Even before the rickety elevator doors had fully closed, she had stripped open the package and removed the contents. Her eyes scanned the handwritten pages, then the typed ones. The elevator slowly climbed toward the fourth floor. Her breathing became shorter and her eyes widened as she sped through the information. Amazing.
The elevator stopped at the third floor, and the doors began to open. Instinctively she crammed the papers back inside the envelope. No one should see this.
An older gentleman holding a bouquet of scraggly flowers moved into the car. He smiled meekly at her, and she smiled back. He was headed for the top floor of the building, where all the spinsters lived, Rachel thought.
For a moment she wondered which woman he was courting, but her mind did not remain on the thought for long. She glanced down at the package in her hands. She needed to talk to Mace right away. He would want to see this.
* * *
—
Mace pushed through the door of his apartment, tossed his coat and jacket on the sofa, and headed toward the kitchen. He wanted that cold bottle of beer he had almost consumed last night with Leeny. On second thought, he didn’t just want that bottle of beer, he needed it. It had been a long day.
Mace pulled the bottle from the refrigerator, popped the cap, and took a long, satisfying swig. Finally he pulled the dark brown bottle away from his mouth. He wiped his lips with the back of his hand and noticed the glass in the sink, the glass in which he had mixed the scotch and water last night for Leeny. He took another swallow of beer. She had still been asleep on the sofa when he had first come out of the bedroom this morning at six sharp to boil water for coffee, lying in roughly the same position in which he had left her after covering her with the blanket last night. But she had been gone when he emerged from the bedroom the second time after taking his shower.
Several more gulps of the beer raced down his throat. The bottle was already almost empty. Leeny had called him at Walker Pryce at eleven o’clock this morning to tell him that all the Broadway Ventures partnership money had been raised, all one billion dollars. It would begin coming into the Chase collection account tomorrow. And she told him that she would not be in her office until sometime after lunch. She provided no explanation for her late arrival or for her abrupt departure from his apartment that morning. She seemed distant on the phone and still seemed that way when she finally arrived at the office around three o’clock. She was a strange woman, he was coming to find.
The empty beer bottle crashed into the trash can next to the rarely used dishwasher. Quickly Mace opened the refrigerator again, pulled out another beer, and headed through the apartment to the second bedroom, which he used as an office. He wanted to check his E-mail to see if the office had sent him anything since he had left Walker Pryce forty-five minutes ago.
Mace relaxed into the comfortable captain’s chair, adorned with the University of Iowa insignia, in front of his desk. He took another sip of beer, then flipped on the computer. As it hummed to life, he gazed at the display. The virus detection software flashed across the screen. Finally Mace leaned forward as the familiar figures at the end of the cycle appeared. Suddenly, as he was about to start tapping an input sequence, the computer began to scream loudly. He pulled back instinctively as the intense beeping continued for a full ten seconds. His mouth fell open slowly. Someone had turned on the computer and accessed his files without his permission. The beeping sound meant that someone had logged into his computer without entering the prescribed password. The computer could still be used without entering the password, but Mace had installed the warning just for fun. The salesman had pointed out that the warning system came with the software he had purchased, so why not use it?
Finally the alarm stopped, but still he did not move. Someone had accessed his files. And it was very obvious to him who that someone was. There was only one person who could have done it. Sometime in the night Leeny had risen from the sofa and systematically rifled through the files he had stored on the hard drive and perhaps what he had on the wafer disks aligned in the small box next to the processing unit as well. But why?
21
Being here flew in the face of all the training. In the face of everything he had been taught to hold dear—like loyalty to your commander, obeying orders, and honor. But he had also been trained to understand that there might come a time when he had to disregard those things and act on his own. His experience told him that this was one of those times. Slade Conner slid the razor-thin lock pick into the office doorknob of James Franklin, a partner at the prominent Detroit-based financial accounting firm of Neel, Layer & Thoss. Franklin was the partner responsible for the Andrews Industries account. After several moments the door unlocked with a gentle click. Slade glanced both ways, but there was no need for caution; the place was dark and deserted. He smirked. If this had been New York or Los Angeles, the lights would have been burning brightly for the associates who wouldn’t leave until two or three in the morning. He would not have been able to break in so easily. But this was the Midwest, where people valued things like time with their families. Those family values made corporate espionage a great deal less challenging.
He moved into the office, closed the door, pulled a flashlight from his jacket, turned it on, and surveyed the office. It was blandly furnished with metal and veneer. Everywhere there were stacks of papers: on the desk, the credenzas, and the several tables at the edge of the room, even on the floor. It looked like the remnants of a ticker-tape parade, for Christ’s sake. Tax time was obviously fast approaching, Slade thought.
There was one spot in the office that seemed out of place with the chaos surrounding it: the center of Franklin’s desk. Slade shone the flashlight on this spot from across the room. There everything seemed in order. Everything had its place. Including the envelope that lay in the very middle of the clearing, its lines exactly parallel to those of the rectangular desk.
