by Andrew Gross
“Okay, I’m flattered.” Hauck shut the door. “What brings you by, detectives? I’m afraid I’m in a bit of a rush.”
Campbell came up to the other side of his car. “I took your advice. On the Donovan thing. I started looking at it in a different way.”
“No charge,” Hauck said.
“Talon.” The detective bunched his lips. “You’ve been working there around, what, four months?”
“I feel like we’ve already been through this, Campbell. Check with personnel.”
The auburn-haired detective cocked a finger at him and chuck-led, like he was saying, One for you, guy. “They handle a lot of banks, I see. Tough time for banks, isn’t it?”
“Listen, detective, I really don’t have the time…” Hauck had no clue where this was going.
The detective smiled smugly. “This thing’s been in your craw from the very beginning, hasn’t it?”
“What thing?”
“These murdered traders. That’s what you called it, isn’t it? Murder. You were at the crime scene in Greenwich. Then the station right after. Called the new head of detectives a few times. That guy who took your place. What’s his name, Chrisafoulis? Pumping him for details. Even harassed him at his kid’s school. You had something going on with that first guy’s wife?”
Hauck stared back, grabbing on to the door handle. To keep from slugging him. Only Steve knew about these things. Brenda said he’d been in the city. Where was Campbell going with this?
“Then you come into the city…All hopped up on this Donovan thing. Pushing me for info. Telling me how to do my job. Then, not an hour later, you’re harassing his widow. Tee-bo, wasn’t it?” He pronounced Dani’s name like it was a Cajun nickname. “The guy you’re trying to tie into all this. I checked him out myself.” Looked at his partner and grinned. “Y’know, I’m finding myself in a whole new social circle these days.”
“What do you want, Campbell?”
There was a click of heels against the pavement and a woman came out of the staircase and crossed over to her car. He waited for her to get inside and start the ignition.
“So, I’m trying to figure it out.” Campbell smirked. “Your prints are all over this mess, aren’t they, Mr. Private Executive? Mr. TV Star?”
“You check out the phone logs yet?”
Campbell shrugged.
“What about the security tapes in Donovan’s building? I saw a camera. You look at them?”
“Maybe I did,” Campbell said, smirking.
“So what’d you find?”
“What did we find?” Campbell glanced around to his partner, cockily scratching the back of his head. Then he dug into his inside jacket pocket like he was about to unholster a gun. To Hauck’s relief, he came back out with just an evidence bag, something inside, and tossed it on the hood of Hauck’s car, never taking his eyes off Hauck. “What we found was this.”
Hauck picked it up and stared at what was inside. As he did, it became clear to him exactly what was going on. His lungs deflated like he’d been punched in the stomach.
It was a pen. A corporate pen. The lettering on it familiar.
The Talon Group.
“We found it on the floor, next to the super’s desk,” the detective said with a self-satisfied smile. A grin that seemed to suggest he enjoyed watching Hauck’s worried reaction. “Could’ve fallen out of someone’s pocket, I guess. Maybe during a spat. Never made the connection until you came in.”
Hauck’s eyes locked on the pen. He had several like them. Everyone did there.
“Just wondering”—Campbell blinked annoyingly—“how the hell you think that got there.”
Hauck shook his head. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Kidding?” Campbell clucked at his partner. “I’d like to think I was kidding, Mr. Hauck. Mister Hero. But y’know, you come around, pump us for information on the case, no longer on the job. Then whaddaya know…whammo. Look what pops up at the crime scene. A bit of a major-league clusterfuck, wouldn’t you say?”
“It’s not my pen.”
“Well, I’m hoping that turns out to be the case.” Campbell laughed. He turned back to his partner. “Don’t you, Lee? You sure?”
“I’m sure,” Hauck said. But he wasn’t liking where his mind was going, bouncing back and forth, atoms careening through an accelerator, except in this case the atoms were saying, What if that somehow did turn out to be my pen? His prints on it. And worse, why…? Of course, he had never been to the building before, never even heard of Donovan prior to the incident. But what was it doing there? What if he was being set up?
