The Hunt

by Jennifer Sturman

  “This is SO weird. It’s the weirdest! All of us together again. It’s just like our Series Seven class!”

  “Just like it,” I agreed amiably. The class had taken place eight years ago in an office building with thirty other people, an instructor and an overhead projector, but debating its resemblance to this encounter would only prolong it, and I now very much wanted to talk to Clay alone.

  “Let’s grab a drink!” said Camilla. “It’s been way too long since I’ve seen you both. I think the lounge is still open.”

  I fumbled for an excuse that would involve Camilla shutting up and going away. “Wow, does that sound like incredible fun, but-”

  “Oh, my GOD! Did you get one of those, too?” She was pointing at the keychain resting in my palm.

  “Too?”

  Camilla held up her own padded envelope. CAMILLA GERGEN was printed on the front in the same distinctive handwriting. “I got one when I checked in. I thought it was a gift or something from the hotel, since I stay here so often. But it’s not from the hotel. I don’t know who it’s from. Isn’t that just the weirdest coincidence that you got one, too? What are you going to do with yours? I don’t know what I’m going to do with mine. I have the cutest little keychain already, with my initials on it and a little picture of my pug and me. See? Do you like pugs? Isn’t he just the cutest? Now, how about that drink? They have the yummiest olives in the lounge here. And pistachios. I love pistachios, don’t you?”

  Her voice would make fingernails on a chalkboard sound like Chopin, and it didn’t help that she used it so liberally. But one word-coincidence-screeched into my ears and kept ricocheting off the walls of my skull.

  It couldn’t be a coincidence that we’d all received the keychains. There had to be a connection, but that didn’t mean I knew what the connection was. My brain would have kicked into overdrive if it had been sufficiently nourished, trying to figure out what the three of us had in common besides our prep course and our profession more broadly. I scanned the lobby, checking to see if any other yuppies were holding padded envelopes or Lincoln Memorial keychains, but we seemed to be the lucky few.

  Then Camilla unwittingly made up for the hours I’d spent in that classroom and the handfuls of aspirin I’d downed trying to remedy the headaches she’d caused.

  “I bet you’re both here to pitch the Igobe IPO!” she squealed. “My firm’s scheduled for nine tomorrow morning. When are you two up?”

  “I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you,” said Clay, stone-faced, but a muscle in his jaw twitched, and I knew Camilla had guessed it in one.

  That Iggie had promised me that Winslow, Brown would be the first firm to make its presentation to Igobe was the least of my concerns. I could postpone getting angry about his scheduling at least two other firms ahead of mine once we’d found Hilary and straightened everything else out.

  I said a hurried goodbye to Clay and Camilla, leaving Clay to extricate himself from Camilla’s grasp and without telling them about my own keychain, much less about the iPod video. Neither seemed particularly eager to figure out what their keychains meant, and I doubted they would be rushing over to the Martin Luther King memorial tonight, so if this was a contest I felt confident I’d maintain my lead.

  The elevator took only a few seconds to descend from the lobby to the street, but that was all the time required for a couple of things to make themselves nice and clear. I still had more questions than answers, but I did know now that the keychains, and the scavenger hunt for which they were the first clue, had nothing to do with Hilary’s disappearance. They were messages from somebody not just to me, but to all of the investment bankers competing for the golden prize of handling Igobe’s IPO, and the messages seemed intended to make us think twice about the role we would play in making Iggie obscenely rich. Of course, the messenger had overlooked a critical factor: investment bankers, by definition, weren’t exactly fertile ground either for second thoughts or planting the seeds of social revolution. We were all about capitalism in its purest and least fettered form.

  I now also knew that the messenger had to be related to Igobe in some way. How else could he-or she-know which firms would be pitching the Igobe IPO, who the contact person was for each firm, and where each could be found today? That was hardly public information. My whereabouts must have been especially challenging, since I wasn’t staying at a hotel, but somebody in Iggie’s office could probably have accessed his calendar and address book, tracked me down at the Forrests’ house, and even trailed me from there. It wouldn’t have been easy-in fact, it would have involved a lot of work-but this person seemed to be a man-or a woman-with a mission: specifically, to derail Igobe and its IPO.

