by Jason Pinter
Murphy stubbed out his cigarette and went to talk to Rawson.
Remy went over to Alena.
“How are you?”
“I don’t know how to answer that. I just buried my husband,” Alena replied.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I am. I wish there was something I could do or say to make it better.”
“I know you do. But you can’t. I’m going to go upstairs and rest.”
“Text me if you need anything,” Remy said. “Anything.”
Alena smiled weakly and said, “Thanks, Remy.”
She went inside. Remy joined Murphy and Rawson.
“I don’t think my daughter has taken a nap since she was a baby,” Rawson said. “Even when she was little, she had a motor that would have won the Indy 500.” He removed his sunglasses. “Thank you both for coming all the way out here.”
“Not even a question,” Murphy said.
“Of course,” Remy added.
“I trust you saw the latest numbers. This is frankly very disturbing. Take a little time to unwind. Wash the cemetery off of you,” Rawson said. “But I want you in my suite at five. Ken, talk to Rebecca and Jerry. I want a total breakdown of where Bertrand’s support is coming from. Look at Costanzo’s schedule. I may want him involved. Pull him off television if necessary so he’s available the rest of the day.”
“You got it, sir.”
“Five o’clock,” Rawson said. “We have a lot of work to do.”
Rawson tipped the driver and doorman and went to his suite.
“No rest for the weary,” Murphy said.
“Or the grieving,” Remy said.
Murphy said, “Do us all a favor. When we meet later, leave the sentiment in your hotel room. This is bad.”
“Okay,” Remy said.
“See you in a bit.”
Murphy left. Remy stood outside the lobby. He was angry about Rawson’s and Murphy’s callousness. He didn’t care about the poll numbers. And he couldn’t get the man with the eyebrow scar out of his head. He needed to know where that anger came from.
Remy took the elevator to his floor. At the end of the hallway, Remy could see two of Rawson’s private security guards standing outside the suite. Remy went to his room, changed out of his suit, and put on jeans and a sweater.
Then he opened up his Facebook account.
He and Paul were Facebook friends, but Remy had never once bothered to look at Paul’s page. He’d never even been curious. But now, he was hoping to find answers.
Remy opened the Photos tab on Paul’s feed and clicked on Albums. There weren’t many. Pictures from various charity events he’d attended with Alena. Remy scrolled down and opened their honeymoon album. They’d spent three weeks in Croatia. Remy clicked through them. The photos were gorgeous, and wide smiles stretched across their sun-kissed faces. Remy enlarged a photo of the newlyweds standing in front of the bluest sea he had ever seen. The caption said it had been taken on Lokrum Island off the western coast of Dubrovnik. Paul was wearing white linen shorts and a loose-fitting t-shirt, Alena in a yellow spaghetti strap tank top and jean shorts that showed off her bronzed legs. They each wore sunglasses, arms wrapped around each other, wind whipped Alena’s long hair about. The caption read: “Love.”
Remy closed the photo. He scrolled down and found an album marked “Our Wedding.” He opened it.
Inside were dozens of photos, professional and candid, from Alena and Paul’s wedding at Cipriani. The event space was packed. There must have been five hundred people there. Each table boasted a gorgeous three-foot high floral centerpiece filled with white orchids. There was a twelve-piece jazz band standing atop a riser. There were mountains of food: lobster tails, buckets of caviar, trays and trays of sushi. There was an ice sculpture in the shape of a heart with “Paul & Alena” carved into it. This was a Rawson Griggs production through and through.
Remy scrolled through the photos. Alena looked absolutely stunning. Her skin shone, her hair a gorgeous cascade of blonde curls. She wore a custom-designed, sleeveless Vera Wang gown that couldn’t have cost a penny less than twenty thousand dollars. Her bridesmaids wore pink tulips. The grooms, blue hydrangeas. It looked like a fairy tale come to life.
Remy focused on the shots of young men. There were many: guys doing shots, guys dancing, guys with their girlfriends and wives. Then he found what—or who—he was looking for. The man with the eyebrow scar.
