The Patriots Club

by Christopher Reich

  Short checked the bank of monitors. There were twenty in all. The four positioned directly in front of him were permanent feeds from the lobby, the garage, and the forty-third floor, where Harrington Weiss’s top executives worked. The others rotated among the cameras on the different floors. He looked at a few, then took out his sandwich. In three years on the job, the most exciting thing that had happened on his watch was one of HW’s partners having a heart attack while waiting for an elevator to take him to his radio car. Short had spotted him on one of the monitors, lying there wriggling around like a landed fish. His call to 911 had saved the man’s life. Every year the man invited Caleb Short and his wife to his home for Thanksgiving dinner and slipped him an envelope with an even grand inside it, along with a bottle of French wine.

  “You want first rotation or me?” he asked Lemon.

  Each night, Short and Wilkie were required to make a minimum of six tours through the building, meaning a stop at each floor to have a look around. A tour took a little more than an hour.

  “Sure, I’ll go,” said Wilkie.

  A skeleton staff was on duty. Besides the two Somalis working the reception desk, there was just Short and Wilkie.

  Caleb Short handed him the keys, but Lemon Wilkie wasn’t looking his way.

  “Ah, shit,” said Wilkie. “Check out camera three.”

  Short looked at the monitor providing a wide-angle view of the lobby. Three African American males were approaching the reception desk. It appeared that two of them were brandishing pistols and the third an Uzi. “Holy shit,” he muttered.

  “You want it . . . or me?” asked Wilkie.

  Regulations called for one man to remain in the security control room.

  “I’ll take it,” said Short.

  “Yes sir.”

  Short glanced at Wilkie. That was more like it.

  It was then that he heard the shots go off like a string of firecrackers. Holes appeared in the floor and the ceiling. The security room was situated directly above the reception desk. Short stared at the monitor. The three men were spraying the lobby with bullets. “Come on, Wilkie. Get your piece out. We’re going down there together.”

  “I’m calling the cops. I ain’t going anywhere.”

  Caleb Short shook his head. “The hell you aren’t. This is our building and we don’t let no one mess it up.”

  Wilkie stood and fumbled with his pistol. His face had gone whiter than a ghost.

  The two men were out the door a few seconds later.

  Neither saw Thomas Bolden emerge from the elevator on the forty-third floor.

  Recessed lights burned dimly, casting shadows on the reception desk, lengthening hallways, and in between, leaving pools of darkness. Bolden walked briskly, keeping an ear open for any activity. He had five minutes, ten at the most. Darius Fell promised to keep his buddies lighting up the place until NYPD showed up and not a minute longer. From somewhere distant came the whirring of an incoming fax. He turned the corner, passing Sol Weiss’s office.

  Weiss, the self-made striver, the genial, charismatic leader, the staunch defender of the firm as a partnership. How many times had he turned down offers to sell the company, to boost the firm’s capital through an initial public offering, or to merge with one of the titans of the Street? He’d said it was to guard the firm’s entrepreneurial culture, to stay a specialist in chosen fields. Mostly, though, he liked to say that HW was a family company. His family. Bolden had never looked past the explanations. Was it that strange for at least one man to be satisfied with what he’d built himself?

  Bolden continued past the private dining room and the executive boardroom. The door to Mickey Schiff’s office was locked. Bolden tried three keys until he found the right one. It wasn’t an office so much as the living room of an Italian palazzo. The room stretched seventy feet and was decorated in a sumptuous style the diametric opposite of his home. There was a section for guests, another for the lord of the manor to roam, and a formal work area at the far side. Somewhere hidden among the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves was a secret door to his private bathroom. Schiff had brought Bolden up on a Saturday a year ago and given him the nickel tour. It was the standard “this all could be yours someday” speech. Show the galley slaves what they’re working toward. Gold-plated faucets, Hockney prints, and an office the size of Rhode Island. That was the carrot. They didn’t have to worry about the stick. HW chose their employees carefully. The single overarching trait was a monstrous fear of failure. The employees provided their own sticks.

