by Stephen Frey
A month later, Macarthur had purchased this Middleburg estate, then invited Bennett to meet him on this porch in this chair to inform the president’s chief of staff that he had leased five floors of a Manhattan skyscraper on Fifth Avenue and hired a hundred professionals from McKinsey, Bain, the Boston Consulting Group, and other top consulting firms. To inform Bennett that Macarthur & Company was fully operational, and he was prepared to make those special funds available. One thing about Macarthur, Bennett thought to himself, he did things in a hurry.
“What did Lucas tell you?” Macarthur asked, picking up a glass of lemonade off the serving tray.
Bennett shook his head. “He told me that in the next Project Trust speech the president will announce a committee from hell to rule Wall Street with an iron hand. That the suspender set can anticipate having their multimillion-dollar annual compensation packages disappear.”
Macarthur shrugged. “I don’t give a flying fuck about those Wall Street pricks.”
“No?”
“They’re nothing but leeches. Skimmed seven percent of everything I got when they took my companies public. They deserved no more than one,” Macarthur continued. “Maybe.I mean, how hard is it to sell stock, for Christ’s sake?” He took a quick sip of lemonade. “What else did Lucas tell you?”
“That, as part of Project Trust, the president is going to propose a seventy-five percent income tax on annual earnings over a million dollars.”
“Fucking Christ!” Macarthur shouted, hurling his glass against an oak tree in the front yard, shattering it into a hundred pieces.
“And a wealth tax of five percent a year on net worths over ten million dollars.”
“Holy shit!He can’t do that.”
“The president canpropose anything he wants to.”
“He’d never get either of those fucking things passed.”
Bennett raised an eyebrow. “Don’t be so sure, Sam. We’re in the middle of a recession, and the ninety-nine percent of America that’s struggling right now doesn’t give a rat’s ass about a man who drinks lemonade served on a silver tray by his personal maid on the porch of his thousand-acre thoroughbred horse farm. And he’s giving the have-nots a tax break. Just as insurance.”
Macarthur pulled at his blond hair with both hands. “Has the little fucker found anything that can help us?”
“Yes, but he wouldn’t tell me what it is.”
“Why didn’t you have some of your boys beat the snot out of him until he told you, then throw his body in the Potomac?”
“Because he’s covered himself.”
“What do you mean?”
Bennett turned toward Macarthur. “Lucas has recorded what he knows and stored that information in a safe place. Remember, what he knows involves Macarthur and Company.”
“The little shit’s bluffing.”
“A man like Lucas doesn’t bluff. He doesn’t have the courage.”
Macarthur rose from his chair and stalked to the porch railing. “So what the hell do we do?”
“Lucas is smart enough to have figured out that men like you take care of political appointees who don’t have a chance to make fortunes in the private sector. He wants in on that.”
“So?”
“We let him in.”
“We let him in?”
Bennett smirked. “We let himthink we’re letting him in.”
Macarthur smiled for the first time since coming out onto the porch.
“We let him think he’s inside,” Bennett repeated quietly, “until we’ve recovered those notes.”
“How are you going to do that?”
“Don’t worry,” Bennett replied. “I have that angle covered.” He glanced out at the horses dotting the fields. When this was over, he was definitely going to the ranch in Montana. “Did you speak with your contacts at the Justice Department this morning?”
Macarthur nodded. “Yes.”
As chief of staff, Bennett had to be careful about being linked to certain federal agencies and departments on a regular basis. So he was using Macarthur as his go-between on this one. As a test. And as something the party could use against the young man in the future if they ever needed to. Macarthur didn’t even realize what was going on. He’d jumped at the chance to get to know these people because Bennett had told him they were important. “And?”
“Several of the other operations are making significant progress, including the one involving Conner Ashby. We may not even need whatever Lucas has uncovered.” Macarthur hesitated. “What would happen to someone like Ashby if he finds what we’re looking for and we have to forcibly take it from him?”
Bennett chuckled. “He’d take that swim in the Potomac you recommended for Lucas.”
21
Conner hustled up the jet-way, quickly switching hands with his cell phone as he peeled off his suit jacket. Miami’s heat and humidity were terrible. You could sweat while you were swimming down here.
“Hello.”
“Is this the Executive Suite?” he asked, darting past slower passengers carrying bags.
“Yeah.”
“Do you have a dancer named Tori there?” No one had answered when he called the club a few hours ago from New York.
“Why you wanna know?”
The air turned cooler as Conner reached the top of the jet-way and moved into the terminal. “I was here in Miami one night last March on business, and she was working. I bought her a drink and we talked a little. She was nice. But she wasn’t at the club when I came back in June, and I was . . . well, I was disappointed. I . . . I thought she was . . . real pretty,” he stammered, trying to sound embarrassed. “I was just hoping she’d be there tonight.”
“You liked her, huh?” the man at the end of the line asked, laughing.
“Yeah,” Conner admitted, lowering his voice. The man had no idea how much.
“You and a thousand other guys.”
