A Delicate Touch

by Stuart Woods

  “The others are going to start arriving this afternoon,” she said, “but I wanted to tell you about Rance Damien.”

  He sat her down and gave her coffee. “Shoot.”

  “You were right. He wasn’t traceable through the usual routes. We were finally reduced to going through college yearbooks at our library at the Times.”

  “Did you find him there?”

  “We did: Lawrance V. Damien. He has a superb education: Groton, MIT, where he got an electrical engineering degree and an MBA, then Harvard Law School, where he was second in his class.”

  “Ancestry?”

  “He’s a great-grandson of one of our file subjects, Vito D’Amato.”

  “Ah!”

  “He lives on the Upper East Side in a prewar building and keeps a Mercedes coupe garaged nearby. No wife, but the doorman hinted at regular female traffic in and out of his place.”

  “Any connection to the Thomases?”

  “Nothing visible.”

  “That’s both expected and sinister,” Stone said. “Don’t start asking around their offices. We don’t want anyone to know we know about him.”

  “Okay, hands off at H. Thomas & Son.”

  “I’d like to know if he turns up at class reunions at any of his schools, though.”

  “Why?”

  “He may have connections with old boys who could prove useful to us.”

  “We’ll check into it.”

  “Can you use the public library for references? I don’t like the idea of anybody working on this where your colleagues could get wind of it.”

  “As you wish,” she replied.

  “Also, can you get somebody to follow him when he leaves his apartment? I’d like to know where he works.”

  “Sure.”

  “Bob Cantor is working next door; go talk with him and figure out what sort of computer setup you need. He can supply equipment and install it.”

  “Okay.” She disappeared.

  Viv came back. “Bob has got a grip on everything,” she said. “All I need is to supply some warm bodies to keep an eye on both houses and the neighborhood. They’ll find out if the same people keep showing up.”

  “Great, Viv, and thanks.”

  “I have to make an appearance at the office,” she said. “It lets people know I’m still employed there.” She gave him a peck on the cheek and departed.

  Stone went to the Excelsior and fished out the file on Vito D’Amato. The name change to Damien came with Vito’s grandchildren, so Rance had never been named anything else, and Jamie had not come up with any siblings. He was of particular interest to Stone, because he was the only descendant of the files that they had found to have a present-day connection to the Thomases. There must be more, he thought.

  28

  The next week went smoothly. Bob Cantor completed his work, including a local area network for the Times people’s computers. They worked on laptops that were isolated from outside computers, even those of the Times. Only one computer could make that connection and all e-mail was sent or received by that machine.

  There were two or three Times people there every day, sometimes as many as four, and they had all been supplied with keys to Bob’s newly located tunnel to Third Avenue. This way no one was seen entering or leaving Stone’s residence or office, except those who would do so normally, like staff and clients.

  Jamie was spending so much time in the house that Stone let her stay in Peter’s old suite, which suited her well. It was at the other end of the top floor, across from the master suite, which suited them both nicely.

  Jamie walked into Stone’s office one morning. “Good news,” she said. “We’ve found out where Rance Damien works.” She handed him some photos of Rance, who was tall, handsome, beautifully dressed, and barbered, going in and out of the H. Thomas building on Wall Street. “He occupies a suite of offices a couple of floors down from where the Thomases roost. The name on the door is LVD Consultants, and there may be as many as twenty people working in his rooms, mostly under forty years of age.”

  “Any word on what transpires there?”

  “We don’t keep specialists in breaking and entering on staff at the Times,” she said. “And it’s in all of our employment contracts that we must not do anything illegal while in the paper’s service, so we’re going to need some sort of freelancer for that. You’re going to have to supply him and not tell me or any of my people anything about it.”

  “I’ll speak to Bob Cantor about it,” Stone said. “If he can’t handle it, or doesn’t want to, he’ll know who to call.”

  “There, you see, I didn’t want to hear that name. And I don’t want any details of how it’s done.”

  “Do you think you can tell me what you want from those offices without sullying your moral code?” Stone asked.

  “Photographs of the premises, downloads from their computers to high-capacity thumb drives, names and addresses of the employees and their duties and any familial connections to the twelve files.”

  “Gee, is that all?”

  “For the moment. You’ll also have to find an impenetrable way of billing me for such services.”

  “And you’ll have to find cash with which to pay the bills.”

  “The Times does not like dealing in cash for anything more boisterous than cab fare or an occasional corned beef sandwich.”

  “Then tell Jeremy Green he’s going to have to pass the hat and take up a collection, because people who do this sort of work don’t take checks or credit cards—not even from the august New York Times. And they like to be paid on the day, if not in advance.”

  “Can you dig up cash and somehow bill us for legal services, or something?”

  “I’ll see what I can do, without getting disbarred,” Stone replied.

  “Don’t tell me anything about it.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah. And by the way, I want to know if Rance Damien has any siblings or first cousins with business connections to him.”

