“I feel bad about your mother. Honestly, I do. But the solution is to cut a deal.”
“The state won’t want just the money-they’re greedy-they’ll want me to set up these other people, the people I stole it from. And, for the record, I did not know who they were. An account is all. A dummy account. But there is no way… there is absolutely no way I am ever going to be that stupid, believe me.” His left hand, the one with the glove, shook involuntarily in his lap.
She felt her original intention slipping away to his reasoning. There was no way she would participate in this, but she’d done little if anything to discourage him. “I love my husband. I love my family.” She appealed to the man she’d once known. “Don’t put me in this position, David.”
The keys dangled above her open palm. “I didn’t know where else to turn. Think this through. I have. You’ll see.” The keys swung back and forth like a pendulum. “It’s going to work out.”
She snatched the keys back, though he willingly released them.
He said, “At least think about it.”
“Do not call me.”
“All I ask is that you think about it.” He slipped out of the car, looked both ways, up and down the road, and quietly shut the door. He had disappeared into the trees by the time her trembling hand worked the key into the ignition.
Seeing her family around the kitchen table like something out of a Norman Rockwell painting made Liz despise herself all the more as she walked in. It seemed so long ago that she’d returned from her morning run eager for some playful sex in the shower.
“Sorry I’m late.”
Lou was already out of his chair. “Help you with the bags?” His gleeful innocence caught her in the center of her chest, knocking the wind out of her.
“The shopping… ” She stumbled. “I never got there. Got hung up at work.”
“You called from your cell.”
Ever the detective. Sometimes she hated him for it. But not now. She reserved that emotion for herself.
“Did I? It’s possible. I ran out to a meeting with the caterers. Phillip seems to think that because I’m a woman I should be in charge of food and beverage on the big night.”
“What big night?” Miles asked expectantly. At six years old, he was sensing his approaching birthday party. He had his father’s nose for clues.
She set down her umbrella, hung up her coat in the hall closet, and left her purse by the toaster, plugging in her cell phone. Little rituals that began to settle her nerves. Better now.
“Daddy cook dinner,” Sarah said.
“I can see that. It looks yummy.”
It was meat loaf and green beans. She loved him for all his interests: jazz, anything culinary, film. He wasn’t a microwave husband. He even made his pancakes from scratch.
He stood for her, caught her chair, and dragged it back. She winced a grin of appreciation vaguely in his direction, refusing to meet eyes, her heart ready to burst.
“Rough day, then.” He sounded cautious all of a sudden. Perhaps he sensed it. She hoped not.
“Same old, same old. You? How’s Danny?”
“Who’s Danny?” Miles asked. “Is Danny coming to my party?”
“A friend of ours,” Lou answered his son. “And no, he’s not.”
“Mommy and Daddy are talking,” Liz informed the children.
“We can do this later,” Lou announced. “What’d you do in school today, sport?”
First grade for Miles, preschool for Sarah. Lou had once worked an illegal adoption case and ever since she’d felt fragile about leaving the kids-even dropping them off at school. Columbine hadn’t helped. David Hayes didn’t help. If anything ever pulled the marriage apart, it would be the kids who would suffer the irreparable damage. She thought it possible, however unlikely, she might even lose them to Lou in a judgment. She had strikes against her. For all his flaws, his general inability to groom himself, his blind dedication to the job, a sense of focus that could so distract him he would miss entire conversations, a sour stomach, and poor digestion that could clear a room, despite it all, Lou came off the hero, the white knight. She shook her head to stop the thoughts, sensing herself becoming panicky, irrational.
“Nothing,” Miles answered.
“Seven hours and you just sat there?”
“Dad.”
“Well?”
And it went on like this as it did every night, the kind of mindless prattle so easily dismissed one night, so treasured on this particular evening, when mindlessness was what she craved. She sat there as an observer, watching them like watching a movie: Lou teasing, the children laughing, manners being reminded, him stealing glimpses of her and offering a smile, and she returning it and feeling traitorous. Then it was dishes, and Miles with a broom he could barely control and Sarah announcing for all she had to go potty. Lou sweeping the child up in his strong arms and warning her to hold it as he rushed her out of the room.
“Mommy,” Miles said, pointing down. “Muddy shoes you leave in twos.” The school was teaching him all sorts of expressions like this.
She looked down, her pulse quickening. Mud and grass clung to the sides of both shoes. I ran out to a meeting with the caterers. Right. And Sherlock Holmes flushing the toilet for Sarah.
At first she didn’t remember having climbed out of the car, but then she recalled opening the hood and closing it, just as David had instructed.
She glanced toward the living room-where Lou would be coming from-wondering if he’d already caught the mud. If she tried to hide it now, would it just compound her problems? They both knew there was no place downtown she would pick up mud and grass like this. The catering was out of a fabulous restaurant called Wild Ginger. Lou had helped her pick it. No city parks between the bank and Wild Ginger. She heard the toilet gurgle.
She cupped her hand beneath the faucet, and splashed her blouse, jumping back, as if an accident. “Dang!” she hollered, brushing herself off. Her silk blouse went translucent and she made sure it stuck to her chest, for she knew if anything would divert Lou’s attention away from her shoes, her wet blouse would. They passed in the doorway.
