Caroline nodded, satisfied. “That makes perfect sense.”
“You’re still with the courts, I assume? Writing everything down that the judge and the lawyers and the bad guys say?”
“Yes.” Her voice was barely above a whisper.
“Interesting work, I’ll bet.”
“Some cases more so than others.” She paused. “Like yours.”
“Mine was a good one?”
“Uh, yeah. It sure beat the guy being sued for selling defective siding.”
He nodded knowingly. “I guess murder is slightly more titillating.”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” she said. Or did she?
Broderick leaned in close and whispered, “If you ever get charged with murder, I highly recommend my lawyer.” He gave her arm a little squeeze.
Caroline’s heart was jackhammering. Was it excitement, or fear? She picked up her cup and said, “I really should be going.”
Broderick put his hand on her arm again and held it gently. “I’m sorry. Please stay. I apologize. I sometimes joke about what I was accused of when there’s nothing funny about it at all. A terrible thing, being accused of such a horrible crime.”
Tentatively, she said, “I guess it was lucky that that witness... changed his mind about testifying.”
“Yes,” Broderick said. “I guess he had second thoughts about lying on the stand. Perjury’s a serious offense.”
A question about what happened to that witness was on the tip of her tongue, but she decided against asking it. Instead, she asked, “So, what... what do you do now?” She laughed nervously. “I don’t mean now, as opposed to what you were accused of doing then. I mean, what do you do? What’s your job?”
“I’m a problem solver,” Broderick said.
“What does that mean?”
“Exactly what I said. If you come to me with a problem, I’ll do my best to solve it for you.”
Caroline circled the rim of her cup with her index finger. “Kind of like Denzel Washington in The Equalizer?”
Broderick grinned, waved the question away, and asked, “You ever have problems?”
“Sure.”
“Name one.”
She had to think. She got as far as “Uh, well” and then started to laugh. “It’s too silly.”
“Go ahead.”
“The dealership won’t fix this thing that’s wrong with my car, even though it should be under warranty. The engine’s making this funny noise, and it’s stalling half the time. They say I missed a scheduled maintenance by about a hundred miles or something, which means whatever’s wrong with the car is on me. That it’s not their fault.”
“Where’d you get the car?” he asked.
She told him, and added, “But that’s probably not the kind of problem you’re talking about, is it? Give me an example of a problem you’d solve.”
Broderick thought for a moment, took a sip of his hot chocolate. “I helped in a labor negotiation one time. A furniture company, all the workers were looking to unionize and the employer felt he was being very generous with his latest offer, but the union leadership was not receptive. They were heading toward a strike, which would have been very crippling for the company. Would have hurt the workers, too. The company asked if I could intercede. I did, and everything got sorted out.”
“How did you do it?” Caroline asked.
Broderick smiled. “I simply talked to the interested parties. I find that people are actually quite reasonable when you present realistic alternatives to them. If you do this, this thing will happen. If you do that, that thing will happen. It helps when one of those choices comes with a level of... inconvenience. And if that doesn’t work, I employ other strategies.”
Caroline was going to ask, then decided against it. She believed there were some things she was better off not knowing.
Broderick had glanced down at her hand more than once. “I see you’re married. What does your husband do?”
“He’s an accountant,” she said, unable to hide the disappointment in her voice. “For a tech firm his brother owns.”
“Oh,” he said. “That sounds interesting.”
“Not particularly. So, this work you do, are there others who do this, too?”
“I know others,” he said. “We have our own network. Sometimes we team up if the job is challenging.”
Caroline thought again about that missing witness.
“And what are you working on right now?”
“As it turns out,” he said, smiling, “I’m between jobs and have some free time.”
Two days later, the service manager at the dealership where Caroline had bought her car phoned to say they were going to replace the entire engine, no charge, and they were tossing in one free car detailing per month for the next two years. It was also the first time Caroline could ever remember a car dealership sending flowers.
Sixteen
New York, NY
Jeremy Pritkin never did join Nicky Bondurant in the Winnebago that night. She’d done as he’d asked and gone inside, figuring he would be along shortly and they would do what they always did, or at least some variation of it. But then he’d gotten that phone call and forgot all about her.
The windows of the RV were cranked open, so she was able to hear the conversation, although she didn’t really have any idea what it was about. But it was clear Jeremy was upset about something, and she had the sense he was talking to a sister or a brother. She thought she’d heard the name Marissa.
When he was done with the call, Pritkin left the office and, presumably, returned to his party.
Nicky thought the smart thing to do was wait, at least for a little while, in case he came back. The last thing she wanted to do was make him even more disappointed with her.
It was never a good idea to disappoint Mr. Pritkin.
She waited for the better part of thirty minutes before deciding it was safe to leave, more than enough time to check out this new addition to Jeremy’s headquarters. What a crazy thing, putting an RV in your third-floor office. The man came across, in public, like a pretty normal guy. Well, if you defined normal as unbelievably rich and connected, outspoken and opinionated, someone who had the ear of decision makers around the globe.
But the outside world also had glimpses of his eccentric side. The Winnebago event was only the most recent.
Jeremy let Architectural Digest do a spread on his place in Spain, where he had a swimming pool shaped like the grill of a Rolls-Royce. And he’d once spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy some custom-made car from a TV show in the sixties — the Black Beauty or a Monkeemobile or a junky truck some hillbillies drove around in. She couldn’t remember which because she had no idea what the shows were. But when Jeremy bought it at an auction, it made the news. So now that he had it, he’d tucked it away in a garage somewhere. It wasn’t like he could actually drive the thing down Park Avenue. He spent God knew how much on a sports jacket Steve McQueen wore while driving a Mustang in some famous movie chase in San Francisco. Couldn’t wear it. Wasn’t even his size.
So those were some of the things the public knew.
But Jeremy Pritkin also had secrets, his love for erotic photography one of the less notable ones. Much bigger was his passion for having young girls like her available to him in his palatial New York residence.
Nicky was not the only one. Over the years, plenty of young women had moved through here. Entertained the man of the house and his friends, then moved on to other things when they got a little older.