Hornet`s Nest

Chapter Twenty-five

The next night, Monday, Blair Mauney III was also enjoying an agreeable meal in the Queen City. The banker was dining at Morton's of Chicago, where he typically went when business called him to headquarters. He was a regular at the high- end steak house with stained-glass windows, next to the Carillon, and across from First Presbyterian Church, which also had stained glass, only older and more spectacular, especially after dark, when Mauney felt lonely and in the mood to prowl.

Mauney needed no explanation from the pretty young waitress with her cart of raw meat and live lobster waving bound claws. He always ordered the New York strip, medium rare, a baked potato, butter only, and the chopped red onion and tomato salad with Morton's famous blue cheese dressing. This he downed with plenty of Jack Black on the rocks. Tomorrow he would have breakfast with Cahoon, and the chairman of corporate risk policy, and the chairman of the credit corp, in addition to the chairman of US Bank South, plus a couple of presidents.

It was routine. They'd sit around a fancy table in Cahoon's fancy Mount Olympus office. There was no crisis or even good news that Mauney knew of, only more of the same, and his resentment peaked.

The bank had been started by his forebears in 1874. It was Mauney who should be ensconced within the crown and have his black and white portrait regularly printed in the Wall Street Journal. Mauney loathed Cahoon, and whenever possible, Mauney dropped poison pellets about his boss, spreading malicious gossip hinting at eccentricities, poor judgement, idiocy, and malignant motives for the good in the world Cahoon had done. Mauney requested a doggie bag, as he always did, because he never knew when he might get hungry later in his room at the luxurious Park Hotel, near Southpark Mall.

He paid the seventy-three-dollar-and-seventy-cent bill, leaving two percent less than his usual fifteen-percent tip, which he figured to the penny on a wafer-thin calculator he kept in his wallet. The waitress had been slow bringing his fourth drink, and being busy was no excuse. He returned to the sidewalk out front, on West Trade Street, and the valets scurried, as they always did. Mauney climbed into his rental black Lincoln Continental, and decided he really was not in the mood to return to his hotel just yet.

He briefly thought of his wife and her endless surgeries and other medical hobbies, as he cataloged them. What he spent on her in a year was a shock, and not one stitch of it had improved her, really. She was a manikin who cooked and made the rounds at cocktail parties.

Buried somewhere deep in Mauney's corporate mind were memories of Polly at Sweetbriar, when a carload of Mauney's pals showed up for a dance one Saturday night in May. She was precious in a blue dress, and wanted nothing to do with him.

The spell was cast. He had to have her that moment. Still, Polly was busy, hard to find, and cared not. He started calling twice a day. He showed up on campus, hopelessly smitten. Of course, she knew exactly what she was doing. Polly had been mentored thoroughly at home, at boarding school, and now at this fine women's college. She knew how men were if a girl acknowledged their attentions. Polly knew how to play hard to get. Polly knew that Mauney had a pedigree and portfolio that she had been promised since childhood, because it was her destiny and her entitlement. They were married fourteen months after their first meeting, or exactly two weeks after Polly graduated cum laude, with a degree in English which, according to her proud new husband, would make her unusually skilled in penning invitations and thank-you notes.

Mauney could not pinpoint precisely when his wife's many physical complications began. It seemed she was playing tennis, still peppy and enjoying the good fortune he made possible for her, until after their second child was born. Women. Mauney would never figure them out. He found Fifth Street and began cruising, as he often did when he was deep in thought. He began getting excited as he looked out at the night life and thought about his trip tomorrow afternoon. His wife thought he would be in Charlotte for three days. Cahoon and company believed Mauney was returning to Asheville after breakfast. All were wrong.

While family traveled from the distant airports of Los Angeles and New York, the bereft chief and her sons went through closets and dresser drawers, carrying out the painful task of dividing and disposing of Seth's clothing table in Gaboon's fancy Mount Olympus office. There was no crisis or even good news that Mauney knew of, only more of the same, and his resentment peaked.

