Russell Andrews - Midas

There were several pages related to the lawsuit New York City had filed against EGenco. The suit was complicated and detailed and Reggie had done her best to simplify things, but there were gaps that Justin wasn’t quite able to bridge. The gist of the suit was that New York had pension fund money-firemen’s and police pension money in addition to that of many other city employees-invested in EGenco. The suit charged that EGenco was violating federal law by doing business with countries that supported state-sponsored terrorism. Justin couldn’t follow every step, but the suit traced over a trail of shell companies that existed only to launder money and circumvent the law. The suit emphasized the fact that post-9/11, the city couldn’t allow its money to be invested in countries and businesses that were responsible or supportive of that attack.

The third major area that Reggie had done her best to condense was the Justice Department’s investigation into EGenco’s business practices, stemming from the financial improprieties that Roger Mallone had explained.

By eight-thirty that night, the living room was even messier, Reggie was chomping on her third piece of pizza from the pie she’d gone out to pick up at the Italian place on Main Street, and Justin had to turn away from his computer screen and say to her, “Okay, enough. I have to stop.”

“What have you put together?” Reggie asked.

He shook his head. “In some ways too much, in some ways not enough.”

“You want to talk it out?”

“I don’t know if I can even make sense of it. I can see the threads, see some of the corruption, I can even see where people are making a shitload of money they shouldn’t be making, but Christ, tying it in to the bombings and the plane crash. . it’s inconceivable.”

“The bombings, Jay? I thought you were just looking at the crash.”

“It’s all tied together, Reggie. I can’t prove it, but I know it.”

“Maybe the McDonald’s thing, I know you think it was all meant to kill the Cooke woman, but come on, Harper’s and La Cucina?”

“I know. I know . It’s crazy. But. .”

“Talk.”

“Okay, look. Bradford Collins is the head of EGenco. The company’s under investigation by the Justice Department for huge, mind-boggling financial misconduct.”

“The misconduct hasn’t been proven yet.”

“A lot of things haven’t been proven yet. But let’s go with it for a minute. Let’s just say it’s justified, that they’re heavily in debt and they tried to hide it, that they screwed around with pension funds. Let’s just say they’re Enron. I heard a good case made for that. Plus, in a separate suit, they’re being sued for illegal dealings with terrorist-supporting countries.”

“Nice company.”

“Yeah, they’re sweethearts. But it’s not hard to see why someone wanted Collins dead.”

“Why?”

“Because he was going to talk.”

“To who?”

“To the Feds. . Wait, hold on a second.” He went back to his computer, called up his file on the case. He didn’t find what he was looking for, went on the Net, back to the New York Times site. He went to a story in their files that he’d looked up before, one that had had the names of the people killed in the Harper’s bombing. He scanned the list and the brief bios that went along with them. “Damn!” he said, when he came to what he was looking for. “He wasn’t just going to talk to Justice. He was going to talk to Elliot Brown.”

“Who’s that?”

“The New York City comptroller. He was killed in the explosion, too. I’ll bet the house he was one of the people at Collins’s table that day.”

“All right, so he was going to talk. Who’d want to stop him? I mean, stop him badly enough to kill him.”

“The Justice Department.”

“Jay, I’m not following. I thought you said he was talking to the Justice Department.”

“Yeah. But he was talking to the lower levels. The investigators. It’s a higher level that wanted him to keep quiet.” She waited for him to say more. Finally, he sighed and said, “He was going to blow the whistle on the attorney general. On Stuller.”

“For what?”

“I don’t know. I just know he’s involved. Stuller and Dandridge both.”

“Jesus, Jay.”

“Yeah.”

She got up, went to the kitchen, came back with two more beers. When she offered him one, Justin shook his head. “How ’bout we split it?” she said, and he nodded. She took a long sip, offered him the bottle. He took a quick hit and passed it back to her.

“I just want to get this straight. You think the vice president and the attorney general of the United States have something to do with the three terrorist attacks this month?”

“Yeah, I do. I don’t know whether they’re involved or they’re covering something up. But they’re connected.”

“Jay-”

“It’s why Hutch Cooke was killed. It’s why his plane was rigged. Because he could link things to Dandridge.”

“You think he knew what was going on?”

“I don’t know. But even if he didn’t, he could’ve figured it out at some point. If I had to guess, I’d say he already did. But either way, he was a loose end. And these guys definitely don’t like to leave anything loose laying around.”

“What was Cooke doing? He didn’t fly Collins or Elliot Brown here, did he?”

“No.”

“So what’s his connection?”

“I think he flew whoever’s responsible for the Harper’s bombing.”

“The guy who killed himself?”

“No. The guy behind the guy who killed himself.”

She took this in, stayed quiet while she mulled it over. “Why here?” is what she asked finally. “Why East Hampton or East End Harbor?”

Justin shook his head. “There has to be a reason. I just can’t connect it. But here’s what I think: that someone from Justice set the meeting up with Collins and Brown and that same person specified the place. Hutch Cooke flew somebody into town and either he made the connection, after the explosion, that he’d flown in the bomber, or whoever he was working for realized that he might figure it out. Once that was in the air, they couldn’t risk having him around anymore.” He stood up, paced back and forth across the living room with quick, hard strides. “I’m close,” he said. “It’s so close, but I can’t put it together.”

“But you will.”

His eyes closed with fatigue, he nodded, and murmured, “Yes. I will.”

When he opened his eyes, Reggie said, “I’ll be right back.”

“What?”

“I’d like to go home and get something. Will you wait here?”

“Where am I gonna go? And what the hell are you going to get?”

“Something that’ll make you feel better.”

“Hard drugs?”

“Better,” she said.

He smiled, plunked himself down on the couch. On her way to the door her hand brushed his arm. It was a friendly gesture, a touch of support, but it also sent a sexual charge up and down his spine. That charge kept him frozen where he was for the few minutes it took her to cross the street to her house and then back to his. She didn’t knock when she returned, just opened the door and stood in the doorframe. She didn’t seem to have anything with her and he looked puzzled.

He could hear the exhaustion in his own voice when he said, “I thought you were bringing something.”

“I did. Two things, actually.”

He waited. She reached into her pocket. Pulled out a toothbrush.

Then she reached into her other pocket. Pulled out a pair of handcuffs.

Reggie cocked her head and shrugged. He remembered the hunger in her eyes that he’d seen the day before. It was there again, even deeper and more rapacious. Without saying another word or even glancing down at him, she walked past him and headed up the stairs.