Money to Burn

by James Grippando

  He stepped away, running his hand through his hair. But he didn’t push back the way she had expected.

  “You’re right,” he said. “The only way to derail Kyle McVee is to make the FBI understand that, in his twisted mind, bringing down Saxton Silvers is secondary to finding you.”

  “Everything is secondary to finding me. I should have told the FBI that four years ago.”

  “The FBI couldn’t protect you then. And they won’t be able to protect you now.”

  “I’m not worried about me. I’m worried about Michael and my mother.”

  He took her hand and squeezed it. “They’ll be fine. I promise.”

  “You got their backs?”

  He nodded. “McVee will never find them. I don’t care what it costs. I may have lost my shirt in Saxton Silvers, but thankfully, money will never be an issue for me. I’ve still got WhiteSands.”

  Eric was talking about the investment management firm he’d founded in the 1980s, before his rise to power within Saxton Silvers. Some said it was the proverbial tail wagging the dog, with over a trillion dollars in assets under management, yet 49 percent owned by Saxton Silvers. Eric, individually, was still a major shareholder.

  “Thank you, Eric.”

  He nodded. “I don’t regret the way I helped you four years ago. And, of course, we all want to help Michael. You just have to figure out a way to do it without throwing me under the bus.”

  She knew he was right. She gave him a quick hug, then stepped away.

  “Good luck, Ivy. And for the last time: good-bye.”

  52

  IVY TOOK THE EXPRESS ELEVATOR FROM THE SAXTON SILVERS executive suite to the garage and left the building through the rear entrance. She walked toward Columbus Circle, weighing her options. Somewhere above the plywood tunnel that said POST NO BILLS, a demolition crew outshouted their jackhammers in a heated Mets vs. Yankees argument. A delivery truck blocked the cross street as fishmongers tossed tonight’s sushi over their shoulders and hauled it down into a restaurant cellar. On the sidewalk alongside the newsstand, hip-hop dancers whirled on their heads like spinning tops, all for a few bucks that passersby tossed into a hat. A bus pulled up, hydraulic brakes hissing. Every square inch of it, including the windows and door, was a mobile advertisement for Jersey Boys, “winner of four Tony Awards, including best musical and best actor…” They’d missed out on best actress.

  Should have gone to Ivy Layton.

  She missed living in the city. Ironically, she never would have returned, had it not been for Ian Burn. Their chance encounter at a restaurant in Florence last fall changed everything. She wasn’t certain that he had recognized her, but the exchange had been too dangerous to ignore. Ivy knew how McVee operated. If Burn was able to convince him that Ivy was alive, McVee would target Michael or her mother to draw Ivy out of hiding. She had to warn them, or at least keep her finger on the pulse of the situation, which meant returning to New York. She’d arrived in February-right about the same time Mallory’s friend Andrea moved to the Upper West Side. It had occurred to Ivy that the timing was no coincidence.

  Speaking of “best actress.”

  Ivy jumped in a taxi and rode up to Le Pain Quotidien near Columbus Circle, where Mallory met Andrea for coffee almost every morning after her Pilates class. As long as Ivy had been watching them, Andrea always arrived ten to fifteen minutes early and snagged a table in the café away from the bakery, surrounded by other skinny women who tried not to get too close to warm loaves of pain au chocolat or-Andrea’s morning favorite-the organic hazelnut flûte. Andrea usually scarfed one down before Mallory arrived. And there she was now, enjoying one with coffee at her usual table when Ivy approached.

  “Wow, coffee and a pastry. How’d you get the bureau to approve that in your undercover operation budget?”

  “Excuse me?” said Andrea.

  She extended her hand, still standing. “Hi, I’m Ivy Layton.”

  Andrea showed surprise but stayed in role. “Michael Cantella’s first wife?

  “That would be me.”

  More surprise, but now it was coming across too thick. “But you’re supposed to be dead.”

  “Careful, girl,” said Ivy. “They don’t give Tony Awards for overacting.”

  Andrea was suddenly speechless. Ivy smiled, then turned serious.

  “Let’s clear that up right now. I’ll stop pretending to be dead, and you stop pretending that you’re not an FBI agent. Deal?”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Andrea.

