by Jason Pinter
Alena took her coat and purse and left the room, slamming the door behind her. Remy felt his face grow hot. He sat down. Looked at his hands. Felt a tear drop into his palm. He punched the mattress, holding in the kind of rage than only came when you got exactly what you dreamed of, only to lose it the next moment.
He bit his lip. Sat there, unmoving, for an hour. Then Remy wiped the tears away, picked up his phone, and texted Grace Rivas.
Tell me when and I’ll be there.
The Gazette offices were three blocks west of his hotel.
So Remy walked east. He had no idea if anyone was following him, but better to be safe than dead. Plus, he knew the Gazette would have tight security, so, unfortunately, the tasers had to be left in the hotel.
He took the 6 train down to Union Square, then transferred to the N, which he took to 34th. He then hopped on the uptown B train, which he rode to 81st.
At 81st, Remy walked around the Museum of Natural History, over to Columbus, down to 80th, and then west where he got on the downtown 1 train at 79th and Broadway. At Columbus Circle, he transferred to the downtown C train, which he took to 42nd and 8th. Which was literally one block from the New York Gazette, and just two blocks from where he was staying. The whole route took nearly an hour and a half to complete.
When he arrived at the Gazette offices, Remy approached the polished granite security desk with his ID ready. There were two metal detectors screening visitors and their bags. Two guards manned the desk, with another guard at each metal detector. And they all looked like they could break Remy in half.
“Hi, I have a meeting with Grace Rivas at the Gazette.”
“Photo ID. Please place your briefcase flat on the belt.”
Remy did so, and handed his license to the guard. When the guard took Remy’s ID, he did a double take.
“Mr. Stanton. You’ve had a hell of a week,” the man said. “Look into the camera.”
Remy offered a weak smile to the orb affixed to the desk.
“Twelfth floor.”
He got his bag and took the elevator to the twelfth floor. When the door opened, Grace Rivas was standing there, waiting for him. Remy smiled, and she returned it. She had a bulky brace on her right knee and held a cane. Remy stepped out and gave her a gentle hug.
“Damn, it’s good to see you,” he said.
“You too. Last time we talked, you were only a minor celebrity. I’m shocked you don’t have a personal TMZ crew following you around by this point.”
“And your knee didn’t look like someone had taken a sledgehammer to it.”
“It feels worse than it looks,” she said.
“How are you doing?”
“I’m angry,” Grace replied. “Pissed. I want to nail Rawson Griggs more than anything in this world.”
“If I only had a hammer,” Remy sang, “I’d hammer in the morning. I’d hammer in the evening.”
“God, you’re a dork. Come on, Eric is waiting for us.”
The twelfth floor of the Gazette newsroom was a massive open floor plan, lined with rows and rows of cubicle after cubicle, with a perimeter of single executive offices. There was a wide red staircase in the middle of the floor plan.
Grace led him through the newsroom, walking gingerly with her cane. He’d never been inside a newsroom this large before. It was a constant blur of activity: dozens of reporters talking and typing and yelling. As they walked, Remy noticed a few reporters stare at him as they passed.
Grace led him to an office in the back. Eric Celsun sat at a conference table leafing through a stack of papers. Grace closed the door behind them. Remy shook Eric’s hand.
“Good to see you,” Remy said. “Thanks again for everything with Dennis.”
“Don’t you mean Dad?” Celsun said.
“No. I mean Dennis.”
Celsun smiled. “Don’t sweat it.” He was jittery and talked like a record played at double speed. “Sorry. Too much coffee today. Do you want a cup? Of coffee? How do you like it? Your coffee? Strong? I like it strong.”
“I’m good,” Remy said, hoping Celsun’s heart didn’t explode from a caffeine overdose before they had a chance to talk. Remy looked over the mountain of papers on the table. “You’ve been busy.”
“Sleep is for losers. I was able to get the 990 forms from the Griggs Foundation dating back twenty years. They’re mandatory tax filings for charitable organizations. And they’re simply fascinating.”
