Bloodthirst in Babylon Read online

  He’d had an office in a nearby building back in the day. Less than a year ago, actually, before the bottom dropped out of the market and fortunes and life savings got lost and reputations got ruined. Or at least severely scarred.

  “So,” said Freddie into a brief lull in their shared reminiscences, and Paul knew this was the moment he was supposed to grab. Freddie wouldn’t go there until he did.

  Paul shifted in his overly accommodating chair. He’d sunk so deeply into its inviting fabric that he felt wedged into comfort, not an altogether good feeling. After squirming briefly, he said, “So what have you found out, Freddie?”

  Freddie nodded, as though the right question had been posed. “I’ve had conversations—informal, and off the record—with people at the SEC and in the attorney general’s offices of two states.”

  God, could it get any more ominous than that last sentence?

  “The good news,” Freddie was saying, “is that it’s not quite a Ponzi or Madoff situation.”

  Yes, it could get worse. Your lawyer could start throwing around two names that Paul, as a former investment broker, didn’t like to hear even when being told that the comparison to his own situation was inapt. It was obvious that this small morsel of good news was only a prelude to the rest of the story. For instance, that phrase, not quite, would have to be dealt with.

  He waited for it.

  “The unfortunate thing,” Freddie continued after a moment, “is that some of Veck’s investment decisions were…” Here he hesitated, pawed through all of the possibilities before selecting the right word. “…aggressive, to say the least.”

  Paul nodded. “Of course they were aggressive, Freddie. How could our investors earn the kind of returns they were seeing for seven years if the fund was risk-averse?”

  “Yes, those returns.” Freddie leaned back and his hooded eyes slid over his office.

  The latte-colored walls and bleached wood surfaces held framed photographs of Freddie Brace with women. At various times and places he posed with his mother, his sister and with a recent governor of the state. In others, he shared banquets, balls and fundraisers with attractive females in evening attire, some of whom he’d casually referred to, at one point or another, as girlfriends. However, those women were just as likely to refer to Freddie, in conversation, as friend or business associate.

  His lawyer had never addressed his sexuality in Paul’s company, and that was a blessing. Still, Paul had come to believe from early in their friendship that Freddie lived more or less happily in a closet he had no intention of leaving anytime soon.

  Fine with Paul. His thoughts were mainly, at this moment, on one Dominick Veck.

  Seven years ago, Veck had seemed like a godsend from Manhattan. They’d been introduced by someone in the Pittsburgh office of Paul’s firm who’d raved about the returns his clients were getting. Paul started small, just investing a small portion of the funds of his most aggressive clients, just to see what happened. He earned returns a percentage point or two higher than his other funds. Not high enough to make him suspicious, but Veck definitely earned more of his business.

  As Veck outperformed the market, quarter after quarter, Paul’s own reputation grew with the satisfaction level of his private, commercial and institutional clients. His success had not gone unnoticed. Three years ago, he’d been made managing partner of the Detroit office and had already, by that point, received a couple seven-figure bonuses and several more in the high six figures.

  “It wasn’t a…scheme?” Paul said forcefully, as though he could turn the question into a statement of fact.

  “The problem,” said Freddie, who hesitated before answering, “is that Veck’s returns were always high—even when the market dipped. Forensic accountants can trace those early returns to his smart, though high-risk strategies. In other words, he really knew what he was doing—and the market helped. However, in the last year or so, the market went in one direction and he continued in the other.”

  Which was how Paul had pocketed a significant raise the previous December and an eight-hundred-thousand dollar year-end bonus even while the firm lost money for the first time in decades.

  “Veck is talking,” Freddie said. “He’s telling investigators that he had to keep returns high. His reputation demanded it. He also had multiple mortgages and, naturally, a mistress that had to be kept as comfortable as his wife.”

  Freddie chuckled at that last comment, then retrieved the humor when he seemed to reflect on how close to Paul’s situation he’d hit.