His hair was a little longer, he was a little trimmer, and there he was not wearing a wedding ring. But Remy immediately recognized the scar cutting through the man’s right eyebrow. He clicked on the photo to enlarge it. The tag displayed the man’s name: Michael O’Brien.
Remy immediately recognized the name. Paul had texted a Michael O’Brien the night he died. Detective Ferguson said the text was gibberish. But O’Brien was the only person Paul reached out to before he died, accident or not.
Remy pulled up Michael O’Brien’s Facebook page. His profile picture was taken from his own wedding. Remy recognized O’Brien’s wife. She was at the cemetery earlier. Same woman. Same scar. Same guy.
Most of Michael O’Brien’s Facebook activity was hidden from Remy’s view, but in O’Brien’s last post, he’d checked in to a restaurant called Anthony’s in Spokane. The post was dated one month ago, and the caption read, “Best sockeye in the state!”
Remy opened the White Pages in another tab, and ran a search for Michael O’Brien in Spokane, WA. The search came back with three hits on Michael O’Brien. One O’Brien was aged fifty-four to sixty-nine. Another other was sixty-five to sixty-nine. The third was listed as being twenty-six to twenty-nine years old. That had to be him.
That Michael O’Brien was listed as the sole proprietor of MOB Real Estate. He’d received a bachelors in economics from the University of Washington, and a masters in finance from Gonzaga. He was listed as having an address on West Indian Trail Road. Remy looked up the directions on Google Maps. O’Brien’s house was about seven miles northwest of the Davenport.
Remy checked his watch. It was 12:47. Plenty of time before they were scheduled to meet in Rawson’s suite.
Remy cleaned himself up, combed his hair, brushed his teeth, and put on deodorant. He needed to be presentable. He eased open his door and glanced towards Rawson’s suite. The guards were still outside. They were in the middle of a conversation. And they weren’t looking in Remy’s direction.
Remy stepped out and gently closed the door behind him. He walked down the hotel corridor quickly but softly. If anyone asked where he was going, he’d just say he was running downstairs to the café for a bite.
Several taxis idled in front of the entrance to the Davenport. He got into a cab, gave the address to the driver, and they sped off down South Post Street.
The cab took 2nd Avenue west, and then turned onto Maple Street. They crossed the Spokane River, went several miles north, and turned onto Francis Avenue. Remy’s cell phone rang. His breath caught in his chest when he saw that the caller was Ken Murphy. Murphy never called him. Texted occasionally. But Remy couldn’t remember a single actual phone call.
He didn’t know what to do. If he answered, Murphy would know Remy wasn’t at the hotel. But what if Murphy had already knocked on Remy’s door? This was bad either way. Remy decided to let the phone ring. If Murphy asked him later, Remy would just say he was napping and turned the ringer off. Still, the call made him uneasy.
Twenty-five minutes after they left the Davenport, the cab turned onto West Indian Trail Road. They pulled up to a single-family ranch style home with a two-car garage and a neatly manicured lawn. There was a yellow tricycle with pink ribbons streaming from the handlebars in the driveway, behind a black Ford Taurus.
Remy paid the driver and asked the cabbie for his cell phone number. He would need a ride back. The driver gave him the number for his dispatcher and left.
Remy rang the doorbell, praying Michael O’Brien wasn’t the kind of guy who greeted strangers with a double-barre
l shotgun. He still wasn’t certain Michael O’Brien even lived here, given that the White Pages were as reliable as Wikipedia—Remy had seen how often Rawson’s own entry got defaced. If he’d gone to the wrong house, Remy would just go back to the hotel, return Murphy’s call, and let it go.
But then the door opened, and Remy was face to face with the man from the cemetery. He recognized the eyebrow scar immediately. O’Brien was wearing track pants and a Seattle Mariners jersey. He looked exhausted and confused.
“Help you?” he said.
“Mr. O’Brien?” Remy said hesitantly. “Michael O’Brien?”
“That’s right,” O’Brien said, looking warily at Remy. “Can I help you?”
“My name is Jeremy Stanton. I was at Paul Bracewell’s funeral today. I saw you there too.”
“I thought I recognized you,” O’Brien said. “You’re the guy I’ve seen in the newspaper a bunch. You stopped that terrorist a while back.”
