Erica Orloff - The Golden Girl

“I hear Butt Fuck can be pretty cold.”

“Exactly.”

“So…” Maddie said, “who is that guy in there?”

“We don’t know yet. The driver’s license on him is a fake.”

“Big surprise.”

“Yeah. And you’re sure he spoke Russian.”

“Absolutely.”

“Yeah…the multiple languages. You’re a real dummy, I hear.” He grinned at her.

“Mm-hmm. Stupid.” Away from the training facilities and out in the field, he was downright flirtatious, Maddie thought.

“All right, well, we’ll be running his prints, everything. And we’ll see what we can come up with. In the meantime, go home. And stay home, will ya? Don’t ever do anything like this again.”

Thinking of witnessing a man get shot in the head, Maddie didn’t need convincing. “I won’t. But how am I supposed to get home?” She pointed at the Aston Martin.

“Oh, yeah…all right, then, let me talk to some of my guys. I’ll drive you.”

Troy went and conversed with three agents, then he motioned to her and pointed at a black Acura. “My ride,” he said.

“Nice.”

“It’s no Aston Martin, rich girl.” He smiled at her again.

On the way back to Manhattan, Maddie felt she had to make a crucial decision. Tell Troy about her father and the files…or keep her mouth shut. He had given her that speech about teamwork, but she had never relied on anyone before in her life. When she went up against Ryan Greene, for instance, or against steely-eyed negotiators, she was the one at the head of the boardroom table. She called the shots.

But she also knew that, in some ways, this assignment was like Hansel and Gretel. Each clue was like a single bread crumb dropped in a dark and eerie forest from which she wasn’t sure she’d escape. If she left something out with Troy, maybe evil would overtake them.

“Can I tell you something?”

“Sure,” Troy said, hands on the wheel.

“Can I tell you it as my partner? I mean, can we just sort of keep this between us until I figure it out?”

“What? Figure what out?”

So she told him about Claire’s office, the missing files, and how, exactly, she had come to be in the warehouse. She also told him about her father apparently being after the same files himself, and that was why she’d gone to the warehouse alone.

When she was done, she looked over at Troy’s profile as they made their way across the George Washington Bridge. He was frowning.

“I wish I knew what Claire had found, Maddie. But it’s got something to do with that warehouse, that dead guy, your father, Pruitt & Pruitt, and her murder. I know you believe your father couldn’t have had anything to do with her death, but I’ve been doing this longer than you have, and the sad truth is that people you would never imagine committing a crime will do so when desperate enough.”

“But…I don’t know. He’s brash. He’s abrasive sometimes. But he’s all about the deal. The bloodletting in the boardroom. The killer deal. Not killing real flesh-and-blood people, let alone someone he supposedly loved.”

“There…that.”

“What?”

“Supposedly. You added that. Do you know, in your gut, that he really loved her?”

Maddie stared out the window at the lights of Manhattan in the distance as they crossed the bridge. “Honestly? Yeah. I think he did. I was so angry at first, I think I forgot that in the end, it was about how they felt about each other. Even if it hurt me in so many ways.”

“Pretty mature of you.”

“Yeah, well, I was born mature. My mother insisted on mature.”

“There’s not a whole lot in your file about dear old mom.”

“She’s complicated. She and I are complicated.”

“Eh…me and my father are, too. Former cop. Really hard-core tough guy. His way of showing love was a swift kick to the ass.”

“In my case, Mom’s an actress. Pretty much retired now. Was considered a famous beauty. When she hit thirty-five, she was already freaking out about aging. By forty, she’d had a lift and her eyes done. And when she and my father got divorced, she was…I have to say, like a rabid she-wolf.”

“Nice visual there.”

Maddie nodded. “You don’t know the half of it. I mean, she was out for every penny she could get her hands on, in ways that were so petty. Like, she was getting a many-million-dollar settlement, and he was supposed to pay child support—including everything related to my schooling. If she bought me a box of pens, she would give him the receipt. She had a bankbook with eight zeros in it, and would charge the man for my pens.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I. You know, I was so ashamed of her—and him. They were so vicious in the divorce. Then, as a single mom, she was worse. She was just husband hunting and expected me to pretty much be all right with a nanny raising me. Dad was building his empire. So, yes, maturity was required.”

“You could have ended up one of those spoiled rich girls.”

“I’m spoiled.” Maddie smiled. “I like the perks that come with never having to look at a price tag. I like my cars, my apartment, my lifestyle. But I’m not a spoiled brat. There’s a difference. I work for what I have, too. Hard.”

“I admire that. You don’t have to. Just like you didn’t have to accept this assignment.”

“I owe it to my father. And to Claire.”

“Let’s hope we can get the bastard who killed her.” Troy said softly.

Maddie nodded, thinking silently. And let’s hope that’s not my dad.

Chapter 8

Troy Carter, management trainee, started at Pruitt & Pruitt on Wednesday. The management training program brought in the brightest candidates and trained them for nearly a year, which they worked side by side with a mentor in each major department. Maddie called human resources and demanded that Troy spend his first four weeks of training in the real-estate division. She said she needed the extra manpower, and pretended to show Troy the finer points of contract negotiation. However, they spent that first week looking in every conceivable spot for information on Waterside Towers. They pored over files and looked online at thousands of Word documents and Excel spreadsheets.

By that Friday, Troy came into her office.

“I have those contracts to review, Ms. Pruitt.”

“Excellent. Shut the door, Troy.”

He did, and for all intents and purposes, they appeared to be two colleagues poring over contracts. With the door shut, he delivered the news. “That dead guy? He’s with the Russian mob, who appear to have their fingers in the waterfront deal.”

“Why would we get involved with the mob—even unwittingly? We’re not desperate for that land. If something looked fishy, we’d walk. I mean, it is harder and harder to put together these big deals, but I don’t see my father, Claire, or anyone in this company being dumb enough to climb into bed with anyone that shady.”

“The mob doesn’t put ‘Owned and operated by the Russian mob’ on their deeds, Madison. It’s all shell companies, so many times removed that tracing them is almost impossible. So maybe those missing files were Claire’s proof. The bottom line is we don’t know, and until we find them…”

“Well, Claire’s paralegal says she has no idea where the files are. I’ll have to try Katherine Gould.”

“Who’s that?”

“She’s my uncle Bing’s secretary. She used to work for my dad. Bottom line is she is one of the most knowledgeable people in Pruitt & Pruitt. She’s helped them build this place—and has a near-photographic memory of every person and file she comes in contact with.”

“I love people like that. We have a woman who works in the bureau—Lila. She can remember details on a case from four years ago she only had peripheral contact with.”