look them in the eyes.”
“Well, your mom is right.” Hauck winked at her. “And I thought all she knew about was making a quesadilla.”
“Full of surprises.” Annie smiled.
“So what have you two been up to?” Hauck asked.
“We’ve been up at the Bruce Museum. They had a great kids’ exhibit there—on what, honey?”
“Robotics,” Jared said. “They had Roomba from iRobot and you got to operate this one and put a puzzle together.”
“Pretty cool.” Hauck widened his eyes, impressed.
“Uh-huh.” Jared gazed up at him with a curious stare. “Mom said you were a policeman. Where’s your gun?”
Hauck grinned. “Don’t need it when I’m hanging out with the good guys,” he replied.
“Jared!” Annie said reprovingly with a shake of her head.
“Did I say something wrong?”
“Not at all.” Hauck grinned conspiratorially. “How ’bout I bring it next time…”
“Why don’t you go feed the gulls some more, honey?” Annie handed her son the remaining crusts of bread. “I’ll come get you in a bit.”
“Okay, but you said we were going to take a drive and you were gonna show me snow…”
“We will. I promise. Go on.”
“He’s adorable,” Hauck said as the boy went over to the railing.
“Thanks. That’s means a lot, Ty.”
“He’s just like you. He’s got your same smile.”
Annie touched his arm. “Are you okay?”
Hauck shrugged. “I guess.”
“I wanted so much to come, Ty…I really did. I wish I could have shared some of this with you. It was just the day Jared was coming in…”
“Probably better you didn’t. It was mostly family. My ex and my daughter were there. Only a couple of people from the office…”
Annie nodded.
“You know, he wasn’t a bad guy…” Hauck rested his arms on the railing and stared out. “I know it’s easy to think that, with all that’s come out. But I just think of him when we were growing up…How he was like a hero to me…Somehow he just crossed the lines on what became important. And never crossed back.”
“All of us have crossed those lines at some point, Ty.”
Hauck nodded and glanced toward Jared. “And come back.”
“And so have you…” Annie looked at him. “Look, I don’t want to push and you can shut me up if this sounds totally corny…But I’m hoping we might have something here. I know it’s early, and I don’t want to get ahead of things. But if you’re up for it, Jared and I…We’d like to be near you, if you’re okay with that. And if you’re not…”
“If I’m not…?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think that all the way out. I guess if you’re not, well, that’s just tough…”
“Tough?”
“Yeah.” Annie nodded defiantly. “Tough.”
“So you want me to eliminate the suspense or let you twist around a bit…”
“Twisting works. I feel like I’ve been twisting for years.”
Hauck met her gaze with a smile. “I’d like that too. And the first step is…” He looked down the railing and called out to her son. “Hey, Jared!”
Jared tossed a last piece of bread at a couple of gulls and ran over.
Hauck asked, “Anyone ever teach you how to skate?”
He shrugged. “We’ve gone Rollerblading, right, Mom? But I’m not so good.”
“Rollerblading? I’m talking ice-skating, dude. This is New England.”
Jared scratched his head and looked at Annie. “I could try.”