“How so?”
“Look at this,” Celsun said. He handed a piece of paper to Remy. “These are the top ten donors in terms of total contributions to the Griggs Foundation over the last twenty years. Recognize any of them?”
Remy scanned the list, then stopped at one name.
“Temur Kamurzenov. He ran Kyrgyzstan’s energy program.”
Grace added, “He also owns a U.S. shell company that contributed millions to Brent Scott’s Super PAC.”
“Kamurzenov donated a hundred thousand dollars every year like clockwork to the Griggs Foundation.”
“So Rawson had a relationship with Kyrgyzstan energy chief going back two decades,” Remy said. “That’s how he was able to broker the deal with GazProm to sell Kyrgyzstan’s energy supply to Russia.”
“It would also explain why PoliSpill would run communications through Kyrgyzstan,” Grace added. “If PoliSpill was coordinating with the Griggs campaign, they would need secure transmissions through a friendly country with a government that would turn a blind eye.”
“I think Rawson plans to lessen sanctions on Russian energy exports,” Remy said. “That kind of policy change would be worth billions, if not trillions. Spending a few hundred million to help Rawson get elected would be a drop in the bucket.”
“For the last thirty years, Saudi Arabia has been our largest oil supplier,” Celsun said. “We currently import over a million barrels of Saudi crude a day, and thirty-eight thousand a day from Russia. That’s a lot of revenue the Kremlin is missing out on. And when the U.S. started exporting oil and LNG, or liquefied natural gas, to Europe, it broke Russia’s stranglehold on European energy exports. Russia is the world’s largest oil exporter. If the sanctions are gone, it would severely cut down on our gas exports to Europe while expanding Russia’s to us.”
“Rawson must have a stake in GazProm,” Remy said. “You know what every insanely rich man has in common? They all want to be more rich. It’s not just about the presidency. If this policy changes like we think it will, Rawson will own part of the largest global exporter of natural gas in the world. Problem is, nobody can prove it.”
“It sounds like Paul Bracewell had proof,” Grace said. “Too bad he never got to share it.”
Remy tapped his chin. “When I met with Michael O’Brien in Spokane, he said Paul was scared. He knew Rawson was tapping his electronic communications. O’Brien said that Paul would only correspond via snail mail, that even Rawson couldn’t track something just dropped in a mailbox.”
“Do people even still use snail mail?” Celsun said.
“O’Brien said the same thing. But what if Paul had proof? He just didn’t trust the electronic files wouldn’t get traced.”
“My actual physical inbox is a wasteland,” Celsun said. “Ninety-nine percent of the mail I get is from crazy people who literally cut my articles out of the paper and doodle things on them like Celsun is Stoooopid. I haven’t checked it in months. Grace?”
“Me either.” They looked at each other. “You don’t think…”
Grace and Celsun looked at each other and bolted from their chairs. Celsun ran out of the conference room and Grace followed him, limping. Remy sat there wondering what the hell had just happened. A few minutes later, they returned with a manila envelope that looked like it had been dragged through a sewage system.
Celsun slammed it on the table like it was some sort of trophy.
“Yahtzee,” he said.
Remy looked at the sad, tattered envelope. “What is that?”
“Check the return address,” Grace said.
Remy looked. “Holy shit,” he said.
“Griggs Tower,” Grace replied. “It’s a message.”
“It was Paul,” Remy said. “And look at the date of the postmark. Paul sent this the day he died.”
The three of them stood around the table in stunned silence. Piles of papers, printouts, folders, and briefings had been shuffled to the edges of the table, months of research treated like detritus. They’d been shunted aside for this, the few pages that before them. They were a game changer.
Five pages. Laid out in a row horizontally.
“Is this really what I think it is?” Remy said.
“I believe so,” Celsun replied. “God love the USPS.”
“From now on, I’m going to check my mailbox every five minutes,” Grace said.
Spread before them were five pages from Rawson Griggs’s official tax returns from 2008. They included his salary, debts, schedules, and forms. Paul had mailed these to Grace the day of the event at the Hyatt. Just hours before he was found floating in the East River.