  I dashed through the elevator doors as they opened, eager to tell everyone else what I’d just learned, but when I raced out to Market Street, the only person there was a lone uniformed doorman. I looked up and down the nearly deserted street in confusion.

  “May I help you, miss?” asked the doorman. His nametag read Dmitri.

  “What?” I asked, distracted. Had they ditched me? Given Luisa’s current state of mind, it wouldn’t surprise me, and I couldn’t speak for Ben or Abigail, but it was hard to imagine Peter doing such a thing.

  “May I help you?” Dmitri asked again.

  “Oh. Sorry. Sure. By any chance were you on duty last night around this same time?”

  He smiled and chuckled. He could have given Clay Finch some pointers. “Some people were here just a few minutes ago, asking me the same question.”

  “Where did they go?”

  He gestured back inside. “I sent them to the other entrance, on Stevenson Street. The guys there were on last night. I have Saturdays off.”

  “Great, thanks.” It was a relief to know I hadn’t been abandoned, but I did have to wonder what Dr. Grout would make of the speed with which I’d entertained the possibility.

  I hurried back inside and across the marble floors of the lower lobby to a rear entrance I’d never used before, although it was officially the main entrance to the hotel. A circular drive served as a drop-off and loading point for passengers, and I found my friends standing at the curb, talking to another doorman and the bell captain.

  “What took you so long?” Luisa asked me, but she didn’t wait for my response. “You won’t believe it. These men say there were two Lamborghinis here last night, both black.”

  “Just like the two at the party,” added Peter.

  “They were both already parked here when we came on at twelve,” said this doorman, whose nametag read Gustav. “We see some nice cars around here, but two Lamborghinis together are pretty hard to miss.”

  “Did you see the drivers?” asked Ben. “Or anyone getting in or out?”

  “The cars had tinted windows, so there might have been other people inside I didn’t see, but both of the drivers got out,” said the bell captain. His name, according to his nametag, was Ray, which squashed my budding theory that the Four Seasons didn’t hire people with boring names. “One regular-looking guy, sort of preppie, and then a guy dressed head-to-toe in purple velvet.”

  “That must have been Iggie,” said Luisa. “Unless there’s a purple-velvet trend of which I’m unaware, which would be disturbing.”

  “On so many levels,” I agreed.

  “Iggie sounds right,” said Gustav. “One of the cars had a vanity plate: IGSTER1. And now that I think about it, the other car had a vanity plate, too, but I can’t remember what it said.”

  “Was it Alex something?” I suggested helpfully. Peter glanced at me, his expression unreadable.

  “I don’t think so,” said Gustav, thinking. “I’d know it if I saw it, but I can’t remember it offhand. And the two guys seemed to know each other already. It wasn’t like they were meeting for the first time and bonding over their cars. They talked for a minute or two, and then they both got back into their cars and one drove away.”

  “Which one?” Ben asked.

  “I don’t
remember,” said Gustav.

  “Me, either,” said Ray. “But a blond lady came out a few minutes later and got into the car that was still there, and then that one drove away, too.”

  “Was the blonde really tall? And wearing a really small dress?” I asked.

  This elicited a smile from them both. “It was like something out of a ZZ Top video,” admitted Ray.

  “Could you hear what the men said? When they got out of their cars?” asked Luisa.

  They shook their heads. “And we couldn’t really tell where they were headed, either, if that’s what you’re going to ask next,” said Gustav. “The only way out of here is down Stevenson Street, and that dead-ends on Third, which is one-way. But once they were back on Market, they could have gone anywhere.”

  A Town Car drew up to disgorge some more banker types, so we thanked them for their help and let them get back to work.

  “Well, either Iggie was lying or Hilary got into the other Lamborghini,” said Abigail.