  “Didn’t I tell you? He has an older sister named Evelyn, known as Eve to her friends, who attended Mount Holyoke College and got an English lit degree, and a younger brother named Paul, sometimes known as Paulie, who also has a law degree from Harvard. Nothing on their employment.”

  “No, you didn’t tell me any of that, and why not?”

  “In all the excitement, I forgot.”

  “I’d give you better than even money that they both work out of LVD Consultants’ offices.”

  “You know what would be interesting?” Jamie said.

  “What?”

  “Where the family gathers for Thanksgiving dinner.”

  “That would be interesting, but Thanksgiving isn’t for months.”

  “Our genealogist is making progress on the family trees. Once we have those we can set up a computer watch on the Times marriage announcements. Maybe we can plant a few people at a wedding or other family occasion and take some snaps.”

  “Now that’s the kind of devious thinking I want to hear from you,” Stone said. “Look for deaths, too, so you can attend the funerals.”

  “Listen, at what point are we going to call in some branch of law enforcement?” she asked.

  “Dino is being kept informed, and if we get to the point where we can prove that federal crimes are being committed, we will call in the FBI or the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York. You should try to be ready to publish when that happens because, suddenly, a lot of other people are going to be involved, and that will greatly increase the possibility of leaks to somebody other than the Times.”

  “That’s a good point. Scott and Jeremy will be happy to know we’ve thought of that.”

  “Have you started on your book, yet?” Stone asked.

  “Well, now, that’s impish, isn’t it.”

  “So
you have started.”

  “I’ve written only the first chapter.”

  “Where does that chapter live?”

  She winced. “On my laptop, I’m afraid.”

  “House it on one of the computers next door, and encrypt access to it. Then ask Bob Cantor to permanently erase it from your laptop, along with anything else relevant to what you’re working on.”

  “Do I really have to be that careful?”

  “What happens if you leave it in a cab, or have it lifted when you’re walking across Times Square?”

  “Oh, all right.”

  “Do it right now, and make sure none of your colleagues is keeping any kind of files anywhere but on our computers.”

  “Geez, I’m going to be so popular,” Jamie said.

  “You’re still very popular with me,” Stone said. “Especially when everybody’s gone for the day.”

  “Hearing that makes me feel all aglow,” she said.

  “You’re a hard-boiled newswoman, remember? You don’t feel all aglow.”

  “Then what’s that little thing I’m feeling when you talk that way? It’s not supposed to happen until after my first scotch.”

  “I’ve got some scotch around here somewhere,” Stone said. “Check back with me when they’re all gone.”

  “Will do,” she said, opening the door.

  “And try to hang on to that little feeling!”

  “Fear not.” She closed the door behind her.

  29

  When Jamie had gone, Stone reached out for the phone to call Bob Cantor, then he stopped. He had used Cantor for such purposes before, but only in tightly contained circumstances where he was the only one with a need to know. Now, if he made that call, he would turn himself into an illegal arm of a newspaper, and they would expect to hear what he learned. He did not want to be in the position of having to tell them, if he didn’t feel like it.

  * * *

  • • •

  HE WAITED UNTIL the end of the day, when he and Jamie had adjourned to his study for her scotch and his bourbon. “I didn’t call Bob Cantor,” he said, “and I’m not going to. Not to find out the things you want to know.”

  “You’re going to chicken out, are you?” she taunted.

  “You’ve already done that for me.”

  “How so?”

  “Because your newspaper requires you not to do anything illegal, and you are unwilling to violate their policy. You want me to do it for you thereby putting in jeopardy my law partnership and my license to practice, not to mention the serious possibility of my going to prison for doing your bidding.”

  “I thought you’d have more guts.”

  “I thought you’d have more sense,” Stone replied. “I certainly do. I’ve laid a huge story in your lap and helped convince your paper to pursue it, but I haven’t broken the law so far, and I’m not going to start now.”

  “Then how are we going to investigate LVD Consultants?”

  “You’re the investigative reporter, you figure it out.”

  She downed the remainder of her scotch and went to the bar for another one, then sat down again.

  “You’re right,” she said finally.

  “At some point, when you’ve put the genealogies together and know the structure of these families, you can go to the Thomases and start asking them uncomfortable questions.”

  “We can’t do that until we can establish criminality.”

  “Right. Then you can go to the D.A. or the FBI and demand an investigation.”

  “At the first sign of an investigation,” she said, “the cockroaches will all scurry back into their crevices and put themselves out of reach. Anyway, the D.A. already has the files.”

  “He’s having the same problem you are: he doesn’t have the evidence to put any of these people in prison. The worst he could do is to call you in, give you the story that you already have, and ask you to write about it, then see how they react. Somehow, I doubt Scott and Jeremy would go for that.”

  She moved over from her seat to his lap and kissed him on the ear. “I so admire clear thinking in a man. It makes me hot.”

