To almost everyone outside this room-occupied by the top three officers of Omaha Logistics-it looked like a legitimate company.
“One of our cargo jets was seized yesterday in Fresno.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Omaha’s chief operating officer, a pasty-faced, chipmunk-cheeked man with a potbelly. “Fully loaded?”
Laurie nodded. “Then yesterday a banker in the San Francisco office of Pacific Commerce Bank disappeared.”
“Mother of God,” the controller said quietly, her face growing ever more mournful. “It’s Toth.”
“What do you mean, disappeared?” asked the chipmunk-cheeked COO.
“He didn’t show up for work,” Laurie said. “He’s not at home. We pinged him and he hasn’t replied.”
“Do you think he’s in the wind?” asked Omaha’s chief financial officer, a handsome Latino-looking man with a light brown complexion and thick black hair combed straight back.
“Look, maybe he’ll turn up on a beach in Playa del Carmen with a nose bag full of coke and a bevy of barely legal hookers. But I doubt it. That’s not his speed.”
“But do we have any reason to believe he’s been arrested?” the Latino CFO asked with alarm.
Laurie shrugged. “We sure as hell better hope not. I don’t even want to think about that possibility. Because if he has…” Her voice trailed off. Her stomach roiled with acid. She needed a Tums. Lately she’d been chewing them like candy.
A breach, a leak-that was the nightmare scenario they all dreaded. If the truth were ever to come out about Omaha, they’d all go to prison.
Or-given who their true employers were-worse.
“We have to find the banker at once,” the CFO said. “Before he spills anything.” In times of stress like this, his Mexican accent became more prominent.
“Obviously,” said Laurie. “But by far the more important matter is the leak. We need to find out where it’s coming from. Or who it’s coming from. And then it has to be plugged. By whatever means necessary.”
“Toth has to be found and prevented from talking,” the controller said, her voice rising sharply. “Can we get to him? Stop him?”
Laurie looked at Omaha’s CFO but said nothing. She wanted this to come from him.
He picked up on her cue. “If we act right away, we can contain the damage. We have a contractor.”
The other three corporate officers fell silent. The chipmunk-cheeked COO shifted in his chair.
“This can’t be traced back to us,” the controller said.
“Obviously,” the CFO said. “He is reliable and discreet. This is a job that requires a great deal of finesse. He is in fact a surgeon.”
“Are we all in agreement?” Laurie asked.
Everyone but the CFO seemed to be avoiding her eyes.
“This is not going forward unless we’re unanimous,” she said. She waited. A course of action as fraught with danger as this, she wanted everyone’s sign-off.
“Yes,” said the controller at last.
“All right,” said the COO.
Laurie Hornbeck turned to the CFO. “Then make the call,” she said.
27
Riding the T from Broadway to Park Street, he texted Abby: pick up @ 3? He never called her at school, of course. Nor did he send e-mails; e-mails were for old people, she insisted. Abby texted throughout the day, between classes and even during some classes. She texted with the speed of a court reporter. She used abbreviations and jargon he didn’t understand.
She replied within two minutes: Thanks but going over to Jenna’s, OK?
No, not okay. No way. Danny texted back: Not today. I want you at home.
The train went through a tunnel, and cell service was unavailable, and by the time he reached the Park Street stop, he had a voice mail. From Abby. He didn’t even bother listening to the message. He knew she’d be pleading or squawking, or some combination. Only desperation would cause her to resort to the spoken word.
As he crossed the platform to board the Green Line train to Arlington Street, he called her back.
“Daddy,” she answered, voice taut. “Jenna and I are going to study precalc, I swear. I promise we’ll be working.” In the background a girl squealed.
“You can do that at home,” he said.
“But we’re studying together. I mean, like, why do I have to be at home when we’re just going to be on chat?”
“I’d like you to be at home today.”
The DEA guys were right: He couldn’t abruptly pull out of Galvin’s orbit without raising all kinds of suspicion. But Abby was a different story. She was the connective tissue. If she stopped hanging out with Jenna, then he could part ways with Galvin naturally, no questions asked.
He felt like he’d pulled the pin from a grenade and hadn’t yet tossed it.
“I mean,” she said, her voice getting high, “I could ask the driver to take me home at, like, seven, so we can have dinner, okay?”
He could see Esteban’s mutilated head, and he felt nauseated.
“I’ll pick you up at three,” Danny said with finality, and pressed END.
Then he called Tom Galvin at his office. “You still free for a game of squash?”
28
Danny had walked past the grand old brownstone hundreds of times and had always wondered what was inside. It was a federal-style mansion with a white granite façade, on the steep stretch of Beacon Street facing the Public Garden. The building was wider than its neighbors, with a double bow front.
Its porticoed entrance was unmarked. Just a burnished oak door with a polished brass knob and brass mail slot. Most of the buildings on this block were private residences; Danny had always assumed it was one of those mansions that had been in some Boston Brahmin family since the days of Oliver Wendell Holmes.
It turned out to be the Plympton Club, Boston’s oldest social and athletic club. He’d heard about it but didn’t know anyone who belonged. Until now.
Inside, the creaky floors were covered with oriental rugs, the walls covered with oil paintings of boats and birds. A couple of racks of deer antlers were mounted on the wall. Display cases held yellowed antique squash racquets and sepia photographs of players from early in the last century. According to a piece in Boston magazine he’d read online, the Plympton Club had six squash courts, a saline pool, and a court-tennis court, known by racquet snobs as a real tennis court. There was a library and an ornate dining room.
He waited on a hard sofa, gym bag on the floor, and tried to act nonchalant.
His discomfort at being in the Plympton Club was nothing, however, compared to his fear of the device in his gym bag being discovered. And how the hell was he going to get five minutes with Galvin’s BlackBerry? It never seemed to leave his hands.
And if he got caught…?
What happened to Esteban could just as easily happen to him.
Danny found it hard to believe that Tom Galvin, who seemed an affable, genial type, was in any way involved in the unspeakable murder-torture of his own driver. Maybe he didn’t even know about it.
But the people Galvin worked for were brutal and cold-blooded and terrifying. They wouldn’t hesitate to do to Danny what they’d done to Esteban.
If he were caught.
He had to be extremely careful. If there was the slightest chance of being caught, he had to back out of it.
The young blond woman behind the reception desk smiled at him and resumed stamping forms or something with an old-fashioned date stamp. A couple of middle-aged business types came in, laughing heartily about a “triple bogey.” They both wore blue blazers with brass buttons. One wore green pants with whales on them. The other wore khakis. They greeted the woman behind the desk, and she waved them through a doorway.
“I kept you waiting,” Galvin called out as he entered from the street.