James Grippando - Money to Burn

He was making too much sense to argue.

Kevin said, “Did Mallory worry about another woman?”

“No,” I said, then caught myself. “At least not a living one.”

Kevin did a double take.

“No, I don’t mean that,” I said, then I paused. “She always harbored jealousy over Ivy.”

“Did you two talk about that?”

“Not very often. At least not until recently.”

“How did it come up?”

I told him about the passwords being tied to Ivy’s birthday and how that had set Mallory off. “She said I haven’t given up hope that Ivy’s alive,” I added.

There was silence. This was dangerous territory between my brother and me. As Kevin knew, even after the shark had been dissected, I continued to have doubts about what really had happened to Ivy. Kevin had stepped in and pushed the assumed role of “big brother” way too far, doing whatever was necessary to deliver the tough-love message: “Ivy is dead, and you need to move on.” I could have handled that, but what drove the wedge between us came later, after the police had asked me to take the lie detector test. “I’m talking to you as a lawyer now,” he’d told me. “If something happened-if you did something you regret-you can tell me. You need to tell me.”

It wasn’t so much what he’d said as the way he’d said it. It was clear to me that-at least at that moment-my brother was more than entertaining the thought that I had killed Ivy. And that was okay in his mind because he was being a lawyer. He had absolutely no clue how that changed his being my brother.

He still thought I was jealous of his family trip to Paris twenty years ago.

“By the way,” I said, reminded of something from yesterday. “The FBI asked if I would take a polygraph exam about the identity theft.”

“I’ll tell them to forget it,” he said. “If you pass, the government will say it’s not reliable; if you fail, you’re their prime suspect.”

It was another awkward moment. Kevin had made his skepticism about polygraphs clear four years ago, when I’d passed the one during the Ivy investigation.

Kevin rose and moved to the leather chair behind his desk, suddenly more comfortable with a big antique oak barrier between us.

“Let’s shift gears,” he said. “Kyle McVee.”

“What about him?”

He flipped back a few pages in his notes. “You said that when McVee dropped you off this morning, his parting words to you were ‘Nothing personal.’”

“Twice he told me that.”

“Do you believe him?”

I thought about it. “I don’t think Kyle has had a ‘personal’ feeling toward anyone since his son died.”

“What’s the story there?”

“Marcus McVee was the heir apparent at Ploutus, about my age. Not a bad guy, actually. Completely unlike Kyle’s nephew-Jason Wald-who now seems to be next in line.”

“What happened to Marcus?”

I paused for no apparent reason, except that it was a subject that seemed to give everyone pause. “He killed himself.”

“Over what?”

“I don’t know. Is it ever just one thing?”

Kevin stroked his chin, thinking. We’d been at this for almost an hour, and I had the feeling that my brother was about to get all lawyerly on me.

“Here’s what I’m going to do,” he said. “First, I’ll call the FBI to see what’s going on with the identity-theft investigation, and also to find out if you’re a target for illegal trading of Saxton Silver stock. Second, I’ll follow up with this detective to see if you’re being linked in any way to Chuck Bell’s shooting. And then I’m going to call Mallory’s lawyer and see if we can avoid the divorce-court version of mutually assured destruction.”

“That’s one hell of a list of problems,” I said. “Hard to believe that we’re actually talking about me.”

“I hear that a lot from people sitting in that very same chair.”

I was suddenly thinking about Anoop Gupta from New Delhi and the status of my credit cards. “This is going to eat up a lot of your time,” I said. “How much do you charge?”

“I don’t want your money.”

“I insist.”

“I refuse.”

“But I want to pay you.”

“All right,” he said, “we’ll barter. I’ll be your lawyer, and you come for dinner with Janice and me at our place. You can even bring an expensive bottle of wine if you want.”

My little brother had boxed me in. Papa would have been ecstatic.

“Okay,” I said, managing a bit of a smile. “It’s a deal.”

I hurried out of my brother’s office in plenty of time to be long gone when the next e-mail arrived from JBU-the mysterious someone who supposedly wanted to help me.

That was the one thing I hadn’t told Kevin about. I didn’t need him thinking I was crazy all over again. I figured I’d deal with that if and when the follow up e-mail came. And it came right on schedule, at exactly ten-thirty A.M.

Orene 52, the subject line read.

I was emerging from the subway station on Seventh Avenue, about half a block away from Saxton Silvers’ shiny glass office tower, closer than any cab could have gotten me to the building. Double-parked media vans and news trucks blocked several lanes of traffic on the street. The sidewalk outside the building’s main entrance was jammed with reporters and camera crews jockeying for the perfect TV shot-right in front of the distinctive gold letters on the black granite wall that spelled SAXTON SILVERS. They pounced on anyone who came through the revolving doors, hoping for thirty seconds of breaking news. Through the windows on the third floor, I saw men and women dressed in business suits peering down on the frenzy. That was the Saxton Silvers foreign-exchange trading floor, normally a place of intense activity where traders were glued to their computer terminals, not standing at the window and pressing their worried faces to the glass.

Hopefully, none of them had it in mind to find a higher floor and jump.

Word was out that Kyle McVee had pulled the plug on Ploutus Investments’ $2.5 billion prime brokerage account. According to the latest FNN online update, two more major hedge funds were about to follow suit. The media smelled blood, and I sensed that at least a few drops were my own. It made me want to stay clear of anyone with a microphone. I stepped onto the sidewalk, found a lamppost to hide behind, and opened the latest e-mail message-the one that was supposed to tell me when and where to meet.

Today at 4 p.m. Table for two in front of the statue of Prometheus. That was the entire message. Again it was signed “JBU.”

“Michael?”

I turned at the sound of the distinctive voice and saw Papa standing next to a hot-dog cart. He was wearing a bright blue University of Florida Gators tracksuit, running shoes, and a pair of wraparound Oakley sunglasses so new that the tag was still hanging from the frame. All he needed was a garbage bag filled with knock-off Gucci purses and a selection of Rolex watches up to his elbow and he would have looked just like the sidewalk entrepreneur who’d sold him the glasses.

“What are you doing here?” I didn’t mean to sound accusatory. I was just surprised to see him.

“I was trying to get up to see you, but I couldn’t get near the building.”

“Is something wrong?”

He came closer and lowered his voice. On the busy streets of New York, Papa really sounded like a mobster when he whispered. “The FBI came to see me.”

“FBI? Why?”

“At first I thought it was about tracking down your lost money, so I was happy to talk to them. But then they started asking me all kinds of questions about the Bahamas, about Ivy, about-”

“About Ivy?”

“Well, not directly. It was more about that sailing trip you were on, and that guy who was your captain.”