  Somehow, a nipple found its way out of her clothing, and he kissed it.

  “That makes me hot, too.”

  “I know,” he said, and located the other nipple.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE NEXT DAY, Jamie called Stone to the dining room next door, and he found an array of large sheets of paper taped to the walls, twelve of them.

  “These are the family trees of the male subjects from the files,” Jamie said. “As you can see, the names begin to stop being Italian at the point of the second or third generation. The younger male members all attended Ivy League colleges, except for the women, who attended Seven Sisters colleges. Only in recent years have the women gone to the Ivy League, as the rules changed. There are thirty-two in the third generation, and a dozen of them have law degrees.”

  “As befits a group of families who are going to need lawyers,” Stone said. “You know, I think it’s time we got the district attorney over here to see all of this; it might spur him into action.”

  “I have two concerns about that,” Jamie said. “The first is that the possibility of leaks will increase if he tells his staff. The other is, what if Ken Burrows has already been corrupted, then where are we?”

  “Fucked,” the genealogist said. Nobody laughed.

  “All right,” Stone said, “let’s get the D.A., the police commissioner, and the agent in charge of the FBI’s New York Bureau here and show them this stuff all at the same time.”

  “We still don’t have any evidence of wrongdoing,” Jamie said.

  “That’s the job of those three agencies,” Stone said. “They have the power to obtain search warrants and issue subpoenas; they also have the power to assign personnel to dig into these people’s lives, residences, and places of business.”

  Everybody seemed a little disappointed.

  “I know,” Stone said. “You wanted to break a complete story, but we don’t have the means to get at it. You’re going to have to let law enforcement inside, if you want a story at all. As it is, you can only show that members of twelve families have changed their names, presumably to avoid discrimination, and sent their progeny to the finest American colleges and universities, where they excelled, and none of that is criminal in nature. Much of it is even admirable.”

  Jamie looked around the room at her people. “All right,” she said, “keep at it, and I’ll go and talk to our bosses.”

  Slowly, people shuffled back to their computers. Jamie left via the tunnel, and Stone went back to his office.

  30

  Stone was in bed, watching Lawrence O’Donnell’s show, The Last Word, when Jamie came into his bedroom, undressed, and slithered into bed next to him. “All right,” she said.

  “Would you like the lights out?” Stone asked.

  “Never, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I poured my heart out to Scott and Jeremy, then Jeremy got on the phone and invited Dino, the D.A., and the U.S. Attorney to dinner at your house, tomorrow night—six-thirty for drinks. He and Scott will be here, too. You’re on the hook for dinner.”

  “I can handle that,” Stone said.

  “After dinner, when everybody is lightly toasted, we’ll trot in our placards and decorate your dining room with them, then I’ll make our presentation.”

  “Better you than me,” Stone said.

  “Don’t worry, I’m very good at that sort of thing.”

  “It’s your breasts,” Stone said, kissing them. “Everybody looks at them and forgets what you’re saying.”

  “That’s a dirty, sexist remark,” she said. “Not just because I believe you could be right. At least they get my audience’s attention, then I can divert it
to more important things.”

  “There are no more important things,” Stone said, fondling one of them.

  “There you go again with the totally unacceptable remarks that I just love hearing.” She reached down to fondle him. “Oh, I hadn’t expected it to be so ready.”

  “Your presence in my bed makes that happen,” Stone said. “Let’s find a nice, cozy place for it.” She rolled over onto her back, and they did.

  * * *

  • • •

  THE FOLLOWING EVENING Dino arrived a half hour early and found Stone in his office. “How the hell did you get all three of us around the same table?” Dino said. “That’s never happened before in a group of less than a couple hundred people in a hotel ballroom.”

  “Jeremy Green did it,” Stone said. “By the way, who is the AIC at the New York Bureau these days?”

  “It’s a woman,” Dino said. “The New York Bureau’s first. Her name is Gillian McCarthy, known to her friends at Gilly, but don’t call her that until she asks you to. She’s not much more than five feet tall, but you know what they say about dynamite.”

  “How long has she been there?”

  “About a month, I think. The last AIC had a heart attack, and she popped out of the deck.”

  “Where had she been before?”

  “She was an assistant director in Washington. This is the first time she’s commanded a bureau.”

  “Anything else?”

  “She’s an Irish Catholic girl from Philadelphia. What else can I tell you? Oh, she went to Notre Dame, then to Fordham Law School—law review, first in her class, and all that. Divorced, with a daughter in school at Notre Dame.”

  The doorbell rang. “We’d better go upstairs,” Stone said.

  Fred had seated Gillian McCarthy in the living room. Stone introduced himself. “I expect you’ve already met Dino,” he said.

  “Oh, yes,” she said, “at a dinner given by the archbishop for Catholic law enforcement. Dino was a great embarrassment to us all.”

  “How’s that?” Stone asked.