“That’s me.”
“And now you work for Rawson Griggs, isn’t that right?”
The question with loaded with venom.
“I do,” Remy said.
“Well, then you can go fuck yourself.”
O’Brien went to close the door.
“Please, wait, just a second,” Remy said. He put his foot into the jamb to prevent the door from latching shut. O’Brien looked at Remy as though he couldn’t believe this asshole. “I need to talk to you about Paul. I saw you at Fairmount today. The way you looked at Rawson.”
“It was a look, dude. Just a look. My friend is dead. The rest doesn’t matter.”
“I think it does.”
O’Brien eyed Remy, unsure what to make of his intentions.
“Did Griggs send you?”
“No. He doesn’t know I’m here. I swear on my mother.”
Remy heard a female voice come from inside the house. “Honey, who is it?”
“Hold on, hon,” O’Brien said. He turned to Remy. “That’s my wife. We both went to school with Paul. Knew him for almost twenty years.”
“I’m just asking for a few minutes of your time. For Paul,” Remy said.
O’Brien shuffled his feet, eyed Remy, then opened the door. “You have fifteen minutes. We dropped our daughter off with her grandparents during the funeral. I have to pick her up at three.”
“Thank you,” Remy said, and stepped inside. “I won’t take much of your time.”
O’Brien led him to a small living room, with white shag carpeting, an overstuffed blue sofa, and a La-Z-Boy facing a thirty-inch flat screen. A half-finished bottle of Amstel Light sat on the table. O’Brien sunk into the couch and took a swig from the bottle. Remy sat down on a loveseat perpendicular to the couch. He did not expect any hospitality, and O’Brien didn’t offer any.
“So what do you want?” O’Brien said.
“How long did you know Paul?” Remy said.
“Oh man. Forever,” O’Brien said. He pointed at the scar above his right eye. “Paul was with me when I got this. We were in high school. Senior year, I think, leaving the Northtown Mall on a Saturday night. Coupl’a kids from Shadle Park jumped us. There were four of them and two of us, but we had balls back then. We could have run, but instead we fought like the devil. I ended up with nineteen stitches above my eye and a sprained wrist. Paul got a broken rib and a concussion.”
“Sounds like he got the worst of it,” Remy said.
“Paul wasn’t much to look at, but he’d fight like a goddamn Tasmanian devil. And the more he fought, the more they went at him. Like they needed to prove they could break him. But he never broke. Oh, and he was a biter too,” O’Brien said with a laugh. “Heard one of those kids had to get a tetanus shot because Paul broke the skin.”
A fighter, Remy thought. Tasmanian devil. The man O’Brien described was a very different person than the Paul Bracewell that Remy had known.
“Paul never wanted to stay out here,” O’Brien said. “Always dreamed about living in the big city. Making money. Real money. Christine and I—that’s my wife—we loved it here. Never had any desire to leave. Paul graduated and went off to Columbia. We knew he was never coming back. But it changed him. We only saw him maybe five, six times since we graduated high school. What’s that, ten years? We’d talk or text occasionally, but…hell, life moves on. Once you have a kid, your priorities change. Did you know I was there the night he met Alena?”
“Really?” Remy said.
“Yeah. Christine’s sister lives in Brooklyn. She had a baby, so we went to visit for a week. Paul had gotten comped two tickets to some fancy charity ball. You know, the kind of event where you buy a five hundred dollar ticket for free drinks. From getting beat up at malls to getting free tickets to fancy parties. Crazy, huh? So we go. Paul goes up to the bar for a drink, randomly chats up Alena Griggs, and the rest is history. The way he looked at her, he was a goner. Talk about being a good wingman, right?”
“Seriously. And all my friends complain that you can’t meet people at bars.”
“Who would’ve thought, you know? Truth is, I always really liked Alena. We all knew who her dad was, and thought she’d be like him. An asshole, I guess. But she was different. She was everything to him. But once they got serious, his life was never the same.”
“In what way?” Remy asked.
