Restitution

by Lee Vance

  “How could a single individual have fooled a big company like Turndale?” she asks skeptically.

  “Happens all the time,” I say. “It’s hard to spot a good fraud if you’re not looking for it, and Andrei’s smart. He pretended to sell the fake Fetsov certificates to another company for a profit and used the money he’d supposedly received to buy different fake certificates. He kept all his fake positions turning over constantly and he kept booking false profits. From Turndale’s perspective, everything was great. They never realized their portfolio of Russian stock was slowly being transformed into a collection of worthless counterfeit paper.”

  “There must have been some safeguard,” she protests.

  “Of course. Eastern European companies keep registers listing the rightful owners of all the physical stock they issue. The clerk working for Andrei should have confirmed Turndale’s positions with each company at least once a week by phone. Except Andrei’s clerk was hanging out at his mamma’s house in Salerno, with Andrei’s blessing, and all the double-checking the clerk was supposed to do was being done—or not being done—by Andrei’s secretary, a Russian woman he’d hired locally.”

  “How much?” she whispers.

  “Over a billion,” I reply, still shocked by the magnitude of the amount. Andrei’s records had revealed an almost unbelievable string of desperate trading gambits and losing positions, the hole he’d sunk into becoming a near-bottomless pit with dizzying rapidity. It was incredible that he’d lost that much money that fast.

  Mrs. Zhilina hunches over her tea, face averted. I can only imagine how she must feel. As for me, my friendship with Andrei died in the basement of Mr. Rozier’s library, victim to a growing certitude that his panicked maneuvers must somehow have led to Jenna’s murder. There are too many coincidences to draw any other conclusion.

  “But why hasn’t it come out?” Mrs. Zhilina asks plaintively. “Why doesn’t Katya know?”

  “That’s the bit that puzzled me at first. And then I remembered Katya telling me that William Turndale was selling his shares in Turndale and Company. I think William eventually figured out what Andrei was doing, fired him, and came up with a plan to make good the loss. He hasn’t told anyone about the theft because he intends to sell his shares in Turndale to an unwitting buyer and then use the proceeds to buy back the counterfeit stock. Fix the problem with his own money before anyone else learns the truth.”

  “Again,” she says, “I don’t understand. Why would he want to do that?”

  “Two reasons. One, Turndale’s worth a lot more as a going concern than it is as a crippled hulk with regulators crawling all over it. William’s shares will bring way more than a billion if no one knows there’s any problem. So he could buy back the counterfeit securities and still have enough money to retire in style, maybe even stay on the board as a senior statesman.”

  “And the second reason?”

  “Pride. Imagine what the press would say. William Turndale, one of the smartest and meanest guys on Wall Street, conned out of a billion dollars by a single employee, the company his father founded brought to its knees. Someone like William would probably rather kill himself.”

  A few moments pass in silence.

  “What does this mean for Andrei?” she asks, her voice surprisingly well controlled.

  “You already know the answer to that,” I respond levelly. “There’s nothing anyone can do to help him at this point. I’m worried about Katya.”

  “Why?” she asks sharply.

  “If the truth comes out, the company’s going down, and William’s looking at jail time for his cover-up. Katya’s the number-two person in the firm, and Andrei’s her twin brother. She’s going to have a lot of trouble persuading anyone that she didn’t know what was going on. At an absolute minimum, the SEC will probably get her for failure to supervise and bar her from the securities industry.”

  “And at a maximum?”

  “I don’t want to speculate. Jail’s a real possibility.”

  “I see,” Mrs. Zhilina says softly. “Thank you for explaining so well. Assuming you’re correct, can William succeed with his plan?”

  “My opinion? Not in a million years. There’s no way a buyer’s due diligence wouldn’t turn up a billion dollars’ worth of fake stock. He must be crazy.”

  She lifts her tea with steady hands and twirls the beaker, watching tiny flecks of tea spin like leaves in a high wind.

  “You suggested that your wife was murdered by someone looking for Andrei,” she says. “You think that person was William Turndale?”

