Silence. It was like talking to a corpse.
Gavin Williams closed his eyes. “Persuade them?” “Stretch a point?” They’re criminals who laundered Brookstein’s dirty money. They should be stretched on a rack till their limbs are wrenched out of their sockets and their screams can be heard from the Statue of Liberty.
“Have you spent m-much time in Geneva, Gavin?”
“No.”
“It’s a beautiful city. The m-m-mountains, the lake. Lenny and I used to love coming here.”
Gavin Williams pulled on his sleep mask. “Good night.”
The plane rattled on.
JOHN MERRIVALE WAS BOOKED INTO LES Amures, an exclusive five-star hotel in Geneva’s old town. In the old days, he and Lenny had enjoyed many fine meals in Les Amures’s famous restaurant, which had been built in the thirteenth century and decorated with exquisite frescos, painted façades and art treasures. Lenny used to say it was like eating in the Sistine Chapel.
Gavin Williams refused to join him, preferring the more modest Hotel Eden. It was right on the lake, but Gavin purposely chose a room with no view that was closer to the gym and business center. “We’re not here to enjoy ourselves,” he told John tersely.
Heaven forbid.
John thought again how much Lenny would have despised Gavin Williams. His joylessness. His anger. Wandering alone around Geneva’s chilly, medieval streets after dinner, he thought how much more fun the trip would have been had Lenny been with him.
“WHAT DO YOU MEAN I’M NOT COMING?”
Gavin Williams looked fit to be tied. He and John were breakfasting together at Gavin’s hotel, prior to the meeting with the people from the Banque de Genève.
“I have a r-relationship with the bankers. They’re more likely to trust me if I g-go alone.”
“Trust you?” Gavin Williams balled up his napkin in his fist.
“Yes. Banking, especially in Switzerland, is all about t-trust.”
Gavin Williams thought furiously, You were the right-hand man to the biggest thief of all time, and you have the nerve to pontificate about trust? Even now, even after Quorum’s disgrace, it’s still an old boys’ club, isn’t it? You’re still one of them—a banker—and I’m not. Out loud he snapped, “Don’t patronize me, John. I’ve written textbooks on Swiss banking.”
“Marvelous. Then you know what I’m talking about.”
“These people you claim to have a relationship with are money launderers. They are scum and their trust is worth nothing. I will attend the meeting, whether they like it or not.”
John Merrivale could not resist a fleeting, triumphant smile. “I’m afraid you won’t, Gavin. You see, I already cleared it with Harry Bain. I’m g-going alone. You’re to follow up on any information I get out of them. Take it up with Harry if you’re not happy.”
“How can I take it up with Harry?” Gavin spluttered. “It’s three in the morning in New York.”
“Is it?” John smiled again. “What a pity.”
THREE DAYS LATER THEY FLEW BACK to the States.
John Merrivale reported to Harry Bain: whatever money Lenny had stashed in Geneva was long gone. Some of it was paid out to investors in returns. The rest was siphoned into property deals in South America. Gavin Williams would fly to Bogotá tomorrow to see what he could uncover.
Harry Bain put his head in his hands. Bogotá. And so it goes on.
“I’m s-sorry about Geneva, sir. I really thought that might be a breakthrough.”
Harry Bain hated the way John Merrivale insisted on calling him “sir.” Nobody else did. He’d told Merrivale to cut it out months ago, but it was like a verbal tic with the guy. Subservience was second nature to him. Not for the first time, Harry wondered what on earth had attracted a type A man’s man like Lenny Brookstein to this weak, milquetoast number cruncher. It didn’t make any sense.
“It’s okay, John. You did your best. The bureau appreciates your efforts.”
“Th-thank you, sir. I’ll keep trying.”
Yeah. We’re all trying. But there are no prizes for effort. Not in this life.
“John, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”
John looked momentarily taken aback.
“Does it ever get to you?”
“Does what ever get to me?”
“You must have lost millions because of Lenny Brookstein, right? Tens of millions.”
John Merrivale nodded.
“You see your entire life’s work destroyed, your good name dragged through the mud. Doesn’t it, I don’t know…test your faith in humanity?”