He looked at Campbell squarely and smiled. “And you’re the one who said the other day it wasn’t even a crime scene.”
“Yeah, I did say that, didn’t I? But y’know, you’re starting to turn me around on that one. It’s sure starting to resemble one now.”
Hauck was thinking he could tell him what he would find in the phone log: Thibault’s phone number. The proof was sitting right on his car seat. But this jerk was the last person he was going to share it with, until he could figure out just what was going on.
“Just a Good Samaritan, huh?” The detective grinned, clearly cynical. “Just following up for an old friend…”
“A dead friend,” Hauck said, glaring.
“I’ve seen her picture. Must’ve been quite a friendship,” the city detective sniffed, glancing at his partner.
“I’m gonna head out now,” Hauck said. His fingers flexed and he felt his body heat up. The thought crossed his mind that slugging an NYPD detective with the case he was making would not be the best of moves. He tossed the evidence bag back to Campbell. “Unless there’s something else…”
“Just keep in touch,” the detective said, and winked. “Until this baby comes back from the lab. You know the drill.”
“Yeah, I know the drill. And here…” He tossed The Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Wall Street over to Campbell’s partner. “Does that book have a chapter in there that talks about collusion to defraud financial markets?”
“Not sure.” The black detective caught it, surprised.
“Too bad. Tell your partner he might want to find one that does.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Outside the garage, Hauck pulled the Beemer into the first spot he could find—an old steak place on Steamboat. His collar was wet with sweat, and he knew he shouldn’t run away with assumptions until he could think them through.
He had never met Donovan. Never been to his building before. Whoever killed him had had to sneak inside, gain access to the super’s office. He had to have been caught on the security tape. Someone Donovan knew. Someone who also knew Hauck was trying to connect Thibault to these deaths. Talon. Merrill. He wasn’t sure who to trust now. If he hadn’t stuck his nose into this mess, widened Campbell’s interest, no one would have ever attached any significance to that pen.
It was starting to concern him that the prints on it might actually be his.
Someone was trying to set him up.
Hauck realized his only options were crossing his boss and maybe getting himself fired—or ending up in jail.
He chose getting fired.
He dialed up Chrisafoulis on the detective’s cell. This time, on the second ring, Steve picked up, sounding as if he was glad to hear from him. “Ty!”
“Listen, Steve, we’ve got to talk.”
“I know we do, Ty. What the hell is going on? The city cops have been buzzing around all day. About you. They’re saying they found something of yours at the Donovan crime scene…”
“It’s not mine, Steve. But someone’s going to a lot of work to make it look that way. Where are you?”
“Back at the office. Listen, you should come in.”
“I’ll meet you there.” Hauck was about to hang up, then hesitated. “Steve, I can trust you on this, right?”
“Of course you can trust me, Ty.”
“I’ll be right there.”
And then hope he didn’t find himself in a viper’s nest at Talon.
He stepped inside the entrance on Mason, waving to the officer at the desk, who looked at him like, Been seeing you a lot around here lately, lieutenant. Chrisafoulis was waiting for him as Hauck headed for the stairs.
“Steve!” Hauck warmly squeezed the detective’s shoulder. “I have to show you some things. Let’s go find a place where we can talk.”
“Ty, don’t be upset,” Chrisafoulis said, looking a bit nervous, “but Fitz wants to see you on this, upstairs.”
Hauck felt whacked in the face. “Fitz?”
Vern Fitzpatrick was Greenwich’s longtime chief of police. He’d hired Hauck, helped lift him back into the world after the year he’d dropped out. He’d been Hauck’s mentor for most of the time he was there. Groomed him to take his job. But on his last case, Hauck had begun to doubt which side of the fence Vern was actually on. A drumbeat of concern started to pound inside him. He started to back out of the station.
“That’s not going to work, Steve.”
