Erica Orloff - The Golden Girl

“Well, let’s say Claire was on the up-and-up. She was a whistle-blower who wanted to figure out what was going on. And it would have killed her inside—if she really did love my father—to think he’d approved the false social-security number, the bogus companies, and so on. But bottom line, she would have come forward, because she was an attorney and she was moral, and that was just Claire. But someone killed her before she could meet with the FBI. Her books say Bing was behind the bogus companies, the mastermind. So who would want her dead? Bing. And if my father was setting her up, it’s not like she would have these fictitious books out of thin air—thus, if she already had papers and ledgers proving it was Bing, then my father could let her blow the whistle, and he gets the girl, and his brother out of the way, and his company’s illegal millions keep rolling.”

“So the fact that the papers she had pointed to Bing leads you to believe they’re the legit fakes—and Bing wanted her out of the way.”

“Right. And if I hadn’t gotten this other set of fakes from Katherine, I would have let it go from there. But since she doesn’t know what I have from Claire, I think Katherine wants to mislead me, intentionally, and send me gunning for my own father who, on the face of things, I am angry with for having an affair with my best friend. Unbeknownst to her, he and I reconciled at a dinner this week.”

Troy opened one of the library books. There was a picture of Victor’s wife and daughter leaving the courthouse.

“So what did you find out about Katherine?”

“Well, according to the writer of the book, her mother married another Russian and moved to a Russian enclave in working-class Brooklyn. This became a key area for the infiltration of the Russian mob after the fall of Communism and glasnost.”

“What do your personnel records indicate?”

“Her background is impeccable. She has a great education, and she clearly has elevated herself above where she came from. I see her in the office. She dresses beautifully, carries herself like an aristocrat.”

One of the agents stood and went to the small refrigerator and got a bottled water. “So how do you know it’s not a coincidence? Gould isn’t all that unusual a name.”

“I thought about that, too. So I went digging further. It’s her mother, all right, who was married to Victor. Then I did some discreet asking around on the office grapevine. Turns out, I never knew, but when she first joined the company years before, she worked for my father.”

“Your father? How come you didn’t know that? You work there, too.”

“Yes. But this was long before I was working at the company, around the time of my parents’ divorce. I was eleven or twelve. Office scuttlebutt has it that Katherine and my father had an affair. My mother found out about it…the affair was one of a thousand indiscretions on my father’s part. So it wasn’t like anyone put much stock or credence into it. It was never common knowledge. But the timing of the whole affair was unfortunate. Even if it was just rumor, my father didn’t need to give my mother’s lawyers ammunition. Right around that time, Katherine suddenly goes to work for Bing.”

“So who’s idea was the whole scheme to set up the offshore accounts, to have William on the books, the whole nine yards?” Troy asked.

“Well, I think Katherine carried the torch for my father for years. Call it woman’s intuition. If she and Bing began an affair, I think she introduced him to the Russian connection…and I’m not sure why he took the bait, but he bit all right.”

“So how do we catch the bastard? And her?” Troy asked.

“He thinks I’m dead. What if I show up to a private meeting with him? Confront him. Shock him with the fact that I’m not dead. I wear a wire. I get him to fess up. You cowboys sweep in, you get the bad guys, I get my old life back. We’re all happy. Case closed.”

“I don’t know if I like that,” Troy said. “Too many variables. Bing is volatile. Gould has connections to the mob. I don’t like it. I really don’t. Preliminary look at the limo points to C4. Fucking C4 explosives. These people don’t play around, Madison.”

“And neither do I. Treat me like an agent, Troy. Not a friend. I don’t think you’d hesitate to send one of your female FBI agents into harm’s way. And I am not staying in this sorry motel for the rest of my life. I already miss my Egyptian-cotton sheets.”

Troy finally cracked a smile.

“Great…This is what I get for working with heiresses.”

Chapter 21

The night before Madison was due to confront Bing, she couldn’t sleep.

In the first place, she was emotionally exhausted by the relentless coverage of her death. And she was tormented by guilt at seeing her father—and Ashley, and even her mother, who normally could drive her insane just by being on the same continent—all torn to pieces by the funeral. The FBI told her that they couldn’t risk placing the people she loved in jeopardy by revealing she was alive. Their grief had to look real—the better for the confrontation with Bing. They even provided her father and mother with ashes, which were buried in the family plot in Rye, New York. Bing served as a pallbearer, which infuriated Madison. She had never been particularly close to him. After all, the Pruitts were known for their stoicism. It wasn’t like she’d grown up with warm, fuzzy memories of him.

Then there was lower-key, but still in the papers, coverage of Charlie’s funeral, attended by old pals from Vietnam, as well as her father and other people from Pruitt & Pruitt who had gotten to know Charlie over the years.

Madison tossed and turned restlessly. She missed John. She missed talking to him. She missed sleeping next to him. She wanted to go back to the life she was trying to create.

Finally, she gave up and went out to the kitchenette where Troy was already drinking coffee.

“What’s your excuse?” she asked.

“Hmm?” he mumbled sleepily. “My excuse for what?”

“For not sleeping. What’s up with you?”

“You know, working side by side with you these last couple of weeks…it’s hard to then separate the friendship and know I’m going to put you in a vest and surround you with snipers and hope this guy doesn’t go off the deep end and try to kill you. They’ve nearly run you off the road, shot at you, blown up your car…”

“Next thing you know, they’d have put cyanide in my martinis.” She tried to make him smile, but Troy was grim-faced.

“I ever tell you I lost my first partner?”

“No,” she whispered. She pulled up a chair.

“Yup. A woman. Great person. Had just found out she was pregnant, too, and was going to ask for a transfer to a desk job. Husband was an awesome guy, completely gaga in love with her. A secret-service agent. They met in D.C. We were all on assignment there. I was an usher in their wedding party.”

“How’d she get killed?”

“We were undercover on a case involving money laundering. Not unlike this one. Drug kingpin, in that case. He somehow got wise to her—she was acting as one of his kids’ nannies. She traveled with him and his family. He had two wives of all things. Some kind of sick fucker. Anyway, he killed her—shot her stone cold in the center of her forehead—right in front of his eleven-year-old son. Told the kid he had to be able to do things like that if he wanted one day to be the kingpin himself.”

“Oh, my God…” Maddie whispered. She patted Troy’s hand.

“I…she didn’t see it coming. None of us did. I was grateful it happened in a split second, but I took a leave of absence for a month. Really had to think about whether I could handle this job.”