by Andrew Gross
“I’ll find him for you, Karen. I promise I will. But just be sure that with what’s happened now, these people know I’m onto them. We’re in it now. If that’s something you don’t think you can face—and I’d understand it if it was—now’s the time to say so.”
Karen looked down. Hauck felt a finger wrap around his hand, her pinkie, cautious and tremulous. It squeezed. There was a frightened look in her eyes, but behind it something deeper, a twinkling of resolve. She looked at him and shook her head again.
“I want you to find him, Ty.”
Her face dipped, ever so slightly, close to his, her hair tumbling against his cheek. Her breath was close and halting. Their knees touched. Hauck felt his blood spark alive as the side of her breast brushed his arm. Their lips could have touched right there. It would have taken only a nudge, and she would have folded into him—and a part of him wanted her to, a strong part, but another part said no. The hair on his arms tingled as he listened to her breathe.
“You knew this all along,” she said to him. “About Charlie. That this led back to him. You held it back from me.”
“I didn’t want you to be any more hurt until I was sure.”
She nodded. She locked her fingers inside his hand. “He wouldn’t kill anyone, Ty. I don’t care how foolish it makes me look. I know him. I lived with him for close to twenty years. He’s the father of my kids. I know.”
“So what do you want to do?”
Karen gently eased open Hauck’s robe. He tensed. She ran her fingers along his chest. She reached for the bag of liniment she had brought. “I want to take a look at that wound.”
“No,” he said, catching her hand. “You know what I meant.”
She held a moment, their hands still touching.
“I want to hear from his lips what he’s done, why he walked away from us, from almost twenty years of marriage, his family. I want to find him, Ty. Find Charles. Something came up while you were down there. I think I may know how.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
It was the car.
She had already been through everything two times over, just as Ty had asked. Still, while he was down in Jersey, she felt she had to do something. To keep from worrying.
So Karen tore through Charlie’s things all over again—the old bills, the stacks of receipts he’d left in his closet, the papers on his desk. Even the sites he’d visited on his computer before he “died.”
A wild-goose chase, she told herself. Just like the one before.
Except this time some things came up. A file buried deep in his desk, hidden under a pile of legal papers. A file Karen had never noticed before. From before Charlie died. Things she didn’t understand.
A small note card still in its envelope—addressed to Charles. The kind that accompanied a gift of flowers. Karen opened it, a little hesitantly, and saw it was written in a hand she didn’t recognize.
It stopped her.
Sorry about the pooch, Charles. Could the kids be next?
Sorry about the pooch. Karen saw that her hands were shaking. Whoever wrote it had to be talking about Sasha. And what did that possibly mean, that the kids could be next?
Their kids…
Suddenly Karen felt a tightness in her chest. What had these people done?
And then, in that same hidden-away file, she came across one of the holiday cards they’d sent as a family before Charlie had died. The four of them sitting on a wooden fence at a field near their ski house in Vermont. A happy time.
She opened it.
She almost threw up.
The kids’ faces, Samantha and Alexander—they had both been cut out.
Karen covered her face with her hands and felt her cheeks flush with blood.
“What the hell is happening here, Charlie?” She stared at the card. What the hell were you involved in? What were you doing to us, Charlie? All of a sudden, the incident in Samantha’s car at school came hurtling back to Karen, her heart starting to race. Accusingly. She got up from the desk. She wanted to hit something. She touched her hand to her face. Looked around the room.
His room.
“Talk to me, Charlie, you bastard, talk to me!”
And then her eyes seemed to fall on it.
Amid the clutter of papers and prospectuses and sports magazines she had still never quite cleared from his office.
The stack. The neatly piled stack Charlie kept on the bookshelf. Every issue. A sure-as-hell fire hazard, Karen always called it. His little dream collection, dating back since he’d first acquired his toy, eight years earlier.
Mustang World.
She went over to it—the stack of magazines piled high. She picked up one or two, the thought now forming in her brain.
This was it! The one thing about him he could never change. No matter what name he was under. Or who he was now.
Or where.
His stupid car. Charlie’s Baby. He read about the damn things in his spare time, checked out the prices, chatted about them online. They always joked how it was a part of him. His mistress that Karen just had to put up with. She called it Camilla, as in Camilla and Charles. Better than Camilla, Charlie always joked. “Better-looking, too.”
Mustang World.
He constantly put the car up for sale, then never sold it. In the summer he drove it in rallies. Monitored the online sites. She didn’t understand what these cards she’d found were about. They scared her. She didn’t know for sure what he’d done.
“But that’s the way,” Karen said to Hauck as she went to dress his wounds now.
She reached into her bag and dropped a copy of the magazine on the table. Mustang World.
“That’s how we find him, Ty. Charlie’s Baby.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
One Police Plaza was the home of the NYPD’s administrative offices in lower Manhattan, as well as of the Joint Inter-Agency Task Force that oversaw the city’s security.
Hauck waited in the courtyard in front of the building, looking out over Frankfort Street, which led onto the Brooklyn Bridge. It was a warm May afternoon. Strollers and bikers were crossing the steel gray span, office workers in shirtsleeves and light dresses on their lunchtime stroll. A few years back, Hauck used to work out of this building. He hadn’t been down here in years.