Lou said, “All by herself.”
Liz said, “I splashed.”
Lou said, “Lucky me.”
She hated him for being so predictable, for him allowing her to take advantage like this.
“I’ll change,” she announced.
“I hope not,” he said, turning her meaning. Lou Boldt loved word games. “Sweetheart?”
She hadn’t realized she’d started crying until her vision blurred. She cleared her right eye with her fingertip. “Hormones again.”
He looked at her oddly, as if he didn’t know her but seemed to buy it just the same, and that hurt worse. “I’ll start the bath.”
“Thanks.”
“For them,” he teased.
“I know.”
“You okay?”
“No,” she said honestly.
“Okay,” he said, backing away and slipping into the kitchen. “Take your time.”
When they finally made it to bed, she realized it was horrible timing to start into this now. He was talking about how tired he was, having been up the night before with Danny Foreman. She had her head buried in a church periodical, a magazine with testimonies of healing, and she searched the pages for guidance, knowing she’d pick up something if she stayed with it. Finally, reading a piece on avoidance, she placed the magazine down.
She gathered her courage. “You feel like talking for a minute?”
He fought off a yawn and said yes. He meant no, but that he’d try.
“I didn’t go to the caterer.” A feeling of weight lifted off her, the childish glee of watching a hot-air balloon rise into a blue sky.
“I know.”
A moment of incredulity. “You know?”
“Birthday shopping, right? I was ready to cover for you, if you needed it. I’m thinking of getting him a sport coat. He keeps asking for a coat like mine. Tweed,
maybe. For his recital. Can you imagine? A little button-down shirt and tie? Tell me that wouldn’t be amazing.”
“Amazing,” she said, choking back a knot in her throat, reaching over and gently touching his hair. It wasn’t going to happen. Not tonight. He closed his eyes and smiled, lost in that imagination of his. She scratched his scalp, like rubbing a cat. “I’ll get the light,” she said.
“Um,” he answered, already on his way to sleep.
THREE
“IMPRESSIVE,” DANNY FOREMAN CALLED OUT loudly as the paper target crept toward Liz. It hung from a clip attached to a belt drive, allowing the shooter to replace it with a fresh one and then electronically return it to a desired distance. Liz was shooting thirty feet. She wore eye and ear gear and a blue business suit with black pinstripes. The indoor firing range was too loud for them to try to carry on a conversation, but she pulled one ear off her headset and shouted above the percussion of reports.
“Hardly impressive! Nine in the magazine. I only hit the target with three of them.” She pointed out the holes in the black-and-white bottle-shaped target. “You want a go?”
“No, thanks.”
“You sure?”
He assented, pulling hearing protection and goggles off a peg on the wall and accepting the weapon, a slick little nine millimeter. “This doesn’t strike me as you, Liz.”
“Lou gave it to me a couple years ago. I protested, naturally. But I took a course so I’d know what I’m doing.”
They had yet to say hello to each other, Liz bearing the burden of what Lou had told her about Danny’s lingering resentment.
“And now, a renewed interest?” Danny Foreman ran the target out to thirty feet, raised the gun, sighted, and squeezed off a single shot. It struck the target low. He lowered the gun, studied it, raised it a second time and caused Liz to jerk back as he unloaded the magazine with eight incredibly fast consecutive shots. He left a tight pattern, very near the center circle of the target. “Sweet,” he said, placing down the weapon.
His shooting seemed charged with emotion. Tension hung in the air along with the bitter tang of cordite.
“I’m truly sorry,” Liz said.
Foreman tugged the headset off. “What’s that?”
“Never mind.”
They chased down a pair of fiberglass chairs in the waiting area in front of two vending machines and a trash can that smelled of burnt coffee grounds. The sign on the wall read NO SMOKING, but there were well-used ashtrays on each of the three round tables. The vinyl floor had been swabbed down with a lemon-scented disinfectant. Foreman offered to clean her gun for her, and she took him up on it, handing him a gray plastic kit of swabs and oil that Lou had given her along with the gun. Foreman’s big hands wrapped around the metal like talons on prey.
Danny Foreman spoke with a warm, sonorous voice that Liz remembered well, a voice it felt nice to be around.
She said, “We’ve not seen much of each other, have we? I want you to know that Darlene’s passing hit us both very hard. We miss her-miss you both, Danny-very much.”
“I could have called. Should have,” he said. “I got this notion it was better to start fresh-a new life, you know? Transferred over to BCI. Bought a little place over to Madison Park. Didn’t change much of anything, though. I miss her badly, Liz.”
She wasn’t the best at such discussions. Even among her girlfriends, she preferred listening to talking, and when she did speak it was to express her true opinions, most of which were the last thing anyone wanted to hear.
“There’s no set time for grieving. It’s a process. But speaking as a friend, Lou and I would like to see more of you than we do.”
“Darlene and I always enjoyed our time with the two of you.”
“And… here we are.”
His face screwed up tight. “Yeah, but it’s business. We both know that’s why you called me. Let me tell you something: It makes it all the more difficult for me.”
