by Stephen Frey
His eyes moved down her body as he put the bottle on a table and sat down in a chair. “You look great.”
“Thanks.” Her pulse was racing.
“You sure you’re okay?” David took another sip of beer.
“I’m fine, really. Let me get something to drink too. I’ll be right back.” She walked through the kitchen’s swinging door, then to the counter next to the stove. The file from Neil’s house was still there and didn’t appear to have been touched. But there was no way to know if David had gone through it. If he had looked inside, he would have made certain to put the file back exactly as he found it.
“What are you doing in there?” David called.
“Just getting a beer. Be out in a minute.”
“Okay.”
Jesse hid the file in a cabinet next to a box of cereal, then pulled a beer from the refrigerator and headed back into the living room.
David smiled at her as she sat down on the couch opposite his chair. “I have a confession to make, Jesse.”
“What’s that?” Fear ripped through her. Was this going to be about the file? What would she say?
“Elizabeth really is going to ask you to interview with some more people,” he said. “That’s on the level. But, well, I came by for another reason too.”
“And that is?”
David hesitated. “I was hoping we might have dinner again sometime soon.”
Jesse placed her beer down on the coffee table, then pulled her knees to her chest without answering.
David sensed her discomfort immediately. “Are you worried that if we go out, Elizabeth might disapprove? That she might not make you an offer because of it?”
He had read her mind. “That thought had occurred to me.”
“What if the situation was different? What if you weren’t interviewing for a job with us? Would you go out with me then?”
Jesse nodded. “Yes.”
“What if I told you that Elizabeth wouldn’t mind us going out at all? That she’s actually said to me that we’d make a nice couple? Would you feel different about it then?” David picked up a business card lying next to the phone and tapped it on the tabletop carelessly.
Jesse thought about his question for a moment. “I guess it would be okay then.” She focused on the business card David was now gazing at. “Don’t take this wrong, but I’d like to hear it from her.”
David didn’t answer. He was still staring at the card.
“Did you hear me?”
The card indicated that the woman had a Ph.D. in psychology. “Who’s Rebecca Saunders?”
“A friend,” Jesse said quietly. She wanted to grab the card from him, but she knew that was out of the question. David was too smart for that. He would recognize her anxiety immediately.
“A friend?” There were numbers scratched all over the card—obviously appointment times.
“Yes.”
“Hey, Jess!” The loud banging on the front door startled both of them. “Jess, open up!”
“My God.” Jesse jumped up from the couch. “What is this tonight, Grand Central Station?”
The banging persisted. “Jess, come on! Open the door!”
She recognized Todd’s voice. “What is he doing here?” She hurried to the door and opened it.
“Hey, gorgeous.” Todd was clearly excited.
“Hi.” Her voice was cool. This was going to be a terribly awkward situation.
“Don’t be so happy to see me, Jess. I know it’s late, but I think you’re really going to be . . .” Over Jesse’s shoulder Todd saw David coming toward the door. “Oh, Jesus.” The enthusiasm drained from his voice. “I’m sorry.”
Jesse brought a hand to her face and shook her head. “It’s all right.”
“I’d better get going.” David moved to Jesse and kissed her cheek. “If Elizabeth calls you, call me right away. Tell my secretary to pull me out of my meeting if you have to. I’ll give you the lowdown on the people you’re seeing.” He and Todd exchanged the same curt nods they had outside the IRS building, then Todd stepped aside and David passed through the doorway.
“Thanks, David,” she called after him.
He waved without looking back as he descended the apartment complex steps.
Jesse turned around and moved back into the apartment. Suddenly she was exhausted.
“I really am sorry, Jess.”
“It’s okay.”
“Looks like I got here just in time,” Todd murmured to himself.
“What?”
“Nothing. Hey, I won’t keep you. It’s just that I found out something pretty interesting about Elbridge Coleman, and I wanted to tell you right away.” He pulled out a notepad from his back pocket.
“You couldn’t call me?” Suddenly she was worried. He was coming on way too strong. Becky was right.
“I thought you said you were worried about talking on the phone.”
She looked up. That was true. “I did,” she said apologetically. Instantly she felt guilty for questioning him. For thinking that Becky had been right about him. “What did you find out?”
He shut the door and moved several steps into the apartment. “I have a broker friend who’s been nice enough to lose me a decent amount of money over the last two years. He feels kind of bad about it, so I asked him for a favor.” Genuine excitement filled Todd’s voice. “He was only too happy to oblige.”
“And?”
“That file you got from Robinson’s house mentioned something about investigating the initial public offering of Coleman Technology. That was one of the reasons he had pulled the corporate tax returns. Robinson mentions in his notes that the price for the stock seemed very high. I asked my broker friend to check it out. He works for Legg Mason here in Baltimore. Legg Mason wasn’t part of the syndicate selling the shares, but he has friends at other firms that were.”
Jesse nodded. “Go on.”
Todd flipped several pages in the notepad, studied them for a moment, then began. “It turns out the offering was handled by only a few small brokerage houses. None of the big bulge-bracket firms like Morgan or Merrill Lynch were involved, just some small-time players, bucket shops, in places like Seattle and San Antonio.
