“I’ve never been more ready,” Wilson said.
“We’ll find her, Wilson. Just buy us some time. Like you said, let them think you’ll give them whatever they want.”
“My thoughts exactly. Here we go,” Wilson said before hanging up. He then talked briefly to O’Connor and Throckmorton, who both agreed that BBDO and Tate Waterhouse represented the two best firms of the seven for Fielder amp; Company’s publicity initiative.
Minutes later, Wilson walked into the Bostonian Club and was immediately escorted to a private dining room on the club’s exclusive third floor. The room looked like a nineteenth-century den with an impressive collection of classic and modern works, an Italian marble fireplace, glazed leather sofas and chairs, exquisite Persian rugs, and two Marsden Hartley originals. He focused on the decor to calm himself, musing on the irony of a beat generation socialist painter, like Hartley, supplying the backdrop for exclusive luncheon meetings among Boston’s elite. But the blue-blooded rich always ignored such contradictions. They bought whatever they wanted whenever they wanted, he thought, remembering detective Zemke’s comment about his father.
Wayland Tate stepped into the room and closed the door behind him. Wilson scoffed nervously to himself, knowing that this meeting would be far from private. Who else besides Hap’s team would be eavesdropping? It was a twisted spectacle of standard operating procedure in a postmodern corporate world.
“You bear a striking resemblance to your father,” Tate said.
Wilson smiled without commenting. How much gamesmanship do we have to go through before Tate gets to the real reason for his lunch invitation? He fought back his rising anger. He needed to remain calm and collected.
“He was a visionary, your father,” Tate said, staring at one of the Marsden Hartley paintings. “I have no doubt, whatsoever, that he will go down in history as the man who launched the transformation of capitalism, and I don’t mean the revolution Marx and Engels imagined. Thankfully, the rich turned out to be too smart for that. But your father was smarter than all of them. How’s he doing?”
Wilson placed his hands in his pockets. Tate’s candid comment had caught him off guard. “We hope he’ll regain consciousness soon.”
“Believe me, we’re all hoping for that, Wilson,” Tate said. “Shall we sit down?”
Wilson nodded, still surprised by Tate’s openness and candor.
“How’s your mother?” Tate asked once they were seated.
“She’s doing well, staying busy,” Wilson said.
“Glad to hear it. Back in our college days, your mother and father were the envy of anyone seeking true romance.”
Disarmed again by Tate, Wilson said, “I didn’t know you went to college together.”
“Columbia University, Class of ’69-the last summer of love. We all expected your father to become the next Jack Kerouac. Have you read his poetry?”
Stunned yet again, he’d never read his father’s poetry because he didn’t know it existed. Wilson felt himself sinking fast. “No,” Wilson said, nervously picking at the seams of his napkin.
“He always said he’d buried his literary past at the B-school,” Tate said while studying Wilson’s expressions. “But, luckily for us, he never lost his passion for changing the world.”
“There are things I still don’t know about my father,” Wilson said, as the waiter entered the room with a bottle of Chardonnay, antipasti, fresh bread, and the day’s menu.
After they had ordered and the waiter was gone, Tate picked up his napkin and carefully placed it in his lap. “I’m not surprised. Everything he was doing depended on secrecy.”
“What was he doing?” Wilson asked, now becoming annoyed with the way Tate seemed to be toying with him.
“Transforming capitalism.”
“How?” Wilson said as he moved his chair closer to the table.
“By documenting widespread abuses in the capital markets,” Tate said, pausing to take a sip of the Chardonnay. “Without noticeable failure, democracies rarely create change.”
There was no more holding back, Wilson told himself. “You mean he planned all along to expose Fielder amp; Company’s insider’s club?” Wilson asked as the tablecloth moved under his tensed elbows, almost spilling the glass of wine in front of him.
“At the right time and in the right way, yes,” Tate said slowly, continuing to study Wilson over the rim of his glass of Chardonnay.
“When?” Wilson demanded. He wasn’t about to sit there chatting amiably while Emily was still being held hostage.
As Tate put down his glass of wine, his face took on a solemn and serious expression. “Our original plan was to document ten years of stock market abuse and then disclose everything. The idea was to galvanize public opinion against capitalism in its current form. The insiders club, as you described it, was created so CEOs from the world’s largest corporations could get anything and everything they wanted by trading on each other’s company secrets. But the real purpose behind our web of insider trading was to force fundamental changes in the way capitalism is practiced. Ultimately, we wanted to supplant the big money interests, who manipulate the global financial system and crush whoever gets in their way. They’ve killed four American presidents and bought the rest. They murdered your great-grandfather Harry Wilson Fielder, after killing two of his closest associates, Congressman Louis T. McFadden from Pennsylvania and William Tate Boyles from New York. They were eliminated to keep them from exposing generations of concealed corruption. William Tate Boyles was my grandfather. Your father and I shared a common vow to avenge their deaths.”
Wilson’s head was imploding. Was Tate telling him the truth? Had this been his father’s ultimate agenda? He couldn’t wait any longer. “Where’s Emily?”
Tate leaned forward, peering into Wilson’s hazel-green eyes for several moments before responding. “I’m aware that she’s been kidnapped, but I didn’t have anything to do with it, Wilson.”
“Who, then?” Wilson said in exasperation, as the waiter entered the private dining room and placed house salads in front of them.
Tate picked up his fork and held it over the top of his salad. “Does the name Davis Zollinger mean anything to you?”
“Of course,” Wilson said, put off by the condescension. “My father has been charged with the murder of his two daughters. Zollinger was found dead in his Boston office six months ago.”
Tate took a bit of salad before proceeding. “Zollinger was a partner with Damien Hearst, the well-known corporate attorney and dealmaker in Chicago. They were both clients of Fielder amp; Company and Tate Waterhouse, until they started making deals on their own, most of them illegal. Zollinger got smart and wanted out, but Hearst blackmailed him into staying. When Zollinger threatened to go to the FBI, Hearst had him killed and made it look like suicide,” Tate said, taking a sip of his Chardonnay. “Zollinger’s daughters began their own investigation, which could have compromised everything we were doing. That’s when your father decided it was time to accelerate disclosure.” Tate paused again. “He invited Zollinger’s daughters to White Horse, so he could convince them of our commitment to avenge their father’s death. He succeeded. But we failed to protect him from Hearst.”
“Hearst shot my father?” Wilson asked, captivated by this smooth-talking, well-heeled man who claimed to share his father’s lofty goals for societal reform.
“A contract killer hired by Hearst killed the Zollinger women-your father was shot to make it look like a murder-suicide. Hearst was invited to White Horse with a group of current and former clients who were ignoring our guidelines. He was one of the partnership’s legal resources. We threatened to blow the whistle on all of them, if they didn’t conform. You have to understand that each of them was a walking time bomb. They still are. If one of them gets caught, it could still jeopardize everything,” Tate said, hesitating a moment. “We don’t know how Hearst found out about our ultimate plan, but he did. Ever since then, he’s been enticing and coercing members of the partnership to join him. He’s taken your father’s maxim to a whole new level. His latest victim was David Quinn.”