  Bolden moved to his desk and took a place in Schiff’s low-backed captain’s chair. An identification card was required to gain access to Nightingale, the firm’s proprietary banking software. The card governed one’s clearance within the system, dictating what areas of the bank he had a right to explore. Schiff saw it all. Bolden slid the card through the scanner located on top of the keyboard. The screen powered up. After a few false starts, he accessed the portfolio management rubric. A prompt appeared asking him to enter the customer’s name or account number. He tried to remember who had mostly recently joined HW.

  He typed in the name “LaWanda Makepeace.”

  Six months earlier, LaWanda Makepeace had served as commissioner of the FCC when the regulatory body had inexplicably altered a holding rule allowing one of Jefferson’s telecom companies to market its service beyond its home state. Two months later, she’d left the FCC to join Jefferson Partners. It seemed a reasonable place to start.

  Three account numbers appeared on the screen. Two of the numbers belonged to standard brokerage accounts. He opened each in turn. Both held a variety of blue-chip stocks, municipal bonds, and cash in the form of money-market shares. Their combined total teetered on the cusp of a million dollars. All in all, a reasonable portfolio for a fifty-year-old government professional who had counted her pennies.

  The third account was labeled Omega Associates.

  Bolden opened it. There at the bottom of the page, in the all-important box listing the total account value, stood the number thirty-four, followed by six zeroes. Thirty-four million dollars. Definitely not what one would expect for a woman who had spent her professional working life toiling in the government’s stables. Bolden blew a stream of air through his teeth. Thirty-four million dollars. It wasn’t a bribe. It was a dynasty.

  A look at the account’s history showed that the cash had been deposited in two tranches. The first, six months earlier, and the second sixty days ago, corresponding to the time the FCC had ruled in favor of Jefferson.

  Bolden recalled Marty Kravitz’s line about conjecture, and something a reasonable man could assume. Screw conjecture. It was time to dig up some proof.

  By shading, then double-clicking on the deposit transaction, he was able to trace the routing of the thirty-four million dollars. The money had been wired in from a numbered account at the private bank of Milbank and Mason, domiciled in Nassau, the Bahamas. Finding the bank’s SWIFT number, the international identity code given to each licensed bank, he asked the software to locate and exhibit all transactions involving the bank and HW’s clients.

  A list appeared, running to several screens. Two million here. Ten million there. There wasn’t an incoming wire from Milbank and Mason for less than seven figures. The sum added up to a fortune, but it was peanuts to a firm that year in, year out, earned its investors a staggering twenty-six percent rate of return. The names were equally staggering. Senators. Commissioners. Generals. Ambassadors. Movers and shakers, all. The men and women whose hands operated the levers of power. He counted no less than seven who currently worked for Jefferson Partners. All of them were here. All were clients of Harrington Weiss.

  And then Bolden stumbled across his divining key. The transaction that tied it all together. Not an incoming wire, but an outgoing payment to said bank of Milbank and Mason, Nassau, the Bahamas. The sum: twenty-five million dollars. The recipient: a numbered account, but as was the custom, the account holder’s name was indica
ted for HW’s internal records. Guy de Valmont, vice chair of Jefferson Partners.

  Bolden double-checked the account number. It matched the account used to pay LaWanda Makepeace and several others.

  The trail was complete.

  There was a last name, too. Solomon H. Weiss. The amount: fifty million dollars. No doubt a payment to ensure the long-lived partnership. A little pocket money to keep prying eyes at bay.

  Bolden sent the information to the printer. He was done with conjecture. He had his proof. The printer began to spit out pages. He checked one. Bribery wasn’t the right word, he thought. More apt was robbery. But robbing what? Integrity. Faith. Accountability. Tammany Hall had nothing on Jefferson. Jefferson had hijacked the government and stuffed it in its back pocket.

  When the printer had finished, Bolden logged off the computer and left the office.