Slade moved purposefully to the desk and surveyed the envelope under the arc of the flashlight. The front of the envelope was blank. But it was clearly meant for him. It had been left in this clear spot for him to find easily, just as his contact had written that it would be.
The person who had written the first anonymous letter had contacted him with a second letter, citing passages from the first letter to prove he or she was the author of both. Whoever had written the letter had somehow known—or made a damn good guess—that he was coming here, to the offices of Neel, Layer & Thoss, to look for information regarding Andrews Industries. The letter was very specific about how to enter the building clandestinely, about how to gain access to the Neel Layer offices, and in which office of the accounting firm the company financial statements of Andrews Industries would be waiting. The letter had included codes, camera locations, and the exact time of guard checks throughout the building.
Initially Slade had been convinced that the letter was sent to entrap him. He was certain at first that local or even federal law enforcement officers would be hiding on the premises to arrest him as he came through the door. Maybe someone on Preston Andrews’ staff had sent the letter so as to link Malcolm Becker to a Watergate-like debacle and take Becker out of the election. But as Slade had performed his reconnaissance—watching the guards and trying the combinations during normal business hours when he would not arouse suspicion—he realized that the letter was truly meant to help him break in. If someone had been trying to set him up, one piece of the intelligence would have been false. One shred of information would have been deliberately delivered incorrectly—a wrong number in the code or a guard check time only minutes off—so as to trip him up, so as to cost him that one moment that in the end would nail him. But the information was accurate.
Even then Slade remained suspicious that the authorities would be waiting inside for him. Except for one other thing. The letter explained that contained in the envelope on Franklin’s desk would be the latest annual financial statements f
or Andrews Industries, highly confidential documents exhibiting the financial position of the huge family firm, but that these financial statements would be inaccurate. The letter explained that the numbers had been fraudulently manufactured to show that Andrews Industries was strong and in solid financial shape. But really just the opposite was true. The company was actually incurring serious problems, but Malcolm Becker must not know this for certain. He must see the false statements and believe that Andrews Industries was flush with cash that Preston Andrews could use in his campaign. There was too much to the letter for it to be a setup.
Slade removed the neatly bound financial statements from the large envelope and leafed through the booklet quickly. He was not a financial expert, but he knew enough to see that the company these financial statements portrayed was performing quite well. And they were complete, right down to the partner’s unqualified opinion. He slid the statements back into the envelope.
Slade switched off the flashlight and tucked the package under his arm, next to the package that contained the real statements he had located ten minutes ago in another office down the hall. These financials had not been so easy to procure. But the writer of the letters must have known he would go for the real statements as well.
He shook his head. The Rat Man. It had to be. Ferris must have realized that if Becker won the presidential nomination, he would leave his lifelong friend behind. Ferris just wasn’t marketable enough to make the leap across the Potomac River to the White House with Becker. And this was the Rat Man’s attempt to maintain his position in life. By somehow torpedoing Becker with the accusations in the first letter and now by making available these phony financial statements meant to confuse him, Ferris actually hoped to keep his boss out of the White House. Because he thought that the White House for Becker meant the end of the line for himself. It was the only explanation for all of this. At least the best explanation Slade could come up with.
* * *
—
Vargus shivered as he sat in the cold car. He watched the child playing gleefully in the snow. The front yard was illuminated by the lamp over the front step. He shivered again, involuntarily. America was too cold. Whether it was the backwoods of West Virginia or a suburban neighborhood of the Northeast, it was much too cold. At least in February. How he longed for the warmth of the Caribbean. But it would not be long now, he thought. Not long at all. And he would have all that money to play with to make paradise even better.
The swarthy man reached for the mug of steaming coffee sitting on the passenger seat beside him. He pressed the container to his lips, enjoying its warmth. The liquid passed over his tongue and down his gullet. It tasted so good, and it seemed to heat his entire body. He could not turn on the car because someone might become suspicious. Someone might notice the exhaust emanating from the pipe in the rear of the auto and come out of his abode to investigate. Then he would have to speed off into the night.
Vargus didn’t care if someone took down the license number. The car was stolen, and the owner recently dead. So there was no reason to worry about a concerned citizen jotting down the six figures of the plate and reporting them to the police. By the time the police ever found the car or its dead owner, he would be long gone. But if someone somehow actually got a look at his face, that was another story. That might require another trip to the neighborhood for a much different purpose.
A pair of car lights appeared in the rearview mirror. Vargus leaned down onto the passenger seat until he was certain the other car had passed, then sat up again. The young boy was still playing in the yard.
He glanced at the lighted liquid crystal display of his watch. Almost eight o’clock. Eight o’clock at night. Pitch-black. And the boy was outside building a snowman. By himself. The parents were not careful with the boy. That was good. Of course they had no reason to be careful with the boy. This was a quiet street in a quiet middle-class neighborhood. Vargus smiled to himself. In a very few days people would begin to be careful again. Young children would not play outside after dark. And they would never again play without parental supervision.