  “Maybe we should ask your friend Alex what he’s driving these days,” I said to Peter. “He may not have been the preppie guy in the footage from Hilary’s floor, but he could be the preppie guy with the Lamborghini. We know there were two Lamborghinis at the party, and we know Alex knows Iggie. And that he’s preppie.”

  Peter looked uncomfortable. “Listen, I know Alex about as well as you know Iggie. It’s not like he’s my best friend, but he already said he wasn’t here last night.”

  Ben cleared his throat. “You know, I forgot to mention this before-it must have slipped my mind with everything else that’s happened, and at the time I didn’t think it was important-but I got a call from a friend of mine at the Bureau a couple of hours ago. He didn’t have any luck finding an address or phone number for Iggie, but he did manage to trace the number of the phone that sent the text messages. It’s registered to a company of some sort, but it just has letters for a name, no words at all.”

  “What are the letters?” I asked.

  “A-C-V-L-L-C.”

  “That’s it!” It was Gustav, who had rejoined us after attending to the occupants of the Town Car. “That was the other plate! A-C-V-L-L-C!”

  I turned to Peter. “The A and the C could be for Alex Cutler. And the V could be for Ventures, right? ACV, LLC. Is that the name of his firm?”

  Peter shifted his weight from one foot to the other and stuck his hands in his pockets. “I think it’s something like that.”

  “And he said his firm invested in Igobe, which means he’s looking at a big payoff from the IPO. So he’s probably as interested as Iggie in making sure there’s no bad news about the company.”

  “Probably,” Peter agreed, but with reluctance. I guessed he didn’t like the idea of his former fraternity brother being on the side of evil, and I could understand that sort of loyalty.

  But there were too many little clues leading to Alex to ignore. A quick phone call to directory assistance taught us that Alex was nearly as protective of his privacy as Iggie, and just as hard to locate. We thought about asking him directly, via phone or text, where he lived, whether he knew where Hilary was, or, at the very least, what kind of car he drove, but if he was a bad guy, these questions would tip our hand even more than we’d already tipped it by asking him if he’d been at the Four Seasons in the first place.

  Which was why I said the words I thought I’d never hear myself say, although I probably didn’t get the inflection quite right. If anything, my tone was grim.

  “Tennis, anyone?”

  17

  We took another few minutes to regroup in the lower lobby. Abigail tried Iggie again on her cell phone, hoping to ask him about Alex, but he was no longer answering since it was past his bedtime. An image of Iggie in purple satin pajamas and an eyeshade, clutching a stuffed elephant, appeared before my eyes, and I hoped it would go away soon. Meanwhile, Peter texted Alex and Caro to let them know we’d meet them for doubles at twelve-thirty at their tennis club in Palo Alto. If all went well, Alex would pull up to the club in his Lamborghini, and then we could pummel Hilary’s whereabouts out of him with our rackets, rescue her and get on with our lives. This was assuming, of course, that it wasn’t too late to rescue Hilary, an alternative none of us wanted to consider.

  “We could carpool down there in the morning,” suggested Abigail. “I’ve been thinking it might make sense to try to catch Iggie off guard by dropping in earlier rather than waiting until lunch, and it would catch him even more off guard if I brought you all along. Which would have the added benefit of helping me to avoid any one-on-one time with him. Igobe’s headquarters aren’t far from the club, and there’s a mall nearby where we can hang out while you’re at tennis.”

  The opportunity to confront Iggie in person was tempting, and, after the phone call we’d witnessed, we could all appreciate why Abigail would want to trade her intimate lunch with Iggie for a group event. And after I’d finished telling everyone about Clay and Camilla and their matching keychains, everyone agreed it made sense for more reasons than one to try to talk to Iggie directly, although Luisa’s decision probably had more to do with Abigail and the mention of a mall than anything else.