The bank had been started by his forebears in 1874. It was Mauney who should be ensconced within the crown and have his black and white portrait regularly printed in the Wall Street Journal. Mauney loathed Cahoon, and whenever possible, Mauney dropped poison pellets about his boss, spreading malicious gossip hinting at eccentricities, poor judgement, idiocy, and malignant motives for the good in the world Cahoon had done. Mauney requested a doggie bag, as he always did, because he never knew when he might get hungry later in his room at the luxurious Park Hotel, near Southpark Mall.

He paid the seventy-three-dollar-and-seventy-cent bill, leaving two percent less than his usual fifteen-percent tip, which he figured to the penny on a wafer-thin calculator he kept in his wallet. The waitress had been slow bringing his fourth drink, and being busy was no excuse. He returned to the sidewalk out front, on West Trade Street, and the valets scurried, as they always did. Mauney climbed into his rental black Lincoln Continental, and decided he really was not in the mood to return to his hotel just yet.

He briefly thought of his wife and her endless surgeries and other medical hobbies, as he cataloged them. What he spent on her in a year was a shock, and not one stitch of it had improved her, really. She was a manikin who cooked and made the rounds at cocktail parties.

Buried somewhere deep in Mauney's corporate mind were memories of Polly at Sweetbriar, when a carload of Mauney's pals showed up for a dance one Saturday night in May. She was precious in a blue dress, and wanted nothing to do with him.

The spell was cast. He had to have her that moment. Still, Polly was busy, hard to find, and cared not. He started calling twice a day. He showed up on campus, hopelessly smitten. Of course, she knew exactly what she was doing. Polly had been mentored thoroughly at home, at boarding school, and now at this fine women's college. She knew how men were if a girl acknowledged their attentions. Polly knew how to play hard to get. Polly knew that Mauney had a pedigree and portfolio that she had been promised since childhood, because it was her destiny and her entitlement. They were married fourteen months after their first meeting, or exactly two weeks after Polly graduated cum laude, with a degree in English which, according to her proud new husband, would make her unusually skilled in penning invitations and thank-you notes.

Mauney could not pinpoint precisely when his wife's many physical complications began. It seemed she was playing tennis, still peppy and enjoying the good fortune he made possible for her, until after their second child was born. Women. Mauney would never figure them out. He found Fifth Street and began cruising, as he often did when he was deep in thought. He began getting excited as he looked out at the night life and thought about his trip tomorrow afternoon. His wife thought he would be in Charlotte for three days. Cahoon and company believed Mauney was returning to Asheville after breakfast. All were wrong.

While family traveled from the distant airports of Los Angeles and New York, the bereft chief and her sons went through closets and dresser drawers, carrying out the painful task of dividing and disposing of Seth's clothing and other personal effects. Hammer could not look at her late husband's bed, where the nightmare had begun as he got drunk and fantasized about what he could do to really hurt her this time. Well, you did it, Seth. You figured it out. Hammer thought. She folded extra-extra-large shirts, shorts, underwear, socks, and placed them in paper bags for the Salvation Army.

They made no decision about Seth's valuables, such as his four different Rolex watches, the wedding band that had not fit him in more than ten years, the collection of gold railroad watches that had belonged to his grandfather, his Jaguar, not to mention his stocks, and his cash. Hammer cared nothing about any of it, and frankly expected him to zing her one last time in his will. She had never been materialistic and wasn't about to begin now.

"I don't know the details about any of his affairs," she said to her sons, who cared nothing about them, either.

"That figures," said Jude as he removed another suit from a hanger and began folding it.

"You would think he might have discussed his will with you. Mom."

Tart of it is my fault. " She closed a drawer, wondering how she could have endured this activity alone.

"I never asked."

"You shouldn't have to ask," Jude angrily said.

"Part of the whole point of living with someone is you share important things with each other, you know? Like in your case, so you could maybe plan for your future in the event something happened to him? Which was a good possibility with his rotten health."

"I've planned for my own future." Hammer looked around the room, knowing that every molecule within it would have to go.

"I don't do so badly on my own."

Randy was younger and angrier. As far as he was concerned, his father had been selfish and neurotic because he was spoiled and made no effort to think about others beyond what function they might have served in his wasteful, rapacious existence.

Randy, especially, seethed over the way his mother had been treated.