  “Oh, come on,” said Ivy. “It takes one to know one, and I’ve known about you for quite some time.”

  Andrea paused, clearly coming to realize that the jig was up. “It’s a crime to impersonate an FBI agent.”

  “I didn’t mean it literally. I just recognize an undercover agent when I see one. It’s the little things. The way you always show up early for your eleven o’clock meeting with Mallory, probably to run through the conversation in your head and figure out what information you’re going to pry out of her. The body language that tells me that you’re only pretending not to listen whenever Mallory takes a call on her cell-that you’re trained to make Mallory think you’re reading the menu or checking your BlackBerry when, in fact, you’re all ears. The way you hang on every word that Mallory utters, always encouraging her to say more.” She tugged at the chair. “May I?”

  Andrea didn’t say anything, so Ivy took a seat.

  “I’ve been watching Michael for years,” said Ivy, “keeping my distance, of course. That’s how I found out his wife was cheating on him. And that’s how I knew you were an FBI agent working undercover.”

  Andrea still said nothing.

  “I understand,” said Ivy. “You can’t confirm or deny. But let me guess. The federal investigation into the manipulation of Saxton Silvers stock is now in its…fifth month? Sixth? The FBI was counting on Chuck Bell to crumble under subpoena and reveal the confidential source who fed him the false rumors about Saxton Silvers. Michael Cantella was one of the short sellers who profited from the rumors. Bell could have exposed a chain of players that led directly back to Michael-motive enough, perhaps, for Michael to have Bell silenced before he could testify before the grand jury.”

  The women locked eyes.

  “Am I even close?” asked Ivy, but Andrea met her with more silence.

  “I thought so,” said Ivy. “So here’s the truth. Eric Volke told me that he’s already laid out these facts for you, but maybe you’ll believe him if you also hear it from me: Michael is innocent. Kyle McVee is your man. He set up everything to make you think exactly what you’re thinking about Michael.”

  Andrea considered it, and Ivy knew she finally had her engaged.

  “Why would Kyle McVee single out Michael Cantella?”

  “Because of me,” said Ivy.

  “That much I’ve figured out. I need specifics.”

  “That’s the best I can do.”

  Andrea’s stare tightened. “You don’t seem to understand. Anyone who fakes her own death has defrauded the IRS, created a false Social Security number, used a phony passport, committed fraud and perjury in connection with identification documents-the list of federal crimes goes on and on. You have no choice: You have to do better.”

  Most of what Andrea described was Eric Volke’s doing. Even if Ivy had wanted to tell the FBI everything, she couldn’t sell out the man who’d put himself at risk to help her create a new identity and disappear-effectively saved her life.

  “Compared to the financial crimes you’re targeting in the undercover operation, that’s all very petty stuff,” Ivy tried.

  “Petty? You’re looking at one to ten years of imprisonment for each offense.”

  “Okay. But before you haul me in, hear me out. Like I said at the beginning: I’ve known about you for quite some time. Which should make you wonder: Why have I kept it to myself? Why didn’t I just come right out and tell Eric Volke or Michael or my mot
her that Mallory Cantella’s friend Andrea is an undercover FBI agent?”

  Andrea was trying to show no interest-but was failing.

  Ivy almost smiled. “I decided to keep my mouth shut until I needed a favor. And that time has come. It’s a simple one, but without it, I can assure you of this: The world will know by sunrise that you are an FBI undercover agent. Then you can watch months of undercover work go up in smoke with no payoff.”

  Ivy let her chew on that one for a while, and finally it drew a response.

  “And if I agree to grant you that favor?”

  “Then I’m willing to tell you more than Eric Volke has already told the FBI. I’ll tell you exactly why Kyle McVee wants me dead.”

  Andrea gave her an assessing look. “All right,” she said, extending her hand. “You good on a handshake?”

  “I am if you are, Andrea.”

  “Call me Andie,” she said as they shook.

  “Okay,” said Ivy. “You may want to call me Vanessa.”

  “So start talking, Vanessa.”

  Ivy leaned closer. And then she told her.

