Sol was the one to deal with here. He was the boss. He’d come up from the streets. He’d know how Bolden was feeling. “Did you talk to her?” he asked him. “She told you this herself?”
“No, I did not,” said Sol. “Her attorneys have contacted the firm. If it makes you feel any better, we’ve decided to place both you and Diana on paid leave until the matter’s settled.”
“I can’t take leave right now,” Bolden protested. “We’re about to close the Trendrite deal.”
“Jake Flannagan can take it.”
Bolden swallowed, the hairs on the back of his neck bristling. And his bonus? Would Flannagan take that, too? This was the biggest deal of his career they were talking about. “This is crap!” he said, bolting out of his chair, throwing his arms in the air. “Utter bullshit!”
Schiff stepped forward to deliver the coup de grâce. “Miss Chambers’s attorneys have informed us that she will be pressing criminal charges against you, and against the firm. Besides the events of last night, she’s talking about some past violations that took place right in this office.”
“This is a mistake,” said Bolden, his eyes searching the office as if he might find the answer hidden in his books or papers. “Diana must be covering for someone.”
“It’s no mistake,” said Sol. Suddenly, he looked bored and annoyed, and Bolden could see that he was against him. “Look, Tommy, let’s do this nice and easy. Mickey’s talked to the special victims unit of the police department and he’s convinced them not to arrest you on the premises.”
“Arrest me? For what? I already told you I didn’t do anything.”
“If you’ll just gather your things and go downstairs…”
“I’m not going downstairs or anywhere else,” argued Bolden. “I don’t know what’s going on… why Diana would make these insane accusations, but I’m not just going to stand here and take it. You’ve all known me for six years. Look at the work I’ve done at the firm. At the club. I’m not some kind of animal.” But when he looked at the two men, he met a stone wall. “You have my word that I did not touch Diana Chambers.”
“Tommy, we’ve got the letters,” said Weiss. “The lovebird stuff you and Diana were exchanging by e-mail.”
“There are no e-mails,” said Bolden. “I’ve never written Diana Chambers a flirtatious e-mail in my life.”
Weiss shook his head, his mouth pinched uncomfortably. “As I said, Tom, we have a record of your correspondence.”
“You have no such thing.”
All the while, Schiff had been holding a sheaf of papers rolled up in his hands. Now he raised the papers and extended them to Bolden. “You’re denying you wrote these?”
Bolden read through the e-mails. It was standard soap-opera script. I love you. I need you. Let’s go screw in the washroom. Exactly what you’d expect from a pair of egocentric young bankers in love. “I know what kind of software the firm uses,” he said. “It records every keystroke of every computer in the place. If I wrote those records from my computer, it will show it. Time. Date. Everything. Show me the records.”
“There are ways around that-” said Schiff.
“Get an expert in here right now,” said Bolden, approaching Sol Weiss. “Someone who can take apart my hard drive and tell us who hacked into it. Then we’ll have some idea of who engineered this… this… setup. Come on, Sol. Put a stop to this. Someone’s framing me.”
“Who?” Schiff cut in. “Answer that. Who did all this? Who busted up Diana’s face? Who wrote all those e-mails? Come on.”
Bolden wasn’t sure how to go about describing his suspicions. Where to begin… what to say…
And in that instant, he lost them. Weiss’s face clouded over. Schiff’s brow tightened. Bolden’s momentum was spent. The temperature in the room might as well have dropped ten degrees.
“Nobody’s taking your computer apart,” said Schiff. “We know that you were conducting a secret affair with Diana Chambers. You had a couple of drinks under your belt, you felt the blood running, so you took her to the bathroom. She didn’t deliver the goods, so you smacked her.” He turned to Sol Weiss. “Come on, we’ve wasted enough time on this. It doesn’t matter what Bolden says in here, anyway. We’re all fucked. It’s going to end up in court and the firm’s reputation will be indelibly tarnished.”
Weiss laid a hand on Bolden’s shoulder. “Look, Tom, unfortunately, everything Mickey’s said is true. There is going to be a criminal complaint lodged against you and the firm. I, personally, would appreciate it if you’d allow these gentlemen to accompany you to the lobby.”
Bolden looked at the guards and realized that he didn’t recognize them. He, Thomas Bolden, who went out of his way to talk to every employee, to know their names, and a little about them, had never before laid eyes on these two hulks. They sure as hell weren’t your average Argenbright employees. They weren’t affable or easygoing. No weight problem, lousy vision, or snaggletoothed grins here. These guys were pumped. They were fit. Like Wolf and Irish, they were capable.
“Who are they? I don’t know them.”
“Come on, sir,” said one of the guards, reaching out for him. “Let’s do this the right way.”
Bolden shrugged off the hand. Belatedly, it came to him that this entire charade was an extension of last night’s events. Guilfoyle was not finished with him. Bolden backed up a step. Suddenly, he was going on about what had happened the night before. The mugging, the ride to Harlem, the intense interrogation about subjects on which he was totally and blessedly ignorant. He pointed at his cheek, demanding that they all take a closer look. “It’s a powder burn. Someone tried to kill me. That’s what this is about. It’s about something called Crown. About some guy I never even heard of. Check their chests,” he said heatedly, pushing his way past Schiff toward the uniformed guards. “They have tattoos. A musket. Look for yourselves.”
Sol Weiss clutched at Bolden’s shoulder. “Tommy, calm down. Get ahold of yourself. We’re listening.”
“No, you’re not,” said Bolden, turning on him, knocking Weiss’s hand off his shoulder. “You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said. You’ve made up your minds and you’re wrong.”
He hadn’t meant to be so aggressive, but somehow Weiss lost his balance and toppled to the floor. The sixty-eight-year-old chairman of the last pure partnership on Wall Street uttered a plaintive cry and tumbled backward into the corner. A billionaire had been assaulted by a hysterical executive. A violent, unstable criminal had taken his hand to the head of the firm.
Bolden kneeled to help Sol Weiss to his feet. Mickey Schiff struggled to get past him and offer assistance to the fallen chairman.
A billionaire had been assaulted!
“Goddamn it,” said Schiff over his shoulder. “Get Bolden out of here. Now!”
One of the two guards, the one who’d done the talking, unsnapped his holster and drew his pistol. “Mr. Bolden. You will come with us now, sir.”
Until then, Bolden had kept his emotions under control. One look at the gun changed all that. They had missed him once, he told himself. They wouldn’t miss him again. His escape had been a matter of dumb luck. No one had expected Bolden to be able to look after himself. The sole advantage he’d enjoyed was gone. He was sure that the men downstairs were not police officers, and that this had nothing to do with assaulting a woman. Nothing happens without a reason. It was about a setup.
And in that instant, all his old talents came back to him in a rush: his distrust of authority, his reckless violence, his fine-tuned paranoia, and most important, his hard-earned instinct for survival.