Stephen Frey

by Trust Fund

  “Meg, I love—”

  “Please don’t go back to Warfield,” she interrupted, pulling back and looking up at him. “I have a terrible feeling about this, I really do.”

  “Meg, I’ve never seen you—”

  “I know,” she said, pressing two fingers to his lips.

  Bo pulled her to him, bringing her face to his chest. “I have a wonderful evening planned for us,” he said. “An early dinner at the River Club and a sail around Manhattan on the yacht. It’ll be romantic. I’ve got it all set up. I’ve been looking forward to it so much. It will help take my mind off of Dad.”

  “Have you spoken to Michael Mendoza about going back to Warfield?” She knew Bo consulted Mendoza on almost every major decision.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “He was against me returning too.”

  “You see.”

  “That was before he knew about Dad’s death.”

  “I’m not sure Michael always has your best interests at heart, but in this case he’s right.”

  Bo slipped his hands onto Meg’s cheeks and tilted her head back, but she looked away. “How in the world can you say that Michael doesn’t have my best interests at heart?”

  “Please don’t go back,” she pleaded, avoiding his question.

  “Bo!”

  For an instant Bo wasn’t certain that he had really heard his name called out over the noise of vehicles streaming in both directions on Thirty-fourth Street.

  “Bo!”

  He wheeled around and searched the street, scanning the pedestrians, cabs, and cars flashing past. Then he saw the blond woman standing on the other side of the wide street, beckoning, wearing jeans and a yellow top. The same yellow top he’d seen this morning when he’d passed through the revolving doors at the Warfield Capital building. It was Tiffany.

  “I’ve got to talk to you!” she yelled above the roar of the street, waving frantically.

  “Who is that?” Meg asked. She hadn’t heard Tiffany yell Bo’s name. “Who is she calling to?”

  “I don’t know.” Bo had convinced himself that the woman he’d spotted outside the Warfield Capital building this morning hadn’t been Tiffany, just his mind playing tricks on him. But there she was, just across the street, motioning to him. She could answer so many questions. Like what had happened after the men had drugged him, and, more important, who was behind the attack. He moved across the sidewalk and stepped off the curb into traffic as if in a trance, his eyes fixed on her.

  “Bo!” Meg called, terrified that he would be hit by a bus that was barreling toward him. “Look out!” she yelled frantically, following him across the sidewalk.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Bo noticed a man sprinting down the other side of the street toward Tiffany. The figure disappeared behind a truck, then reappeared quickly, only a hundred feet away from her.

  Tiffany spotted the man too, took one last look at Bo, clutched the bag hanging from her shoulder, and ran.

  Bo lunged forward as the bus bore down on him, horn blaring.

  “Bo!” Meg stepped off the curb into the street, vaguely aware of someone coming up behind her, then felt a rough push. She tumbled forward, landing on her hands and knees in the path of an oncoming taxi. As Meg tried to make it to her feet she caught a glimpse of a man slipping back into the crowd.

  Halted on the double yellow line in the middle of the street, Bo turned back for an instant and saw that Meg was down, and saw the cab bearing down on her. He dashed in front of a pickup truck, grabbed Meg by the arm, and dragged her back toward the curb. They tumbled onto the sidewalk together as the cab flashed by, grazing Bo’s knee. Not noticing the pain, he scrambled to his feet and for a fleeting second glimpsed Tiffany and the man who had been racing toward her standing side by side, looking back at him from the corner half a block away. Then a truck rolled in front of the pair. When it had passed, they were gone.

  It was after ten o’clock when Paul, guided by the faint beam of a flashlight he had taken from his study, slipped into a darkened tack room of the estate’s large stable. He disliked horses, as he did most animals, but he loved the sweet smells of grain and hay that surrounded them. Paul played the flashlight beam about the room and found what he was looking for. “Hello, Scully,” he said. Joseph Scully was leaning against a cobwebbed wall, exactly where he’d said he would be.