  He cleared his throat and started again. “It was only in that last year that Veck started manufacturing returns. Sending out his own balance statements. Figuring that he’d make good when the markets ran bullish again. Only…”

  Here, Freddie shrugged. The rest needn’t be said. Paul knew as well as everyone what had happened to Wall Street when basic laws of mathematics had caught up with all of that balls-out borrowing and investing and lending. It didn’t take more than an hour after Dominick Veck’s name had come up in a defensive press release by his firm that an emergency meeting of the board at Knoll Sullivan/Weldman Group LLP had been called in Boston and Paul had been invited to appear.

  “I didn’t know anything about it, Freddie.”

  “Of course not, man. You just operated a feeder fund.”

  Paul winced. Feeder fund. A phrase that had become an indictment in and of itself. He was screwed.

  “The political climate is such that I can’t say the risk of prosecution is non-existent,” said Freddie.

  Paul had to read between the cautious legalese to hear what was really being said: You might go to jail, but the risk is minimal for now.

  Meaning that it wasn’t a problem that he hadn’t brought a toothbrush to this meeting. About all the good news he’d get that day.

  “There are, however,” Freddie went on, “a couple areas of threat.”

  “Only a couple?” Paul said, trying for grim humor.

  Freddie saw it and flashed an accommodating smile before continuing. “First, there are the investors who lost money. Hundreds have already grabbed attorneys.”

  “I didn’t do anything wrong, Freddie.”

  The lawyer nodded in full agreement. Charles Manson’s attorney had nodded the same way.

  “Lawsuits of this nature tend to take a shotgun approach, Paul. Let’s hit everyone and see who bleeds. So, in this case we’re talking about Dominick Veck and his firm, Knoll Sullivan and you. Hell, they’ve probably managed to work your office landlord and your window washing service into the action, but, as I like to say, ‘suing ain’t getting.’“

  “Meaning you don’t think I’m vulnerable.”

  Here, Freddie momentarily slipped eye contact. When he returned it he said, “More like, I think all the lawsuits will get consolidated and they’ll take one lump-sum settlement from you. You have liability insurance, don’t you?”

  “My company has—had—coverage on me. But now that I don’t work there…”

  Freddie studied his face for a long time. Or his eyes remained on Paul and his thoughts drifted elsewhere. Hard to say. Finally, he said, “Which gets us to our second area of concern. Your former employer.”

  While they’d thrown money at him and promoted him to the top during the good times, Anchor/Tatum had terminated him on the spot during that final board meeting, branding him as the sole culprit of unspecified crimes, instantly obliterating his reputation in the market.

  “And now they want their money back,” said Paul, thinking his thoughts out loud. “How much?”

  Freddie waved a hand in his face. “I don’t want you to get bogged down with that at this point, Paul. Their lawyers throw out figures and so do we.”

  “Meaning you want to settle?”

  “It’s all theoretical right now, man. Everything is part of the discussion. We’ll know more—”

  “How much?”

  Freddie’s gaze wavered. “The latest figure they’ve hande
d us is seven million.”

  Paul would have fallen out of his chair if he wasn’t so tightly wedged into it. “Seven million dollars?” he asked stupidly. Not the right question, but he had so many it was hard to figure where to start.

  Now Freddie was waving both hands. “That’s why I didn’t want to talk specifics,” he said. “It’s like suing McDonald’s for a hundred mil for hot coffee. It’s just a starting point.”

  “I don’t have liability coverage,” Paul said. “I’m still getting two girls through college and my wife—my ex-wife—won spousal support for the next eight years.”

  She hadn’t won it, Paul corrected himself. He’d told his divorce lawyer to agree to it without a fight. Just like he’d volunteered to buy her the Grosse Pointe Woods condo that replaced the family home. He’d staved off guilt with checkbook.

  “I know, I know,” said Freddie. “That’s why you have to leave it to the lawyers. You pay me to do the worrying so you won’t have to. We, after all, have grounds for suing your former employer for liability coverage since you were obviously an employee when this happened. There’s room for negotiation here.”