In fact, she had called him to test the thickness of the ice, like tossing rocks and watching them skim across the frozen surface. Called him, to edge her boot down onto that ice and listen for the splintering cracks beneath her added weight. If she misjudged or misstepped, she knew the peril she faced. This meeting with Danny would determine how much she shared with Lou, believing it unfair to revisit that pain unless absolutely forced to. She avoided eye contact, focusing on his long fingers and the meticulous way he handled the weapon.
She said, “He wants me to get him some cash.”
“Hayes, we’re talking about. Just to make sure I get this right.”
“Yes.”
Foreman pulled out a notebook. “Contacted you how?”
She ran down the events, bending facts slightly to make it sound as if Hayes had contacted her due to her position in the bank.
“And the location of this face-to-face. How was that known to you?”
She paused too long trying to think something up. Foreman filled the gap.
“In case you forgot, Liz, I was the investigator on the original wire fraud. That put me in a… let’s call it a unique position, that allowed me to collect all sorts of information about this case, some of it relevant at the time, some not.”
The room dropped about twenty degrees. She realized now that calling Foreman had been a terrible mistake. “I’m sure that’s true.”
“Do we understand each other?”
“Yes, we do.” The ice gave way and she clung to the ragged edges, half in, half out. Lou would have to be told.
“I can’t see any reason to drag Lou through any of this,” Foreman said like a mind reader.
“Well, we differ there. But that’s between Lou and me.”
“Let me clarify one point in particular, and I want you to think carefully before you answer this, because I’m going to consider it as a statement to law enforcement, just so we understand each other.”
“If I can help in any way, then I want to. That’s partly why I called you.”
“Some people, Liz, they call us first because they think that helps remove them from suspicion. Not that you’d ever resort to such a tactic. I’m just saying, who called who doesn’t matter much.”
“And the point you want to clarify?”
“You were or were not involved in any with the initial wire fraud?”
“Was not.”
“There is no way this is ever coming back onto you? There is nothing out there that’s going to blindside me, or anyone else associated with this investigation? Discounting personal relationships that you may or may not have had with employees of the bank. I’m not interested in that unless it carries weight with my investigation. And you’re telling me it does not?”
“That’s correct.” The edges broke free and she bobbed up to her neck, the weight of her clothing pulling her down.
“Okay. Good. Then tell me about the meeting. Location, time, circumstances, duration, topics discussed, any items exchanged. You want to edit out the personal stuff, that’s just fine.”
“There was no personal stuff.” She regained some internal strength, defiant in her defense.
“I’m just saying… what you tell me here, Liz, is going down in my notes. You understand? My notes can be subpoenaed, probably will be subpoenaed, so a person wants to think that through.”
“I haven’t thought any of this through. David said he needed my help. He said he was afraid for his mother.” She’d told him all this already. “Then the money. I told him I couldn’t do that.”
“Next time you’ll agree.”
“I most certainly will not.”
“You played it right, believe it or not. Convincing. But next time you’ll agree to pay in exchange for him leaving you alone-which he won’t. We’ll make the drop, not you, and that’ll be the end of it.”
“It won’t be the end of it. You just said so yourself.”
“Your role in it, I’m talking about. It’s complicated, Liz. We want that money. We want whoever that m
oney belonged to. More than anything, we want to know how he did it-how he hid that money for so long.” Foreman’s eyes were unrelenting and cold. “This merger,” he continued. “MTK buying out WestCorp. That’s significant. Hayes switched lawyers within a week of that announcement. Did you know that?”
“How would I possibly know that?”
“His new team pressed hard for parole, and they got it. Attorney-client privilege… we’ll never know who hired those new attorneys, but someone wanted Hayes sprung for a reason, and that reason is the merger.”
“But we announced the merger nine months ago.”
“And they’ve been lobbying for an early release ever since. Your systems fold into MTK’s, or the other way around?”
“I see what you’re driving at. All the hardware’s in place, if that’s what you’re asking-and mind you this is confidential information, so put your pen down.” Foreman did so. “We’re in beta testing on the front-end system. Our accounts merge into their hardware. We throw the final switch at a reception, Sunday, nine P.M.” And I’m in charge of the catering, she thought absurdly.
“Front end? What’s that about?”
“Both brokerage and retail operate on a three-tier server system. Windows environment on the front end-the retail side, for our account executives, tellers, and the like. Not terribly secure but easy to use. A UNIX level that handles account management, wire transfers, the nuts and bolts-much more secure. And a pair of AS/400s-incredibly stable and secure IBM machines-on the very bottom of the stack for the account data-the balances.”
“But you’re only testing the front end?”
“The Windows environment is the last to be tested. It’s the most likely to have bugs and glitches. The technicians have been through the lower-level servers for months now. We don’t expect any surprises there.” She asked, “Why the technical interest, Danny?”
“I’ve got to think like Hayes. I’ve got to put myself in his shoes. He said he needed you to pull this off.”
“He did.”
“And what makes you special? Ignoring any personal connection.”
“My access.”
“Security clearance?”
The Body of David Hayes Page 3