She deserved someone who admired and loved her for all her goodness and courage. He went over and wrapped his arms around her as she folded a Key West shirt she remembered Seth buying on one of their few vacations.

"Don't." She gently pushed her son away, tears filling her eyes.

"Why don't you come stay with us in LA for a while?" he gently said, holding on to her, anyway.

She shook her head, getting back to the business at hand, determined to get every reminder of Seth out of this house as fast as she could, that she might get on with life.

"The best thing for me is to work," she said.

"And there are problems I need to resolve."

"There are always problems. Mom," Jude said.

"We'd love it if you came to New York."

"You know anything about this Phi Beta Kappa key on a chain?" Randy held it up.

"It was inside the Bible in the back of this drawer."

Hammer looked at the necklace as if she had been struck. The key was hers, from Boston University, where she had enjoyed four very stimulating years and graduated near the top of her class, with a double major in criminal justice and history, for she believed that the two were inexorably linked. Hammer had grown up with no special privileges or promise that she would amount to much, since she was a girl amid four brothers in a household with little money and a mother who did not approve of a daughter thinking the dangerous thoughts hers did. Judy Hammer's Phi Beta Kappa key had been a triumph, and she had given it to Seth when they had gotten engaged. He wore it for a long time, until he began to get fat and hateful.

"He told me he lost it," Hammer quietly said as the telephone rang.

West felt terrible about bothering her chief again. West apologized on the cellular phone inside her police car, as she sped downtown. Other units and an ambulance roared to the heart of Five Points, where another man from out of town had been brutally slain.

"Oh Lord," Hammer breathed, shutting her eyes.

"Where?"

"I can pick you up," West said over the line.

"No, no," Hammer said.

"Just tell me where."

"Cedar Street past the stadium," West said as she shot through a yellow light.

"The abandoned buildings around there. Near the welding supply company. You'll see us."

Hammer grabbed her keys from the table by the door. She headed out, not bothering to change out of her gray suit and pearls. Brazil had been driving around, in a funk, when he'd heard the call on the scanner. He got there fast, and now was standing beyond crime-scene tape, restless in jeans and T-shirt, frustrated because no one would let him in. Cops were treating him as if he were a reporter no different than others out foraging, and he didn't understand it.

Didn't they remember him in uniform, out with them night after night, and in foot pursuits and fights?

West rolled up seconds before Hammer did, and the two women made their way to the overgrown area where a black Lincoln Continental was haphazardly parked far off Cedar and First Streets, near a Dumpster.

The welding company was a looming Gothic silhouette with dark windows.

Police lights strobed, and in the far distance a siren wailed as misfortune struck in another part of the city. A Norfolk Southern train loudly lumbered past on nearby tracks, the engineer staring out at disaster.

Typically, the car was rented, and the driver's door was open, the interior bell dinging, and headlights burning. Police were searching the area, flashguns going off and video cameras rolling. Brazil spotted West and Hammer coming through, reporters moiling around them and get ting nothing but invisible walls. Brazil stared at West until she saw him, but she gave him no acknowledgment. She did not seem inclined to include him. It was as if they had never met, and her indifference ran through him like a bayonet. Hammer did not seem aware of him, either. Brazil stared after them, convinced of a betrayal. The two women were busy and overwrought.

"We're sure," Hammer was saying to West.

"Yes. It's like the others," West grimly said as their strides carried them beyond tape, and deeper inside the scene.

"No question in my mind. MO identical."

Hammer took a deep breath, her face pained and outraged as she look at the car, then at the activity in a thicket, where Dr. Odom was on his knees, working. From where Hammer stood, she could see the medical examiner's bloody gloves glistening in lights set up around the perimeter. She looked up as the Channel 3 news helicopter thudded overhead, hovering, its camera securing footage for the eleven o'clock news. Broken glass clinked under feet as the two women moved closer, and Dr. Odom palpated the victim's destroyed head. The man had on a dark blue Ralph Lauren suit, a white shirt missing its cufflinks, and a Countess Mara tie. He had graying curly hair and a tan face that might have been attractive, but now it was hard to tell. Hammer saw no jewelry but guessed that whatever this man had owned wasn't cheap. She knew money when she saw it.