  Paul had been paying a lot of lawyers to assume a lot of worrying lately. Two years ago he’d started with the divorce lawyers and had found that Meredith was in no mood to settle peacefully. Soon after that came the corporate litigators fighting to make sure Paul’s name wasn’t spoken in the same sentence with such words or phrases as Madoff and feeder funds.

  The jury was still out on that one—almost literally.

  Even Freddie had been a legal victim of sorts. His close working and personal relationship with Paul had been the main reason Anchor/Tatum had voided their contract with his law firm. Paul didn’t even want to think about how Freddie’s partners must have reacted to that loss of business.

  “Okay, okay.” He held out his hands, palms out in surrender. “I’ll let you take care of it. Just make sure you at least leave me enough to pay you.”

  “That’s always in the forefront,” Freddie said, tapping his temple and grinning.

  Paul made himself share the laugh. Then, suddenly wanting out of the law office, out of the ornate building and the congested city just as quickly as possible, he said, “I’m glad that’s taken care of for now, Freddie. It’s a relief knowing you’re working on this, and it’s really the only reason I came here today. I mean, I had to close out a storage unit in town and run a few errands, but it was this face-to-face that really brought me here.”

  “Babylon,” Freddie said. Part statement but a whole lot more question. “Where the hell and why the hell?”

  Paul had gotten used to the question, and he’d managed to come up with a different answer for everyone. The truth was, it was far enough away that he couldn’t hear the gossip, but close enough to his girls—if they ever showed any real interest in seeing him and the new family.

  “It’s not all that far from here,” he said. “Maybe an hour south.”

  “So why have I never heard of it?”

  Paul would have told him that the town was so far off the beaten path that it didn’t get cell phone service. Would have explained that its obscurity, lost in the woods as it was, had been Babylon’s main attraction at the time—although, after barely a couple months, some of the appeal had worn off. He was just starting to make some of those points when she walked in the door.

  “Freddie, I’m returning the Huntington file. It’s—”

  She stopped when she caught sight of him. Tall and slender as ever in a pair of jeans and a black blazer—an outfit that went perfectly with the stone and concrete and copper and exposed brick.

  “Oh,” she said.

  Her sandy hair, not worn as long as he was used to, looked stylishly tangled.

  “Hi, Connie,” he said.

  “Come on in and join us,” Freddie said heartily. To Paul it sounded forced. “I was just about to call, tell you you had an important visitor.”

  Paul could hear the lie in his voice and he knew that she could, too.

  “Hello, Dad,” she said.

  Chapter Three

  “I want to see your kids in swim suits. If they don’t suit up they’re gonna be sorry ‘cuz all the other kids’re gonna be flapping around in the cool water, and they’ll be high and dry, all alone. Sound good, kids?”

  That’s what the cop, McConlon, had said on the way to the Sundown, but fifteen minutes later he was staring into the brackish water of the motel swimming pool and nodding as though he’d found the situation to be exactly as expected.

  “My guess?” he said. “The pump broke down and Mona hasn’t gotten around to replacing it yet. But that’s more than I know about swimming pool mechanical systems.”

  The Sundown Motel sat high off the road, at the end of a long, twisting driveway and in front of a green patch of woods. The building was a low-slung plaster bunker, two stories accented by an ugly metal balcony that had started to rust. It was dirty white with a little pink trim, vaguely Latin in design, as if trying to entice vacationers into thinking they’d stumbled upon a Mexican villa. But not trying too hard. The cars in the parking area looked as beaten down as Todd’s.

  All the way up Darrow Road, into the town and along the dubiously named Pleasant Run Avenue that twisted between tall pines and oaks and green brush, Officer McConlon—“Marty” to his new friends—had bragged about the legendary hospitality afforded guests of the Sundown Motel.

  “We get lots and lots of out-of-towners that Mona Dexter puts up for like twelve bucks a night, don’t know how she can do it,” he’d told Todd and Joy. “And she’ll let the bill slide till you cash that first paycheck. I’d like to know how many motels you folks ever stayed at lets you pay when you can afford it.”