  “No,” I reply, having considered the possibility at length earlier. “Angry as he must be, William’s got to want Andrei to stay hidden. The last thing he needs right now is to attract any external scrutiny.”

  “Then who?”

  I shrug, unwilling to share my thoughts any further. Lyman’s still at the top of my list, but I’ve been thinking about Vladimir more and more. I’d bet the prior business he did with Andrei was forging stock certificates. If so, Andrei would have been dependent on Vladimir to keep his scam going, and Vladimir could have used that dependency to win a position at the clinic. It isn’t hard to imagine Vladimir as a mercenary working for terrorists. Incredible as it seems, Davis might have been telling me the truth. Maybe Andrei discovered what Vladimir was doing and fled, in which case Vladimir would have been looking for him.

  “So,” Mrs. Zhilina says evenly. “What must I do?”

  “Tell me where Andrei is. The more I can learn about what happened, the more I’ll be able to help Katya.”

  Her eyes bore into me again.

  “Your motivation is to help Katya?”

  “One motivation,” I reply, meeting her gaze. “I never meant to hurt her. I want to make amends.”

  “And what else do you want?”

  “Vengeance. Whoever murdered my wife has to pay.”

  “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” she says, nodding slowly. “That’s justice. I’ll help you any way I can, but I don’t know where Andrei is. He’s been leaving messages on my home machine every few weeks, saying that he’s well and that I shouldn’t worry.”

  I’m disappointed, but not out of options yet.

  “There’s another thing you might be able to tell me,” I say. “Has Andrei ever had a relative or family friend that he referred to as bon papa?”

  Her mouth twitches, a tell so tiny that I would have missed it if I’d blinked. She knows something.

  “Why do you ask?”

  “Andrei’s been using a debit card linked to a numbered bank account in Luxembourg to pay for his personal travel. If I can access the account on-line, I might be able to figure out where he is. The phrase ‘bon papa’ is his personal security question. I think the answer might be a name—someone he knew as a boy, or when he was a student. It’s important I figure this out to help Katya.”

  “There’s no one I can think of,” she replies stiffly.

  I’m leaning forward to remonstrate with her when a thought catches me up short. Andrei once confided that the root cause of the tension between Katya and their mother was Mrs. Zhilina’s refusal to tell them anything about the father who abandoned them. All Andrei and Katya ever knew was that he was an American she’d met in Europe. Maybe Andrei learned more. Maybe Andrei’s bon papa isn’t from Mrs. Zhilina’s side of the family.

  “I’m not trying to dredge up unpleasant memories,” I say, deliberately oblique for the sake of her pride. “If you give me a name, I won’t repeat it.”

  “I already told you,” she says in the same stiff tone. “There’s no one.”

  My phone rings before I can respond. I check the display reflexively and see Katya’s office number.

  “One second,” I say to Mrs. Zhilina, lifting the phone to my mouth. “Hello?”

  “Katya would like to see you in her office as soon as possible,” Debra says.

  “Fine. I’m on my way.”

  I hang up and get to m
y feet, debating whether or not to take another run at Mrs. Zhilina. Anything Andrei found out about his father, he likely shared with Katya, which means I’ll learn it in a few minutes anyway.

  “That was Katya’s secretary,” I say. “I’ve got to go meet Katya now. You’re quite sure—”

  “I am,” she says coldly.

  What was it Katya said to me the other day? That she’d been trying to persuade her mother to tell her things for years, and that she hadn’t had any luck yet. I turn to go.

  “Don’t forget,” Mrs. Zhilina says to my back. “You said you wanted to make amends. I expect you to look out for Katya.”

  It’s a bit much for her to hector me, given that she’s the one withholding information. I repress my instinctive sarcasm, mindful of all the bad news she’s had to absorb.

  “I will,” I say, answering from the heart. “There’s no one else more important to me now.”

