Джозеф Файндер - Company Man

“Thank you.”

“But we don’t know, do we, what that means? Did Stadler walk around Nicholas Conover’s premises? Sure. No one’s disputing that. Did he crawl around the property on his hands and knees, get dirt under his fingernails? Sure, why not? But does that mean Conover did it?”

“It’s a piece of the puzzle.”

“But is the puzzle one of those easy twenty-piece wooden jigsaws that little kids do? Or is it one of those impossible thousand-piece jobs my wife likes to do? That’s the thing. A hunch and some hydroseed isn’t enough.”

“The body was too clean,” she said. “Most of the trace evidence was removed by someone who knew what he was doing.”

“Maybe.”

“Rinaldi’s an ex-homicide detective.”

“Don’t have to be a cop to know about trace evidence.”

“We caught Conover in a lie,” she went on. “He said he slept through the night, the night Stadler was killed. But at two in the morning he called Rinaldi. That’s in the phone records.”

“They give different stories?”

“Well, when I asked Conover about it, he said maybe he got the day wrong, maybe that was the night his alarm went off and he called Rinaldi to check it out, since Rinaldi’s staff put it in.”

“Well, so maybe he did get the day wrong.”

“The bottom line,” Audrey said, exasperated, “is that they knew Stadler was stalking Conover. He butchered the family dog. Then he turns up dead. It just can’t be a coincidence.”

“You sound certain of it.”

“It’s my instinct.”

“Your instinct, Aud? — don’t take this the wrong way — but your instinct isn’t exactly developed yet.”

She nodded again, hoping her irritation didn’t show in her face.

“The bullet fragments,” he said. “At Conover’s house. What was that all about?”

She hesitated. “We didn’t find any bullet fragments.”

“That’s not what you told Conover. You said you found a piece of metal. You said it was a fragment from a projectile.” Rinaldi must have told him this. How else could he know?

“I didn’t say that.”

“No, but you let him think that, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” she confessed.

“That was a little show you put on for Conover, wasn’t it?” he said sadly. “That was all a bluff, designed to get Conover to break down and admit it. Am I right?”

She nodded, hotly embarrassed. “I hardly think I’m the first homicide detective to try a bluff.”

“No, you’re not. Far from it. I’ve done my share, believe me. But we’re dealing with the CEO of the Stratton Corporation. That means we’re under the klieg lights here. Everything you do, everything we do, is going to be scrutinized.”

“I understand. But you know, if my little bluff pushes him closer to an admission, it’ll be worth it.”

Noyce sighed. “Audrey. Okay, so the crack on Stadler’s body was really lemon drops. Whether the guy got swindled or the thing was a setup, we just don’t know. But you got a schizo guy wandering around the dog pound in the middle of the night, it’s not so surprising he gets shot, right?”

“None of the informants knew anything about it.”

“Stuff goes on down there, our informants only know one little slice of it.”

“But boss—”

“I don’t want to be a backseat driver on this one, but before you go off trying to sweat the CEO and the security director of a major corporation for conspiracy to murder some crazy guy — two men who have an awful lot to lose — you want to make sure you’re not being seduced by a great story. I mean, your theory is sure a heck of a lot sexier than some drug killing. But this case mustn’t be about entertainment value. It’s got to be about hardnosed police work. Right?”

“Right.”

“For your own sake. And ours.”

“I understand.”

“I can’t help you if you don’t keep me fully informed, okay? From now on, I want you to keep me in the loop. Help me help you. I don’t want you getting burned on this.”

Eddie lived in a small condominium complex called Pebble Creek. It had been built about half a dozen years ago, and consisted of four five-story buildings — stained wood, red brick, big windows — set on a big square of grass and gravel. Each of the condos had its own white-trellised balcony, where residents had put out things like folding chairs and trees in pots. It was a look Nick had heard described as neo-Prairie. No creek anywhere, but plenty of pebbles around the parking lot. There were homey-looking office parks that looked like this — the Conovers’ pediatric dentist was located in one — and some people might have found Pebble Creek a little officey-looking for a home. Eddie wouldn’t have been one of them.

“Be it ever so humble,” Eddie said as he let Nick in. He was wearing black jeans and a gray knit shirt that was furred from one too many tumbles in the dryer. “Welcome to the Edward J. Rinaldi fuck pad.”

Nick had never visited Eddie at his home before, but he wasn’t surprised at what he saw. A lot of glass, a lot of chrome. Blue-gray carpeting. Black lacquered furniture and booze cabinet, big mirrors on the wall behind it. The biggest things in the room were two big flat Magnapan speakers, in silver, standing at either side of a black sofa like shoji screens. Everything more or less matched. In the bedroom, Eddie showed off an immense waterbed that he said got so much use he’d had to replace the liner three times already.

“So what do you know?” Eddie said, walking Nick into the area of his living room he no doubt called his “entertainment center,” though maybe he had a more colorful name for it.

“Well,” Nick said, “I know that ‘J’ was the last letter added to the alphabet.”

“No shit? How did they get by without it? Jacking off. Jheri Curl. Jism. Jesus. Jock straps. You got all the basics of civilization right there.” Eddie opened the drinks cabinet, twisted open a bottle of Scotch. “Not to mention J & B. And Jameson’s. What’ll you have?”

“I’m okay,” Nick said.

“Yeah,” Eddie said, settling into a chair covered in fake silver-gray suede, and putting his feet on the glass coffee table, next to a couple of books titled Beyer on Speed and Play Poker Like the Pros . “I think maybe you are.”

“What makes you say that?” Nick sat on the adjoining sofa, which was covered in the same fake suede.

“’Cause, Nicky, I got something for you. Figured you wouldn’t mind coming over to my place to look at a couple of e-mails our boy Scotty deleted a couple of weeks ago. I guess he figures if you delete something it’s gone, poof. Doesn’t realize all e-mail’s archived on the server. So who’s Martin Lai?”

“Martin Lai. He’s our manager for Asia Pacific, out of Hong Kong. In charge of accounting. Truly the deadliest, most stultifyingly dull guy you’re ever going to meet. Human ether.”

“Well, check it out.” He handed Nick a couple of pages.

To:SMcNally@Strattoninc.com

From:MLai@Strattoninc.com

Scott,

Can you please confirm for me that the USD $10 million that was wired out of Stratton Asia Ventures LLC this morning to a numbered account, no attached name, was done at your behest? The SWIFT code indicates that the funds went to the Seng Fung Bank-Macau. This entirely depletes the fund’s assets. Please reply soonest.

Thank you,

Martin Lai

Managing Director, Accounting

Stratton Inc., Hong Kong.

And then, Scott’s immediate reply:

To:MLai@Strattoninc.com

From:SMcNally@Strattoninc.com

This is fine — just part of the usual process of repatriation of funds in order to avoid tax payments. Thanks for keeping an eye out, but all is OK.