“Ty.” Steve took his arm. “No one’s accusing you of anything. The detectives from the NYPD went to Fitz and got him involved. You need friends now, buddy, not anyone doubting you. But you leave here”—the detective looked at him solidly—“that list of people starts to get smaller and smaller. You understand, don’t you, Ty?”
He wasn’t sure what to do. And it scared him. But Chrisafoulis was right. He had stumbled into something he could no longer outrun or outmaneuver. And where was he going to go anyway? He had to trust someone now.
“Alright.” He nodded warily toward the stairs. “Lead the way.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The chief’s office had been relocated to the newly completed wing. Industrial carpeting, bright lights, modular workstations, computers on every desk. It looked more like CSI: Miami than the wear-worn wooden desks and fixtures from when Hauck had worked there.
Vern stood up at his desk in a plaid shirt and slacks. It had been six months since Hauck had seen him. “Ty.”
“Nice digs, Vern,” Hauck said, admiring the new paneling, the pictures of the chief with the governor, with Lee Trevino and Jack Nicklaus, with the state attorney general. And his grandkids, one of whom was serving in Iraq. A conference room next door. Vern’s hair was whiter, but his smile was just as trusting and friendly. Hauck had only seen him once since he had left. “Going up in the world, huh, guy?”
“One could say the same about you.” He came around the desk and they shook hands. “Until the present time, that is,” he said with a wise smile, motioning Hauck over to a seating area by the large window.
“Yeah.” Hauck smiled. “You might say that, Vern.”
“We miss you here, Ty,” the chief said, motioning for Hauck to sit down. “Steve’s doing a terrific job, but I don’t have to tell you that your imprint is all over the place here.”
“If I knew you were going to redo it like this I wouldn’t have left.”
He laughed. He crossed his legs and sank back in the couch. “So, how’s the private sector treating you?”
“It’s brought a few surprises.”
Fitzpatrick nodded sagely. “You were always a good man, Ty…But you always did have a special talent for stepping knee-deep in the shit bucket, didn’t you, son?”
Hauck smiled in return. “Yeah, Vern, guess I always did.”
“Well, hate to see that muck up the new career just as it’s starting to bloom. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on.”
Steve came over and leaned against the wall. Hauck took his old boss through the tale of how it had all begun: Hearing the news about Marc Glassman that morning. Seeing April’s face. “She was a friend of mine, at a time before I moved up here, when I really needed one. I was part of a therapy group for a while. After Norah died. April helped me through. When I saw what happened…” Hauck took in a breath, blew it out, and smiled crookedly. “Well, you know me…”
“Yeah, I know you, Ty. I’m sorry. I wish we had made more progress on the Glassman thing. Still working it though.”
“Around the same time,” Hauck went on, “I was introduced to a woman through my job whose name I’d rather keep out of it for now. The assignment was confidential. It was a background search. She raised some doubts about a man she’d been seeing.”
Vern chuckled. “I thought they had you hobnobbing with congressmen and company heads over at that firm of yours. Didn’t realize it was the same old shit, just with a fancier shingle on the door.”
“It was a favor,” Hauck said. “For my boss. The managing director there. Let’s call the man Subject A.”
“Subject A.” Vern nodded. “Alright.”
“As I looked into him, it became clear most of her doubts were valid. The guy just got dirtier and dirtier. At the same time”—Hauck opened his case and nodded to Steve—“I guess I started sticking my nose into the Glassman thing.”
“Subject B. Can’t say that went over well here, Ty. You left. You moved on to other things.”
“She was a friend, Vern. During a rough patch of my life.” Hauck wet his lips and thought about how to make it sound right. “Everyone had the thing labeled as a burglary. Doesn’t matter now. What does matter is that in looking into this other subject, I came across something…”
Vern took off his wire-rims, folded them neatly, and put them in his breast pocket.
“Something that tied him back to the other case,” Hauck said. “To Marc Glassman.”
Now Vern’s eyes widened in interest. “What?”
