Mystery Writers of America Presents the Rich and the Dead

by Inc. Mystery Writers of America

  What Breezy was doing was no big surprise. Maybe you don’t remember that Enron guy—he dropped dead from a heart attack after the jury convicted him but before he was sentenced. A dead financial felon can’t file an appeal. No appeal means the conviction is legally void—like the trial never happened. No conviction means no fine. If Nicky dies today, all Breezy’s problems go away—the marshals, the red tags, the forfeiture sale. She keeps everything, including her husband’s corpse with its handsome face as smooth as her own.

  I sprinted across the room, grabbed the Botox lady’s wrist, and twisted it. She whimpered and dropped the syringe. I pulled her away from Nicky.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Nicky said. “Have you lost your mind?”

  He pushed himself out of the chair and examined his image in the ornate-framed mirror over the mahogany dresser, turning his head right and then left.

  “Let go of Miriam so she can get back to work. I don’t want these crow’s feet on tomorrow’s news.” His tone was the same commanding one he used in that TV commercial. You know, the one where he got out of the helicopter and told us if we gave him our money, we’d end up rich.

  I shook my head. Here I am thinking I saved his life, when really I just saved his wrinkles from extinction. Well, my job was to make sure Nicky got safely to prison, even if all he cared about was how he looked on the way.

  “Mr. Taakall,” I said in as cool a tone as I could manage. “You’re here for a walk-through, not a spa day.” I picked up the syringe from the carpet and dropped it into the Botox lady’s open case. “Let’s go,” I told her.

  “You people just won’t stop trying to humiliate us!” Breezy said. She turned to Nicky. “Don’t worry, darling,” she cooed. “My Chanel foundation will do wonders.” She stroked his silvery hair. “Trust me, baby. We’ll take care of each other.”

  Gerald Karius appeared in the doorway, resplendent in a dark suit, white shirt, gold and gray striped tie tied in a double Windsor knot, and black Italian shoes buffed to a brilliant shine.

  “What’s going on here, Marshal?” Gerald said. “You know you’re not allowed to talk to my clients when I’m not present.”

  “Fine,” I said. “So tell your clients they have one hour until we lock up the place.” I pushed the Botox lady past him and out of the room.

  I never knew what to expect from the Taakalls, even though I’d gotten well acquainted with Nicky over the past few months. Actually, I’d mainly gotten to know his stuff, which is practically the same thing. From the time the judge entered the pretrial asset seizure order, we’d been cataloging everything he owned so it would be ready for sale if Nicky was convicted.

  There are the Haves and the Have Yachts, and the Taakalls are the latter. They had enough stuff to keep me and Don and two other forfeiture guys busy for six weeks. Add Nicky himself to his list of prized possessions. I’d tagged drawers full of stuff devoted to keeping him perfectly trimmed, clipped, and buffed, plus racks of shirts and suits to make the man.

  We also tagged fifteen vacuum cleaners. Who needs fifteen vacuum cleaners? Turned out Breezy was nuts about the carpets being perfectly smooth. She had to have them vacuumed right after anyone walked through a room. I’m not talking about getting rid of dirt. She wanted her carpets to look as well-groomed as the Yankees’ infield grass. So there was a vacuum cleaner on every floor of every house—the New York penthouse, the Jackson Hole ski lodge, the Connecticut farm, the condo in Florida, even the jet—plus a housekeeper to run each one. That made the hundred-thousand-dollar road grader at the Connecticut place seem almost logical. It was a present from Nicky to Breezy, so she could always have a comfortable ride on the fourteen-mile driveway to the country house, whether she was in the Range Rover or the yellow phaeton with the calash top Nicky had given her for her last birthday, along with the two gray hackney ponies to pull it.

  I have nothing against the very rich. As a matter of fact, I’ve made a study of them. Having money does something funny to people, and having a lot of money does something even funnier. It sounds great to be able to buy whatever you want, no worries. But it puts you on a treadmill of wanting more, more, more. You spend so much time wanting and getting, you don’t have any time left to be a person.