  53

  I WAS INSIDE THE CLOSET, TAPPING ON THE BACK WALL WITH MY knuckles.

  Our motel room was like every other I had ever seen. The front wall facing the parking lot was a prefabricated door and window with a built-in climate-control unit. The room had no other way in or out. In the back was a small bathroom on one side, a Formica counter with a mirror and vanity setup in the middle, and a step-in closet on the other side.

  I tapped again on the back wall of the closet.

  “What are you doing?” asked Olivia.

  “One of my clients once bought a motel chain. I remember him telling me that the rooms don’t back up to other rooms. There’s usually a service corridor that runs the length of the building.”

  “So?”

  “So if it’s true that we’re being watched, all we have to do is bust through this back wall, leave through the service corridor, and they’ll never know we’re gone.”

  Olivia came into the closet and knocked. “But it’s a wall.”

  “Not a bearing wall,” I said. “It’s hollow. And these studs are twenty-four inches apart, not sixteen.”

  “It’s still a wall.”

  I took a wire hanger from the rack and straightened it out. Holding it with both hands, I pressed the tip to the wall and pushed. It went right through, like a poker. This was going to be even easier than I’d thought; there was wallboard on only my side of the studs. The service corridor on the other side was obviously unfinished, the studs exposed. I pulled out the hanger, placed the tip an inch above the previous hole, and pushed again. Olivia caught on to what I was doing, straightened out another hanger, and started on the other side of the closet. In ten minutes we had the dotted outline of a punched rectangle on the wall.

  “Stand back,” I said.

  Olivia stepped aside. I got a running start, jumped at the rectangle, hit it squarely with both feet, smashed right through it-and landed flat on my ass on the concrete floor of the dark service corridor, covered from head to toe with broken bits of wallboard.

  “Owww-shit.”

  Olivia appeared in the opening, gazing through the dust. “Are you all right?”

  My breath was gone. “This never happens to Jason Bourne.”

  Olivia climbed through the hole and helped me to my feet. I brushed the debris from my shirt as I looked around. One end of the corridor was blocked by laundry carts that were over-flowing with towels and linens. The door at the other end was clear.

  “This way,” I said, leading her down the hall at a medium jog. The door was unlocked, and we stepped into a sunny courtyard. It took a moment to get my bearings. If the entrance to our room was being watched, we were out of view, no longer right on busy Tonnelle Avenue. I led Olivia around the building, away from our room, to the opposite side of the motel. A cab was parked beneath the carport. We hurried toward it and jumped in the backseat.

  The driver put down his newspaper.

  “Where to?”

  “Nutley,” I said. Nick, the driver who had taken my grandparents to the airport, lived in New Jersey, and I was hoping he would have some idea what had gone wrong last night.

  “Where about in Nutley?”

  I’d been to Nick’s house for his daughter’s First Communion, but I didn’t remember the exact address.

  “Walnut Street, I think. I’ll recognize the house. Just hurry.”

  “You got it,” he said.

  The meter started running, and both Olivia and I ducked down to the floor as the taxi pulled onto Tonnelle Avenue.

  “Hey, hey,” said the driver. “None of that in my cab.”

  We stayed low until we were a good half mile from the motel, then climbed back into our seats. Olivia gazed out the window at oncoming traffic on the divided highway, a wan expression on her face, as if searching hopelessly for her daughter. I should have let her have time to herself, but something was weighing on my mind.

  “Why did it bother you so much when I told you that Burn knew Ivy as ‘Vanessa’?”

  Olivia glanced back, seemingly puzzled. “I told you: That’s the name Ivy used after she disappeared.”

  “What was her surname?”

  Again, she bristled-the same way she had earlier, when I told her that Burn had used the name Vanessa.”

  “What?”

  “When Ivy became Vanessa,” I said, “what was her last name?”

  Olivia continued to fumble-why, I wanted to find out.

  “I don’t know,” she said.

  She turned her attention back to the passing cars and road signs. I let it go. Her reaction was more telling than anything. Something wasn’t adding up.

