Once a Killer

by Martin Bodenham

  “Art tells me you’re one of his superstars,” said Caravini, slipping off his jacket and placing it on the back of his chair.

  “I wouldn’t say that.” Michael couldn’t take his eyes off the file. Clearly, Caravini wanted him to see it. What was on there? Was there anything that might incriminate him?

  “Seems as though you handle a lot of Dudek’s major deals.”

  “I get my fair share.”

  “You must be mighty pissed that some of them have been leaked. I know I would be.”

  Abi came in with their coffee mugs and placed them on the table. Caravini appeared momentarily distracted by her rear, which gave Michael a chance to think of what to say.

  “Do we know for sure they have been leaked?” Michael was not about to make it easy for Caravini to string up Towers.

  “Well, let’s see.” Caravini opened the fat file to a page earmarked with a yellow Post-it note. He started reading the typed sheet in front of him. “Spar’s acquisition of Collar Telecom.” He raised his head. “Is that one of yours?”

  Michael nodded.

  “That was leaked.” Caravini flicked through a few more pages. “Looks like there were over a million suspicious trades on that one just before the deal was announced.” He turned to a page with another sticker on. “K-Mines. Is that one of yours?”

  “Okay. I get the picture. Let’s assume someone’s been talking. How can I help you?”

  Caravini closed the file and shoved it to one side. “How well do you know Glen Towers?”

  “Very well. I should; I hired him.”

  “What’s he like?”

  “Bright, hardworking. Clients love him.”

  Caravini laughed. “I doubt they will after this.”

  “He’s not the one you’re looking for. I know Glen. He’s not like that.”

  “You trust him, then?”

  “Of course I trust him. Why would I have him working on my deals if I didn’t?”

  “You don’t believe he’s capable of leaking information to a third party?”

  “No. I’d trust Glen with my life. He’s done nothing wrong.”

  “Does he have any money troubles?”

  “Not that I’m aware of.”

  “No gambling or addiction issues?”

  “He’s not like that.”

  Caravini gulped some of his coffee. “What do you know about James Grannis?”

  Michael hadn’t expected the ninety degree turn. He thought for a moment. “Not much. I know he runs a hedge fund here in town. Why?”

  “Ever met him?”

  Michael glanced at the file. Did they already know he’d met Grannis? Could he face this one down and get away with it? He lifted his coffee mug and took a slow drink as he considered his response.

  “I don’t think so.”

  Caravini wrote a note on his pad. “Can you be certain?”

  “I’m not sure. I meet a lot of people in my work.”

  “What would you say if I told you Grannis was the one receiving the leaked information on your deals?”

  “I’d be stunned. I’d want to know how that could have happened.”

  “His fund has made tens of millions on the back of price sensitive information on your transactions. Have you really no idea at all how that might have happened?”

  “All I know is we’ve had no contact with Grannis in connection with any of my clients. Whether he has some secret access to our data, I don’t know, but I’m certain it hasn’t come from my team.”

  Caravini rubbed his chin. “Why did Towers visit Grannis’s headquarters on Cedar Street a few months back?”

  “I wasn’t aware that he did.”

  “You can’t think of any reason?”

  “None. Did he say he did?”

  “He said it was for you.”

  “I didn’t tell him to go there. I’d have no reason to do that.”

  “He says he was carrying out research on Grannis for you.”

  “Why would I need that? I’ve never met the man.”

  Caravini shrugged. “I’m just telling you what Towers told us. I was hoping you could help us join up the dots.”

  “I don’t remember researching Grannis.”

  Caravini made another note. “Would Grannis have any reason to contact you?”

  “No. He’s not a client, and I don’t know him.”

  “So he’s never contacted you?”

  “That’s right. I don’t know how many times you need to ask me the same question.”

  Again, Caravini scribbled on his legal pad. “So if I told you Towers saw a call from Grannis on your cell phone, I guess you’d deny that?”

  “I’ve never had a call from him.”

  “So Towers is making that up?”

  “It didn’t happen.”

  “And yet you just told me you’d trust Towers with your life. Now he’s a liar?”

  “I’d say he was mistaken.”

  “The same way he was mistaken about visiting Cedar and researching Grannis for you?”

  “That’s right. We all make mistakes.”

  “It wouldn’t be difficult to check the phone calls to your cell phone.”

  “Look, I don’t know what Glen told you, but I haven’t received any calls from Grannis.”

  Caravini opened up the file again and took four sheets of paper off it.

  “Okay, Michael,” he said. “It’s time to cut the bullshit. We know you’ve been meeting with Grannis. I just wanted to give you the opportunity to come clean with us.” He pushed the papers to Michael’s side of the table. “That’s a record of all the times we’ve recorded you meeting him. To save you the effort of reading it, we’ve seen you eight different times, either at Cedar Street or in Brooklyn.”

  Michael’s neck muscles twitched as he stared at the log of times and places in front of him. Jesus. They know everything. How could he deny it all now?

  “Towers has been working for us for weeks,” Caravini said, piling on the pressure. “He was never our real suspect. You are.”

  “Ugh?”