  Nicky had made enough money legitimately that he could have retired years ago with his family fully provided for as long as they lived. But for people like Nicky, it wasn’t about enjoying what money could buy. It was about getting more. Nicky was like a mountain climber who thought if he stopped to enjoy the view on the way up, he’d fall. Me, I’d be happy to make any higher ground. I’m living so far beyond my income, we’re in different zip codes.

  After Nicky made all that money with his Ponzi scheme, he could have moved to someplace like Switzerland or Brazil where they wouldn’t have cared how he got rich. Instead he stayed here, making a big show, until somebody ratted him out to the U.S. attorney. Before you knew it, Nicky was indicted and Gerald was negotiating a plea.

  Despite the “Jail to the Thief” headline in the Post, he ended up with only seven years for securities fraud, mail fraud, wire fraud, and every other fraud the U.S. attorney could think of. Gerald got him a light sentence in return for the names of the other players in the scheme. I don’t know who was footing the lawyer’s bill. Nicky’s accounts were frozen, and Gerald Karius didn’t work for free.

  Nicky also had to pay a pretty hefty fine—a hundred million bucks. So far we’d collected about fifty million in money and stuff. Grayson—she’s the assistant U.S. attorney on the case—said there was a lot more, but I didn’t think so, especially after we found Nicky’s account in the Caymans with the six million in it. He’d left the account number taped to the underside of his desk drawer.

  Grayson went back to court after we found Nicky’s secret stash. She said Nicky’s deal should be revoked and the judge should give him twenty years, like the other defendants. But Nicky testified he had forgotten about the account and that’s why he hadn’t listed it on the inventory sheet. He said something like, “I don’t keep track of the small stuff. It’s dollars to you and pennies to me.” I don’t know if he was telling the truth or not. If he was trying to hide the money, pretty dumb to stick the bank info on a piece of furniture we were going to seize.

  It’s got to be hard to walk into your home and see red tags attached to everything—your furniture, your clothes, even your electronic toothbrush—all that stuff you sold your soul to get. In cases like this, we seize everything in the apartment, including the apartment itself—three floors on Fifth Avenue overlooking the park.

  Ten thousand square feet per floor, a total of thirty-eight rooms filled with antiques from Sotheby’s—Don calls it the rich man’s eBay—and modern art. The library had a gold leaf ceiling that came from a palace in Italy. There was even an indoor pool with silver stars spangled across the bottom, so when you launched yourself off the board, it’s like you were diving into the sky. A lot of things are upside-down in the super-rich world.

  All Nicky’s loot was heading to auction. The Taakall name was the new hot label. Every pair of socks, every spatula would go for ten times what you could buy it for in the store. I wondered if Nicky would be proud when his branded stuff fetched top dollar.

  The same press that vilified her husband paid Breezy grudging respect for standing by her man. I wondered if Breezy was fonder of Nicky or of everything his money bought her—the biggest, fastest, newest, and best. There were rumors in the Post that Nicky had a girlfriend, but nothing came out in court. Maybe the fact that Breezy hadn’t tried to kill him a few minutes ago was proof she really loved him.

  The strain on her was starting to show. The skin under her violet eyes looked tight and bruised, and I didn’t think it was from a session with the Botox lady. No doubt about it, she was still a pretty woman. From the way he looked at her, Gerald knew it too. For a lawyer, he had a bad poker face.

  I put the Botox lady on the elevator. When I came back into the
apartment, Louis Taakall was in the hallway between the family room and the kitchen, along with his two daughters. They’d just arrived.

  Nicky, Breezy, Louis, and Gerald were the starring cast for the walk-through. Husband, wife, son, and lawyer—the modern nuclear family. Louis was Nicky and Breezy’s only child. He and his wife owned an art gallery on the West Side. The owners were actually Nicky’s unwitting investors—it came out in court that the gallery was dependent on cash infusions from Louis’s dad. I’d tagged the gallery inventory last week.

  Louis was in his early thirties. His face was pale, and he had twitchy fingers. He’d been just as antsy last week when he came by the penthouse to collect the things his grandfather had left him in his will. He’d been storing them there. They were the only items in the place that weren’t bought by Nicky with other people’s money, so they were exempt from forfeiture.

