David Duffy - Last to Fold

“You want to count it?”

He shook his head.

“Do I need a receipt?”

Another shake.

“Who should I talk to about my fee, you or Mulholland?”

He held up the papers he was reading. Bloodshot eyes, exhaustion written all over his face.

“Bankruptcy petition, Turbo. Mulholland’s busted.”

“Come on, Bernie, this is America. People like Mulholland don’t go broke.”

“Remember how you told me he was buying FTB? You didn’t know the half of it. He was buying on margin—as the stock fell. Best we can figure, he paid north of nine hundred million for shares now worth three.” He looked at his computer screen. “Less. Market opened down again.”

“Surely he’s got other assets.”

“Yeah, but looks like he’s pledged those, too. We’re trying to get a full picture. It’s a mess.”

“I’m sorry,”

He took off his glasses and wiped them on his tie. “He’s not such a bad guy when you get to know him. Rory and I… We met at college, Yale, two scholarship kids in a pool of privilege. He was a poor mick from the wrong Boston ’burbs, me a Jew from Brooklyn. We formed a bond of sorts, us against the rest. Went our separate ways afterward but stayed in touch—holiday cards, reunions, that sort of thing. When I started here, he called me up, said he needed a lawyer he could trust. FTB was already a pretty big bank then, and he sealed the deal here for me. I owe him. He’s human like the rest of us, he’s got his flaws, but…”

“I won’t argue with you, not today.”

“Don’t worry about your fee. We’ll get it, one way or another.”

“I’m not worried,” I said, mainly to be polite. “How’s the girl?”

He shook his head. “Touch and go. Docs say she was on Rohypnol. Borderline overdose. Still in the ICU.”

“The date rape drug?”

“Yeah, but some kids take it recreationally. Roofie, they call it. Amnesiac—she probably won’t remember a thing.” He shook his head again. “She’s been through rehab a couple times already. Didn’t take. This stuff with Rory won’t help.”

“Maybe. Everybody needs a wake-up call. Something that makes you realize it’s not all about you—unless you want to piss your life away. In which case, that is all it’s about.”

“Once more, Turbo, you’ve found just the right way to cheer me up.”

“I met your former partner this morning.”

“The piranha?”

“She hauled me in for a talk. Kind of intimated you sold me out.”

“No way. You must be getting rusty. She knew who you were, where you’d been, who you’d been with. All she asked for was a character reference, which I’m guessing is why you’re not in jail. How’d you make out?”

“All right, under the circumstances. She tried to push me over, I pushed back. No blood spilled.”

“Sounds like Victoria. She likes to intimidate first thing out of the box. Thinks she needs even footing with the boys. I’ve always thought she’d do better using her feminine assets, but who am I to argue? She’s done more than all right her way.”

“How well do you know her?”

“Like I said, she came here about eight years ago, with that Atlanta firm. She’s got brains to match her looks, and she’s tenacious as hell. Every guy in the office hit on her with the same result. No soap. Used to be lots of rumors—lesbian, S&M, frigid, you name it. If her time sheets were any indication, not much social life of any kind. She was at the top of billable hours every year she was here.

“We were all surprised by the U.S. attorney appointment, but she networks a lot, she’s active in the Bar Association, she’s got a great rep in white-collar crime. After all the Wall Street scandals, that’s probably what the Justice Department thought they needed. She may be a little out of her depth—organized crime, drugs, and terrorism haven’t been her thing—but I bet she figures it out.”

“She’s trying. Not sure she’s there yet.”

“Only been a couple of months.”

“Okay. I’ll get out of your hair.”

Bernie went around his desk and closed the door. “How bad was it, when you found Eva last night?”

“Bad as could be. You really want specifics?”

He shook his head. “Why’d you cover? Why not call the cops?”

“Multiple reasons. Eva’d be in jail now, looking at lots worse than a possible drug rap. There was a dead guy in that loft who’s tied up with the Russian mob. He ran the kidnap scheme, I’m pretty sure, but no question Eva was in on it. She was walking around the streets of SoHo yesterday afternoon.”

“So?”

“This whole thing’s screwy, has been since the beginning. Like your former partner pointed out an hour ago, Tuesday, I meet Mulholland, who thinks his daughter’s been kidnapped. Then he gets arrested. He’s worried about his wife, but he doesn’t know who she really is. I go looking for the supposed kidnapper—Rad Rislyakov, a.k.a. Ratko Risly, big-time identity thief, screwing around with a small-time shakedown. Next thing I know, Lachko Barsukov—that’s right, that Lachko Barsukov—whom I haven’t seen in twenty-plus years, tells me to stay away from Ratko and applies some heavy pressure. But he doesn’t know about his ex-wife, now married to Mulholland, or his daughter, who’s screwing around with Rislyakov. Then I find Eva in Ratko’s hideaway, blotto, along with a corpse that’s probably Ratko. I also find Lachko’s father—right again, Iakov Barsukov—who has no reason to be there, except he says it’s Cheka business. I also find a computer that may tell me what Lachko is worried about and Victoria is looking for. Haven’t had a chance to check yet. So maybe I’m in a position to solve the mystery, help Eva, make a deal with Lachko, and possibly help Victoria, although I don’t know at the time I want to do that—but not if I call the cops. Make sense now?”

Bernie shook his head and opened the door. “About as much sense as a Russian novel. Sorry I asked.”

“Life’s not as simple as crossing a field.”

“One of your proverbs?”

“One of the more cheerful ones.”

Foos was chewing another bacon-egg-cheese-grease-on-a-roll when I got back to the office.

“I’m guessing Pig Pen’s jealous.”

“He offered to trade his bagel and got all out of sorts when I declined. You could at least get him cream cheese.”

“I’m trying to prolong his life, although I’m not sure why.”

“Pig Pen said something about a drive-by.”

“Pig Pen’s a bird brain. I said hard drive.”

“You may have grabbed more than you bargained for when you took that computer.”

“Lachko and his father are keen to get their hands on it—that tells me something.”

“The something is what it’s running. I left it asleep last night, but online in case someone wanted to e-mail the late Mr. Risly. This morning, it woke itself up at six, activated e-mail, and received a bunch of messages. Three hundred twelve to be exact. Came in from all over, including overseas. Couple of apps went to work, downloaded the data in the e-mails, sorted them, sent out a bunch of new messages. Those went through zombies, so I can’t tell where they ended up.”

“All automatically?”

“Yep.”

“What’s in the e-mails?”

“You’ll see. Lists of figures. Code, most likely.”

“Lists? You mean like spreadsheets?”

“Yeah, but these aren’t calculations, just lists.”

“Hold on.”

I retrieved both BlackBerrys from the safe. Long list of new messages on Ratko’s. Shorter one on Marko’s. None of the senders meant anything to me, but I showed them to Foos.

“This one’s getting copied on all the e-mails. The other’s only receiving a few.”