John Merrivale smiled. “I’m afraid I’ve never had much f-faith in humanity.”
“Okay, then. In friendship.”
In a flash, the smile was gone.
“Let me tell you something about friendship, Mr. Bain. Friendship is everything. Everything. It’s the only thing that really m-m-matters in this world. People can say what they like about me. But I’ll tell you this. I’m a loyal friend.”
He turned and walked away. Harry Bain watched him go.
He felt uneasy, but he had no idea why.
IN A HOTEL BATHROOM in BOGOTÁ, Gavin Williams stood under a cold shower, scrubbing his body with soap. It was so hard to stay clean in this filthy world. Colombia was the greatest cesspool of all. Every aspect of life here was diseased, tainted by greed, infected with corruption. It made Gavin sick.
As he scrubbed away, cleansing his soiled body, Gavin’s thoughts turned to John Merrivale. John had humiliated him in Switzerland. No doubt he thought he’d had the last laugh. But Gavin Williams knew better.
John Merrivale had patronized the wrong man.
He would live to regret it.
TWELVE
GRACE’S FIRST YEAR AT BEDFORD HILLS passed quickly.
Most long-term prisoners looked back on the first twelve months of their sentence as the worst. Karen described it to Grace as “like cold turkey, except you’re not withdrawing from drugs, you’re withdrawing from freedom.” It was a good analogy, but Grace didn’t feel that way. For Grace, the first year of prison was like awakening from a lifelong slumber. For the first time, she was seeing life as it really was. She was surrounded by women from ordinary backgrounds, poor backgrounds. Women who had grown up less than twenty miles away from where Grace grew up, but who lived in a world as foreign and alien to her as the rice paddies of China or the deserts of Arabia.
It was wonderful.
In her old life, Grace now realized, friendships had been a mirage: fragile, hollow alliances based solely on money or status. At Bedford Hills, she observed a different kind of female friendship, one born of adversity and strengthened through suffering. If someone said a kind word to you here, they meant it. Slowly, cautiously, Grace began to forge bonds, with Karen, with some of the girls she worked with in her new job at the children’s center, even with Cora Budds.
Cora was a mass of contradictions. Violent, moody and uneducated, she could certainly be a bully, as Grace had learned to her cost on her second night at Bedford. But Cora Budds was also a loyal friend and devoted mother. After Grace’s suicide attempt, Cora’s maternal side took over. It was Cora, more even than Karen Willis, who had led the campaign to change their fellow prisoners’ minds about Grace Brookstein. When a group of women at the children’s center froze Grace out, refusing to talk to her or even eat in the same room, it was Cora who confronted them.
“Give the bitch a chance. She din’ steal nuthin’. You kidding me? She wouldn’t know how.”
“She’s rich, Cora.”
“She ain’t even a mom. How’d she get a job in here? The warden’s showing her favors.”
Cora Budds said, “Lemme tell you something. The warden wanted her dead. Tha’s why he sent her to me. But I’m tellin’ yous, Grace is okay. She ain’t the way they made her out to be in court and on TV. Just give her a chance.”
Slowly, grudgingly, the women began to include Grace in their conversations. Winning their acceptance, and later their affection, meant more to Grace than she could express. Society had labeled the women of Bedford Hills as criminals, as outcasts. Now, for the first time, Grace wondered if perhaps it was society that was criminal, for casting them out in the first place. Grace had lived the American Dream all her life. The fantasy of wealth, freedom and the pursuit of happiness had been her reality since the day she was born. Here, at Bedford Hills, she witnessed the flip side of that golden coin: the hopelessness of poverty, the unbreakable cycle of fractured families, poor education, drugs and crime, the iron grip of gang culture.
It’s all just a lottery. Prison was these women’s destiny, the same way wealth and luxury was mine.
Until someone stole it from me.
Grace was luckier than most inmates. She had something rare and priceless, something that other girls at Bedford would have given their eyeteeth for: a sense of purpose. Here, in jail, Grace finally had something to do, other than shop for designer clothes or plan her next dinner party. She had to find out what really happened at Quorum. It wasn’t about freedom. It was about justice. About truth.