  His daughters were real cuties. Katie was about seven, a blonde with round peachy cheeks. Jen was a few years older, a thin brunette. She had an overstuffed pink knapsack slung over her shoulder, like a Sherpa. Both girls had their grandmother’s violet eyes.

  “Daddy, we have to go to my Mandarin lesson,” Jen was saying. “I don’t want to be late. We’re learning personal pronouns—w, n, nín, t, and tmen. I have to be there.”

  “Gammy!” Katie shrieked and bolted toward Breezy.

  She and Nicky were walking toward us from the direction of the bedroom. Neither seemed to be in any danger from the other. Breezy had regained her composure—her blond hair was smooth, her steps precise in high heels. The skin on Nicky’s face looked five years younger and several shades tanner. Breezy knew how to wield a makeup brush.

  Louis could have used her help. A decade of hard living had left permanent bags under his eyes, and red veins had bloomed on his cheeks. His gallery’s parties always made the tabloids. He was known for caring more about getting his picture in the paper than selling the pictures in his gallery. No surprise, he’d dropped out of sight after Nicky’s indictment.

  “I wanted the girls to see their grandfather before he… goes away,” Louis said to me. “Besides, we had to let the nanny go six months ago. Vanessa finally found a job, so I’ve been Mr. Mom.”

  He looked the part. His khakis and faded polo shirt were straight out of the L.L.Bean catalog. His hair looked like he cut it himself—no more slick razor cuts like in the tabloid shots of his party days.

  Everyone walked to the family room to the beat of Jen’s backpack bumping against her leg. Breezy took a seat next to Gerald on a sofa. Katie squirmed between them and began recounting the tale of their crosstown trip.

  “The train smelled like pee, Gammy.”

  “It’s a subway, dummy,” Jen said.

  “I’m not a dummy! Anyway, I hate the train. I don’t want to go on it anymore.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the subway, Katie,” Louis said. “I think it’s a lot more fun than taking a cab. I think we’ll take it more often.”

  Jen cast a beseeching look at him. “Daddy, we’re going to be late.”

  “We won’t be, sweetie. Now go say hi to your grandy.”

  “Jen’s always mad at me,” Katie said in a stage whisper to her grandmother. “We have to share a room at the new apartment and she says I touch her stuff but I don’t.”

  Jen dragged her backpack across the carpet to where her grandfather sat on one of the silk brocade sofas.

  “Hi, Grandy,” she said.

  “How are you doing in math?” Nicky asked.

  “I just got an A on my quiz.”

  He grunted. “You’re very good with numbers, Jennifer,” he said. “That’s the most important thing.”

  The Taakall charm was famous, but Nicky was keeping it mostly under wraps today. Jen stood for a minute, uncertain, then plopped down on the carpet and unzipped her backpack.

  I ran through the rules for Louis. Basically, a Taakall could keep anything of sentimental value that was worth less than twenty dollars.

  “Twenty dollars?” He swept his arm in an arc that took in the furniture, the art, the possessions stacked on the dining table. “I don’t think you could find anything here worth less than twenty thousand.”

  “It usually means photos or letters,” I said.

  “Then I’d like this one.” Louis picked up a photo from among the cluster on the sideboard. He wore a graduation cap and gown. Nicky stood on one side, his arm thrown over his son’s shoulders. Breezy, on the other side, smiled brightly.

  “You can have the photo but not the frame.” I removed the photo from the gold-plated frame. According to the appraiser, it had been made for John Singleton Copley by Paul Revere. I handed it to Louis.

  He looked at the photo and sighed.

  I glanced over at Nicky on the sofa. His legs were splayed out before him, his eyes were closed, and his head was back against the cushions. Jen sat at his feet, working on her math homework—I could see the large block numbers.

  “The only other things I want are my daughters’ drawings and the schoolwork they gave their grandparents,” Louis said.

  “They’re all yours,” I said. “What about any more photos?” I showed him the twenty-plus frames I had collected from Nicky’s home office. Each one was a study in wealth and power—Nicky hoisting the mainsail of his Hinckley, Nicky sitting in a new Spyker with the car’s doors extended like raven wings, Breezy dancing with a celebrity gate-crasher at the White House.

