At first, it looks like a bookmark, but there’s a confused squint on Charlie’s face.
“What’s it say?” I ask.
“I have no idea.” Flipping it around, Charlie turns the bookmark sideways and reveals four photos – headshots, all in a row. A salt-and-pepper-haired older man, next to a pale mid-forties banker type, next to a freckled woman with frizzy red hair, next to a tired-looking black man with a cleft chin. It’s like one of those photobooth strips, but since it runs horizontally, it looks more like a lineup.
“What’s yours say?” Charlie asks.
I almost forgot. Gripping the legal-looking document, I skim as fast as I can: Confidentiality… Limits on Disclosure… Shall not be limited to formulae, drawings, designs… “I may’ve never gone to law school, but after four years of dealing with paranoid rich people, I know an NDA when I see one.”
“A what?” Charlie asks.
“NDA – a nondisclosure agreement. You sign them during business deals so both sides’ll keep their mouths shut. It’s how you prevent a new idea from leaking out.”
“And this one…?”
I hold up the document and point to the signature at the bottom. It’s a mad scribble in muddy black ink. But there’s no mistaking the name. Martin Duckworth.
43
“I don’t get it,” Gillian says. “You think dad invented something?”
“Oh, he definitely invented something,” I say, my voice already racing down the mountain. “And from the looks of it, he was up to something big.”
“What’re you talking about?” Charlie asks.
I once again wave the creased paper through the air. “Read the other signature on the contract.”
He grabs my wrist to hold it steady. Agreed to and signed – Brandt T. Katkin – Chief Strategist, Five Points Capital. “Who’s Brandt Katkin?” Charlie asks.
“Forget Katkin – I’m talking about Five Points Capital. With a name like that and a letter like this, I’ll bet you my boxers it’s a VC.”
“VC?” Gillian asks.
“Venture capital,” I explain. “They lend money to new companies… get entrepreneurs rolling by investing in their ideas. Anyway, when a venture capital firm signs a nondisclosure agreement – trust me on this one – we’re talking pocketfuls of cash on the line.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s how the business works – these VCs see hundreds of new ideas every day – one guy invents Widget A; another guy invents Widget B. Both widget guys want to get nondisclosure agreements before they go in and lift their skirts. But the VCs – they hate nondisclosures. They want to see up every skirt they can lay their eyes on. More important, if a VC signs a nondisclosure, it opens itself up to liability. When we took a client to Deardorff Capital in New York last year, one of the partners said the only way they’d sign an NDA was if Bill Gates himself walked in and said, ‘I have a great idea – sign this and I’ll tell you about it.’”
“So the fact that Duckworth got them to sign…”
“… means that he’s got a Bill Gates-sized idea,” I agree. Turning to Gillian, I ask, “Do you have any clue what he was working on?”
“No, I… I didn’t know he was building anything. All his other inventions were tiny – like the 8-track.”
“Not anymore,” I say. “If this is right, he came up with something that makes the 8-track look like, well… like an 8-track.”
“It had to be something with computers,” Charlie adds.
“Really? You think?” Gillian asks sarcastically.
“No. Just a guess,” he shoots back.
“Both of you – stop,” I warn. “Gillian, are you sure there’s nothing you can think of? Anything at all that he might’ve been trying to sell?”
“What makes you think he was selling it?”
“You don’t go to a VC unless you need some cash. Either he got them to invest, or he made the sale outright.”
“So that’s where he got the money?” Charlie asks. “You think the idea was that good?”
“If they’re giving him three million dollars,” Gillian adds, “it’s gotta be major good.”
Charlie wings me a look. If it’s three hundred mil, it’s King Kong good.
“What about the photos?” Gillian blurts out of nowhere. She sounds incredibly excited, but as Charlie immediately points out, her bare feet are once again fists on the carpet. What does he expect? We’re all anxious.
“So they’re not relatives or anything?” Charlie asks her.
“Never seen ’em before in my life.”
“What about friends?” I ask.
“I bet one of them’s Brandt Katkin,” Charlie says, motioning with his chin at the nondisclosure agreement.
“They could be anyone,” I add, unable to slow down. With the taste of hope on my tongue, I stare down at the four headshots. “I’m betting they were his contacts at the VC.”
“Maybe they were people he was working with,” Charlie adds. “Maybe they were the people he trusted.”
“Or maybe they were the ones who killed him,” Gillian says. “They could all be Secret Service.”
All three of us fall silent. At this point, anything’s possible.
“So what do we do now?” she adds.
“We should call up this guy Brandt Katkin and ask him about Five Points Capital,” Charlie suggests.
“At two in the morning?” Gillian asks.
“The later the better,” he glares back at her, refusing to give a centimeter. “We should go down there and bust through a window. In high school, Joel Westman once taught me how to take out an alarm with a kitchen magnet. We can rummage through the files Watergate-style.”
“No, that’s a great idea,” I chime in. “Then you two can lower me on a rope from the airvents, where I’ll try to stop a single drop of sweat from falling to the ridiculously overprotected floor and simultaneously grab the NOC list.”
Charlie’s eyes narrow. “Are you being sarcastic?”
“Stay focused,” I tell him. “Why risk it all sneaking through the back when we can walk right in the front?”
“Say what?”
“Work with what you have,” I say, pointing to Gillian. “If they made that kind of investment in Duckworth’s future, don’t you think they’ll want to meet his next of kin…?”
“So you really want to go down there?” Charlie asks.
“First thing tomorrow morning,” I say, still feeling the sugar rush. “Me, you, Gillian… and all our new friends at Five Points Capital.”
44
“You’re not going to like it,” DeSanctis warned as he entered Gallo’s office in the downtown Field Office of the Secret Service. It was almost two in the morning and the halls were dead-empty, but DeSanctis still shut the door.
“Just tell me what it says,” Gallo demanded.
“Her name’s Saundra Finkelstein, fifty-seven years old…” DeSanctis began, reading from the top sheet of the stack. “Tax returns say she’s been renting there for almost twenty-four years – plenty of time to become best friends.”
“And the phone records?”
“We went back six months. On average, she spends at least fifteen minutes a day on the horn with Maggie. Since last night, though, not a single call.”
“What about long distance?”
“See, that’s where it starts getting ugly. At one A.M. last night, she accepted her first-ever collect call – from a number we identified as – ready for this? – a payphone in Miami International Airport.”
Biting at the knuckle of his thumb, Gallo stopped. “What?”
“Don’t look at me…”
“Who the hell else am I supposed to look at!?” he asked, slamming the desk with his fist. “If they’re at Duckworth’s-”