Guilty Minds

47

We met for breakfast at a no-frills diner a few blocks from the hotel. She ordered waffles, the house specialty, and I ordered eggs over medium and a half-smoke. They brought coffee without being asked, and I downed half a mug right away, nearly scalding my esophagus.

She looked surprisingly fresh, for someone who’d gotten hardly any sleep. Her skin was dewy and she smelled like soap. For the first time I noticed that she had freckles across her nose. It was cute. Her hair was pulled back. She was wearing an old, faded pair of jeans and a black T-shirt.

She took a few tentative sips of the hot coffee, and I told her what I’d found out from the hotel security guy.

“You think she let her killer into the room?” she asked.

I nodded.

“So it was someone she knew and trusted.”

“Seems that way. Unless she thought it was someone from the hotel, room service, or security, or a manager. Even though I told her not to open the door for anyone.”

“Oh, man. You know these homicide detectives are supposed to treat every suicide as a homicide until it’s proven different.”

“That’s right.”

“But there’s always other pressures. Numbers pressures. Stats. Like maybe they don’t want to add to the homicide rate.”

“Could be that. Or it could be simple incompetence. Balakian’s new and doesn’t know what he’s doing.” I took a swig of coffee, then said, “So you said you had something?”

“I think so. All right. As we know, Slander Sheet is owned by Hunsecker Media. Which is in turn owned by a company called Patroon LLC, right?”

“Okay.”

“But Patroon LLC is a black box. And for a long time that stumped me. So then I had an idea: pull my payroll tax forms. I looked at my W-2 tax forms from Slander Sheet. And it says that my salary was paid by something called the Slade Group.”

“Another black box, I assume.”

She nodded. “So I went online and searched the electronic database of the State Corporation Commission in Virginia and found something interesting. The Slade Group was incorporated by a law firm, Norcross and McKenna.” She looked at me, expectantly. Her light brown eyes twinkled.

I nodded. “Interesting.”

“You know who they are?”

“I’m pretty sure they represented my dad once. I recognize the name.”

“You know what they’re famous for?”

I shook my head.

“You know what ‘dark money’ is, right?”

“Sure.” Dark money was like the slurry trough of campaign fund-raising in the United States. The superrich, and corporations, could take advantage of a loophole in the law to secretly give unlimited amounts of money to their favorite candidate by passing the contribution through a nonprofit corporation. They could influence elections and do it in secret. It was totally corrupt, but that’s our political system. God bless America.

“I did a piece on dark money for the Post. And I kept coming across the name of this one particular law firm, Norcross and McKenna. It specializes in forming phony corporations and nonprofits as a way to hide donors’ names. The firm is based in Leesburg, Virginia, but that’s all I know about it.”

“Sketchy-sounding firm. No wonder my father did business with them. So Slander Sheet is owned by the Slade Group, which is one of these phony nonprofit corporations.”

“That’s right.”

“A corporation formed by this law firm.”

“Right.”

“Do you have any names?”

“For this law firm?”

I nodded.

“They have a website that’s pretty bare-bones.”

“This is great, Mandy. That’s our next move.”

“The law firm?”

“Right.”

“They’re not going to talk to you.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.”

The waitress appeared with two plates on her arm. She put the eggs in front of me and the waffles in front of Mandy and topped off our coffees. She returned a minute later with syrup for Mandy and sriracha sauce for me. Mandy tucked right into her waffle without waiting. I liked that. I like a woman who likes to eat.

When she finally took a break, she said, “So, your dad was Victor Heller. Wow.”

“The dark prince of Wall Street himself, yep.” My dad was a prominent Wall Street tycoon who turned out to be a fraud and a liar. A brilliant man, a financial genius, but a twisted soul.

She dribbled syrup on the remains of her waffle. “Is he still in prison?”

“In upstate New York, doing twenty-eight years. He’ll probably die there.”

“Do you ever see him?”

“I visit him from time to time. As rarely as possible.”

“Interesting guy.”

“That’s one way to describe him.”

“So you must have been a smart kid — didn’t you go to Yale?”

“I dropped out. And I’m sure I got in only because Yale figured I was a rich kid and they’d snag some big contributions from my dad. That he’d hidden money away somewhere.”

“Did he?”

“A damned good question. I think so, but he’s not talking.”

She nodded. “You’re in Boston, right? How come you’re not based here?”

“Because I don’t enjoy living in Washington, DC. Never did. Boston’s my town. Besides, my mother lives there, and she’s not going to live forever. So there’s that.” I gulped some coffee. “Is this a job interview? Want to know my biggest weakness?”

She smiled. “So why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Aren’t you done with this job? For Gideon Parnell?”

“As far as Gideon is concerned, I’m done. But as far as I’m concerned, I’m not finished till I find out who killed Kayla and why.”

“And then what?”

“When I find out?”

She nodded.

“I’ll see when I get there,” I said.