  I checked Mallory’s smart phone. Back at the motel, calls had come through, but it had been an Internet dead zone. Now I was getting the Web. On a hunch, I linked Vanessa with Olivia’s surname-“Hernandez”-and ran it through the electronic white pages. The result wasn’t promising: “Hernandez,” the search summary told me, was the twenty-second most common surname in America. Slap “Vanessa” in front of it, and the full name was only slightly less popular than “Valerie Clark”-1,950,000 hits. In a last-ditch effort, I typed “Vanessa Hernandez and Ivy Layton” and pressed Search. Only a few hits came up, and I clicked on a link that took me to a photo gallery for “Ivy Layton.” Most of the photos looked to be twenty years old or more. My specific link was to a photograph of two high school girls wearing soccer uniforms. I looked closer. One of them was named Ivy Layton. I didn’t recognize her. The girl next to her was named Vanessa Hernandez, and I froze.

  It was Ivy.

  Her hair was longer and darker, her face more girlish, but eighteen-year-old Vanessa Hernandez from Gulliver Academy in Coral Gables, Florida, class of 1990, had grown into the woman I knew as “Ivy Layton.”

  My head was spinning. Admittedly, I had never known much about Ivy’s childhood. She’d told me that she was home-schooled in Chile. That her mother-Olivia-was from Santiago. Her father, long since deceased, was an engineer in the mining business. Details were sparse; Ivy didn’t like to talk about the past. “Life’s about the future,” she would tell me. She was so full of energy, and I was so in love with her, that her forward focus always seemed healthy to me. Now it seemed duplicitous, perhaps nefarious.

  I clicked on the Home button on the menu bar, and I discovered that I wasn’t in just any photo gallery. It was a memorial book-a tribute to Ivy Layton that her friends had created for the tragic no-show at their ten-year high school reunion. She’d died in a car crash. Ivy had not become Vanessa after she’d disappeared from our sailboat. Vanessa Hernandez had become Ivy Layton. For the short period of time I had known her, Ivy-Vanessa-had used the name of a deceased high school girlfriend so that she could become…what?

  And why?

  “Here you go, buddy,” said the driver. “Walnut Street.”

  I looked up. Nutley’s former reside
nts included everyone from Martha Stewart to Little Sammy Corsaro, a Gambino crime family soldier. Nick’s part of Nutley was more along the Little Sammy lines. To my left, a huge willow tree overpowered the small yard, hiding all but the screened-in porch of an old frame house.

  I spotted Nick in his driveway.

  “Stop!”

  The cabbie hit the breaks. Nick looked over. The black suit and cap that he wore as a limo driver were instantly recognizable, but it was odd to see him dressed that way behind the wheel of his own modest Chevy. He was backing out to the street, on his way to work, giving me no time to confront Olivia about Ivy’s real name.

  “Go,” she told me, “I’ll cover the fare.”

  I jumped out of the cab, ran across the street, and practically threw myself in the path of Nick’s car. He stopped at the end of the driveway and cranked down his window.

  “Mr. C., what are you doing here?”

  I was about to explain my paranoia about using a cell phone-Ivy’s warning that McVee might be listening-but skipped it. “I wanted to talk to you about last night. Did you get my grandparents to the airport okay?”

  My question put him on the defensive. “Yeah, almost two hours before the flight. Something wrong?”

  “They didn’t get on the plane. And no one has heard from them since.”

  He seemed genuinely shocked. “That’s weird.”

  “Did you see anything strange? Anyone at the airport who looked out of the ordinary?”

  “Nuttin’ that worried me,” said Nick. “They seemed in good hands when I left.”

  “Whose hands?”

  “There was a woman who met them at the curb.”

  “You mean curbside check-in?”

  “No, I dealt with that. She was…a friend, I thought. Good lookin’, too. Anyways, they seemed to know her and were glad to see her-really glad. Like they ain’t seen each other for a long time. I didn’t think nothin’ of it.”

  I froze, almost too perplexed to ask. “Did you catch her name?”

  “Your grandpa called her Ivy.”

  Ivy.

  “Mr. C.,” said Nick, breaking my chain of thought. “I know you got a lot on your mind, but I heard about the bankruptcy on the news this morning. I was just wondering about my stock.”