  “If Iggie has any shame, he’ll be embarrassed he lied to me about meeting with other banks first,” I said. “That might give us some leverage when we ask about Alex. We can also ask him if he has any ideas as to who might want to spoil his IPO. Maybe the keychain guy is a disgruntled employee.”

  “I suspect Iggie’s surrounded by disgruntled employees,” observed Luisa.

  “And he doesn’t have much shame,” said Abigail. “But it can’t hurt to ask.”

  Ben offered to try to pull a few more strings to procure a list of Lamborghini owners in the area, and Peter volunteered to pick everyone up at the hotel in the morning, assuming his parents could spare a hybrid.

  “Unless it would be more convenient for Abigail if we picked her up at home,” I said. “Abigail, would that be more convenient for you?”

  Luisa shot me a murderous look. What she and Abigail planned to do after we left was none of my business, especially if it involved Abigail not waking up in her own bed, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to get back at Luisa just the tiniest bit. I’d been insufferable, as well, but it was important to keep the score even on the insufferability front.

  “That’s all right,” said Abigail easily. “I’ll meet up with you here. Thanks, though.”

  “Yes, Rachel. Thank you,” said Luisa, but there was a menacing edge to her voice that made me glad we weren’t alone.

  It was fortunate that Peter remembered where he’d parked the car, because I didn’t. A few minutes later we were buckled in and heading back across the city to Pacific Heights. He gave up trying to find anything of interest on the radio once it became clear nothing could be heard over my yawning.

  “We’ll be there soon,” he assured me. “There shouldn’t be any traffic at this time of night.”

  “Good,” I said, but it came out muffled by yet another enormous yawn. “Ouch.”

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “My jaw cracked.”

  He laughed. “Life with you is always an adventure.”

  He said it affectionately, and I knew he meant well, but the words reminded me of what I’d been too busy to think about for the past few hours-namely, that I was merely his way of getting over Caro after she’d broken up with him, a sort of palate-cleansing interlude of oddity that would last until she either took him back or he found someone else comparably normal. And thinking about this only made me more anxious than I’d been already, between trying to track down Hilary, ingratiating myself to Peter’s parents and making sure I didn’t completely screw up my career.

  I could feel myself being sucked into the preliminary loops of a doom spiral. I really needed someone to talk to, but my usual confidantes were either long asleep on the East Coast, missing, or too gripped by nicotine withdrawal to be of any use. Luisa’s specific
brand of calm rationality would have been particularly comforting, but she was too scary right now even to contemplate seeking her out for emotional support.

  Since nobody appropriate was available to discuss my relationship with Peter, I decided I might as well use this time productively and ask Peter about another relationship. He might have been in denial about Caro and whether fifteen years together could be interpreted as serious, but perhaps I could figure out what was going on between him and the fourth member of our little tennis klatch. Assuming tennis had klatches.

  “What’s with you and Alex Cutler?” I asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Why do you keep defending him? Is it because you’re brothers?”

  “Brothers?”

  “Frat brothers. Like Bluto and Otter.”

  He laughed. “How many times have you seen Animal House, anyway? Trust me, Bluto and Otter wouldn’t have had anything to do with us. Even the Kevin Bacon character would have stayed away.”

  “Then is it just because you’ve known Alex for such a long time?” We were stopped at a traffic signal, and red light spilled through the windshield. It was a good color for Peter, but it probably wasn’t the best look for me. The light turned green, and the car moved forward.

  “No. I mean, we were friendly, and he always seemed like a nice enough guy, but he wasn’t one of my closest friends.”

  “Then why did you invite him to the party?”

  He glanced over at me. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Sure.”

  “It’s sort of silly. You promise you won’t laugh?”

  “Why would I laugh?” If Peter laughed at every silly thing I did, he’d be in perpetual hysterics.

  “Well,” he said, sounding unusually awkward, “I was hoping I could set him up with Caro.”

  “Set him up with Caro?”

  “I thought they might make a good couple. Do you think they’d make a good couple? That is, if he ends up not being the sort of guy who goes around abducting your friends?”