  27

  LOW CLOUDS HANG ominously in a darkened sky as I exit the museum. It smells like snow. Scanning the street for a cab, I notice a white step van double-parked across Fifth Avenue, in front of the old Stanhope Hotel. A man smoking a cigarette looks toward me through the open passenger window, features downlit by a streetlight. My heart races as I realize he looks like Vladimir. He flips his cigarette into the street as the truck begins moving, orange embers arcing through the night air. The truck turns left on Seventy-ninth Street before I think to get the plate number. I button my coat higher as I shiver, wondering if I’m imagining things. What would Vladimir be doing in America? Disappearing people, maybe, I realize, thinking of Lyman. Everything that’s happened is somehow connected. It could be that Vladimir’s tidying up. Permit or no, I should be carrying my dad’s gun.

  I flag a taxi and settle sideways in the rear seat, watching the traffic behind us for the white van as I try Tilling yet again, raging at her continued unavailability. My only new message is from Tigger.

  “Peter. Where are you? Give me a call as soon as you can.”

  I hang up and dial him back, glad for the distraction. He answers on the first ring.

  “It’s Peter,” I say.

  “What number are you calling me from?” he demands.

  “I got a new cell phone. It’s a long story.”

  “Where are you now?”

  “Manhattan. In a taxi.”

  “You’re never gonna guess what happened,” he says, laughing gleefully. “We gotta talk. When can we meet?”

  I glance at my watch.

  “Seven o’clock at the Harvard Club,” I say. “What is it?”

  “I’ll tell you later,” he says. “This is too good for the phone. You’re gonna love it.”

  28

  A CREW-CUT MAN who looks to be in his mid-thirties is waiting for me when I step off the elevator into Turndale’s old-world reception area. He’s a big guy, with a head that droops toward me on a long neck, dark eyes half-hidden beneath a protruding brow. He looks like a ferret. He’s wearing a navy blazer, gray slacks, and a Secret Service–style earpiece and lapel pin. Probably an ex-cop of some sort hired as executive security.

  “You’re supposed to be wearing that on your suit jacket,” he says, looking at the adhesive visitor’s pass in my hand.

  “Haven’t got one,” I reply, brushing past him.

  “Wait a minute, wise guy,” he says, catching hold of my sleeve.

  I’ve been manhandled by enough guards for one week. Spinning toward him, I knock his hand away and slap the pass against his chest.

  “Don’t touch me. You got that?”

  He peels the pass from his tie and folds it in half, not looking down.

  “You already got one shiner,” he says, jerking his chin toward my bruise. “A smarter guy might have learned something.”

  I can’t afford to let petty rage get the better of me.

  “I’m here to see Katya Zhilina,” I say tersely.

  “Boardroom,” the ex-cop mutters, pointing with his chin again. “You’re expected.”

  I walk down a corridor and through a pair of large open doors into the boardroom. A black-lacquered table thirty feet long sits on an enormous Oriental rug in the center of the room, the high-gloss surface reflecting a constellation of pinkish halogen spots overhead. To my right, an ornately carved wooden fireplace surrounds a blazing gas fire that must have required an expensive exemption from the city’s fire code. A large winter landscape hangs over the mantel, barren trees partially obscuring snow-covered wooden buildings, cloaked peasants hurrying about their business.

  “Do you recognize the painting, Mr. Tyler?”

  William Turndale’s entered the room behind me, trailed by the weaselly character I met in the reception area. William’s tall, at least my height, despite a slight stoop. Skin sags from his neck as if he’s begun to erode internally, a big man starting to melt from within. Pale blue eyes gleam fiercely beneath a full head of snow-white hair. Aging or not, William’s still formidable.

  “I don’t know much about art,” I say warily, surprised that he’s stopped in to say hello. We’ve met only a handful of times, and never outside of Katya’s presence. There’s no reason for him to speak to me now that I’m persona non grata on the Street.

  “There’s a remarkable story behind that painting,” William says, walking toward me. “Hitler was interested in art. He collected canvases from all over occupied Europe. He was planning a museum in Linz, his hometown, to display his most prized acquisitions. Are you familiar with any of this?”