"Do we have an ID?" Hammer asked Dr. Odom.

"Blair Mauney the third, forty-five years old, from Asheville," he replied, photographing the hateful blaze- orange hourglass spray-painted over the victim's genitals. Dr. Odom looked up at Hammer for a moment.

"How many more?" he asked in a hard tone, as if blaming her.

"What about cartridge cases?" West asked.

Detective Brewster was squatting, interested in trash scattered through briars.

"Three so far," he answered his boss.

"Looks like the same thing."

"Christ," said Dr. Odom.

By now, Dr. Odom was seriously projecting. He continually imagined himself in strange cities, at meetings, driving around, maybe lost. He thought of suddenly being yanked out of his car and led to a place like this by a monster who would blow his head off for a watch, a wallet, a ring. Dr. Odom could read the fear the victims had felt as they begged not to die, that huge. 45 pointed and ready to fire. Dr. Odom was certain that the soiled undershorts consistent in each case were not postmortem. No goddamn way. The slain businessmen didn't lose control of bowels and bladder as life fled and bled from them. The guys were terrified, trembling violently, pupils dilated, digestion shutting down as blood rushed to extremities for a fight or flight that would never happen. Dr. Odom's pulse pounded in his neck as he unfolded another body bag.

West carefully scanned the interior of the Lincoln as the interior alert dinged that the driver's door was ajar and the lights were on.

She noted the Morton's doggie bag, and the contents of the briefcase and an overnight bag that had been dumped out and rummaged through in back. US Bank business cards were scattered over the carpet and she leaned close and read the name Blair Mauney III, the same name on the driver's license Detective Brewster had shown her.

West pulled plastic gloves out of her back pocket.

She worked them on, so consumed by what she was doing, that she was unaware of anyone around her or the tow truck that was slowly rolling up to haul the Lincoln to the police department for processing. West had not worked crime scenes in years, but she had been good at it once. She was meticulous, tireless, and intuitive, and right now she was getting a weird feeling as she looked at the clutter left by the killer. She lifted a US Air ticket by a corner, opening it on the car seat, touching as little of it as possible as her misgivings grew.

Mauney had flown to Charlotte from Asheville today, arriving at Charlotte-Douglas International Airport at five-thirty p. m. The return, for tomorrow afternoon, was not back to Asheville, but to Miami, and from there Mauney was flying to Grand Cayman, in the West Indies. West carefully flipped through more tickets, her heart picking up, adrenalin coursing. He was scheduled to fly out of Grand Cayman on Wednesday, and stop over in Miami for six hours. Then he would return to Charlotte, and, finally, to Asheville. There were more disturbing signs that were likely unrelated to Maundy's murder, but pointed to other crime possibly surrounding his life.

This was always the bitter irony in such cases, she couldn't help but think. Death ratted on people who were closet drug abusers, drunks, or having affairs with one and/or the other sex, or those who liked to whip or be whipped, or to string themselves up by pulleys and nooses and masturbate. Human creativity was endless, and West had seen it all. She had gotten out a ballpoint pen and was using it to turn pages of other paperwork. Though her forte was not cash and equivalents, treasury and agency securities, derivatives, investment banking, commercial and corporate banking, West knew enough to get a sense of what Mauney might have been intending on his travels.

In the first place, he had an alias, Jack Morgan, whose picture IDs on passport and driver's license showed Mauney's face. There were a total of eight credit cards and two checkbooks in the names of Mauney and Morgan. Both men seemed to have a keen interest in real estate, specifically a number of hotels along Miami Beach. It appeared to West that Mauney was prepared to invest some one hundred million dollars in these old pastel dumps. Why? Who the hell went to Miami Beach these days? West flipped through more paperwork, perspiring in the humid heat. Why was Mauney planning to drop by Grand Cayman, the money-laundering capital of the world?

"My God," West muttered, realizing that Grand Cayman was three syllables.

She stood up, staring at the bright skyline, at the mighty US Bank Corporate Center rising above all, its red light slowly blinking a warning to helicopters and low flying planes. She stared at this symbol of economic achievement, of greatness and hard work on the part of many, and she got angry. West, like a lot of citizens, had checking and savings accounts at US Bank She had financed her Ford through it.

