There was an elaborate secretary’s desk to the left, in blond wood that matched the wall paneling, and a waiting area with tan leather sofas to the right. Straight ahead was a set of double doors with sleek brass handles. The doors were shut.
“We wait,” Pflug said, and sat on one of the sofas. He crossed his long legs and patted the seat next to him. “Come on, take a load off, John. Don’t be shy.”
I looked at him but said nothing.
He laughed. “Peevish today? What’s the matter, not seen enough of your little friend lately? She is a busy beaver.” I stared at him. He cracked his knuckles and showed me more of his big teeth. He held his hands in front of his face like an imaginary camera and moved his finger up and down. “Click-click,” he said. I shook my head and the double doors opened.
Marcus Hauck was my height but heavier, and his close-set features were half a size too small for his round pink face. His hair was blond gone gray, cut close and slicked down, and his brown eyes were moist and guileless behind wire-framed glasses. He wore an oxford shirt that was tight across the belly and khaki pants that were an inch too short, and his careful mouth was set in a tiny smile. Hauck was deep in his forties, but despite the graying hair and spreading gut, he had an unripe, somehow fussy look, like an over-large choirboy.
“Come in,” he said. His voice was soft and had no accent.
It was a long room with a desk at one end, in front of a wall of windows that looked out on a stone terrace. The desk was a broad slab of maple with sharp edges and tapered legs, and there was a tan leather chair behind it and two Windsor chairs in front. The desktop was bare except for a leather blotter, a black telephone, a coffee mug, and a crystal sphere the size of a baseball.
A maple console sat along the wall to the left, its surface mostly covered with flat-panel monitors arranged in a strict row. There was a green rug on the floor, with a geometric pattern. It ran the length of the room, and at the far end, facing the desk, was a large weathered statue of a plump four-armed man.
He sat cross-legged on a stone plinth, and his stone features, and the elaborate carvings of jeweled strands on his arms and across his belly, were blurred and indistinct. His four hands held a club, a cup, a bowl, and a pouch, and there was something at once comic and sinister about him.
I took a seat in a Windsor chair. Pflug shut the doors and leaned against them. Hauck sat behind the desk and clasped his hands in front of him. They were pink and pudgy and perfectly still.
“I think I gave Ms. Pratt the wrong idea, perhaps- or maybe she was confused on her own.” Hauck gave a hesitant smile. “In any event, between her and our Mr. Pflug here, I think you have gotten a mistaken impression as well.” He shrugged his shoulders and the smile turned wry. Just a regular Joe, with five billion under management. I looked at Pflug. His eyes were fixed on me. I looked back at Marcus Hauck.
“What impression was that?” I asked.
Hauck laughed softly. “Something… sinister, perhaps? Something conspiratorial?” He smiled at me some more, but I didn’t reciprocate and didn’t speak.
Hauck was a quick study. He looked down at his clasped hands, and when he looked up again and spoke every trace of levity had vanished from his face and from his voice. “I understand your feeling that way,” he said. “Those photos must have been quite upsetting.” He looked over at Pflug and scowled. “I don’t condone those tactics, and regardless of the outcome of our business today, I want you to know that you have my deepest apologies.” It was an impressive change of tack- sudden, but with enough sincerity that it didn’t seem jarring. I picked up the crystal baseball and turned it over in my hand. It was heavy and cool to the touch. Hauck’s eyes followed it.
“That’s comforting,” I said. “But I’d like to know why it happened.”
Hauck nodded gravely. “Mr. Pflug was working for me, doing what I gather you have been hired to do: searching for Greg. He actually started his work ahead of yours, Mr. March, but when he learned that you were on the job- and when he learned of your reputation- he thought he might leverage your efforts. Ride your slipstream, as it were.”
“In other words, he thought he’d follow me around and see if I led him to Greg.”
Hauck nodded encouragingly. “Yes- though unfortunately your results don’t seem to have been much better than his.” Hauck paused and looked at me, but I kept still. He went on. “And then you became aware of his people.”
“They became hard to miss.”
Hauck looked pained. “I’ve already spoken to Mr. Pflug about the quality of some of his resources.”
I looked over at Pflug. If any of this was bothering him he hid it well. I rolled the ball from hand to hand above my lap. Hauck’s eyes followed it, back and forth.
“And then?” I asked.
“And then some unfortunate decisions were made.”
“Starting with the breakin at Pace-Loyette?”
Hauck cleared his throat. “I have no comment on that, Mr. March.”
“Then which unfortunate decisions were you talking about?”
“When he learned of your determination to identify who was following you, Mr. Pflug elected to send those photos. And when you were undeterred and traced them back to Mr. Pflug and made contact with him, he became… hostile. Again, you have my apologies, Mr. March.”
I nodded and rolled the crystal ball in my palm. I looked at Hauck. “As entertaining as that was, I’d figured most of it out already. What I was asking was why you were looking for Danes in the first place.”
Another change came over Hauck, more subtle this time but just as quick. He sat back in his chair and his shoulders stiffened. His eyes cooled distinctly. The sincerity remained in his voice, in full measure, but the empathetic undertones dropped out and were replaced by something that hinted at indignity. He crossed his arms on his chest.
“Gregory Danes is a friend of mine, Mr. March, and I was worried about him; I still am. As you may have gathered, he has few friends and no family to speak of. If I didn’t do something, who would?”
It was a credit to his performance, not to mention my self-control, that I managed not to shout bullshit. “Who indeed,” I said, and nodded some more. “But why the secrecy? Why send Pflug sneaking around? Why not call the cops?”
Hauck smiled a little. “In retrospect, perhaps I should have, Mr. March. Perhaps things wouldn’t have gotten so… out of hand. It would certainly have saved a good deal of misunderstanding. But at the time, I’m afraid, that just didn’t seem possible.
“For one thing, I had- I have- no reason to think that anything untoward has happened to Greg. I’m still hoping that he’s just decided to go on another of his unannounced retreats, and that the phone will ring and it will be him on the other end. If that’s all this is, and I call in the police and create a furor in the press…” Hauck shook his head and smiled. “Well, I don’t think Greg would appreciate it.
“And I have my own interests to consider, and those of my investors. Media attention is at best a double-edged sword for someone in my business, and I’ve made a habit of avoiding it. A story of this sort- hedge fund manager calls police in search for missing analystwould be irresistible to the press. I have no wish to be linked to such a story, Mr. March, and neither do my investors. We simply couldn’t afford it.”
I couldn’t suppress a laugh. “And this business- with photographs and threats- this was supposed to be the discreet approach?”
Hauck shook his head. “It seems absurd from this vantage point, I know.”
Absurd and unbelievable, I thought, but I didn’t say it. “And now what?” I asked.
Hauck smiled benignly and leaned forward. “And now, I hope, we’ve cleared things up between us, Mr. March. Now, I hope, you realize that this nonsense with the photos was simply Mr. Pflug’s ill-advised attempt to cover his tracks- a desire for discretion taken to ridiculous and upsetting lengths.”