  “Towers has been our eyes and ears at the firm, providing the additional proof we needed to support our case against you.”

  Michael’s heart was about to explode in his chest. He closed his eyes. That’s why Towers had been behaving strangely over the past few weeks and why he’d reacted in such a weird manner when he and Jenks grilled him. It all made sense now.

  “You’ve been under surveillance for months. We know everything.” He took a photograph off the file and slid it over. “The good news is we’re not going to do you for criminal damage.” Caravini smirked.

  Michael looked at the photo. It showed the rear end of a black car with a dent in the trunk and scratches leading from the dent down to the fender.

  “What is this?”

  “That was our car you damaged when you threw a shovel at it outside your home.”

  Michael felt cold. “That was you?”

  Caravini nodded. “We’ve been trailing you for weeks—at home, as well as the office. We have enough on you to prove you’ve been conspiring with Grannis as part of his insider trading scam for some considerable time.”

  Michael dropped his head into his trembling hands. “My God!”

  “We have enough evidence to lock you away for ten years, maybe longer. I can’t wait to announce that the lynchpin of this criminal conspiracy was a rainmaker at the venerable firm of Dudek, Collins, & Hamilton.”

  Chapter 47

  THE EVIDENCE ON CARAVINI’S FILE was compelling, particularly when he had corroboration from Towers. And it turned out that it was Caravini’s people who’d been trailing Michael all this time, not Rondell’s. They certainly had enough against him now to guarantee a long term in prison.

  It was funny; Michael had never imagined the nightmare ending this way. All along, he’d most feared what Rondell could do to him and his family. That overwhelming fear had so distracted him that he hadn’t thought too much abo
ut being caught by the FBI and the realities of going to prison. He’d been incarcerated before and knew how hard that would be, particularly on Caroline and the girls.

  “Can I make a call to my wife?” Michael’s voice was weak, his head still reeling in shock. The last thing he wanted was for Caroline to learn of this from someone else. It chilled him to think of a stranger turning up at their home and telling Caroline her husband was under arrest, charged with a serious crime. At the very least, he owed her an explanation and an apology for the hell he was about to put her through. But that explanation could only go so far. It was bad enough that she was about to learn she was married to a criminal. He was not about to make things worse by telling her what Rondell had over him that drove him to do it in the first place. While the thought turned his stomach, he’d sooner have her think he did it for the money. Even that she’d find incomprehensible, but the whole truth would be devastating. Michael would do anything to shield her from that. Anything.

  “Why do you need to speak to your wife?” Caravini asked. “She can’t help you.”

  “I’d like to be the one to tell her I’ve been arrested. That’s all I’m asking.”

  “Right now, you’re not under arrest.”

  Michael didn’t know how to respond. How could he not be under arrest?

  “Sure,” Caravini continued, “we have enough evidence to charge you, but there may be another way out of this mess for you.”

  Michael raised his head out of his hands. “Another way?”

  “Depends how much you want to help us.”

  Michael sat upright. “I don’t follow.”

  “You’re not the one we’re after. While it would be good profile for us to skewer a Dudek partner’s head on a pole, and we may yet have to settle for that, Grannis is the one we really want. Our investigation has highlighted how wide his connections go. There’s little doubt he’s at the center of the biggest international insider trading operation we’ve ever seen. I don’t know how much you realize it, but Grannis has many more Michael Hoffmans out there feeding him information. Then there are the serious criminals providing him with funds that we can get to through him.”

  “And you want me to help bring him down?”

  “You got it. You help us indict Grannis—” Caravini pointed to his file, “—and all this goes away for you. You get to carry on as you are now. You get your life back.”

  Helping Caravini now was a chance for Michael to pull back from the cliff edge, to avoid wiping out his career and, potentially, his marriage. Certainly, it would spare Caroline the horror of discovering her husband was a securities fraudster today. It was a seductive offer, one he badly wanted to accept. But if he agreed to become the main witness against Rondell, his whole life would be destroyed anyway when Rondell came seeking revenge. Rondell would have nothing to lose by telling Caroline everything about his past. When that happened, Michael’s family would be lost forever.

  “I don’t think I can help you,” Michael said, rubbing his scalp with his palms, his elbows resting on the table. “It isn’t that simple.”

  “This is not an offer we’re going to leave open, Michael. You agree to help us now, and you get to go home today. If you don’t, then you can kiss goodbye the chance of seeing your two daughters grow up. Can you imagine the hell they’ll go through, once everyone learns their father is a convicted criminal? It seems a simple-enough choice to me.”

  That was easy for Caravini to say. He didn’t understand what was at stake.

  “Can I have a moment?”

  “If you’re worried about what could happen to you or your family, we can protect you. We’ve done it many times before.”

  It didn’t matter what Caravini said. Nothing could protect them from Rondell using what he knew to destroy their lives. There was only one way to do that, to guarantee Rondell’s silence, and that was to have him killed, and he’d tried that already with Duane. But tattoo man had proven he was just another scam artist. He’d taken his money, but had never intended to go after Rondell. And there wasn’t enough time to find someone else to do it, even if he knew where to start locating another hit man.