A slightly built, balding man in a navy police sweater waved to a coworker and came up to him, his police ID fastened to his chest.
“New York’s Finest.” The man winked, standing in front of Hauck. He sat down beside him and gave him a tap of the fist.
“Go, blue!” Hauck grinned back.
Lieutenant Joe Velko had been a young head of detectives in the 105th Precinct, and had gone on to receive a master’s degree from NYU in computer forensics. For years he and Hauck had been teammates on the department’s hockey team, Hauck a crease-clearing defenseman with gimpy knees, Joe a gritty forward who learned to use a stick on the streets of Elmhurst, Queens. Joe’s wife, Marilyn, had been a secretary at Cantor Fitzgerald and had died on 9/11. Back then it was Hauck who had organized a benefit game for Joe’s kids. Captain Joe Velko now ran one of the most important departments in the entire NYPD.
Watchdog was a state-of-the-art computer software program developed by the NCSA, powered by nine supercomputers at an underground command center across the river in Brooklyn. Basically what Watchdog did was monitor billions of bits of data over the Internet for random connections that could prove useful for security purposes. Blogs, e-mail messages, Web sites, MySpace pages—billions of bits of Internet traffic. It sought out any unusual relationships between names, dates, scheduled public events, even repeated colloquial phrases, and spit them out at the command center in daily “alerts,” whereupon a staff of analysts pored over them, deciding if they were important enough to act on or to pass along to other security teams. A couple of years back, a plot to bomb the Citigroup Center by an antiglobalization group was uncovered by Watchdog, simply because it connected the same seemingly innocent b
ut repeated phrase, “renewing our driver’s license,” to a random date, June 24, the day of an event there highlighted by a visit from the head of the World Bank. The connection was traced to someone on the catering team, who was an accomplice on the inside.
“So what do I owe this visit to?” Velko turned to Hauck. “I know this isn’t exactly your favorite place.”
“I need to ask you a favor, Joe.”
A seasoned cop, Velko seemed to see something in Hauck’s face that made him pause.
“I’m trying to locate someone,” Hauck explained. He removed a thin manila envelope from under his sport jacket. “I have no idea where he is. Or even what name he might be using. He’s most likely out of the country as well.” He put the envelope on Velko’s lap.
“I thought you were going to give me a challenge.” The security man chuckled, unfastening the clasp.
He slid out the contents: a copy of Charles Friedman’s passport photo, together with some things Karen had supplied him. The phrases “1966 Emberglow Mustang. GT. Pony interior. Greenwich, Connecticut.” Some place called Ragtops, in Florida, where Charles had purchased it. The Greenwich Concours Rallye, where he sometimes showcased his car. A few of what Karen remembered as Charlie’s favorite car sites. And finally a few favorite expressions he might use, like, “Lights out.” Or “It’s a home run, baby.”
“You must think just because you elbowed a few firemen out of the crease who were trying to knock the shit out of me I really owe you, huh?”
“It was more than a few, Joe.” Hauck smiled.
“A ’66 Mustang. Pony interior. Can’t you just log onto eBay for one of these things, Ty?” Velko grinned.
“Yeah, but this is far sexier,” Hauck replied. “Look, the guy may be in the Caribbean, or maybe Central America. And Joe…this is gonna come out in your search, so I might as well tell you up front now—the person I’m looking for is supposedly dead. In the Grand Central bombing.”
“Supposedly dead? As opposed to really dead?”
“Don’t make me go into it, partner. I’m just trying to find him for a friend.”
Velko slid the paper back inside the envelope. “Three hundred billion bits of data crossing the Internet every day, the city’s security squarely in our hands, and I’m looking at an Amber Alert for a dead guy’s ’66 Mustang.”
“Thank you, guy. I appreciate whatever turns up.”
“A wide goddamn hole in the Patriot Act”—Velko cleared his throat—“That’s what the hell’s going to turn up. We’re not exactly a missing-persons search system here.” He looked at Hauck, reacting to the marks on his face and neck and the stiffness in his reach.
“You still skating?”
Hauck nodded. “Local team up there. Over-forty league now. Mostly a bunch of Wall Street types and mortgage salesmen. You?”
“No.” Velko tapped his head. “They won’t let me anymore. They seem to think my brain is good for something other than getting knocked around. Too risky on the new job. Michelle is, though. You should see her. She’s a goddamn little bruiser. She plays on the boys’ team for her school.”
“I’d like to,” Hauck said with a fond smile. When Marilyn died, Michelle had been nine and Bonnie six. Hauck had organized a benefit game for them against a team of local celebrities. Afterward Joe’s family came onto the ice and received a team jersey signed by the Rangers and the Islanders.
“I know I’ve said this, Ty, but I always appreciated just what you did.”
Hauck shot Joe a wink.
“Anyway, I better get on these, right? Top secret—specialized and classified. Joe stood up. “Is everything okay?”
Hauck nodded. His side still ached like hell. “Everything’s okay.”
“Whatever turns up,” Joe said, “I can still find you up at your office in Greenwich?”