  “Hello, Mr. Hancock.”

  “I trust no one saw you come in,” Paul said in a low voice.

  “No one.”

  “Good.” Until now, Paul had allowed Teddy to handle this end of the arrangement. Allowed Teddy to believe he was the only link to the people behind the scenes. As of this afternoon, that was no longer possible. Still, he had to be very careful and keep these meetings to a minimum.

  “I assume you called me because of your brother’s accident,” Scully spoke up.

  Paul nodded. “You and I will have to communicate directly from now on,” he said, hanging the flashlight on a nail protruding from one wall. It cast a dull glow on the room. “But no one is ever to see us together,” he warned, moving to where Scully stood.

  “I understand.”

  “What do you have?”

  Scully searched Paul’s face for any hint of sadness at the loss of a father and brother, but found nothing. “Ron Baker is about to launch an all-out assault on you,” he answered.

  “What do you mean?”

  “He has possession of certain compromising information about you.”

  “What kind of information?”

  “Information regarding a three-month affair you had with a young prostitute last year.”

  “What exactly does he have?” Paul asked impassively.

  “The girl.”

  “I see,” Paul said calmly. “Then it’s time to use what we have uncovered about Mr. Baker through our northern Virginia operation.”

  “That’s why I came all the way out here. To make certain that you wanted me to follow through on that.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’ll take care of it then.”

  Paul took a step toward the flashlight hanging on the wall, then turned back. “I want to ask you a question.”

  “What?”

  “Do you think it was really an accident this afternoon?”

  “You mean what happened to Teddy?”

  “Of course that’s what I mean.”

  Scully was certain that the episode had been no accident, but he wanted to figure out why Paul was asking. “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, Scully,” Paul said tersely. “I’m sure you and your people have already checked out what happened very thoroughly.”

  “I think he was murdered,” Scully said. “What do you think?”

  Paul hesitated. “The same. The question is, who did it?”

  “Who do you think?”

  Paul pulled the flashlight down from the nail on the wall. “I don’t know who actually killed Tom and Teddy,” he said, raising one eyebrow, “but I believe Bo engineered it.”

  CHAPTER 9

  “Good evening, Counselor.”

  “Bo.” Laird answered with his typical brusqueness. “Meg.” He nodded stiffly in Meg’s direction without offering his hand to her either.

  They hadn’t seen each other in a year, Bo reflected, and there was no enthusiasm in Laird’s voice or manner. Not a “welcome home,” not even a “sorry about your father.”

  “I appreciate you seeing me so late in the evening, Bruce,” Bo offered politely. It was after eleven o’clock. After their close call on the street, he and Meg had enjoyed a wonderful evening cruise on the family’s yacht. Now they’d stopped at Laird’s Upper East Side apartment on the way out of the city, back up to the estate. “I hope we aren’t disturbing you.”

  “It is late,” he said. “Fortunately the children are already asleep. Come in.”

  Bo and Meg stepped from the foyer into the living room of the apartment as Laird shut the door behind the
m. Bo had never been here, and he noticed as they came inside that the furnishings were stark and impersonal. There weren’t even pictures of the children on the tables.

  “Hi, Cindy.” Smiling, Meg hugged Laird’s wife, who had appeared from a hallway leading to the bedrooms.

  “Hello, Meg.” Cindy Laird’s personality was only marginally warmer than her husband’s. As Bo and Meg had agreed in the past, it was a match made in heaven—or hell. The Lairds rarely made an appearance at Hancock social functions, though they were always invited. When they did come, they hardly said anything to anyone, preferring to stay off in a corner by themselves. “We’re sorry about Jimmy Lee,” Cindy said quietly.

  “Thank you,” Bo answered.

  “Bo, let’s talk in the study.” Laird gestured toward a hallway opposite the one from which Cindy had appeared.

  “I won’t be long, sweetheart.” Bo kissed Meg on the cheek, then followed Laird down the corridor.