Suddenly the door of the small brick house swung open. The woman stood in the doorway, her arms crossed tightly over the thick sweater, calling to the eight-year-old boy. Even from this distance Vargus could see the breath rushing out of her warm mouth and into the frigid night air, creating a mist before her face that slowly dissipated in the halo of light coming from the exposed bulb above her head. His eyesight was excellent. All his senses were excellent. And he used them to their fullest potential.
The child did not come right away when his mother called, choosing instead to hide behind the snowman. The mother stamped her loafer on the cement step several times; still, the boy did not obey. Finally the woman moved back into the house, closing the front door behind her. The young boy hid behind the snowman for a few more moments, assuming his mother would open the door and call again. But then the exposed bulb over the cement step went out, and within seconds the boy was banging on the door. Moments later it opened, and he disappeared inside.
Vargus smiled again. She thought she was teaching the little boy a lesson. In truth she was sealing his doom.
22
Printed on the single piece of paper in neat boldface type was a list of the real estate investors he and Leeny had visited so far, the specific names of equity and fixed-income money players he had targeted as the best prospects for the fund. Mace picked the piece of paper up off the desk. It was by no means a comprehensive list of his contacts in the real estate industry. But as far as equity investors went, the list represented the richest and most sophisticated ones. These were individuals and institutions that threw lots of cash around and threw it around aggressively, pushing financial leverage to the limit so that their return was as high as possible, so that the properties constantly teetered perilously on the edge of insolvency.
Mace cursed himself quietly. He should not have been so stupid. He should have been less generous with his Rolodex. Leeny had met them all in person now. She had direct access to them. And if she wanted to go around him for some reason, she could.
The buzz of the telephone distracted Mace from his thoughts. He glanced at the phone’s display and saw that the call was coming from the receptionist’s desk. “Yes, Anna.”
“Mr. McLain, you have a visitor out here at reception.”
Mace rubbed his cheek. He wasn’t expecting anyone. “Who is it?”
Anna’s voice dropped to a whisper. “She wouldn’t say.”
Mace hesitated. “Okay, I’ll be right there.” He hung up the phone, leaned back in his chair, and groaned. It was probably a messenger, carrying some kind of legal document, who had been given specific orders to give the package to no one but Mace. People were like that with legal documents sometimes. He rose slowly from the chair and moved to the office door. As he reached the doorway, he nearly ran into Leeny, just turning the corner to come into his office.
“Excuse me, Mace.” She backed away several steps. They had actually touched for a moment.
“That’s all right.” Mace’s voice was not as friendly as usual.
She glanced up at him quickly, noting the tone, and then away again.
Mace crossed his arms over his broad chest. It was eleven o’clock, and it was the first he had seen of her this morning, the first he had seen of her since discovering that at some point during the night she had spent on his couch, she had run through every computer file he owned—and probably everything he had in his desk as well. He said nothing, waiting for her to begin the conversation.
“Everything okay?” Leeny asked innocently.
She wore a short black skirt, a tight maroon blouse, and loftier-than-usual high heels. It was an outfit most women would not ever have considered wearing to work, particularly when their office was on Wall Street, he thought. But Leeny could carry it off somehow.
“Mace, is th
ere anything wrong?” To the eye she appeared as calm and cool as usual. But her voice, usually soft and smooth, betrayed an atypical unsteadiness, something Mace had not heard before.
He shook his head but said nothing.
Leeny fiddled nervously with the small gold ring on her right index finger as she stood before him. It was terrible to hold a human being’s life in one’s hand, she thought, to play God. Suddenly she remembered fantasizing many times as a little girl about being God. About knowing things others didn’t. About making people do what she wanted them to do. About causing pain. Now she realized how terrible being God really would be.
She glanced at Mace again and then away again. There was nothing more he could do for them. He had outlived his utility. And he didn’t suspect a thing. There was nothing to indicate that he had the slightest suspicion of what was really going on or, more important, that he had communicated any suspicion to anyone. Nothing on the computer in his office here at Walker Pryce. Nothing on his computer at the apartment or in his desk at the apartment. He had been a good soldier, and now he would pay for it.
With one visit to Webster’s office she would effectively put an end to his existence. Webster was pushing. He wanted to send the assassin to kill Mace. Because the men in West Virginia were ready to go. Because the man in Washington desperately needed the money. And because Mace had now become a huge liability, someone who might easily figure out what was really going on.
Finally she was able to meet Mace’s gaze. He had to die. She had known that from the start. If he were somehow spared, he might figure it out, the whole thing. Then it all would come crashing down around them. She wouldn’t collect her five million dollars, and she would end up in jail. So what was her problem? She looked deeply into Mace’s steel gray eyes. She had begun to care about him. It was as simple as that. He had covered her with the blanket on the sofa of his apartment and given her the tender kiss on the forehead. It had been so long since someone had shown her that kind of compassion.
The Vulture Fund Page 24
