Andrew Gross - The Dark Tide

Karen nodded to her, sitting next to her on the couch and taking her hand.

Sniffling back tears, Sam went through it all again. Coming out of the gym after practice, stepping into her car, putting on her iPod. The man in the backseat, completely surprising her from behind. Cupping her mouth so she couldn’t scream, his voice so chilling and close to her ear that his words seemed to tingle down her spine.

“It was so scary, Mom.”

Karen squeezed. “I know, baby, I know…”

She told Hauck that she’d never gotten a good look at him. “He told me not to.” She was certain she was about to be raped or killed.

“You did right, honey,” Hauck said.

“He said that the investigation was going to start soon. And that it was going to get very personal. He said something about two hundred and fifty million dollars.” Samantha looked up at Karen. “What the hell did he mean by that, Mom?”

Karen fitfully shook her head. “I don’t know.”

When they’d finished, Karen eased herself away from her daughter. She asked Hauck if he would come outside with her. The awning on the patio wasn’t up yet. Still too cold. In the darkness there were lights flashing out on the sound.

“Do you have any idea what she’s talking about?” he asked.

Karen drew a sharp breath and nodded. “Yes.”

And no…

She took him through the visit she’d received. The two men from Archer and Bey, who had pressured her about all that missing money. “Two hundred and fifty million dollars,” she admitted.

Now this.

“I don’t know what the hell is going on.” She shook her head, eyes glistening. “Charlie’s trustee-he’s a friend-he promises that everything in the partnership was one hundred percent by the book. And I’m sure it was. These people…” Karen looked at Hauck, flustered. “Charlie was a good man. He didn’t handle that kind of money. It’s like they’ve targeted the wrong person, Lieutenant. My husband had a handful of clients. Morgan Stanley, a few well-to-do families he’d known a long time.”

“You understand I have to look into this,” Hauck said.

Karen nodded.

“But I need to tell you that without a physical description from your daughter, it’s going to be very tough. There are cameras at the school entrances. Maybe someone around spotted a car. But it was dark and pretty much deserted at that time. And whoever these people are, they’re clearly professional.”

Karen nodded again. “I know.”

She leaned toward him, suddenly so full of questions she felt light-headed, her knees on the verge of buckling.

The lieutenant placed his hand on her shoulder. She didn’t pull away.

She’d handled Charlie’s death, the long months of uncertainty and loneliness, the breakup of his business. But this was too much. Tears rushed in her eyes-burning. Tears of mounting fear and confusion. The fear that her children had suddenly become involved. The fear of what she did not know. More tears started to flow. She hated this feeling. This doubt that had so abruptly sprung up about her husband. She hated these people who had invaded their lives.

“I’ll make sure you have some protection,” the lieutenant said, squeezing Karen’s shoulder. “I’ll station someone outside the house. We’ll see that someone follows the kids to school for a while.”

She looked at him, sucking in a tense breath. “I have this feeling that my husband might have done something, Lieutenant. In his business. Charlie always took risks, and now one of them has come back to haunt us. But he’s dead. He can’t untangle this for us.” She wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand. “He’s gone, and we’re still here.”

“I’ll need a list of his clients,” Hauck said, his hand still perched upon her shoulder.

“Okay.”

“And I’ll need to talk to Lennick, your husband’s trustee.”

“I understand.” Karen pulled back, taking in a breath, trying to compose herself. Her mascara had run. She dabbed her eyes.

“I’ll find something. I promise you. I’ll do my best to make sure you’re safe.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant.” She leaned against him. “For everything.”

Static from her sweater rippled against his hand as he took it away.

“Listen.” He smiled. “I’m not exactly a Wall Street guy. But somehow I don’t think this is how Morgan Stanley goes about collecting its debts.”

The call came in at eleven-thirty that night. The limo had just dropped Saul Lennick at his Park Avenue apartment, home from the opera. His wife, Mimi, was in the bathroom removing her makeup.

“Can you get that, Saul?”

Lennick had just pulled off his shoes and removed his tie. Calls this late, he knew what they were usually about. He picked up the phone in frustration. Couldn’t it wait for the morning? “Hello.”

“Saul?”

It was Karen Friedman. Her voice was cracking and upset. He knew that something was wrong. “What’s happened, Karen?”

Exasperated, she told him what had happened to Samantha leaving school.

Lennick stood up. Sam was like a grandniece to him. He had been at her bat mitzvah. He had set up accounts for her, and for Alex, at his firm. Every bone in his tired body became rigid.

“Jesus, Karen, is she all right?”

“She’s okay…” Karen sniffed back a sob in frustration. “But…” She told him what the man who had accosted her had said, about wanting their money. The same two hundred and fifty million dollars as before. The part about how she was her father’s little girl.

“What the hell did they mean by that Saul? Was that some kind of threat?”

In his underwear and socks, Lennick sank down on the bed. His mind ran back to Charles. The avalanche he had unleashed.

You stupid son of a bitch. He shook his head and sighed.

“Something’s going on, Saul. You were about to tell me something a couple of weeks back. You said it wasn’t the right time… Well I just put my daughter in my own bed,” Karen said, her voice stiffening. “She was scared within an inch of her life. What do you think, Saul-is it the right time now?”

Archer and Bey turned out to be phony.

Just a name on a business card. A call to an old contact at Interpol and a quick scan over the Internet for companies registered in South Africa determined that. Even the address and telephone number in Johannesburg were bogus.

Someone was trying to extort her, Hauck knew. Someone familiar with her husband’s dealings. Even his trustee, Lennick, whom Hauck had spoken with earlier and who appeared like a stand-up guy, agreed.

“Incoming, Lieutenant!”

The call rang out from the outside squad room, followed by the low, pretend whoosh of a mortar round exploding.

“Incoming” was how they referred to it when Hauck’s ex-wife was on the line.

Hauck paused a second, phone in hand, before picking up. “Hey, Beth, how’s it going?”

“I’m okay, Ty, fine. You?”

“How’s Rick?”

“He’s good. He just got an increase in territory. Now he’s got Pennsylvania and Maryland, too.” Beth’s new husband was a district manager in a mortgage firm.

“That’s real good. Congratulations. Jess mentioned something like that.”

“It’s sort of why I’m calling. We thought we’d take this long-overdue trip. You know how we’ve been promising Jessie we’d take her down to Orlando? The theme-park thing.”

Hauck straightened. “You know I was sort of hoping she and I could do that together, Beth.”

“Yeah, I know how you’ve always been saying that, Ty. But, um…this trip’s for real.”

The dig cut sharply into his ribs. But she was probably right. “So when are you planning on doing this, Beth?”