  Laird sat down behind a dark, marble-topped platform desk, moving a thin chrome lamp to one side so his view of Bo was unobstructed. “What do you want?” he asked, nodding toward a chair on the opposite side of the desk. “Why the late meeting?”

  “I trust you’ve been well,” Bo said, easing into the seat and the conversation. He had been taught by Jimmy Lee never to go directly to the matter at hand, but to take the time to judge the mood of the party on the other side of the table. “It’s been a year since—”

  “I’m fine,” Laird interrupted, clicking the lamp’s tiny bulb to its lowest intensity and pointing it subtly in Bo’s direction at the same time. He knew what Bo was doing.

  Laird was little more than a shadow on the other side of the desk now. “You are the family attorney,” Bo began. Laird’s mood was obvious. There was no need to ease into the conversation. “I wanted to let you know that I’m home from Montana for good, and that I intend to go back to Warfield full-time starting tomorrow.”

  “Frank Ramsey informed me of such this afternoon,” Laird acknowledged, his voice giving no hint of his opinion concerning Bo’s decision. “You were at Warfield today.”

  “Yes, I was.”

  “You should know that while you were away J. L. executed a new general partnership agreement at Warfield Capital.”

  “What?”

  “The new agreement stipulates how Warfield will be run now that he is deceased,” Laird continued. “J. L. was always prepared for any situation, and this is no different.”

  “Fill me in on the details.” Bo sensed another roadblock to his Warfield return.

  “The new agreement provides for a Warfield executive committee consisting of all your generation, chaired by Paul. All major issues, including the appointment of senior management positions at Warfield, will be determined by a vote of the executive committee, with the majority ruling.”

  “I assume you drafted this agreement.”

  “I did.”

  “Did you propose it?” Bo asked, trying to determine if Laird was friend or foe now that Jimmy Lee was gone.

  “No, Paul and Teddy were responsible. Frank Ramsey had a hand in it too.”

  “But you didn’t object to its implementation.”

  Laird hesitated. “In confidence, Bo, I suggested to J. L. at the time that Frank Ramsey was not the right man to be assisting Teddy with Warfield Capital. I told him that I believed Ramsey was not consistently forthright with Teddy, and that Teddy did not have a full grasp of what was going on at the firm. I said Ramsey could easily take advantage of Teddy and that made me uncomfortable as J. L.’s advisor.”

  “What was Jimmy Lee’s reaction?”

  “He thanked me for my counsel and instructed me to draft the document exactly as he had stipulated.” Laird paused. “In the end, Bo, I am nothing more than a hired hand for the Hancock family.” He reached beneath his desk, removed a bottle of orange juice from a small refrigerator, and opened it. “You have long overestimated my influence on J. L.”

  “So a three-to-two vote by the executive committee could prevent me from returning to Warfield Capital,” Bo observed, ignoring Laird’s comment.

  Laird sipped the orange juice. Either Bo hadn’t heard that Teddy had been killed, or he was doing an excellent job of playing along. “That’s correct. In fact, those voting against could bar you from the premises. They could call the authorities to have you physically removed from Warfield, and be within their legal rights.”

  “What if the executive committee is deadlocked on an issue?”

  “How could a deadlock be possible?” Laird asked.

  “I assume when you said that the executive committee would consist of all my generation, you meant that Ashley would have a vote as well.”

  “She does.”

  “She may be difficult to locate.”

  “So?”

  “So it may come down to Catherine and me.”

  Laird finished his orange juice and placed the small bottle on one corner of his desk. If Bo actually believed Catherine might side against Paul, he was sadly mistaken. It would never happen that way. Catherine would always side with Paul. “Specific to your situation, in case of a deadlock, the dissenting side could not have you removed. With respect to you, or any other member of your generation, being involved on a day-to-day basis in the management at Warfield Capital, dissenters must have the majority. I buried that language deep in the document and no one had an objection at the signing,” Laird added.