  He shut the door and looked down the hall.

  “Bang,” said a voice, from behind him. “You’re dead.”

  Bolden froze.

  Wolf stood three feet away, holding a silenced pistol. “Don’t even think about it,” he said.

  57

  “Wolf’s got him,” said Guilfoyle, striding up to James Jacklin outside his office.

  “Well, hallelujah. I thought I’d never see the day. Where’d they nab him?”

  Guilfoyle took Jacklin to one side. “In Mickey Schiff’s office.”

  “What the hell was he doing there?”

  “Looking into the financial affairs of some of our counselors.”

  “He’s one resourceful individual. I’ll give him that much.”

  “Does it surprise you?” Guilfoyle monitored Jacklin’s expression. As ever, it was impossible to read anything in the man’s features except scorn and a general frustration that the world didn’t run quite the way he’d like it to.

  The office was quiet for a Wednesday evening. The entire staff had received invitations to the dinner. Most of the executives were either at Jacklin’s home or on their way. A few stragglers hurried up and down the hallways, throwing on their dinner jackets, spending a last moment adjusting their ties.

  “Have you talked to Schiff?” asked Jacklin.

  “Voice mail. But I plan on speaking with him as soon as he arrives. Bolden had these documents with him.”

  Jacklin accepted the sheaf of papers that had been faxed to D.C. for Guilfoyle’s inspection. “Busy bee, isn’t he? Most people would have done the smart thing and run for the hills.” He thumbed through the copies, frowning when he came across the LexisNexis reports listing Schiff as a director of Defense Associates. “These reports were printed this afternoon. Who does he have on the inside?”

  “His secretary helped him. Her name is Althea Jackson. We can assume she’s conversant with the material.”

  “Married?”

  “Single. One boy. Twelve years old.”

  “Dammit,” said Jacklin. He shook his head and sighed. “See that the boy’s well taken care of. Set up a scholarship or something. Remind me to give St. Paul’s a call. I know the rector. They’re good about taking needy cases.”

  Guilfoyle nodded. “I spoke with Marty Kravitz. He swore that Bolden impersonated one of HW’s senior executives when ordering the reports. Apparently, Bolden strong-armed him into handing over the information. I think we can count on Kravitz keeping his mouth shut. If Prell tattled every time they found something incriminating, they wouldn’t have any customers left.”

  “All right then, get Bolden down here. I want to talk to him face-to-face.”

  “He’s on his way.” Guilfoyle stepped closer to Jacklin. “Got a minute?”

  “I’ve got the limo waiting downstairs. I can give you a lift.”

  “It won’t take long.” Guilfoyle took Jacklin by the arm and guided him into the confines of his office. “There’s something you need to know. Something about Albany.”

  Jacklin folded his arms, giving Guilfoyle his undivided attention. “What about Albany?”

  “A detective in New York ran latents of your thumb and index finger through the NCIC’s database and got a match.”

  “Where the hell did he get copies of my fingerprints?”

  “I don’t know, but we have to assume the worst.”

  “And that is?”

  “The prints came from the gun used to kill David Bernstein.”

  “How is that possible? I thought the matter was cleared up a long time ago.”

  “I never found the prints. It bothered me at the time, but without Kovacs there wasn’t a reason to be concerned. The problem was localized and contained. Twenty-five years, J. J. Really, I’m as shocked as you.”

  “That I very much doubt,” said Jacklin. When he spoke next his voice was quiet as a rattlesnake’s whisper. “It was our bargain. You cleaned up that mess in exchange for a cozy job with Jefferson. I had thought it a fair one at the time. I’m no longer so sure.” Jacklin stepped toward the model of the battleship Maine. “Who ran the prints?” he asked.

  “Detective John Franciscus. He’s the same one who questioned Bolden last night.”

  “What makes him so damned curious?”

  “Just a good cop, I guess. We’ve tracked him to a flight to D.C.”