  “So I can remember all of Dad’s toys that he bought with investors’ money?” Louis said. “I’ll pass.”

  I felt a little sorry for him. Louis hadn’t chosen to have his self-worth replaced by net worth. Now he had to start over and not even with a clean slate. It would take time for people to forget who his father was, and for Louis to forget the taste of the silver spoon. Having money and losing it can be worse than never having it at all, especially if you never earned it.

  “Excuse me,” I said to Louis. Breezy and Gerald were walking among the tables where her jewelry was laid out. I wanted to keep an eye on them. It was our responsibility to make sure nothing of value was taken from the apartment. Breezy wouldn’t be the first person to slip a pair of diamond earrings into a pocket.

  “Da-ad.” Jen stretched the word into two syllables. “My Mandarin lesson?”

  “I’m getting your stuff, baby. Then we can go.” He was already on his way to the kitchen.

  “Daddy, I want to come with you!” Katie wriggled off the sofa and ran after her father.

  I’d finished tagging everything in the kitchen this morning. Four-star restaurants were run out of smaller spaces. When I cleaned out the fridge and freezer—a tin of caviar, two bottles of champagne, and a flacon of Joy perfume went on the inventory—I noticed the ice cubes were in the shapes of Ns and Ts. The rich were into personalizing. They wanted to be sure you knew they owned everything, even the ice cubes.

  Silver service for dozens was spread out on the nearby table, and there were stacks of paper-thin china on the granite counters, each dinner plate bearing a gold crest and Taakall in bold script. Breezy didn’t pronounce her last name the way Nicky did anymore. After the newspapers started making fun of Take-all, she adopted Tack-all—accent on the all—as the correct version. Maybe she just wanted people not to make the connection. It’s got to be tough for her and Louis. They didn’t have anything to do with what Nicky did. But they’re still villains to the public.

  I signaled Don to keep an eye on Nicky and Breezy while I followed Louis and Katie to the kitchen. Louis was in the butler’s pantry, staring at the various papers stuck with ivory-topped pushpins to a corkboard set into an antique Venetian frame. Neither Nicky nor Breezy had paid any attention to the colorful mass of artworks and test papers.

  “You want all of them?” I said.

  Louis jumped as though I’d startled him. If he’d taken something to calm down, it wasn’t working. He was still as twitchy as when he’d arrived.

  “Sure
,” he said.

  I started unfastening the drawings. Katie had signed the picture of a horse. Or maybe it was a camel. Jen had done well on a math quiz. There were a few teacher corrections in red and a big red A at the top with a circle around it.

  I handed Louis the evidence of his children’s talent and brilliance.

  “Daddy, I want to see my drawings!” Katie said.

  “Can you say please?”

  “Pleasepleasepleasepleaseplease.”

  Louis smiled—the first one I’d seen from him—and made his arms into an easel for the drawings.

  Katie paged through the stack, announcing the subject of each one. The horse-camel was really a deer.

  The next drawing was smaller than the others.

  “I like this lady! She’s a pretty dancer,” Katie said.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” Louis said. He arranged the drawings back into one stack and put the math quizzes on top. “Katie, let’s—”

  A commotion erupted in the family room.

  We got there in time to see Breezy yanking on one sleeve of a fur coat. Don held on to the other—a determined snapping turtle. Jen watched with her mouth open. Nicky still sat on the sofa, oblivious to the ruckus, sorting through photos Don had removed from their frames. He wasn’t really interested in anything that didn’t involve making money.

  “I have to go out for milk for Jen! She’s thirsty and there’s nothing left in the house,” Breezy said. “You’re inhuman! It’s November, and I need a coat!”

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Don said, “but you can’t take this outside. It’s not on the permitted list.”

  Breezy’s jaw tightened. “For God’s sake, it’s only a mink!”

  To someone with a pair of sables appraised at eighty grand each, I suppose a five-thousand-dollar mink jacket would be the equivalent of a Costco windbreaker.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Taakall,” I said. “All the furs are part of the sale. They can’t leave the apartment.”