  “No,” I say, wondering where Katya is. William’s standing next to me now, staring up at the landscape.

  “The core of the collection was a group of eighty paintings that were stored in Neuschwanstein, a nineteenth-century castle in the Bavarian Alps. There was a da Vinci, a Caravaggio, a Raphael, a Canaletto, and two Vermeers. Imagine that. There are only thirty-five known Vermeers in the entire world, and ten of those have doubtful provenance. The entire collection vanished at the end of the war. The Soviets accused the Americans of stealing it and the Americans accused the Soviets. No one’s ever unraveled the mystery.”

  “Imagine that,” I echo, beginning to get impatient.

  “There’s one painting from the collection that’s unusual in two respects. The Village in Winter, by Pieter Brueghel the Younger. First, it’s the only painting that Hitler acquired legitimately, a loan from an aristocratic German family. And second, it’s the only painting of the group that’s ever been seen again.”

  He tips his head toward the landscape and smiles, purplish lips drawn up to expose his canines.

  “Fascinating,” I say. “Will you excuse me? I was hoping to have a quick word with Katya.”

  “She’s in Chicago,” William says. “You told her you knew what Andrei had done. I thought perhaps we could chat.”

  I feel myself flush as I realize what’s happened. Katya’s worked for William for twenty years, and even though there’s no reason she should be feeling loyal to me just now, it still hurts to realize she passed my message to William without speaking to me first.

  “Don’t fret,” William says, apparently noticing my distress. “She didn’t tell me. I’ve been monitoring her phones ever since her brother disappeared. I heard your voice mail.”

  “Katya’s going to be pissed,” I say, simultaneously relieved that Katya didn’t give me up and incredulous at William’s audacity.

  “She’s gotten over worse,” he says indifferently. “I’m not an easy man to work for.”

  “Most people say you’re a prick,” I shoot back, wanting to wipe the complacent look off his face.

  “Your language is a little rich for my taste,” William says, smiling easily. “I just got off the phone with your old boss, Josh Kramer. He used the term prima donna when he described you, which is a more polite way of saying the same thing. And of course there’s the small matter of your wife’s murder, which the police seem to think you committed. Glass houses, Mr. Tyler.” He winks as if
we were chatting companionably.

  Back when I worked for Josh, he related a story he’d heard William tell once. William did a tour with the army prior to joining his family firm, working as an intelligence officer in Berlin during the early sixties. One day, he questioned three brothers suspected of spying for the Soviets. Unable to persuade any of the three to talk, he fell back on an old interrogation trick, pointing at the eldest brother and telling a German guard to take him outside and shoot him. Moments later, William and the remaining brothers heard a shot. William pointed at the youngest brother and said he was next. Both men spilled their guts, confessing everything. The punch line of the story was that the unwitting guard, new to his job, actually had shot the eldest brother. Josh was reverential as he described the shout of laughter William finished the story with, thrilled by his callousness.

  “You want to talk?” I say, looking him in the eye. “Talk.”

  “Why don’t we sit down first,” he says. “Earl?”

  The security guard sidles around the table and pulls out a chair for William. I sit down next to him with my back to the fire, figuring I already know where this conversation is going.

  “Would you like something to drink, Mr. Tyler?” he asks.

  “Nothing, thanks.”

  “To business, then. A little bird told me that you took some files from a computer belonging to me.”

  It takes me a couple of seconds to put the pieces together. There’s only one person connected to Turndale who might know I took Andrei’s files.

  “Dmitri called you.”

  “Excellent, Mr. Tyler. Very quick. Josh said you were smart.”

  “You didn’t know that he had Andrei’s computer?”

  “Regretfully, Dmitri wasn’t quite as forthcoming as he seemed when Earl and I conducted the postmortem on our Moscow office. It’s disappointing how few people are. He’s evidently gotten himself in some legal trouble over there. What was it again, Earl?”