  “He’s coming here? Wonderful. Maybe we should leave an invitation to the gala at the airport for him.”

  “Hold on, J. J. I’m as upset about this as you.”

  “You?” Jacklin shook a finger at him. “You cold-blooded bastard. You haven’t got a feeling inside you. What do you know about being upset?”

  Guilfoyle felt part of him lock up. He knew as much about emotions as anyone. He knew how destructive they were. How they controlled you. How once you gave in to them, you were powerless. He said, “We had a man at LaGuardia keeping an eye out for Bolden. He was able to get on board the plane with Franciscus.”

  “What are you waiting for, then?” asked Jacklin.

  “He’s a police officer.”

  “So? It didn’t stop you before. Those fingerprints can put both of us away.”

  “First, they need a witness to place you at the scene.”

  “They have one,” Jacklin flared. “Bobby Stillman. Those fingerprints are her ticket to freedom.”

  58

  The Scanlon operative lay on his side panting.

  “Not bad,” said Bobby Stillman. “I didn’t expect money to buy that kind of loyalty.” She dropped to a knee and put a hand under the man’s shoulder. “Get up.”

  When he didn’t move, she yanked him to his feet. His face was red from where she’d slapped him, but other than that he was no worse for wear. Still, she couldn’t help but notice that her friends were eyeing her differently.

  She was a mean bitch. Count on it.

  “So, you really don’t know what Crown is?” she asked.

  The man shook his head.

  “Then you won’t mind if I try one last way of finding out?” Bobby Stillman pulled a carpet layer’s X-Acto knife out of her pocket. She pushed the blade out slowly. Click. Click. Click. Millimeter by millimeter the steel snout emerged, until the razor-sharp triangle had grown to the size of a thumbnail. She laid the blade against his cheek.

  A calm had come over her. After all the yelling, cajoling, browbeating, and finally striking her mute captive, she had made a dangerous peace with herself. All along she’d wondered how far she would go; what she would do if, ultimately, he refused to talk.

  She stared into the man’s eyes. She was sure she saw his willful self staring back. Never for a moment had she believed that he didn’t know. J. J. had always said that it was important to trust your men, to give them the truth and let them come to grips with it. And so, she decided that there weren’t any rules. Screw the Geneva Convention and the Marquess of Queensberry. This wasn’t a war or a boxing match. She’d been living outside the bounds of the civilized world for so long that she was surprised she hadn’t come to the conclusion earlier. God knows, Jacklin had. He was always willing to
subordinate everything to the result. The end was all. The means meant nothing.

  Bobby Stillman placed her lips next to the man’s ear. “You will tell me,” she said.

  For the first time, she read fear in his eyes, as if he had finally taken a test of her mettle.

  J. J. would be proud of me, she thought, and the idea made her terribly sad.

  It had been a hot day. A hot day after many other hot days. Everyone’s nerves were shot. People had worn through their good cheer. It was only July, but summer had gone on for a week too long already. Bobby came home to finish packing. She carried a grocery bag full of things they couldn’t find when they left. Skippy peanut butter, granola bars, and a new pair of Superman pajamas for Jacky Jo. The flight for Buenos Aires left at eleven out of JFK. They would disappear for a year, longer if it suited them. She found David speaking with Jacklin in the front hall.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Didn’t you think I’d keep an eye on you?” Jacklin asked, smiling scornfully. “Once that building went up, I knew who was responsible.”

  “They have it on tape,” said David Bernstein. “A surveillance camera got it all.”

  Jacklin took a step toward Bobby. “Don’t make it hard on yourself, sweetheart. Police are on the way now. You can give them your excuses.”

  An alarm bell sounded in her mind. This isn’t right, she thought. Why is J. J. waiting for the police to come?

  “What are we standing around for?” she said to David, grabbing his hand. “Let’s go. Now. Let’s get out of here.”

  She turned for the stairs. Two of Jacklin’s goons waited at the upper landing. Broad shoulders, short haircuts, closed faces. She knew the type.