“I think even though Paul dreamed of working in the big city, he was never a big city guy. Never cared much for glitz and glamour. And, well, you date Alena Griggs, it’s like living in a disco ball twenty-four seven. That’s not Paul.”
“Being around that family, that company, you don’t really understand it until you’re part of it.”
O’Brien nodded, solemn. “Alena loved him. Really did. I never had a problem with her. It’s that goddamn father and his sycophants. They’re vampires.”
“What do you mean?” Remy said.
“Vampires. They drain you of everything that makes you human, and then turn you into one of them. They don’t even pretend. Feed the beast, isn’t that his slogan or some shit?”
“Close enough,” Remy said. “Paul texted you the night he died. Do you know why?”
O’Brien seemed unsure as to whether Remy was on the level. His eyes narrowed. “You gonna leave, go right back to Griggs and tell him about this? And then I end up dead too? No thanks.”
“End up dead? You don’t really think…”
“That Rawson Griggs killed Paul?” O’Brien sipped his beer, put it down, and wiped his mouth. “I’m not saying that. But I’m not not saying that.”
“Paul’s blood alcohol level the night he died was off the charts. I personally saw him drink enough to stun a horse.”
“Maybe so,” O’Brien said. “But Paul knew it was only a matter of time.”
“What was?”
“He figured one way or another being a Griggs would kill him. Only question was whether it would be Rawson or Paul himself.”
“I think we got the answer to that.”
“Did we?” O’Brien said. “Paul knew they were coming for him. He knew you getting in the way just pushed the timetable back.”
“Come on,” Remy said. “That’s absurd.”
But there was no confidence behind Remy’s word. O’Brien was saying the same thing as Doug Rimbaud. And Remy was starting to wonder.
“You spoke to the NYPD the day of Paul’s death, right?”
“They called before they found him. Yeah.”
“About the text?”
O’Brien nodded. “They wanted to know if I knew where he was, if we’d spoken recently, if he’d said anything that could help the investigation. That text was the first time I’d heard from Paul in a few months.”
“Did you tell the NYPD you thought Rawson was involved?”
“Fuck no,” O’Brien said. “Griggs has the goddamn former mayor of New York on his payroll. You don’t think word would get back to Griggs?”
“The last time you spoke to Paul,” Remy said, “what d
id he say?”
“He was scared. Griggs had banned him from strategy meetings. Paul knew he was being cut out of the loop. He told me he’d been speaking with another campaign. Feeding them info.”
“He told you that?”
“Yeah. And whenever he called or texted, it was either from a private number or a strange phone with area codes in, like, Idaho. It was all very weird.”
The burner cells Rimbaud had mentioned. Rimbaud was telling the truth.
“He talked about leaving Alena and coming home. I don’t think he thought it was realistic. You don’t just divorce a Griggs and walk away.”
“I believe you about Paul. That he was acting as a mole within the organization. But why did he start? He couldn’t have just decided to ruin his life for the fun of it.”
O’Brien sat back. “I’d never met anyone in my life who was better with numbers than Paul. About a year ago, we’re catching up on the phone. He’s telling me that he and Alena have started to talk about having a family. I say that’s great, you know, and joke that the kid’s grandfather will probably buy him an Aston Martin before he can legally drive. Then Paul goes all quiet.”
“Why?”
“He tells me that he and Alena use the same accountant as Rawson. Paul being Paul, he had to be involved in everything finance-related. The Griggs accountant, Benson something, he was one of those ‘I’m away from my wife and kids for a night so I’m going to go on a bender’ types. Paul met him for drinks one night, and apparently he got bombed on tequila shots and told Paul there were major discrepancies in the accounting for a whole lot of Griggs properties.”
“What kind of discrepancies?”
“For example, the Griggs resort in Scottsdale lost money eight straight years, to the tune of something like a hundred and twenty million. But then, two years before Rawson decides to run for President, revenue at that resort suddenly quadruples out of nowhere. Go figure.”
“The economy improved,” Remy said.
“Not a chance. Paul told me that the Scottsdale resort operated for eighteen months at ninety-eight percent capacity. That’s unheard of. The industry average is about seventy-three percent. Not only that, but after eight years of losses, the hotel ADRs increased.”
