Grace dispensed with the pleasantries. “I want you to help me prove that John Merrivale framed me and my husband.”
Karen hadn’t mentioned anything about this. “She needs you to do a little digging,” those had been her exact words. Nothing about Grace Brookstein being a total fucking fruit loop who’d convinced herself her old man was framed. Jesus. Every man and his dog knew that Lenny Brookstein was as crooked as a two-dollar bill.
“John Merrivale. Wasn’t he the number two at Quorum? The guy the FBI has been working with?”
Reading his thoughts, Grace said, “I understand your skepticism. I don’t expect you to believe me. All I’m asking is that you look into it. I’m doing as much research as I can from the library here, but I’m sure you appreciate my resources are limited.”
“Look, Mrs. Brookstein.”
“Grace.”
“Look, Grace, I’d like to help you. But I gotta be honest. The FBI has been through Quorum’s finances with a fine-tooth comb. If there were any evidence that Merrivale had framed your husband, any evidence at all, don’t you think they’d have found it?”
“Not necessarily. Not if they trust him. John’s been working with the FBI, Mr. Buccola. He’s part of the investigative team. Don’t you see? He’s convinced them he’s one of their own. Believe me, John Merrivale can be very plausible.”
“Plausible’s one thing. Stealing seventy billion dollars and stashing it where no one can find it, not the SEC, not the smartest brains at the bureau, no one…some might say that’s impossible.”
Grace smiled. “I believe that’s what my attorney told the jury. And yet here I am.”
Davey Buccola smiled back. Touché.
“I’ve never even opened a bank statement, Mr. Buccola. John Merrivale’s a financial wizard. If I could do it, couldn’t he?”
Davey Buccola thought, I underestimated her. She’s not a fruit loop. Misguided, maybe. But she’s nobody’s fool. “All right, Mrs. Brookstein. I’ll do some digging for you. But I’m warning you now, don’t believe in foregone conclusions. They’re against my religion.”
“I understand.”
“If I take this case, I’ll take it with an open mind. I’m digging for the truth. You might not like what I find.”
“I’ll take my chances.”
“Another thing you should know: nothing’s going to happen quickly. This is a complicated case. A lot of the information is classified. I have FBI sources, guys in the police and the SEC who’ll talk to me, but it’s slow work.”
Grace looked at the four walls around her. “Time’s about the one thing I have left, Mr. Buccola. I’m not going anywhere.”
Davey Buccola shook her hand. “In that case, Mrs. Brookstein, I’m your man.”
“WHERE ARE YOU GOING, HONEY? COME back to bed.”
Harry Bain looked at his wife’s voluptuous naked body sprawled out across the sheets. Then he looked at his watch. Six A.M. Fucking Quorum.
“I can’t. We’ve got a team meeting at seven.”
“Can’t you say you’re sick?”
“Not really. I called the meeting.”
The whole of America hated Lenny Brookstein. But at that moment no one hated him quite as much as Harry Bain.
I can outsmart a street fighter like Brookstein, Bain had reasoned, when he first took the case. It’s not like we’re looking for a pair of cuff links. Seventy-five billion dollars is missing. That’s like trying to hide a country. “Excuse me, but has anyone seen Guatemala? Some dead Jewish guy from Queens mislaid it last June.”
Of course he would find the money. How could he not?
Yet here he was, a year later, with nothing. Harry Bain, Gavin Williams and their team had commandeered Quorum’s old offices as a base for their investigation. With John Merrivale’s help, the task force had spent millions, chasing leads all over the world, from New York to Grand Cayman to Paris to Singapore. Between them, Harry Bain, Gavin Williams and John Merrivale had clocked more air miles than a migrating flock of Canadian geese, produced enough paper to wipe out an entire rain forest, conducted thousands of interviews and seized countless bank records. If Lenny Brookstein took a shit between January 2001 and June 2009, the FBI had a record of it. But still no goddamn money.
