“That’s one hell of a list of problems,” I said. “Hard to believe that we’re actually talking about me.”
“I hear that a lot from people sitting in that very same chair.”
I was suddenly thinking about Anoop Gupta from New Delhi and the status of my credit cards. “This is going to eat up a lot of your time,” I said. “How much do you charge?”
“I don’t want your money.”
“I insist.”
“I refuse.”
“But I want to pay you.”
“All right,” he said, “we’ll barter. I’ll be your lawyer, and you come for dinner with Janice and me at our place. You can even bring an expensive bottle of wine if you want.”
My little brother had boxed me in. Papa would have been ecstatic.
“Okay,” I said, managing a bit of a smile. “It’s a deal.”
I hurried out of my brother’s office in plenty of time to be long gone when the next e-mail arrived from JBU-the mysterious someone who supposedly wanted to help me.
That was the one thing I hadn’t told Kevin about. I didn’t need him thinking I was crazy all over again. I figured I’d deal with that if and when the follow up e-mail came. And it came right on schedule, at exactly ten-thirty A.M.
Orene 52, the subject line read.
I was emerging from the subway station on Seventh Avenue, about half a block away from Saxton Silvers’ shiny glass office tower, closer than any cab could have gotten me to the building. Double-parked media vans and news trucks blocked several lanes of traffic on the street. The sidewalk outside the building’s main entrance was jammed with reporters and camera crews jockeying for the perfect TV shot-right in front of the distinctive gold letters on the black granite wall that spelled SAXTON SILVERS. They pounced on anyone who came through the revolving doors, hoping for thirty seconds of breaking news. Through the windows on the third floor, I saw men and women dressed in business suits peering down on the frenzy. That was the Saxton Silvers foreign-exchange trading floor, normally a place of intense activity where traders were glued to their computer terminals, not standing at the window and pressing their worried faces to the glass.
Hopefully, none of them had it in mind to find a higher floor and jump.
Word was out that Kyle McVee had pulled the plug on Ploutus Investments’ $2.5 billion prime brokerage account. According to the latest FNN online update, two more major hedge funds were about to follow suit. The media smelled blood, and I sensed that at least a few drops were my own. It made me want to stay clear of anyone with a microphone. I stepped onto the sidewalk, found a lamppost to hide behind, and opened the latest e-mail message-the one that was supposed to tell me when and where to meet.
Today at 4 p.m. Table for two in front of the statue of Prometheus. That was the entire message. Again it was signed “JBU.”
“Michael?”
I turned at the sound of the distinctive voice and saw Papa standing next to a hot-dog cart. He was wearing a bright blue University of Florida Gators tracksuit, running shoes, and a pair of wraparound Oakley sunglasses so new that the tag was still hanging from the frame. All he needed was a garbage bag filled with knock-off Gucci purses and a selection of Rolex watches up to his elbow and he would have looked just like the sidewalk entrepreneur who’d sold him the glasses.
“What are you doing here?” I didn’t mean to sound accusatory. I was just surprised to see him.
“I was trying to get up to see you, but I couldn’t get near the building.”
“Is something wrong?”
He came closer and lowered his voice. On the busy streets of New York, Papa really sounded like a mobster when he whispered. “The FBI came to see me.”
“FBI? Why?”
“At first I thought it was about tracking down your lost money, so I was happy to talk to them. But then they started asking me all kinds of questions about the Bahamas, about Ivy, about-”
“About Ivy?”
“Well, not directly. It was more about that sailing trip you were on, and that guy who was your captain.”
“Rumsey?”
“Yeah, that’s the name. Did you know he was dead? Killed a few days ago in Harbor Island.”
The news took me aback, and not just because Rumsey was one of the nicest guys I’d ever met. That made two people who knew me and who’d been murdered in the same week.
Papa said, “The FBI apparently knows that you travel down to Florida pretty often to see Nana and me. The agent was really pushing hard to find out if you ever hooked up with Rumsey on any of your trips to Miami.”
“What did you tell him?”
“I said I don’t know anything about that. But that’s when I started to get a bad feeling about this whole thing. So I says to him, ‘If this ain’t about finding my grandson’s money, I’m not interested in talking to you.’”
I glanced toward the growing crowd outside Saxton Silvers’ headquarters. Suddenly it was hard for me to breathe. I knew who “JBU” was.
“Thanks, Papa. You done good.”
28
TEN MINUTES LATER, I WAS HEADED FOR LONG ISLAND. THE IVY factor was growing stronger, and I needed answers.
A phone call from Andrea had pushed me over the edge. It came just five minutes after my conversation with Papa. I still didn’t trust her, but the fact that my grandfather had also been approached by the FBI lent credence to her story.
“Heads up from a friend,” she’d told me. “The FBI just interviewed me. They seem to be questioning all the wives and significant others, anyone who might have known your first wife or anything about her disappearance.”
I didn’t drive often, but I loved my car. My first set of wheels in high school had been a nine-year-old Monte Carlo two-door coupe with a smashed-in fender, a broken heater, and a headlight that pointed at the moon. I bought it with my summer earnings and a five-hundred-dollar loan from Papa. When I finally unloaded it after B-school, the two-hundred-dollar CD player mounted under the dash was worth more than the entire car. The joke was that the dirt was holding it together, and it got to the point where I was actually afraid to wash it-what if it wasn’t a joke? Now I was head of the green team and drove a Mini Cooper Convertible, although it broke Papa’s heart when I took him to see The Italian Job and had to tell him that the “scoopers,” as he called them, weren’t actually Italian.
“Hello, Olivia,” I said when Mrs. Hernandez opened the door.
I didn’t know Ivy’s mother well. She was a widow who had never taken her husband’s surname, the proud Latina half of Ivy Layton’s heritage. I had spoken to her only once before Ivy’s death, and our only face-to-face meeting was at Ivy’s memorial service. I phoned her a couple of times after that, but it was clear that Olivia did not care to make me part of her life. At first I surmised that I was simply an unpleasant reminder of her daughter’s tragic death. As time wore on, however, I sensed that she actually blamed me, as if I should have been more careful with Ivy on the boat, should have noticed she was missing sooner and radioed for help, or could have done something to prevent it altogether.
“You should have called first,” she said from behind the screen door.
“I really need to speak to you,” I said.
“I’ve seen your name in the news,” she said. “Not too flattering.”
“That stuff’s not important. This is. It’s about Ivy.”
She stood there for a moment, saying nothing. Then she finally opened the door, and I was thankful to be inside. She led me to the parlor, and I glanced around the room as I settled into the armchair. I expected to see framed photographs of Ivy and of Olivia’s late husband on the bookshelves and end tables. There were none, at least not in this room.