“A photo.” Hauck reached into his case and took it out of the file. He laid it on the glass table. “That’s them there. In conversation. A polo event at Conyers Farm. Last summer.”
Vern looked it over. “The two of them talking…” He handed it to Steve with a skeptical gaze. “You haven’t been in the private sector that long not to know that a shot of two people talking in a public place isn’t exactly a slam dunk when it comes to evidence. And for what? What is it you’re trying to say? Steve’s been telling me you’ve been pushing that this Glassman thing wasn’t a home break-in from the start.”
“And I turned out to be right, didn’t I? And no, it doesn’t make much of a case for anything—by itself. That’s why when the guy in New York suddenly died as well, the other trader—”
“Subject C,” Vern said, nodding patiently. “The suicide that’s not a suicide.”
“The second guy who died under other suspicious circumstances. Who was covering up massive losses. Not to mention who brought down a second Wall Street firm. I went in to try to see if there was any connection.”
“That’s what sticking your nose into an ongoing police investigation and harassing the victim’s wife was all about?”
“There was no active investigation. And all I did was talk to her, Vern, with her consent. And yes, I can see how maybe I might’ve overstepped on some things. And how maybe it would be easy to think I’m a guy who just can’t get used to life away from the force, or that a photo of two guys talking at a polo match doesn’t mean shit—all of it—if it weren’t for what I found.”
The chief’s smile suddenly got narrow and Vern’s stare steadied on him. “You mean like a pen with your company logo on it found at the crime scene?”
“Come on, Vern, you really think I killed that guy? For what? So I could short Beeston Holloway in my 401(k)?” He turned to Steve. “What kind of vehicle did the Glassman kid claim to have seen at the end of the driveway that night?”
“A black Suburban. Unmarked.”
“The same thing James Donova
n’s wife told me her husband spotted outside their apartment building two days before he died.”
Vern wrinkled his brow. “Jeez, Ty, that’s even weaker than the photo.”
Hauck took out the rest of the file. He dropped Thibault’s phone log in front of Vern on the table. He jabbed his finger at it. “How about I place three separate calls from that same person in that photograph to the very office where James Donovan hung himself? One, Vern, the night before he died. Are we getting warmer?”
Vern picked up the sheets and put on his glasses and scanned over the yellow highlights delineating Dani Thibault’s phone calls to Donovan’s apartment building.
“That enough to maybe make you rethink the home break-in theory?” Hauck pointed to the highlighting. “That’s why they did it there. It wouldn’t show up on a routine search of Donovan’s phone records. The only reason it did turn up is I happened to be looking into the other case. C’mon, Vern, Steve, you don’t have to know what a credit-default swap is to figure out two successful traders are dead, traders who lost billions and whose two firms are history now…”
Fitzpatrick nodded, seeming to glance in the direction of the adjoining conference room. “You said this was part of a confidential search. What does your firm think of what you stumbled on?”
Hauck shrugged. “This is where it starts to get a little sticky for me, Vern. I haven’t told them.”
“Haven’t told them?” Vern put down the papers. “Some things don’t seem to change, do they, son?”
“One of the firm’s largest clients is Reynolds Reid. Apparently, they’re seeking to pick up some of Wertheimer Grant’s assets. Their retail broker division. My boss doesn’t want to muck up the deal by bringing out possible revelations of fraud or a possible scandal. So they pushed me off the case.”
“Some people might find it sticky that two New York City detectives are trying to tie you into a murder case, Ty.”
“Someone’s trying to set me up. I don’t know whether that pen is mine or not. I don’t know what they’ll find on it. More to the point, what does it even matter? Do I have to prove myself to you? You think you’re going to find my face on some security tape sneaking into the building? That’s why I couldn’t go to my firm. I can’t trust them. Four people are dead, Vern. I don’t know why they had to be killed, but while I’m out there having to prove my innocence two banks have collapsed. Am I the only person in the world who sees what may be going on?”