Their failure wasn’t from lack of effort. Gavin Williams might be a card-carrying weirdo but you couldn’t fault the guy for commitment. As far as Harry Bain could tell, Williams had no friends or family, no personal life at all. He lived and breathed Quorum, following the impenetrable, circuitous paper trail of trades Lenny Brookstein had left behind him with the dogged bloodlust of a fox hound. Then there was John Merrivale, the Quorum insider-turned-police-asset. John was an odd bird, too. So shy he was almost autistic, the guy still teared up whenever Lenny Brookstein’s name was mentioned. In the beginning, Harry had wondered whether John might be implicated in the fraud himself. But the more he learned about Lenny Brookstein’s business practices, the less he suspected John Merrivale, or Andrew Preston, or any of the other employees. Brookstein was so secretive he made the CIA look indiscreet. Surrounded by people, a social animal to the last, at the end of the day Lenny had trusted no one. No one except his wife.
Rumors on the team were that John Merrivale was unhappy at home. Harry Bain had met Caroline Merrivale once and could well believe it. That bitch probably wore stilettos and a whip to bed. Or a gestapo uniform. No wonder John was happy to put in long hours on the task force. So would I be if I was married to Madam Whiplash.
“OKAY, FOLKS. WHAT HAVE WE GOT?”
The elite group of FBI agents who formed the Quorum task force stared at their boss dejectedly. One joker piped up, “Gavin’s thinking of heading out to Bedford Hills again, right, Gav? He’s gonna use his legendary charm with the laydeez to get Mrs. B to sing like a bird.”
The rest of the group sniggered. Gavin Williams’s obsession with “breaking” Grace Brookstein had become a running joke. Either Grace didn’t know where Lenny had stashed the cash, or she knew but she wasn’t telling. Either way, Williams was beating a dead horse and everyone could see it but him.
Gavin didn’t join in the laughter. “I have no plans to return to Bedford, Stephen. Your information is incorrect.”
The joker murmured to his partner, “‘Your information is incorrect.’ Is he human? He sounds like R2 fucking D2.”
“No kidding,” his partner replied more loudly. “‘Help me, Obi-Wan Brookstein. You’re my only hope!’”
More laughter.
Gavin Williams glanced around the table at his so-called colleagues. If he could, he would have ripped every one of their hearts out with his bare hands and stuffed them down Harry Bain’s smug, self-satisfied throat till he choked. What did any of them have to laugh about? They were all part of the biggest, lamest operation in FBI history. If he, Gavin, were running the show, things would be different.
Harry Bain said, “Okay, then, so it’s all on this trip to Geneva.”
John Merrivale had spent the last three weeks researching a huge swap trade from 2006. The trail led as far as a numbered account in Switzerland, then went cold.
“Gavin, I’d like you and John to make the trip together this time. Two heads may prove better than one.”
John Merrivale failed to hide his surprise. He and Gavin Williams usually worked independently, following up on separate leads. This was the first time Bain had asked them to travel together.
“I’m f-fine to handle the Geneva trip alone, Harry.”
“I know you are. But I’d like the two of you together on this one.”
John Merrivale’s relationship with Harry Bain had come a long way since Harry’s “bad-cop” interview with him, before Grace’s trial. It had taken months to persuade not just Bain, but the entire task force, that he was on their side, that he was as much a victim of Lenny Brookstein as anyone else. But slowly, with the steady, quiet patience on which he’d built his entire career, John Merrivale had won them over. He was no longer frightened of Harry Bain. But at the same time he didn’t want to cross him. John still loathed confrontation. As much as Gavin Williams’s dour, monosyllabic presence was bound to ruin the Switzerland trip, John didn’t want to fight about it.
Harry Bain said, “We need to build some more team spirit. Bounce ideas off each other more. Somehow we’ve got to break this deadlock.”
John Merrivale tried to imagine a scenario in which anyone might “bounce an idea” off Gavin Williams. Bain really must be getting desperate.
THE FLIGHT FROM NEW YORK WAS bumpy and unpleasant. John Merrivale felt his stomach flip over with nerves. He tried to make small talk with his companion. “Of course, legally we can’t force the Swiss to cooperate with us. But I know the g-guys at the Banque de Genève pretty well. I may be able to p-persuade them to stretch a point.”