“That Matisse in your entryway. Did you buy it?”
Her eyes widened slightly. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t.”
He turned in his seat and looked at the sculpture of a ballerina that stood on the mantle above the fireplace. Her feet in fifth position, the original pink ribbon in her hair, the sculpture was one of Gloria’s favorites and had been sold at auction a year ago, after the suicide of its previous owner. Marty noticed it when he walked in. “And the sculpture by Degas? Did you buy that?”
Maggie smiled.
“I know about your relationship with Mark Andrews,” he said.
“It’s no secret. I loved Mark. He was everything to me.”
“Did he buy you the Matisse and the Degas?”
“I do well, but not that well. He also bought me the piano.”
“How about this house?”
Maggie shook her head. “I bought the house-Mark just helped me furnish it.”
“I want you to tell me about your relationship.”
“I want you to tell me why it’s important.”
“It’s important because I’ve just learned from a friend that for years, you’ve been under surveillance by the FBI. I have a feeling you do know Wolfhagen. I have a feeling you’re writing this book for reasons other than insight or commercial success. I don’t like being lied to, and if I’m going to work for you, I expect you to tell me the truth.”
Maggie looked at him for a moment, the expression on her face wavering between anger and resentment. She stood and went to the piano, where there was a pack of cigarettes on the padded bench. She shook one out, lit it with a gold lighter. “You’ve run a check on me?”
“I run a routine check on everyone who wants to hire me. It’s standard procedure. You weren’t singled out.” He let a beat of silence pass. “Are you aware of the FBI’s surveillance?”
“Of course, I’m aware of it. They aren’t exactly subtle.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Too long-I don’t know. Years.”
“Do you know why they’re watching you?”
Maggie laughed. “Do I know why they’re watching me? Jesus, Marty, I was involved with a man who helped to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from people around the world. I lived with a man who passed briefcases filled with cash to people in Central Park and who was partly responsible for the stock market collapse. Mark did all these things without my knowing it-until the day the FBI knocked on our door and read him his rights.
“Now, look,” she said. “I’ve asked you to watch someone for me. If you take the job, I’ll pay your fee. While I’m flattered by your interest in my personal life, I’m sure as hell not going to share it with you. It’s none of your business. You can take this job or not. As for the FBI, they’ve been watching me for years-they’re probably listening to us right now-but I don’t care because I’ve never done anything wrong. I don’t have any of Mark’s stolen money stashed away in some Cayman account. I was a victim. By writing about Wolfhagen, by exposing the truth about him, I’ll finally be able to close that part of my life and move on. That’s why I’m writing the book. That’s why I want to hire you.”
It wasn’t enough. “How well do you know Wolfhagen?”
Maggie closed her eyes. “Well enough to know that he deserved far more than the three meager years he spent at Lompoc.” She looked at him. “I hate the man, Marty. He’s a cruel son of a bitch and I’m going to burn him with this book.”
In her anger, he saw something else. Vulnerability? Fear? There was something more here and it went beyond mere anger.
He was about to speak when she raised a hand. “That’s it,” she said. “That’s all I’m offering. Yes, I know Wolfhagen. Yes, I lied to you and I’m sorry. But to be honest, I’m not going to tell you my entire life history when we’ve only known each other for a few hours. I don’t even know if I can trust you.”
Marty decided that was fair. He certainly wouldn’t tell her how his commitment issues had twice cost him his marriage to Gloria. But still he was uneasy. He could see she was shaken. There was something she wasn’t telling him, but if he could earn her trust, he felt she would eventually reveal it.
They fell into a silence. Maggie stood looking at him, drawing on her cigarette. Marty searched for something to say, but everything that came to mind seemed inadequate. It was Maggie who spoke first. “So, will you help me and take the job? Or have I spoiled everything?”
He needed something to take his mind off Gloria.
“I know you’re good. I think we could work well together.”
Her toughness was a facade.
“You haven’t spoiled anything,” he said.
“Then you’ll take the job?”
Here was the perfect opportunity to do what came naturally-lose himself in his own movie, one in which even he didn’t know the ending.
“I’ll start tomorrow.”
CHAPTER FOUR
Carmen Gragera paused outside the building on Wall Street and looked through the tinted wall of glass. The uniformed security guard was there, seated at the circular front desk, his face glowing blue in the flickering light of a television she couldn’t see.
Watching him, she lifted the lapel of her black business suit and spoke into the tiny wireless microphone Spocatti hid there earlier. “He’s alone,” she said. “Start filming. I’m going in.”
She pushed through the revolving doors and moved across the lobby, her attache case swinging, her heels clicking like drum taps on the shiny marble floor. The man looked up from the television as she approached. “I have an appointment to see Gerald Hayes,” she said. “He’s expecting me.”
“Your name?”
“Maria Leonard. From the Times.”
The man swung around to his computer, typed her name into the machine and smiled at her while waiting for confirmation. Carmen smiled back. She lowered her gaze in a way an American woman might and glimpsed the gun holstered at his waist. Had he ever used it before? Carmen doubted it.
And he certainly wouldn’t use it on her.
The computer screen flashed and the man nodded at the illumined wall of elevators behind him. “Mr. Hayes is on the 20th floor, third office on the right. I’ll call and let him know you’re coming.”
Carmen crossed to one of the elevators and stepped inside. She punched the button marked 20 and leaned back against a mirrored wall as the elevator began its rapid ascent.
Late last evening, she arrived from Salamanca and hadn’t slept. Instead, she and Spocatti spent the entire night talking, planning, exchanging ideas and stories, speaking on the phone with Wolfhagen and deciding how this would play out and who would be next. In spite of getting no sleep, she felt absolutely alive.
The elevator slowed. Carmen glanced up at the lighted dial and saw the number 20 highlighted in blue. She felt a prickle of anticipation.
The doors slid open, revealing a tastefully decorated corridor accented with 19th-century furniture, paintings on the hunter-green walls, alabaster lamps casting umbrellas of soft light on the otherwise bare tables. Carmen stepped out. She could feel the gun concealed behind her buttoned, loose-fitting jacket. Hayes’ office would be at the end of the hall, third on the left.
She started toward it, recalling her conversation with Wolfhagen, a man she and Spocatti hadn’t met in person, but only spoken with on the phone.
Gerald Hayes had been one of Wolfhagen’s most trusted friends, and still he became an undercover agent for the Department of Justice, going so far as to tape a recorder to his chest and trick Wolfhagen into admitting that he had traded, time and again, on inside information. Hayes had done all this for personal immunity. He’d sat on the witness stand, pointed a finger at the man who had made him millions, and sent him to prison with his testimony.
Now, at fifty, Hayes was reestablishing himself in a world that had shunned him only a few short years before.