Tellers were always pleasant and hard-working. They went home at the end of the day and did their best to make ends meet like most folks.

Then some carpetbagger comes along and decides to cheat, steal, hoodwink, make out like a bandit, and give an innocent business and its people a bad name. West turned her attention to Hammer and motioned to her.

"Take a look," West said quietly to her chief.

Hammer squatted by the open car door and examined documents without touching them. She had been making investments and saving money most of her life. She knew creative banking when she saw it, and was shocked at first, then disgusted as truth began to whisper. As best she could tell, and of course none of it could be proven at this precise moment, it appeared Blair Mauney III was behind hundreds of millions of dollars loaned to Domin ion Tobacco that seemed to be linked to a real-estate development group called Southman Corporation, in Grand Cayman. Associated with this were multiple bank account numbers not linked by identification numbers. Several of the same Miami telephone numbers showed up repeatedly, with no description other than initials that made no sense. There were references to something called US Choice

"What do you think?" West whispered to Hammer.

"Fraud, for starters. We'll get all this to the FBI, to Squad Four, see what they make of it."

The news helicopter circled low. The cocooned body was loaded into the ambulance.

"What about Cahoon?" West asked.

Hammer took a deep breath, feeling sorry for him. How much bad news did anybody need in one night?

"I'll call him, tell him what we suspect," she grimly said.

"Do we release Mauney's ID tonight?"

"I'd rather hold out until morning." Hammer was staring beyond bright lights and crime-scene tape.

"I believe you have a visitor," she said to West.

Brazil was at the perimeter taking notes. He was not in uniform this night, and his face was hard as his eyes met West's and held. She walked toward him, and they moved some distance away from others, and stood on different sides of crime-scene tape.

"We're not releasing any information tonight," she said to him.

"I'll just do my usual," he said, lifting the tape to duck under.

"No." She blocked him.

"We can't let anybody in. Not on this one."

"Why not?" he said, stung.

"There are a lot of complications."

"There always are." His eyes flashed.

"I'm sorry," she told him.

"I've been inside before," he protested.

"How come now I can't?"

"You've been inside when you've been with me." West began to back away.

"When I've…?" Brazil's pain was almost uncontain- able.

"I am with you!"

West looked around and wished he would lower his voice. She could not tell him what she had found inside the victim's car, and what it quite likely implied about the not-so-innocent victim Blair Mauney III. She glanced back at Hammer. The chief was still leaning inside the Lincoln, looking through more paperwork, perhaps grateful for the distraction from her own private tragedies. West thought of Brazil's behavior at her house while Raines was watching the videotape. This was a mess, and it could not go on. She made the right decision and could feel the change inside her, the curtain dropping. The end.

"You can't do this to me!" Brazil furiously went on.

"I haven't done anything wrong!"

"Please don't make a scene or I'm going to have to ask you to leave," West, the deputy chief, stated.

Enraged and hurt, Brazil realized the truth.

"You're not going to let me ride with you anymore."

West hesitated, trying to ease him into this.

"Andy," she said, 'it couldn't go on forever. You've always known that. Jesus Christ. " She blew out in frustration.

"I'm old enough to… I'm… "

Brazil backed up, staring at her, the traitor, the fiend, the hard-hearted tyrant, the worst villain ever to touch his life. She didn't care about him. She never had.

"I don't need you," he cruelly said.

Brazil wheeled around and ran. He ran as fast as he could, back to his BMW.

"Oh for God's sake," West exclaimed as Hammer suddenly was at her side.

"Problem?" Hammer stared after Brazil, her hands in her pockets.

"More of the same." West wanted to kill him.

"He's going to do something."

"Good deduction." Hammer's eyes were sad and tired, but she was full of courage and support for the living.

"I'd better go after him." West started walking.

Hammer stood where she was, strobing lights washing over her face as she watched West duck reporters and trot off to her car. Hammer thought about new love, about people crazy about each other and not knowing it as they fought and ran off and chased. The ambulance beeped as it backed up, carrying away what was left of a person who Hammer, in truth, did not feel especially sorry for at this point. She would never have wished such horrendous violence upon him, but what a piece of shit he was, stealing, hurting, and more than likely perpetuating the drug trade. Hammer was going to take this investigation into her own hands, and, if need be, make an example of Blair Mauney III, who had planned to screw the bank and a hooker during the same trip.