Hauck shook his head. “I’m taking a little time. My cell number’s in the package. And Joe…I’d appreciate it if you kept this entirely between us.”
“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that.” Joe raised the envelope and rolled his eyes. “Taking a little time…” As Velko backed away toward the police building, he cocked Ty a wary smile.
“What the hell are you getting yourself involved in, Ty?”
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
After his meeting with Velko, Hauck went to the office of Media Publishing, located on the thirtieth floor of a tall glass building at Forty-sixth Street and Third Avenue.
The publishers of Mustang World.
It took Hauck’s flashing his badge first to the receptionist and then to a couple of junior marketing people to finally get him to the right person. He had no authority here. The last thing he wanted was to have to call in yet another old friend from the NYPD. Fortunately, the marketing guy he finally got him in front of seemed eager to help and didn’t ask him to come back with a warrant.
“We’ve got two hundred and thirty-two thousand subscribers,” the manager said, as if overwhelmed. “Any chance you can narrow it down?”
“I only need a list of those who’ve come aboard within the past year,” Hauck told him.
He gave the guy a card. The manager promised he’d get to it as soon as he could and e-mail the results to Hauck’s departmental address.
On the ride back home, Hauck mapped out what he would do. Hopefully, this Mustang search would yield something. If not, he still had the leads he’d taken from Dietz’s office.
The Major Deegan Expressway was slow, and Hauck caught some tie-up near Yankee Stadium.
On a hunch he fumbled in his pocket for the number of the Caribbean bank he’d found at Dietz’s. On St. Kitts. As he punched in the overseas number on his cell, he wasn’t sure just how smart this was. The guy could be on Dietz’s payroll for all he knew. But as long as he was playing long shots…
After a delay a sharp ring came on. “First Caribbean,” answered a woman with a heavy island accent.
“Thomas Smith?” Hauck requested.
“Please hold da line.”
After a short pause, a man’s voice answered, “This is Thomas Smith.”
“My name is Hauck,” Hauck said. “I’m a police detective with the Greenwich police force, in Greenwich, Connecticut. In the States.”
“I know Greenwich,” the man responded brightly. “I went to college nearby at the University of Bridgeport. How can I help you, Detective?”
“I’m trying to find someone,” Hauck explained. “He’s a U.S. citizen. The only name I have for him is Charles Friedman. He may have an account on record there.”
“I’m not familiar with anyone by the name of Charles Friedman having an account here,” the bank manager replied.
“Look, I know this is a bit unorthodox. He’s about five-ten. Brown hair. Medium stature. Wears glasses. It’s possible he’s transferred money into your bank from a corresponding bank in Tortola. It’s possible that Friedman is not even the name he’s currently using now.”
“As I said, sir, there is no account holder on record here by that name. And I haven’t seen anybody who might fit that description. Nevis is a small island. And you can understand why I would be reluctant to give you that information even if I did.”
“I understand perfectly, Mr. Smith. But it is a police matter. If you would maybe ask around and check…”
“I don’t need to check,” the manager answered. “I have already.” What he told Hauck made him flinch. “You are the second person from the States who’s been looking for this man in the past week.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE
Michel Issa squinted through the lens over the glittering stone. It was a real beauty. A brilliant canary yellow, wonderful luminescence, easily a C rating. It had been part of a larger lot he’d bought and was the pick of the litter. Hovering over the loupe, Michel knew it would fetch a real price from the right buyer.
His specialty.
Issa’s family had been in the diamond business for over fifty years, emigrating to the Caribbean from
Belgium and opening the store on Mast Street, on the Dutch side of St. Maarten when Michel was young. For decades Issa et Fils had bought high-quality stones direct from Antwerp and a few “gray” markets. People came to them from around the world—and not just couples off the cruise ships looking to get engaged, though they catered to that, too, to keep up the storefront. But important people, people with things to hide. In the trade, Michel Issa was known, as his father and grandfather had been before him, as the kind of négociant who could keep his mouth shut, who had the discretion to handle a private transaction, no matter what its magnitude.
With the money trail between banks so transparent after 9/11, shifting assets into something tangible—and transportable—was a booming business these days. Especially if one had something to hide.
Michel put down the lens and transferred the premier stone back into the tray with the other stones. He placed them in his drawer and twisted the lock. The clock read 7:00 P.M. Time to close for the day. His wife, Marte, had an old-style Belgian meal of sausage and cabbage prepared for him. Later, on Tuesday nights, they played euchre with a couple of English friends.
Michel heard the outside door chime. He sighed. Too late. He had just sent his sales staff home. He didn’t flinch. There was no crime here on the island. Not this kind of crime. Everyone knew him, and, more to the point, they were on an island, surrounded by water. There was absolutely nowhere to go. Still, he reproved himself for having to be rude. He should have locked the door.
“Monsieur Issa?”
“I’ll be with you in a moment,” Michel called. He glanced through the window into the showroom and saw a stocky, mustached man in sunglasses waiting by the door.
He twisted the lock of the security drawer a second time. When he went around into the shop, there were two men. The man who called out, sort of a circumspect smile in his dark features, stepped up to the counter. The other, tall in a beach shirt and a baseball cap, standing by the door.