  Was there was a way to help the FBI bring down Rondell without making it obvious that Michael was the one who had helped them?

  “I want to help,” Michael said, “but the moment I stand in the witness box against Grannis, my family is put at risk. We both know that man is capable of anything.”

  “I told you; we can protect you.”

  “The only way to do that would be some sort of witness protection scheme. I don’t want all that. My career would be over and my family’s life ruined. If it’s a straight choice between that and going to prison, then you can arrest me now.”

  “There may be another way.” Caravini sat in silence, and Michael could tell he had something in mind. “Maybe there’s a way we could keep you out of the spotlight and avoid the need for you to be a formal witness.”

  “What are you thinking?”

  “The idea’s not yet fully thought through, but maybe we could create a phantom deal involving a real company; create a story and make out it’s about to be acquired. Then get you to leak it to Grannis in the usual way, while we monitor him buying the stock.”

  “That might work. I tell Grannis the information is price sensitive and confidential, and the moment he deals in the stock, he’s broken the law.”

  Caravini nodded. “Exactly. It would have to be something big, though. He’d need to go in heavy.”

  “I’m sure I could come up with something convincing.”

  “I’m certain of it. After all, you’d have a massive incentive.”

  “Ugh?”

  “If Grannis didn’t take the bait, we’d still charge you based on what we have here.” Caravini placed his hand on the thick file. “You don’t think you get to walk away that easily, do you?”

  “Listen, if I help you indict Grannis, I want a cast iron guarantee that my name will be kept out of this and that no charges will ever be brought against me.”

  “I don’t have a problem with that, provided you deliver. I need him indicted.” Caravini paused. “There is one potential difficulty, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “What’s Grannis going to think when the fake deal fails to go through? He’ll know you set him up.”

  “I could tell him the bidder withdrew the offer. I’d just have to do that after he buys the stock, but before you arrest him.”

  “I guess that’s a risk anyone takes with inside information. Sometimes it turns out to be wrong.” Caravini grinned.

  “You would need to tell him you are investigating me, too.”

  “So he thinks you’re not the one who tipped us off?”

  “Exactly. He needs to think I’m as much a target in your investigation as he is. There’s still a residual risk for me, but I can’t see how I can avoid that.”

  “I guess we could let him find out after a while that we didn’t have enough evidence to charge you, but we knew the leak came from someone at Dudek’s.”

  “That ought to work. He just needs to think I’m in the frame as much as he is when you arrest him. That way, he won’t immediately think I set him up.”

  “Who knows? He might even offer to become a witness against you.”

  “That’s not funny.” Michael peered at Caravini. “I have one condition before I agree to do this.”

  Caravini scowled. “I don’t like conditions.”

  “This one shouldn’t be a problem for you. It concerns Glen Towers.”

  “Go on.”

  “I want him completely cleared of any suspicion. I want you to spell that out to Art Jenks so he can get his job back. He’s an innocent victim in all this.”

  “I can do that. We never really suspected him anyway. He was always our route to you.”

  “I know that now, but this kind of thing will remain on his record. I don’t want that to happen to him. He deserves better. You nee
d to convince Jenks he had absolutely nothing to do with your case.”

  “I’ll make sure that happens.”

  “Then we have a deal.”

  Caravini leaned forward onto the table. “You know, something has confused me all along.”

  “About what?”

  “Why would a partner in one of the country’s biggest law firms become mixed up with scum like Grannis? It doesn’t make sense to me. It can’t be the money.”

  “What if I told you it was?”

  “We’ve seen your bank records. This isn’t about money. What hold does Grannis have on you? It must be something big.”

  The last thing Michael needed now was for Caravini to start investigating his past, looking for any leverage Rondell might have over him. This had to stop.

  “Listen, I’ve agreed to help you bring Grannis down. That’s all you need to know.”

  “Okay, I was just curious. That’s all.” Caravini rose to his feet. “We’re going to need another session to get the story straight before you go to see Grannis. Let’s do that tomorrow morning, say ten o’clock.”

  “Overnight, I’ll give some thought to the phantom deal and come up with a script.”

  “You know you’re going to have to wear a wire when you go see him.”

  Michael swallowed. Nice try. “That’s not going to happen. Our deal is my involvement is kept out of this. A wire leaves a record.”

  “I guess we can live without it.”

  “I’ll come armed with a written agreement tomorrow, something that sets out exactly what we’ve just agreed.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “Let’s just say I’ll want you to sign it before I go any further.”

  Chapter 48

  CARAVINI TOOK THREE DAYS to get the written agreement summarizing their arrangement through his legal department. He kept assuring Michael everything would be fine and pressured him to meet Grannis on the basis of their handshake. Michael was having none of it. He wanted every detail agreed in writing so there would be no wriggle room for Caravini to have a go at him at some later date. He didn’t trust him; it was obvious the man was out for himself and would say anything to get his own way. Besides, the delay gave Michael time to rehearse the story he and Caravini had created around the phantom deal. When the signed agreement eventually came through, Michael contacted Rondell.