“My friend confirmed for me that the price was very high for a company involved in the defense industry, especially in light of the list of investment banks selling the shares. They just weren’t very powerful firms. They didn’t have the breadth of investors a Morgan or a Merrill would have, so they shouldn’t have been able to command such a high price.”
“That’s interesting.” Jesse nodded. “But I don’t think it’s enough to nail Elbridge Coleman for something other than getting a good deal.”
“It gets better. My friend at Legg Mason had a conversation with a broker at one of the firms handling the Coleman underwriting, a firm by the name of”—Todd checked the notepad once more—“Zarb & Co. It’s in Phoenix. Apparently even the brokers at Zarb thought it was a strange deal. The shares had already been presold before they got their hands on them. Essentially all they had to do was write tickets for names a senior person at Zarb had given them. Usually the brokers have to call everyone from their blue-haired great-aunts to the President of the United States to sell shares. This deal was already done when they got the shares.”
“Orchestrated, in other words,” Jesse said.
Todd nodded. “And the buyers of Coleman shares were midsize industrial companies, not mutual funds or retail investors that typically dominate the buy side of the IPO market.”
“Can your friend get information on any of these firms that purchased Coleman shares in the IPO?”
“I’m way ahead of you, Jess. The guy at Zarb did a little more digging. At least three of the small companies that bought shares of Coleman were all themselves owned by a common holding company. He’s getting more information on the holding company. You know, who actually owns it. Sometimes with these corporate shells it takes time to figure all that out.”
Jesse knew that as well as anyone. People were constantly trying to fool the IRS with all kinds of convoluted ownership structures. “Pending that information, your theory is that one corporate entity might have been responsible for purchasing all Coleman Technology shares in the company’s initial public offering, but tried to mask what was really going on by spreading the shares around its portfolio companies.”
Tod nodded. “Exactly.”
This was excellent information. Something that could be confirmed and might give them a concrete trail to follow. “And why would someone do that?” She was thinking out loud.
“It would be a convenient way to fund a candidate’s campaign without making it obvious who the money people were.”
That was her idea as well, but she had wanted to see if Todd would come to the same conclusion without prompting. She glanced down at the table next to the chair in which David had been sitting. Her eyes narrowed. Becky’s card was gone.
David climbed into the back of the limousine next to Elizabeth Gilman as the driver shut the door. He had walked all the way to the other side of the apartment complex because Elizabeth didn’t want the limousine parked where Jesse might see it.
“What happened?” she asked. “You weren’t in there very long.”
He was barely able to make out her profile in the darkness. “A friend of hers came by out of the blue. It wasn’t going to happen.”
“What friend?”
“Some guy named Todd Colton. She claims he’s just a friend, but I don’t know.”
“Todd Colton,” she whispered. “Todd Colton.” She said the name again, committing it to memory.
David closed his eyes and relaxed. He was coming to find there was a great deal more to Elizabeth Gilman than the refined grande dame exterior she portrayed.
“Did you find anything while you were in her apartment?” she asked.
David hesitated. The file on the kitchen counter had accused candidate Elbridge Coleman of conspiring with a group of corporate angels to manipulate his election, of working with a conservative faction focused on controlling the defense industry and beating down people like Malcolm Walker. David’s godfather in Washington would be a likely candidate for that faction. So would Jack Finnerty, he thought to himself. And the potential link to GEA, Sagamore, and himself had crackled through his brain like lightning as he stood in the kitchen staring at the papers.
Then David had heard Jesse’s hair dryer turn off and realized he had to put the file back. The frenzied look in her eye as she came running from the bedroom told him she was afraid he had seen it. “No, Elizabeth, I didn’t find anything.” Information such as the file was best kept to himself until it could be used as a bargaining chip. “Nothing out of the ordinary, anyway.”
“All right, but I want you to search her apartment again thoroughly. And I want you to get closer to her. I want you two in constant contact.” Elizabeth needed to know where Jesse was at all times now.
“I don’t understand, Elizabeth.” David’s voice was flat. “Why is that so important?”
She couldn’t tell him the truth. “I’m thinking of making her a job offer now, contingent upon her graduation from business school, of course. I don’t want the investment banks to have a chance at her, so I’m going to preempt them.”
“I don’t understand why you’re going after Jesse so hard. There will be lots of candidates to choose from. Candidates from Ivy League business schools with much more experience than Jesse Hayes.”
“I can recognize raw talent immediately.” She turned toward him. “That’s why I run Sagamore,” she said coldly, “and you are a portfolio manager just hoping to celebrate your fifth anniversary with the firm.”
But even as the whip snapped, David felt her fingers on the back of his hand.
“David, in four years we’ve never had a chance to really get to know each other.” Her voice softened, and she pulled his hand to her lap. “I think we should have that opportunity tonight.” She saw the strange look come to his face. The words had quickly achieved her goal. To distract him.