  Todd couldn’t think of a one, but the arrangement seemed less generous after his first look at the place. Stuck out five, six miles from the nearest half-ass highway, and not really even in the town, the sad-sack feel of the building and grounds dropped the value of the deal considerably in Todd’s estimation.

  It was while the Dunbars and Marty McConlon and three disappointed little kids were checking out the algae-infested swimming pool that the motel owner put in her appearance. She was petite, fit and tan, with high cheekbones and a charcoal pair of eyes. McConlon introduced her as Mona Dexter.

  “Pool’s off-limits. Broken,” she said, her voice the sultry growl of a smoker past forty who could still command attention.

  Joy sidled a step closer to Todd as Mona puffed on her cigarette and looked them over without seeming to make eye contact.

  “No problem,” the plump cop sang out. “Hell, when you’re only paying twelve a night, a pool’s just frosting on the cake.”

  “The cake costs fourteen a night,” said Mona.

  “Fourteen,” repeated the cop. “I see. You must have raised the rate.”

  Todd had a hard time reading the other man’s expression. The motel owner tapped out an ash on the cracked cement that passed for a pool deck, and crushed it with a slender sandal-clad foot.

  “That’s alright,” said the cop into the silence. “Big family like yours, you’ll want two adjoining rooms with connecting doors, and Mona’s got a pair like that available for eighteen a night for both.”

  “It’s twenty now, the adjoining rooms.”

  Mona and the cop exchanged glances that made Todd wonder, not for the first time, what was going on. He’d initially considered the possibility that the cop dragged travelers off the highway for a commission, but that hardly seemed likely now. It didn’t look like Mona Dexter even wanted the business.

  Three noisy kids thudding about on the other side of the paper-thin wall and Todd and Joy still had more privacy than they’d experienced since last leaving Parkersburg seven months ago. They’d spent all too many nights with his folks in West Virginia, with her sister’s family near Knoxville, and with a childhood friend in Richmond. In every case, the whole family had been packed together in a single room.
They’d also spent a handful of nights in the Olds, and had been forced to bunk down in homeless shelters on two horrific occasions.

  A room to themselves, even in a seedy joint like this, was a luxury to which the Dunbars were unaccustomed.

  Todd sat at the cheap desk, absently pawing through empty drawers while Joy showered. No motel stationery, no postcards, not even a Gideon Bible, but what had he expected for the nineteen-dollar-a-night rate for both rooms that Marty McConlon had haggled for them?

  He felt itchy and trapped as he listened with mild annoyance to Little Todd and the squealing girls releasing their pent-up energy in the next room. Todd rapped on the shared wall in an effort to lower the volume a notch so he could concentrate on the creased sheet of paper he spread flat on the desktop. It held the awkward, almost childish scribbles that marked the writing effort of the typical male. A company name and address, a boss’s name and a crude map.

  Marty McConlon had made some phone calls from the motel office while the Dunbars were settling in, and had come back with the scrawled information that Jack Traynor of Corwin Corrugated out on Sennett Street would be expecting him at eight o’clock the following morning, Wednesday.

  Just like that, Todd had a job after months of searching, and it wasn’t the end of the good news. The cop had also placed a call to the Babylon Town Hall in something called the Drake Municipal Complex and found that the Water Department did indeed need someone to answer phones. It wasn’t a sure thing yet, but it looked pretty good. Paid only seven dollars an hour to start, but there’d been plenty of times the family had survived with that much as a primary income.

  Yeah, things were looking up. Which made Todd wonder why he felt so uneasy.

  The bathroom door clicked open, startling him out of his tense mood. He hadn’t even heard the shower water being turned off.

  “I was thinking,” Joy said, her voice so high and girlish that Todd knew he wasn’t going to like where this was going. “The kind of money we’ll be making, it’s not going to be long before we can afford a house. I mean, it’s a possibility, right? Maybe we could start looking now. You know, just window shopping at this point. Checking out neighborhoods and schools, that sort of thing.”