"People die the way they lived," she commented to Detective Brewster, patting his back.

"Chief Hammer." He was loading new film in his camera.

"I'm sorry about your husband."

"So am I. In more ways than you'll ever know." She ducked under the tape.

to Brazil must have been speeding again, or perhaps he was hiding in another alleyway. West cruised West Trade street, looking for his old BMW. She checked her mirrors, seeing no sign of him, the scanner a staccato of more problems in the city. She picked up the portable phone and dialed the number for Brazil's desk at the Observer. After three rings, it rolled over to another desk, and West hung up. She fumbled for a cigarette, and turned onto Fifth Street, checking cars driven by men checking the late night market. West whelped her siren and flashed her lights, messing with those up to no good. She watched hookers and shims scatter as potential clients sped away.

"Stupid bastards," West muttered, flicking an ash out the window.

"Is it worth dying for?" she yelled at them.

vv Cahoon lived in Myers Park on Cherokee Place, and his splendid brick mansion was only partly lit up because its owner and his wife and youngest daughter had gone to bed. This did not deter Hammer in the least. She was about to do a decent thing for the CEO and great benefactor of the city. Hammer rang the doorbell, her fabric worn in places she had not known she had. She felt an emptiness, a loneliness, that was frightening in its intensity. She could not bear to go home and walk past places Seth had sat, lain, walked, or rummaged through.

She did not want to see remnants of a life no more. His favorite coffee mug. The Ben amp;: Jerry's Chocolate Chip

Cookie Dough ice cream he'd never had a chance to eat. The antique sterling-silver letter opener he had given her the Christmas of 1972, still on the desk in her study.

Cahoon heard the bell from his master suite upstairs, where his view above sculpted boxwoods and old magnolia trees included his building encrusted with jewels and topped by a crown. He threw back fine monogrammed sheets, wondering who on earth would dare to drop by his home at this obscene hour. Cahoon went to the Aiphone on the wall, and picked up the receiver. He was startled to see Chief Hammer on the video monitor.

"Judy?" he said.

"I know it's late, Sol." She looked into the camera and spoke over the intercom.

"But I need to talk to you."

"Is everything all right?" Alarmed, he thought of his children. He knew Rachael was in bed. But his two older sons could be anywhere.

"I'm afraid not," Hammer told him.

Cahoon grabbed his robe from the bedpost, and flung it around himself.

His slippers patted along the endless antique Persian runner covering stairs. His index finger danced over the burglar alarm keypad, turning off glass breakers, motion sensors, contacts in all windows and doors, and bypassing his vault and priceless art collection, which were in separate wings and on separate systems. He let Hammer in. Cahoon squinted in the glare of bright lights that blazed on whenever anything more than a foot tall moved within a six-foot radius of his house. Hammer did not look good. Cahoon could not imagine why the chief was out so early in the morning, so soon after her husband's sudden death.

"Please come in," he said, wide awake now and more gentle than usual.

"Can I get you a drink?"

She followed him into the great room, where he repaired to the bar. Hammer had been inside Cahoon's mansion but once, at a splendid party complete with a string quartet and huge silver bowls filled with jumbo shrimp on ice. The CEO liked English antiques and collected old books with beautiful leather covers and marbled pages.

"Bourbon," Hammer decided.

That sounded good to Cahoon, who was on a regimen of no fat, no alcohol, and no fun. He might have a double, straight up, no ice. He pulled the cork out of a bottle of Blanton's Kentucky single barrel, and didn't bother with the monogrammed cocktail napkins his wife liked so much. He knew he needed to be medicated because Hammer wasn't here to hand him good news. Dear Lord, don't let anything bad have happened to either of the boys. Did a day go by when their father didn't worry about their partying, and flying through life in their sports cars or Kawasaki one-hundred horsepower Jet Skis?

Please let them be okay and I promise I'll be a better person, Cahoon silently prayed.

"I heard on the news about your…" he started to say.