“Look, I—”
“Tori was away for a few months,” the man cut in, “but she got back last week. I’m checking tonight’s schedule and . . .” His voice faded momentarily. “. . . and you got lucky. She’s gonna be here.”
Conner had been worried that he might have to stay in Miami for a few days to run everything to ground, but maybe that wouldn’t be necessary after all. Maybe he’d be able to catch that nine o’clock flight back out of here. “What time does she go on?”
There was another pause. “Six.”
“Is she there yet?”
“No. She won’t get here until right before she goes on. She never does.”
Conner glanced at his watch. It was just before five. He might still have time to get to the Executive Suite before she did. He didn’t want to have to wait around until the club closed, because then he’d miss that flight. And that would give the people trying to track him down more time to figure out where he was.
They must be going crazy right now, Conner thought to himself. One of them in particular.
He rented a car and followed the directions the man behind the counter gave him, glancing in the rearview mirror every few moments. Looking for anything suspicious.
The Executive Suite was located beside a strip mall on the edge of an upscale neighborhood north of downtown. He swung the car into an open parking spot in front of a jewelry store. From here he could see anyone who drove onto the club’s lot.
Conner watched a palm tree sway in the warm breeze as he sat in the car, engine idling, air-conditioning turned on high. It had been a long time since he’d been back in Florida. It would have been nice if the homecoming could have been under different circumstances.
He shook his head. There’d been no engagement to a Morgan Sayers investment banker named Todd. Which was why the three-carat diamond was so cheap. Why spend a lot of money on a ring that was meaningless? The story about a trust fund left to her by a grandfather was a lie, too. Just like Art Meeks’s claim about being a private investigator. Amy Richards’s story about taking a new wa
itressing job at an Upper East Side restaurant. Everything was smoke and mirrors. The e-mail, the break-in, and the murder. A complete sham.
A sham, but an intricately crafted one with a very specific goal, Conner realized. To get him to investigate Global Components, specifically what was happening in Minneapolis. So the person behind the sham—without risking his own neck—could confirm that Global Component’s senior executives were committing fraud on an enormous scale. Overstating Global’s earnings to keep the stock price going up—it had closed today’s trading at sixty-seven, according to a broker at Ameritrade. To keep it moving north so the executives could keep cashing in the massive amount of call options the board had granted them.
Conner was convinced he had figured out the ultimate objective of this thing: To confirm the fraud baked into Global’s EPS numbers so that once there was definitive proof of what was happening in Minneapolis, the person behind the sham could release the information to the financial markets and make millions as Global’s share price crashed in the face of panic selling. Selling Global’s stock short or buying tons of put options before he released the information. Global’s share price would likely hit single digits in the hours immediately after the information was released, and the perpetrator of the sham would stand to make sixty bucks on every share he shorted and every put option he bought. Global was so big and had so many shares outstanding that by the time investigators sifted through the ashes and discovered any unusual trading activity—if they ever actually did discover it—the perpetrator would be long gone.
Liz’s “murder” had put the sham in motion. It had forced Conner to act on the e-mail from Rusty. At first, because he wanted to bring the murderer to justice. Then to protect himself as Art Meeks turned the screws tighter and tighter. Because, as Meeks—and Gavin—had pointed out several times, the police would ultimately focus on Conner as the prime suspect in Liz’s murder. He was in love with a beautiful woman who was engaged to another man. Conner had motive—jealousy—and opportunity. And he showed up in her diary so many times.
Which was all crap, of course. But he hadn’t known that there was no diary when Art Meeks had confronted him the first time on Lexington Avenue. Then the second time in Central Park. It wasn’t until he discovered that the errant e-mail had actually come from Amy Richards’s computer—not from the computer of some accountant named Rusty at Baker Mahaffey—that he had begun to understand what was really going on. It was an e-mail that had turned out not to be errant at all. Liz’s “murder” had been the explosion that had put the sham into motion, but the e-mail had been the fuse that had ignited the explosion. And ultimately led him to the truth—thanks to Jackie.
The truth was that Paul Stone was the one behind this thing. Rebecca had seen Stone with Amy Richards. Eddie had confirmed Stone as the name on the lease of the apartment down the hall from Conner’s where he and Eddie had discovered his old furniture and the bucket of red liquid—just dye intended to look like blood. Stone was on the lease at Liz’s Fifty-first Street apartment, too. And, according to the cell phone bills, Stone and Liz had talked at least three or four times a day during July.
Conner had also discovered that Stone was in a world of hurt financially. Stone’s mortgage was three months past due, his credit cards were maxed out, and his country club membership had been revoked—it always helped to have a friend at a background check company. That same friend had run a trace on Mandy Stone’s family and informed Conner that her family was leading a middle-class life in Omaha, Nebraska. They weren’t influential, as Gavin had suggested. Apparently, Stone had fooled Gavin, too. About a lot of things.
Paul Stone had been caught committing insider trading once before, and he was at it again. But this time it was on a huge scale.