David bowed forward in the seat and rubbed his forehead. The promise of millions and all that money could buy. Of financial security. All he had ever wanted. To be rich. But was it really worth all this?
Gordon Roth watched from behind a minivan as the man on the porch said good night to the young woman, then turned and made his way down the stairs. The apartment’s outside light flipped off and for a moment the man was obscured by darkness, but at the bottom of the stairs Roth picked up his shape again as he walked out into the parking lot and slipped into his car.
As the red taillights of the man’s car disappeared around the corner, Roth moved from his hiding place, walked quickly to the back of the complex, and scaled the fire escape to the third floor. There he crouched down next to the bedroom window and slowly leaned forward. Through the curtains he watched the woman disrobe and slip under the covers. Then the light went out and he could see nothing more.
For two hours he waited. Finally, when he was certain the woman was asleep, he pulled the black ski mask over his head and raised the unlocked window—a window he had unlocked this afternoon in preparation for tonight. In just seconds he had stolen across the room, straddled her with his knees on her elbows, and clamped a hand down over her mouth. For a moment she struggled, but despite his average size he was immensely strong and her efforts were useless.
When she lay still, Roth bent down until his mouth was only inches from her ear. “I’ll take my hand from your mouth, but if you scream, I’ll kill you,” he whispered. With his free hand he removed a long, serrated hunting knife from his belt and pressed it against her cheek. “Do you understand?”
She nodded frantically, her eyes wide open.
Quickly Roth removed two long pieces of cord from his belt and secured her wrists to the bedposts, then ripped the covers back and did the same to her ankles.
She gazed up at him, on the verge of tears. “Please don’t hurt me,” she begged.
“I need information. If you cooperate, you’ll be fine.” He pushed the razor-sharp knife point against the soft skin of her neck.
Instinctively she moved her neck as far away from him as possible, but he followed and pushed the knife in until a tiny drop of blood oozed onto the tip. “You’re hurting me.” Her voice was loud.
Instantly he clamped a hand over her mouth again. “I told you not to make a sound,” he hissed. “One more time and you’re dead.” He took the hand away slowly.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured.
He bent down until his mouth actually touched her earlobe. “Where is the file?”
“What file?” she sobbed.
He tried again several times, but to no avail. Clearly she wasn’t going to cooperate easily. He pulled a rag from his coat and shoved it into her mouth roughly. “I’ll be back.”
For half an hour, starting with the bedroom, he tore the apartment to shreds, but found no file. Grim-faced, he returned to the bedroom, knelt over her again, and removed the gag. “Where is the file?” he asked firmly.
“I don’t know about any file,” she insisted. “I swear to you.”
“Did you give it to the man who was here tonight?”
“I told you,” she sobbed pathetically, “I don’t know about a file. Please let me go.”
“This is going to get very bad unless you cooperate right now. It would be so much easier if you’d just tell me.”
“I don’t know about any file!”
Roth jammed the gag back in her mouth, and for an hour he tortured her. He left no marks on her body but devastated her psychologically with the threat of the huge knife. Still she gave away nothing. Finally he pulled a pillow over her face and meted mercy. When she had gone limp, he untied her wrists and ankles, picked up her body and moved to the window. She had died in her bed of asphyxiation. But the world would think her death had been the result of a fiery car crash.
Chapter 2
3
“Good morning, Malcolm.” Monique Howard was Walker’s chief of staff. She was tall with long dark hair, a pretty face, and a slender frame. She had been with Walker since his campaign for the state senate and often accompanied him to formal government affairs, because the senator’s hectic schedule allowed him little time to date. As they were both unmarried, rumors of a physical involvement abounded. And if he had made it obvious that he was interested, Monique knew she would have agreed, because she was extremely attracted to his sharp features, quick wit, and natural charm. But in their ten years together, he had always been a perfect gentleman. So like most Washington gossip, the talk was just that—talk.
“Monique, how are you this morning?” Walker’s voice boomed out over his huge desk, cluttered with papers and empty Styrofoam coffee cups.
He was naturally disorganized. He had tried to convince Monique for years that he kept the desk a mess on purpose because it helped him to think in a more liberated fashion. That the mess represented free thought. But she knew the truth. He just didn’t like cleaning up. So it was she who reorganized the desk once every two weeks to keep him from being buried by the paper mountain.
Monique eyed Walker suspiciously. “Why are you in such a good mood today?” He had been outwardly discouraged lately by Coleman’s strong showing in the polls.
“Today we begin the comeback.” He stood up quickly and moved to the large office doorway, acknowledging the four young interns working in the outer office with a quick nod before shutting the door. Then he began pacing, as he always did when he was excited. “Today we grab the spotlight back from Elbridge Coleman.” Walker smacked his lips as if savoring a delicious meal.
“Oh, right, the news conference.” Monique was not as excited about the day’s possibilities as Walker.
He continued to pace. “Yes, the news conference.” He heard the skepticism in her voice. “Why do you say it like that?”
Monique smoothed her pleated knee-length skirt. “Let’s go over your remarks,” she said, sidestepping his question for the moment.