“We need to confirm the authenticity of these pages before we can even think about running them,” Grace said. “Remy, you mentioned there was an accounting firm that handled work for Rawson Griggs. They would be able to verify these documents.” She used her finger to underline the accounting firm listed on the top sheet: Benson, Hawes, and Seligmann.
“Benson,” Remy said. “That’s the guy. O’Brien told me about an accountant named ‘Benson something’ who’d worked on Griggs’s tax returns. Paul knew him. That’s how he got these.”
Grace turned her laptop around for them to see. She’d pulled up the Benson, Hawes, and Seligmann website and found Benson’s bio page. “Here he is. Hayes Benson. Founder and senior partner. It says here, ‘Mr. Benson has worked with some of the most prominent citizens and corporations in the country, including Comcast, NewsCorp, Exxon, and the Griggs Organization.’”
“And look here,” Celsun said, pointing to a line on the third page of the returns. “Look at the losses Rawson Griggs claimed in 2008.”
“Jesus,” Grace said. “Can that be right? One point eight billion dollars? How is that even possible?”
“I’m willing to bet that’s Rawson’s stake in GazProm,” Eric said. “He spent nearly two billion dollars to go into business with the Russian energy department.”
“That’s the year Rawson made his speech at the LiK conference in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan,” Remy said. “Which was attended by Temur Kamurzenov and the head of GazProm.”
“So, if Rawson spends two billion to buy into GazProm, and his properties are losing money hand over fist, it’s entirely possible Rawson was essentially bankrupt prior to launching his campaign. Which is why all that foreign money started flooding into his properties.”
Remy added, “Paul said that Rawson’s properties were running at an unheard of capacity rate. They needed to keep Rawson solvent. Make him appear wealthy. And the money they spent to do it, even if it’s hundreds of millions, is incidental. Because if he wins, if Russia can start exporting energy here, it’s a new global economy.”
Celsun said, “And then there might as well be an invisible pipeline running from Moscow to Washington, D.C.”
“I’m going to the Benson, Hawes, and Seligmann office,” Grace said. “I need Hayes Benson to confirm these documents in person.”
She took the pages, left the room, and came back with two sets of copies. She placed one in a manila folder and put it in her briefcase and laid the others on the table. “If Hayes Benson confirms the authenticity of these documents, we have enough here for one hell of a story.”
“Agreed,” Remy said, “but is it enough to stop Rawson?”
“That’s not our job,” she said.
“You’re kidding me, right?” Remy said, incredulous. “After what that monster did to you in Cincinnati? What he did to Paul? What he’s capable of doing if he’s elected?”
“We still don’t have proof that Rawson did anything to Paul Bracewell,” Grace said. “There’s been no investigation. No proof of foul play. For us to even touch that story, we’d need something hard to go on. Financial ties to the Russian energy federation are a big deal. We have enough here to tie him to all of that. But you don’t accuse the frontrunner for president of the United States of murder unless you have proof.”
“Or you have a confession,” Celsun said. “And good luck getting that.”
Remy felt heat rising up from his chest to his neck, anger starting to coil and burn. Grace could have been killed and she was still pretending that this was all about the story, all about plastering some article on the front page of the Gazette in the foolish belief it could do anything to even dent the hide of the Griggs battleship. Maybe the ties to Russia and links to PoliSpill could pierce his skin, but the wounds would heal.
“You have proof, proof, that this man is using his power to enrich himself and put our country at risk. What the hell else do you need to take a stand against him?”
“We don’t do our jobs based on taking a stand,” Grace said. “I want Rawson to go down. Hard. But lawfully.”
“You have an obligation,” Remy said.
“To who? To you?”
“To people. To tell them the truth.”
“Which is exactly what we’re doing. But if you want me to allege capital crimes based on conjecture or your gut, you’re in the wrong place.”
“I’m sorry,” Remy said. “I thought you were a fighter.”