Conner still hadn’t confirmed exactly what was going on at Global’s Minneapolis operation. Or how Stone knew that Global had a problem in Minneapolis, but didn’t have possession of the kind of conclusive evidence that would influence the markets. Which would be the key to a short selling strategy involving the kind of money Stone would want to clear out of this. Having a knockout punch. Having enough credible information in hand to instantly and completely convince the markets that Global Components was going down because of the accounting fraud. With the same lightning-quick speed Enron had imploded. So Stone could get in and out fast. His plan wouldn’t work if the information was unspecific and dribbled out. And, if he put out information that didn’t contain the knockout punch, the massive company might have time to somehow hide what was going on.
The image of Liz sprawled on his bedroom floor flashed through Conner’s mind. The sham had been choreographed so perfectly. He’d seen her body for only a split second before hearing the intruder in the living room. Only a moment to see the blood covering her throat and chest.
He lifted his arm, rolled up his sleeve, and glanced at the bullet wound. Being shot had convinced him that what was going on was very real, too. The guy chasing him down the fire escape must have been a hell of a marksman. A few inches to the right and—
A red Mustang zipped into the Executive Suite parking lot and pulled into a spot well away from the club’s entrance. Conner cut the rental car’s engine and grabbed the door handle as a young woman emerged from the Mustang. But he eased back into the seat as she shut her door. It wasn’t Liz. He watched as the woman trotted toward the club’s entrance.
When the woman had disappeared inside, he looked up at the Executive Suite sign over the entrance. Liz Shaw was a stripper. No wonder she’d been so comfortable being nude in front of him. He chuckled wryly. He’d wanted that sapphire belly piercing to be the rebel side of a society girl. Instead, it had been the sound business judgment of a woman trying to earn a living. An ornament intended to titillate. And, damn. How it had.
A rusting, light-blue Honda rolled into the parking lot. Conner caught a glimpse of long blond hair and a beautiful face. He held his breath as the Honda pulled to a stop alongside the Mustang.
Then a pair of long legs emerged from the driver’s side. He’d recognize those legs anywhere—even from a distance. He’d found Liz Shaw. She wasn’t dead after all. She was alive and well in Miami.
On the flight down Conner asked himself over and over how he could have fallen for the con. He prided himself on seeing things for what they were. Then Liz emerged from the Honda. She was wearing three-inch heels and a tiny dress that covered very little. Suddenly he realized exactly how he’d fallen for it. She was one of the most stunning women he’d ever seen.
Liz lifted a bag to her shoulder, locked the car, and began walking across the parking lot toward the club.
When she was halfway to the entrance, Conner broke from the rental car and headed toward her. She’d turn an ankle if she tried to run far in those heels.
Liz spotted him as he hurdled a divider separating the jewelry store and the club parking lots. She froze, glued to the asphalt for a split second. She made a move for the club, then stumbled and stopped short, realizing she wouldn’t make it. She dropped the bag, kicked off her heels and dashed back toward the Honda.
It was exactly what Conner had hoped for. If he’d been forced to drag her to the rental car screaming her lungs out, someone would have heard her and called the cops. But there were woods out beyond Liz’s Honda. A thick grove of pine trees separating the Executive Suite parking lot from a neighborhood, and that was what he needed—an isolated spot where he could interrogate her without being seen.
It was going to be close. She was faster than he’d anticipated. Covering a lot of ground quickly. If she made it to the Honda and managed to lock the doors before he got there, he’d lose her. She’d go squealing away, and he’d lose his chance to solve this thing. She’d call Stone, and then Conner would suddenly become the rabbit.
Conner heard a high-pitched beep and saw the Honda’s parking lights blink when Liz popped the locks with the remote button. He raced the last few yards as she grabbed the driver side handle and
yanked the door open. He jammed his arm into the car just as she slammed the door shut—right on his elbow. Searing pain shot up to his shoulder and down to his fingers, but he kept the door from closing. He wedged his knee into the crack, forced the door open and grabbed Liz as she tried frantically to scramble into the passenger seat.
“Get off me!” she screamed, clutching the steering wheel in a death grip. “Get the hell off me!”
But he grabbed a fistful of her hair and wrenched her from the car, hustling her roughly into the grove of pines. Twenty yards into the woods he hurled her onto a bed of needles in a small clearing, then dropped on top of her, pinning her arms to the ground with his knees and pressing one hand to her mouth. She was still screaming.
“Shut up!” he hissed, leaning down so his face was only inches from hers. He slipped his fingers to her throat and squeezed. “Shut up or so help me I’ll break your goddamn neck!”
Liz turned her head to the side and cringed. “All right, all right.”
Conner’s eyes flashed around. The cover was dense in here. No one could see them. But someone might have heard her screams. “Tell me everything,” he demanded. “Everything!”
“Don’t kill me,” she begged. “Pleasedon’t kill me.”
“Is it Paul Stone? Is that who you’re working with?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know any Paul Stone.”
“I’ve got phone records, Liz. Multiple cell phone conversations between you and Stone every day in July. Don’t lie to me.”
“Okay, okay. I’m working with him.”
“Why did he approach you?”
Liz hesitated, her eyes flickering wildly from side to side. “He . . . he didn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
She swallowed hard. “Ginger was the one. Ginger approached me.”
