“Great. And bill the Edwin Charles Junior Trust. I’m his trustee.” Stone had a thought. “Let’s do the rest of the family, too — Edwin Charles Sr. and Annetta Charles, his widow.”
“New business, I hear.”
“Gotta oil the wheels, don’t we?”
“You betcha. Let’s have lunch tomorrow. I should have something by then. The Grill, at one?”
“See you there.”
Joan peered from around the corner. “You’re running checks on members of my family, dead and alive?”
“I am. I forgot to add your name to the list,” Stone replied.
“What could you possibly want to know about us?”
“Everything. I can’t get much out of you.”
“I’ve answered every question you asked me.”
“What about the ones I didn’t ask you? Tell me about those.”
Joan rolled her eyes. “I could have saved you the money.”
“It’s Eddie’s trust’s money,” Stone said. “I’m entitled to know what and whom I’m dealing with.”
“I thought I was helping.”
“And yet, I keep getting smacked in the kisser by surprises! That’s nerve-racking, don’t you understand that?”
“It’s nerve-racking to get the third degree from you, too.”
“What have you got to hide?”
“I’m sure Mike Freeman will come up with something.”
“Did you do time for embezzlement of your employer’s funds?”
“No! Of course not!”
“Then you’ve got nothing to worry about, have you? Or have you? Best to tell me now.”
“I don’t like telling on people.”
“Then meet some people who don’t have anything to be told about them.”
“I’m stuck with the ones I’ve got,” she said. Then she went back to her desk, while Stone wondered what she was talking about.
Stone met Mike Freeman the following day for lunch. They each ordered a drink and lunch, then Mike opened his briefcase and set a file folder on the table. “Ready?”
Stone took a deep breath and exhaled. “Hit me.”
“Okay, let’s start with some good news.”
Stone looked surprised. “I didn’t think there would be any.”
“Eddie Jr.’s academic record stands up. He was a smart kid who worked hard at his studies, and he left Groton, Yale, and Yale Law School in good order. His appearance on the bar exam list of passes is legit, too.”
“I’m stunned!” Stone said. “How’d he get to be such a weasel?”
“An indulgent papa,” Mike said. “He was good in school and got a zero in behavior.”
“Any reason why?”
“Excess in just about everything — girls, booze, gambling, you name it.”
“Does he have a record?”
“Nope, his sheet is clean.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“Do you know a lawyer named Jacob Marvin?”
“Jake the Snake? Doesn’t everybody?”
“Well, Jake, as you well know, was reputed, in his day, to be very adept at moving cash from pocket to palm, and Eddie Sr. had him on retainer, for the personal use of Eddie Jr.”
“That explains a lot,” Stone said.
“Every time Junior got busted, Jake made it all go away. Thus, Junior’s clean slate.”
“Is there a list somewhere of what he was charged with?”
“He was never charged. Jake was that quick.”
“Well, I can’t confront the kid with missing court appearances, because there weren’t any?”
“You’re very quick. That’s about all there is to tell about Junior. You want to hear about the rest of the family?”
Lunch came and was served. “Okay,” Stone said, around a chunk of Dover sole.
“Eddie Sr., in addition to running his hedge fund, was banking three or four loan sharks.”
“Well, that’s a cash-rich business, if you can hide the proceeds.”
“The loan sharks were wiring Eddie’s share of the vigorish straight into a Caymans bank account. He also kept a large safety-deposit box at a bank near his office where bundles of the green stuff were stowed, until Eddie or Annetta, as she likes to be called now, could think of something to spend it on.”
“My goodness!”
“Wait until I tell you about his wife, or Apple Annie, as she was known in the bordello where she spent a few years in a bedroom. Then she met Eddie.”
“He was a customer?”
“Her best regular. She apparently had a peculiar talent for satisfying his particular needs. With Eddie’s assistance, she moved up to management.”
“Holy shit! The society grande dame!”
“She never went near the premises. She confined herself to hiring and firing and the books — plus making regular trips to the safety-deposit box.”
“And what happened to all this when Eddie Sr. fell off the perch?”
“She was in complete control of everything, and she kept it all. Probate was unnecessary.”
“How much?”
“Nobody knows for sure, but a survey of his, later her, assets suggests tens of millions annually, and even after the big spending, better than a hundred mil stashed away.”
“I think I’ll have some dessert, while I try to digest this,” Stone said.
Nine
Stone got back to his office and put the file folders on the Charleses into his safe.
Joan came in. “So, now do you know everything there is to know about my family?”
“The files are in my safe. If you know everything, it won’t hurt you to read them, but if you know nothing, my advice is to let them lie.”
“Aunt Annetta just called. She wants you to come and see her.”
“When does she want me to come?”
“Ten minutes ago.”
“Okay, alert Fred.”
“He’s waiting in the garage.”
“All right,” he said, getting back into his jacket. “I’ll be back when I’m back.”
“Nicely put.”
Stone got out of the car a door or two off Fifth Avenue in the Sixties. It was not an apartment building but a house. Stone rang the bell, and a moment later, a uniformed butler let him into a large, marbled foyer. “Good afternoon, Mr. Barrington. You are expected. Elevator or stairs?”
“Elevator,” Stone said.
The butler showed him into the car and pressed eight. A moment later, he was in another foyer, and a uniformed maid greeted him and led him to the living room, which featured an expansive view of Central Park through broad windows. He was alone in the room. After taking in the view, he took one of the chairs in front of the fireplace, where logs crackled.
Another ten minutes passed before he heard the tap of high heels on marble, and Annetta Charles swept into the room, wearing a tightly fitting tailored tweed suit. “Good afternoon, Stone,” she said, shaking his hand and giving him a momentary glimpse at what the suit had been designed to display. “Take a seat.” She indicated the sofa and sat there, too.
“Thank you, Annetta,” he replied and sat down.
“I understand that you are interested in the background of my family.”
“Yes, but no more than of any other new client.”
“You like to know whom you’re dealing with, do you?”
“Doesn’t everybody?”
“I think you’ll find that we are pretty much run-of-the-mill, among wealthy Upper East Siders.”
Stone was amused that she had started with a lie but tried not to show it.
“Edwin was a product of Greenwich, Yale, and MIT,” she said. “I am a product of Miss Porter’s School and a finishing school in Switzerland.”
Stone nodded, as if all that were to be expected.
“What more would you like to know?” she asked.
“Whatever you’d like to tell me; no more.”
She turned toward him, breasts first, and rested a hand on his thigh. “Your reputation with women precedes you,” Annetta said, stroking the thigh.