Joseph Finder - Vanished

“Hedge funds are in trouble these days. Besides, everyone has a price.”

I nodded. Smiled. Tell me about it, bro. “And sometimes the family has to pay it.”

“Believe me, Lauren and Gabe aren’t going to suffer. They’re not exactly going to be paupers.”

“Her payoff, right? Her divorce settlement? For all she did to help you?”

“No, bro. Because I still love her.”

“Heartwarming,” I said. “No one shows it the way you do. At least Dad didn’t arrange a hit on Mom before he disappeared.”

“Oh, come on, Nick. You really think I’d hire someone to bash Lauren’s head in? What kind of guy do you think I am?”

“I don’t think you want me to answer that.”

“My guy was just supposed to knock her out. Nothing more than that.”

“She almost died, you know. And then, thanks to you, Koblenz sent one of his guys to kill her. Who came very close to succeeding.”

Roger looked ashamed suddenly. He hung his head. “She’s okay now. Thank God.”

“Maybe. But not Gabe. After what you’ve put him through in the last couple of weeks. That leaves scars. Not that you care.”

“Of course I care. I still love the kid. Lauren, too.”

“What a guy.”

“I did what I had to. To protect them.”

“No,” I said. “You did what you did to try to pull off the greatest heist in history. Even if it meant a little collateral damage. Like Marjorie Ogonowski, who seemed to be the only friend you had at Gifford. You know about her by now, right?”

I could tell from his expression that he knew about her murder. And me, I thought. I almost became his collateral damage, too . But I’d never give him the satisfaction of hearing me say it out loud. “Well, I guess you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, huh?”

“I had no choice.”

“So you staged the greatest vanishing act of all time,” I said. “With the help of a couple of guys you lured away from Paladin. While you were in the process of taking their company over. Well played.”

“Actually, Nick, you disappointed me, I have to say. I was convinced you’d identify my ‘abductor’ ”-he made air quotes with two fingers on each hand-“as a Paladin employee.”

“With a little more time we would have. The license plate was good enough to finger Paladin. Which was the point, wasn’t it?” Obviously, they’d switched plates with a Paladin vehicle. And meant for me, or someone, to locate that gas-station surveillance camera and make the connection. “Though I’m surprised you trusted any of those Paladin guys.”

“They’re all for sale. Look who they work for. Whoever writes their paychecks buys their loyalty.”

“So you had someone steal a body from a hospital morgue to set up your final trick,” I said. “No matter how it might traumatize your son.”

A pained expression wracked his face. “That was unfortunate, but necessary.”

“All to convince Gifford and Paladin that you were dead? Just to buy yourself a little time while you arranged to steal the company?”

“Not just that. Also to protect Lauren and Gabe.”

“Whose lives you endangered in the first place,” I pointed out.

But he ignored that. “After Paladin started putting pressure on Lauren, I had no choice. She started panicking. I almost lost her. I had to keep her from giving the whole thing up. I mean, look, when it comes right down to it, she’s a mother first and foremost.”

“Yeah,” I said dryly. “What’s wrong with her?”

“Nick,” he said, “I’m sure you know the story about the family that’s hiding from the Nazis, right? They’re in the basement, or hiding under the floorboard-I forget, a mother and father and a couple of kids and a tiny infant. And the Nazi soldiers are searching the house-”

“Yep,” I said impatiently. “And the baby starts to cry so the mother puts her hand over his mouth to stop his cries. Smothers her own child. Feels it go limp.”

He nodded. “She kills her own baby to protect the rest of the family. A hard thing. A haunting thing. But what choice did she have? The life of a tiny child weighed against the life of an entire family?”

“You have a point?”

“Whatever Gabe and Lauren had to endure, it was for their own protection.”

“Protection? No. This was about bread crumbs.”

“Bread crumbs?”

“Easter eggs, maybe. Laying down a false trail for me.”

“Well, not for you. For the cops or the FBI. I certainly never wanted Lauren to call you in. That was Gabe’s doing.”

“Sorry to screw up your plans.”

He shrugged. “But you didn’t. Not at all. If it hadn’t been you, it would have been someone else. See, diversion is a major part of every magic act. Haven’t you learned that yet?”

I thought of the story that Victor and Lauren both told about Roger’s attempt to extort money from Paladin-which I doubted was true. He was after far more than ten million dollars. And everything buried just deep enough that I’d have to dig. Which made it all plausible. And then I thought of that “missing” billion dollars in cash, which Stoddard put me onto, which led me to Carl Koblenz, and I knew that Roger had somehow set that up as well. All in the interests of creating a false trail that pointed toward Paladin. But why? To neutralize them? To keep the heat on them? That part I hadn’t figured out yet.

“So you hired the cargo guy yourself,” I said. “To steal the container. Which you knew Paladin was shipping.”

He tipped his head to one side modestly. “And gave him Koblenz’s cell phone number to use only in case of an emergency.” He chuckled. “I can only imagine what Koblenz would have said if he’d gotten a call from the guy.”

“What if Stoddard hadn’t put me on the job?” I said.

“Why would he assign anyone else? Leland Gifford specifically requested you.” He gave me a wink, and I immediately understood that it was actually Lauren who’d put in the request, in her boss’s name. “I knew I could count on my little brother to protect me like you always did. That’s the thing about families. Even when we grow up, we play the same roles.”

“And yours was always as Dad’s Mini-Me. Has he been pulling the strings the whole time from his prison cell? The greatest swindle of his career? He wanted his empire back, didn’t he? Probably his idea, too, this whole scam.”

“Give me a little more credit than that, Nick.”

“I do. You always saw Dad for what he was.”

“You can’t be disillusioned if you never had any illusions to begin with.”

“And you couldn’t have done this without him.”

“Probably not,” Roger admitted. “I know a lot about offshore finance. But he really knows all the ins and outs. His firm was structured just like Gifford Industries, you know. Both family firms, both privately held by offshore entities. For tax reasons. Liability reasons.”

“I see,” I said. “So you convinced Leland Gifford to restructure his company after he acquired Paladin, right?”

“You been going to night school, Nick? You got it. I told Gifford he had to create another layer of offshore insulation, in order to shield himself from liability. He knew about all the kickbacks Paladin gave the Pentagon. He was smart enough to see that, with a new president in the White House, the worm was turning. He knew he might have to take the fall. He could be facing Congressional hearings, maybe even prison time, if he wasn’t protected. So he did what I urged him to do. He temporarily transferred beneficial ownership.”

“‘Beneficial ownership,’” I said. “In other words, the title to the company. To all of Gifford Industries, which included its new subsidiary, Paladin. Am I right? Since Gifford’s privately held?”