Grace approached Remy until they stood toe to toe. She looked him right in the eye. She was nearly a head shorter than him, but didn’t stop until their toes were touching. Remy felt something slip. The anger coursed through him, but he couldn’t fully understand why. It wasn’t Grace. He was angry about Alena, about how he’d kept this from her, how she had every right to leave him that morning.
He’d wanted to be with her for months, and now it was tarnished. So he was lashing out. He knew it. Grace knew it.
“I have fought battles you cannot fathom. You’ve had hardships? Well, so have I. I have fought my whole life. And I’ll be damned if you’ll question any of it.”
Grace grabbed her briefcase and walked out of the conference room, her cane clacking on the linoleum. Remy watched her go, silent. He turned to look at Eric Celsun.
“Whoa,” he said. “That was intense.”
“Thanks for the analysis.”
“She’s right, you know,” he said. “The second you let people know you have an agenda, your credibility is shot. If these documents check out, we’ll print the story. Then people can judge for themselves.”
“And if they still vote for Rawson Griggs? Who might be acting as a puppet for a foreign nation?”
Celsun sighed, shrugged. “That’s their choice.”
“I’m don’t want to leave that up to chance. There’s too much at stake.”
“We’re not your enemy, Remy. If Rawson had a hand in Paul’s death, and if Dastan Nogoyev and Alexay Usenov are linked to Rawson’s ties in Kyrgyzstan, we’ll want people to know. But we can’t prove that yet.”
“I’ll prove it,” Remy said. And then he left the Gazette without any idea of just how he was going to live up to that promise.
The apartment felt damp. Like a steam room left alone for days.
Alena wasn’t quite sure when it started to feel that way, but everywhere she went, she felt like she was walking in a swamp. She knelt down, ran her hands over the hardwood floor, but the boards were as dry as the day they were installed. She checked the air ducts, the bathroom ceiling, the spaces underneath the dishwasher and refrigerator. They were all as dry as a bone.
Alena picked up the phone and called the front desk.
“Yes, Mrs. Griggs?”
That dagger. Mrs. Griggs. She didn’t know how long people would keep calling her missus, if there was a statute of limitations on how long you kept your married status after yo
ur husband died. But every time that word—missus—escaped someone’s lips, it felt like a blade slipping through her ribcage.
“Hi, Don. I think there’s a leak in my apartment.”
“Ah, so sorry. I’ll have maintenance up right away to take a look. Where’s the leak coming from?”
“I…um…I’m not sure.”
“Bathroom? Kitchen?”
“No, neither one.”
“Bedroom?”
“Nope. That’s fine.”
“I…uh…what should I tell maintenance?”
“Just…forget it. I’m mistaken. Thanks, Don, sorry about this.”
“Should I have them come just in case?”
“No, that’s alright. I’m sure they’re busy.”
“Not a problem. Call back if you find the leak.”
Alena hung up the phone, then found herself sliding down the wall until she was seated next to the fridge. She took deep breaths. Being the daughter of Rawson Griggs meant Alena had a life most people would never understand, a life most people only dreamed of. Because that was what they believed it was: a dream. Being a Griggs meant you were surrounded by glitz and glamour twenty-four seven, your days full of charity lunches, your nights full of parties and balls. You were one of the beautiful people, your every desire catered to, never wanting for anything.
But there was also a devastating loneliness, a hollowness, knowing she woke up every single day with a life that did not fully belong to her. For the last fifteen years, Alena received an email from Wanda LeFebvre containing her father’s itinerary, which, more often than not, was also her itinerary. There were always dinners to attend, pols and businessmen to wine and dine, wealthy and influential people to impress. And she would dress exquisitely, act politely, fake modesty when appropriate, laugh like she meant it, and always have a good-looking man by her side.
She’d had no shortage of those men throughout her life. Placeholders. Paperweights. Men who looked dashing in photographs, men who made other women envy her like mad. European shipping heirs and well-coiffed movie stars and scions who still used the phrase “old money” without a sense of irony.
