“We’ll find them,” Menendez said.
“They’re not on a plane,” Masi said. “We think they’re still in the area.”
“Let me know if there’s anything the firm can do to help,” Virgil said. “I can’t imagine what that would be, but the offer is real.”
Masi stood up and shook hands across the desk. Menendez moved toward the door without any ceremony. Hal extended his hand and Masi took it. I didn’t wait to be snubbed. I opened the door and ushered them out.
“What now?” Virgil looked exhausted. He had two hours to recover and get pumped for the morning’s meetings. I was exhausted too. A friend’s murder will do that to you.
“We’ve got Dean Harris in...” I checked my watch. “Seven minutes.”
“I can’t,” Virgil said. “I want a massage and a sauna and a double espresso. You two handle him.”
“What do you want us to do?” I said.
Virgil turned to Hal. “If we have to make good on all the front-running trades how much are we on the hook for?”
Hal looked surprised. “I’d need a week to dig them all out.”
“Millions? Tens of millions? Hundreds?”
“Okay. Tens, maybe. Not hundreds.”
“I agree. Put a freeze on his accounts. If he resigns quietly and cooperates with an internal investigation, we will allow him to withdraw enough cash to pay legal bills and reasonable family expenses. Next, draft a letter for my signature to the SEC describing the situation and pledging our full cooperation.”
It would be difficult to prove a conspiracy with only one of the actors available. But that didn’t mean Dean-o would get a pass.
Virgil continued. “Jason, I want you to borrow some people from accounting and start pulling out all of the trades that might qualify as front-running. Every one.”
“How far back? There’s got to be a statute of limitations.”
“All the way back to when they first began working here. I want full disclosure. Understood?”
“Very good,” I said.
“But no matter what, I want that son of a bitch out of the building in one hour. Or less.”
Monday nights were tough on all of us. Tessa was cranky because she’d been deprived of her mother all day. Her mother was cranky because, as much as she loved her work, it took her away from Tessa four long days each week. The Kid did not transition well in the best of times — vacations could be difficult — but Mondays were the worst.
“I don’t care what happens. I don’t care what happens.” He must have muttered the phrase a hundred times through dinner.
“Do you know what this is about?” I asked.
Skeli shrugged. She and Tessa were bonding over chicken soup.
I wanted some sympathy about my day, but there was no chance I was going to get it. The fact that I knew I didn’t deserve it did nothing to lift my spirits.
Sybil’s death still hadn’t fully penetrated. I’d pay for it later. Grief will out. Neither of us had a world of friends. Each loss was like losing a limb.
And the session with Dean Harris had been particularly unpleasant. Hal Morris was a dependable, steady, honest man, but he wasn’t much of a talker. That left me in the position of firing a man who didn’t work for me, and negotiating his cooperation in his own discharge. It was a challenge, and if Dean-o had not hated me before, he certainly did now.
At first, Virgil’s one-hour deadline had felt like an impediment as Harris lied and denied, explaining the trades with long-winded fabrications. But once he was convinced that we had the evidence, the tables turned. And when, forty-five minutes in, I called security and asked for two officers to escort him out, there was total capitulation. He bluffed, raged, and cajoled, but in the end, he cried.
Which was a fair description of my session with the Kid when I got home. He wanted his computer back, but refused to show any remorse for his threats and curses. He told me, “This has gone on long enough,” and once screamed, “Don’t make threats,” when I told him that I was keeping his iPad until he showed some real contrition. I felt like a bully, not a parent. We were at a stalemate. But as much as I wished it was over, and that my son could accept some responsibility, I also admired his tenacity. He had a lot more guts than Dean Harris.
We got both children into bed, Skeli taking the Kid, and I took care of the dishes while Skeli sank onto the couch and continued her binge-watch of Game of Thrones. I had tried one episode with her and bowed out. The show was too much like work.
My home office was less a man cave than a nook, or wall recess, but it was recognized by the family as my space, where I was allowed some privacy. I poured myself a thimble-sized portion of bourbon — tomorrow was going to be no easier than today had been — and dug out the Kid’s iPad from behind the row of black books. I opened it and went to work. It was time to find and remove the offending clip.
The recording app was simple to use, even for an adult. One click opened it and a second dropped a file menu. The Kid had hundreds.
Hundreds. How awful a parent was I that I had not realized that all this was there? I poured a heftier dose of bourbon and began to search.
None of the files were named, they were identified by a series of sevendigit numbers that must have been generated by the app itself, with the largest files listed first. There was no way to identify which of these was the object of my search. I began to open them at random.
There were a lot of files of dogs barking. Someone sneezing. Someone snoring — possibly me. I found a short loop of Skeli saying, in a terribly annoyed voice, “Stop that.” It was funny if you played it three or four times in succession. It was a side of her I rarely got to see.
It was impossible. A random approach would take me forever. I went back to the menu and worked my way through commands until I found a Sort by Date button. I hit it. The most recent recordings were listed first. Now I could see that they were all dated. I needed Saturday. There were seven, all of varying lengths. All were audio only. I clicked on the first.
The crowd at Yankee stadium was chanting “Let’s Go Yan-kees.” Much too late in the day. I should have skipped to the last Saturday entry, as that would be the first that morning. I went to swipe the screen back to the previous page with the list of files, but stopped when I heard a familiar voice.
It was Sybil. “This has gone on long enough.”
Armies of multiped mini monsters whisked across my shoulders and down my arms. There was a chill in my back. The voice of my recently deceased friend leapt out of the machine and strangled me. I was choking and at the same time tears were collecting at the corners of my eyes. I hit the pause button.
Was I going to be able to do this? It was all too soon, too raw. I had been able to avoid my grieving with constant activity, doing what I did, what I was good at. Investigating. But faced with the all-too-real sound of her voice, I was defenseless.
Breathing came easier. I felt my pulse return to something more like normal. I had to do this. For her. For the Kid. I started the file and listened to it repeat.
Then came Dean Harris’s voice, rumbling in the background. I couldn’t make out the words. Only the tone. He was angry. “Don’t make threats.” Sybil again. “I don’t care what happens.”
I opened the next file. “You can’t do this, bitch.” Slightly slurred with Bombay gin, but dripping with venom, it was undeniably Dean. He went on. “You don’t get to just walk away. I’ll kill you first.” In the background I heard the crack of a bat and the roar of the stadium crowd. The file stopped playing and a smiling clock face appeared as it reloaded.