  “No one saw it, I’m sure. If they had, there would have been an objection.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Could I have an orange juice?” Bo asked. He had waited for Laird to make the offer, but, predictably, the offer hadn’t come.

  Laird reached beneath the desk and produced the bottle. “I could get you scotch if you would prefer,” he said, holding the drink out.

  “This will be fine.”

  “All right.”

  Bo cracked open the bottle and took a sip, weighing Laird’s motivation for offering the alcohol. Laird had a hidden agenda in everything he did. He was the consummate attorney in that way. “Tell me about Frank Ramsey’s contract at Warfield.”

  “Why should I waste my time? You already know about it.”

  Bo glanced up. “What makes you say that?”

  “Dale Stephenson secured a copy of it for you just before his death, I believe. Isn’t that right?”

  “Yes,” Bo admitted, “but I don’t know all of the specific terms.”

  “You weren’t supposed to contact anyone at Warfield while you were in Montana, were you?” Laird said, his manner turning confrontational. “But you violated that order.”

  That was the thing about Laird, Bo thought to himself. You could never determine exactly where he was coming from. One minute he was telling you how he’d buried a clause in an agreement presumably to help you, and the next he was essentially accusing you of treason for violating Jimmy Lee’s gag order. “Why did my father give Ramsey a contract that involves an ownership position at Warfield? It’s a tiny piece, but I don’t understand why Jimmy Lee would ever do that.”

  Laird shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you know that Ramsey has accepted an outside equity investor from Europe to support increasing the asset level at Warfield to somewhere in the neighborhood of two hundred billion dollars?”

  Laird raised his eyebrows. “Two hundred billion? Really?”

  Bo had never seen Laird show such surprise. “Yes.”

  “An investor from Europe?”

  “Do you know who that investor is? Were you aware of this development?”

  “No.”

  “Doesn’t make sense, does it, Counselor? That investor will be subject to U.S. taxes. No legitimate European investor would ever agree to that structure. They all want offshore vehicles and there are plenty of options for them. The really scary thing is that Ramsey didn’t know all of that. What the hell do you think is going on?”

  “I have no idea.”

>   “Does it make you suspicious?”

  Laird said nothing.

  “Did my father have you check Ramsey out before he joined Warfield?” Bo asked.

  “No.”

  “He didn’t ask you to get the Hazeltine people involved?”

  “No,” Laird answered, more firmly this time. “In the months before J. L.’s death there were things going on to which I was not privy.”

  “Such as?”

  “I think mostly things that had to do with Paul’s campaign.”

  Bo scanned the credenza behind Laird’s chair. On it were two neat stacks of paper and a telephone. “Do you think Paul will win the nomination?”

  Laird thought for a moment. “When you analyze the numbers, Paul is almost a lock to win it. At this point he and Ronald Baker are close in terms of delegates, but Paul will get the superdelegates at the convention as well as Reggie Duncan’s delegates when Duncan concedes. I believe there has already been talk of a deal with Duncan, but, as I said, I was not allowed into that inner circle.”

  “Was Ramsey?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s your guess?”

  “I never guess. You know that.”

  Bo leaned forward to avoid the glare from the bulb so that he would be able to observe Laird’s reaction to the next question. “Now that Jimmy Lee is gone, where do you see your role? Do you even deserve a role within the Hancock empire now?”

  Laird glanced up. “I know where all of the bodies are buried, Bo,” he said, anger creeping into his tone. “You would be foolish to let me go. Very foolish.”

  Laird would make one hell of an adversary if it came down to a fight. He was a little man but he had the heart of a lion. Bo had learned during his hockey days that physical stature often had nothing to do with a man’s willingness to wage war. He’d taken some of his worst punches on the ice from little guys. Given the testiness of Laird’s response, Bo guessed that Laird may have thought that this question was at the crux of the hastily called meeting. Laird had seemed even frostier than normal in the foyer when he and Meg had arrived. “I didn’t say I wanted to let you go. I can’t speak for the others, but I wouldn’t want that.”