“Tell Mr. Kozelka I don’t care about the money. I didn’t ask for it, and I’m not here to ask for more. I’m not a criminal, and I’ll do the right thing with or without the help of the FBI. All I want is a straight answer to a very simple question. Why. That’s all I want to know. Tell him I want to know why.”
He headed for the door and opened it, then stopped and glanced back. “And tell him one more thing. Tell him my appointment with the FBI is Monday. Ten o’clock.
“I can find my own way to the elevator,” he said, closing the door behind him.
Amy took an early lunch off the beaten track of Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall. With her mind still buzzing from Marilyn, she didn’t necessarily want to be alone, just someplace where she was certain not to run into anyone from the law office.
She went to the Sink, one of her old college hangouts. In fact, it had been everybody’s college hangout since the thirties, achieving a genuine claim to fame when a young Robert Redford quit as janitor, bagged UC-Boulder, and decided to try his hand at movies. The decor was organized graffiti. Youthful exuberance was the only way to describe the atmosphere. The food was of the munchies variety, with self-described “Ugly Crust Pizzas” a heavy favorite. Amy took one with pineapple topping and grabbed a small table by the window.
She glanced at the table beside hers. Two guys barely old enough to drink were making small talk with the girls, planning the weekend. Amy thought back to the days when weekends started after the last class for the week, sometimes on Thursdays if you could fix a schedule with no Friday classes. She hadn’t had a real three-day weekend since — well, since college.
The television in the corner caught her attention. Noise from the lunch crowd made it inaudible, but she didn’t need audio to know what was going on. Marilyn was standing beside the President outside the White House. A semicircle of smiling onlookers were applauding. It was official. Marilyn Gaslow had her nomination as chairwoman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. Now all she had to do was withstand the congressional approval process.
“Mind if I join you?”
Amy looked up. The face triggered no recognition. The only thing for sure was that he was the only person in the restaurant older than Amy. Way older. From the corduroy jacket and Bugle Boy pants, she would have guessed he was a professor.
“Do I know you?”
He put down his soda and joined her at the table. He extended his hand, introducing himself. “Jack Forsyth. FBI.”
All she could say was “Oh.”
“I hate to interrupt your lunch, but I would like to talk to you.”
Amy froze. The warning outside the baseball stadium was all too fresh in her mind — how her daughter would pay if she talked to the police. But it was too late to get up and run. “Talk to me?” she asked innocently. “What about?”
“I think you know.”
“I think you’d better tell me.”
“We’ve been watching Ryan Duffy for several days now. And we’ve been monitoring his phone calls. We heard the message you left at his clinic. And we saw you meet with him last night in Denver.”
Amy tried not to flinch. Her message had been intentionally vague, she recalled, just in case someone other than Ryan had listened to it. “So?”
“So, we’ve checked you out as well. We understand you were robbed recently. We spoke to the detective from the Boulder police. Says you were acting strange during his interview, as if you were holding back something.”
“That’s his opinion.”
“Yes. It is a matter of opinion. But you know what? Just sitting here and watching your face for the last two minutes, I’ve formed the same opinion.”
Amy looked away. It was a curse, that expressive face of hers. It wasn’t just Gram who could read it.
The agent leaned closer. “Tell me. What are you doing with a guy like Ryan Duffy?”
She could sense his stare, but she didn’t look, couldn’t meet his eyes. She had too many reasons not to talk to him — the threat outside the stadium, and now Marilyn. She had promised Marilyn never to talk to anyone about the rape, and she knew that was where this would lead if she let the FBI in the door.
She gathered up her tray and rose, spilling her soft drink. “I have nothing to say to you,” she said, flustered.
“You will. Take my card,” he said, handing it to her. “Call me when you’re ready.”
Amy gave him a long look. She took the card without a word and walked away, never looking back.
45
Ryan went directly from K &G headquarters to Norm’s office. Norm was working alone in the conference room, preparing for tomorrow’s courtroom showdown. That Brent’s deposition had blossomed into a full-blown evidentiary hearing came as a surprise to Ryan. Norm wanted to talk strategy with his client. Ryan, however, unloaded a surprise of his own — the meeting with Kozelka, or at least with his right-hand man.
Norm listened without interruption, but Ryan could tell he was steaming.
“Big mistake,” said Norm. “I don’t see an upside to a stunt like that.”
“You got a better way to find out how my father committed rape and then turned it into blackmail?”
“You’ll never find that out. Not from Kozelka.”
“Had I already gone to the FBI, I would agree with you. But I made it very clear that I haven’t said anything to the FBI yet. Kozelka can keep the FBI out of this just by giving me the information I want.”
“Ryan, he’s not an idiot. If you don’t already know what information your father used to blackmail him, he’s not going to tell you. He’d be giving you carte blanche to pick up where your father left off and keep on blackmailing him. He’s probably back in his office doing cartwheels, delighted that your old man took the secret to the grave.”
Ryan fell silent. “I hadn’t really thought of it that way.”
“Of course you haven’t. You’re a brilliant guy, but you haven’t had a good night’s sleep since sometime before your father died. You’ve hardly slept at all in the last four days. Your wife’s divorcing you. Your blockheaded brother-in-law appears to have beaten the crap out of her lawyer. Your sister’s a pregnant squirrel. Your mother has her head in the sand. Your father’s a convicted rapist. You’ve been chased by the Panamanian police. The FBI and the IRS are breathing down your neck. Need I go on? You have too much to think about. That’s why you should listen to me, damn it. Or do you want to add ‘FBI Most Wanted’ to your list of woes?”
“So maybe I could have thought this through a little better. But Kozelka does appear to hold the key. I was afraid that once I went to the FBI, he might never talk. I’d never find the truth.”
“The truth is, you made a terrible mistake. And you made it for one reason: you’re still protecting your father.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your obsession right now is to find out why Kozelka paid your father all that money. One option is to cooperate with the FBI and let them interrogate Kozelka, but then you’d have to tell them your father was a rapist and extortionist. The other option is to barge into K &G headquarters like an idiot and demand to speak directly to Joe Kozelka yourself.”
Ryan was suddenly angry, pacing the room. “Is it really that crazy to wonder why a man like Kozelka would pay a rapist five million dollars?”
“You’re way too consumed by this rape question. Step back. You might even realize the blackmail has no connection at all to the rape.”
“Then why would the rape conviction record have been in the same safe deposit box as the Panamanian bank records?”
“Maybe the rape simply explains why your dad gave a two-hundred-thousand-dollar chunk of the money to Amy Parkens. You said it yourself before — it could have been his way of making amends for what he did to Amy’s mother. But the rape might have nothing to do with the reasons Kozelka or anyone else paid your father five million dollars.”
Ryan considered the theory quietly, saddened by its plausibility. He could think only of the horrified look on Amy’s face yesterday. “That would mean my father really did rape Amy’s mother.”