He loved that.
Faint classical music was on the radio but it dimmed when an incoming call announced itself. Daniel answered and spoke to his client in the awkward language of business that is at the same time vague and precise. Finally, some technical legal and financial decisions made, he offered a pleasant farewell to the man who’d earned The Norwalk Fund close to two hundred thousand dollars last year. He disconnected. The classical music rose once more. Mozart. The clarinet concerto. An odd instrument and very difficult, he knew, to play well. He’d dated a girl once who’d been a clarinetist in a symphony orchestra. She’d explained that the reeds had taken her the most time to master. “You’ve got to negotiate the sound from them.”
Daniel had liked that expression quite a lot, which was why he remembered the sentence, while the image of the girl had all but vanished years ago.
In his gray Canali suit, Daniel was certainly dressed for this area. He seemed like any other businessman returning home early from his White Plains law firm or investment bank.
He drove carefully. The streets were slick with colorful layers; wind and rain had conspired to thin the canopy of oak and maple, decimating the foliage (almost literally, removing about every tenth leaf or so — Daniel grew irritated when people used the verb incorrectly).
He steered onto Henderson Lane, presently deserted of traffic, and continued past houses less opulent than the mansions but just as quiet. The windows of the structures were dark, mostly, and he spotted not a single person on the clean sidewalks. At a four-way intersection, he braked to a stop and let a Grand Cherokee, dark red, precede him, turning into Henderson. Daniel accelerated slowly and fell in behind the vehicle.
Several blocks away, when the SUV eased up to a stop sign, Daniel stabbed the brake pedal. The Prius skidded on the leaves and tapped the bumper of the Jeep gently.
He frowned and glanced forward. He saw the eyes of the Jeep’s occupants, the driver’s in the mirror and his college-aged passenger’s directly: The girl turned to gaze with some generic hostility.
Daniel winced and climbed out. He joined the driver, standing by the Jeep’s open door. He shook his head. “I am so sorry!”
The stocky man in a navy sport coat, tan slacks and blue shirt grinned ruefully. “Not like you were doing a hundred miles an hour.”
“I didn’t think the leaves’d be that slick. Man, it was like ice. I just kept going.” Daniel looked into the front seat. He said to the girl, clearly the man’s daughter, “Sorry, you okay?”
“Like, yeah. I guess.” The blond girl returned to her iPod. The day was warm but she wore a stocking cap pulled down tight over her long hair, and the sleeves of her thick sweatshirt extended nearly to her fingers.
The two men walked to the back of the SUV and regarded the vehicle. The Cherokee driver said, “They make ’em tough. I was going to say American cars, but, hell, I don’t really know where these babies’re built. Could be Tokyo.” A nod at the Prius. “And that could’ve been made in Arkansas. Parts of it anyway.”
Daniel looked around the immaculate neighborhood. All was still deserted. “Thomas, listen carefully. Are you listening?”
The driver kept grinning. Waiting for an explanation. When there was none, he asked. “Do I know you?”
“No, you don’t. Now, I want the name of the bank in Aruba your investment partnership uses. And the main investment account number and the PIN.”
“Wait. What is this?”
Daniel unbuttoned his jacket and displayed the narrow grip of an old Smith & Wesson revolver. A .38 special.
“Oh, my God.” His eyes went to his daughter, lost in the elixir of music.
“Just give me the information and you’ll be fine. She will too.”
“Who are you...?” His voice rose into a filament of sound, not unlike a note from a reed instrument.
“Hold on, hold on,” Daniel said, keeping a smile on his face, just in case anybody did happen to be behind one of those black windows. “Don’t panic. You don’t want to do that. This is just business. All I want is that information. I’ll verify it and then you go on your way. You’ll be out twenty million dollars but no one will get hurt. Besides, you didn’t exactly get that through socially minded investments, did you?”
“You’re insane,” he whispered. Panic was gone, anger had taken its place. And fast. “You fucker. You do this in front of my daughter? Who are you working for?”
“Thomas, you don’t have much time. I’ll shoot your daughter first, because I need you alive to give me—”
“All right. Don’t even mention that! Don’t even say it! All right, I’ll give it to you.”
Daniel placed a call.
“Hello?” came the low, melodious answering voice.
“Andrew.” He handed the phone to Thomas and instructed, “Give him the information.”
“I don’t have it memorized!”
“She gets shot first and—”
“I just mean it’s in my phone! It’s encrypted. It’ll take a minute.”
Daniel said into the phone, “He’s got to decrypt it.”
Andrew Faraday said through the tinny speaker, “Okay. But hurry.”
Daniel glanced into the Jeep. The girl seemed irritated that she couldn’t find a song on her playlist.
With Daniel watching, to make sure that Thomas didn’t hit 911, the businessman began typing on his mobile. He lost his place. He took a deep breath. Daniel told him, “Stay calm. Take your time.”
“He said hurry!”
“Calm,” Daniel said.
Thomas started over. He nodded at the screen and took the phone from Daniel’s hand. He began reciting numbers.
Daniel took back the iPhone. “Well?” he asked Andrew.
He heard keyboard taps. A delay. “It’s good.” The phone disconnected.
The whole incident from car tap to confirmation had taken four minutes, just the time for two drivers to good-naturedly swap insurance info and agree there’d be no point in calling the police.
“Now get in your car and drive home. It’s okay. You gave us what we wanted. It’s all over with now. Just go home.”
Thomas turned and reached for the Jeep’s door with shaking hands. When he’d opened it, Daniel took a paper towel from his pocket and, wrapping it around the grip of the gun, drew the weapon and shot the businessman twice in the back of the head. He leaned down and looked in the passenger compartment, where blood flecked the dashboard and the windshield and the face and hat of his daughter, who was screaming as she stared at her father’s twitching body. She was clawing frantically at the door handle.
Daniel held up a reassuring hand. She froze, uncertain about the gesture, he imagined, and turned slightly toward him. He shot her once in the center of the chest. As she slumped back, staring up, he shot her twice more, in the mouth. For the brain stem. This emptied the five-round cylinder.
Daniel dropped the gun on the seat and pocketed the paper towel. He returned to the Prius and pulled around the Cherokee slowly. He drove out of the neighborhood, occasionally checking the rearview mirror, but saw no lights, no emergency vehicles. He noted only a few SUVs, two, coincidentally, with nearly identical infant seats affixed in the backseat.
He took a direct route to the parkway and then headed into the city. Eventually he ended up in the South Bronx. GPS sent him to an intersection, near one of the better — or at least cleaner — housing projects. He drove to where a Taurus sat idling in a parking space. He eased up behind it and flashed his lights, though the driver had already seen him, he’d observed. When the Ford had pulled out of the space, Daniel parallel parked, wiped the interior for fingerprints, then climbed out and dropped the keys on the floor of the car, leaving it unlocked. He got into the Taurus’s passenger seat.