Thank you. He had so much amputated, Sol. " Hammer cleared her throat.

She sipped bourbon and was soothed by its heat.

"He wouldn't have had a quality of life, had they been able to clear up the disease. I'm just grateful he didn't suffer any more than he did." She typically looked on the bright side as her heart trembled like something wounded and afraid.

Hammer had not and could not yet accept that when the sun rose this morning and each one after the next, there would be silence in her house. There would be no night sounds of someone rattling in cupboards and turning on the TV. She would have no one to answer to, report to, or call when she was late or not going to make it home for dinner, as usual. She had not been a good wife. She had not even been a particularly good friend. Cahoon was struck speechless by the sight of this mighty woman in tears. She was trying hard to muster up that steely control of hers, but her spirit simply could not take it. He got up from his leather wing chair and dimmed the sconces on dark mahogany that he had salvaged from a sixteenth-century Tudor manor in England. He went to her and sat on the ottoman, taking one of her hands.

"It's all right, Judy," he kindly said, and he felt like crying, too.

"You have every right to feel this way, and you go right on. It's just us, you and me, two human beings in this room right now. Who we are doesn't matter."

"Thanks, Sol," she whispered, and her voice shook as she wiped her eyes and took another swallow of bourbon.

"Get drunk if you want," he suggested.

"We have plenty of guest rooms, and you can just stay right here so you don't have to drive."

She patted Gaboon's hand, and crossed her arms and drew a deep breath.

"Let's talk about you," she said.

Dejected, he got up and returned to his chair. Cahoon looked at her and braced himself.

"Please don't tell me it's Michael or Jeremy," he said in a barely audible voice.

"I know Rachael is all right. She's in her room asleep.

I know my wife is fine, sound asleep, too. " He paused to compose himself.

"My sons are still a bit on the wild side, both working for me and rebellious about it. I know they play hard, too hard, frankly."

Hammer thought of her own sons and was suddenly dismayed that she might have caused this father a moment's concern.

"Sol, no, no, no," she quickly reassured him.

"This is not about your sons, or about anyone in your family."

"Thank God." He took another swallow of his drink.

"Thank you, thank you, God."

He would tithe more than usual to the synagogue next Friday. Maybe he would build another child care center somewhere, start another scholarship, give to the retirement center and the community school for troubled kids, or an orphanage. Damn it all.

Cahoon was sick and tired of unhappiness and people suffering, and he hated crime as if all of it were directed at him.

"What do you want me to do?" he said, leaning forward and ready to mobilize.

"Do?" Hammer was puzzled.

"About what?"

"I've had it," he said.

Now she was very confused. Was it possible he already knew what she had come here to tell him? He got up and began to pace in his Gucci leather slippers.

"Enough is enough," he went on with feeling.

"I agree with you, see it your way. People being killed, robbed, and raped out there. Houses burglarized, cars stolen, children molested. In this city. Same is true all over the world, except in this country, everybody's got a gun. A gun in every pot. People hurting others and themselves, sometimes not even meaning to. Impulse." He turned around, pacing the other way.

"Impaired by drugs and alcohol. Suicides that might not have happened Were there not a gun right there. Acci…" he caught himself, remembering what had happened to Hammer's husband.

"What do you want me want us at the bank to do?" He stopped and fixed impassioned eyes on her.

This wasn't what she'd had in mind when she'd rung his doorbell, but Hammer knew when to seize the day.

"You certainly could be a crusader, Sol," she thoughtfully replied.

Crusader. Cahoon liked that, and thought it time she saw he had some substance, too. He sat back down and remembered his bourbon.

"You want to help?" she went on.

"Then no more shellacking what really goes on around here. No more bullshit, like this one hundred and five percent clearance rate. People need to know the truth. They need someone like you to inspire them to come out swinging."

He nodded, deeply moved.

"Well, you know, that clearance rate crap wasn't my idea. It was the mayor's."

"Of course." She didn't care.

"By the way," he said, curious now.

"What is it really?"

"Not bad." The drink was working.

"Around seventy- five percent, which is nowhere near what it ought to be, but substantially higher than in a lot of cities. Now, if you want to count ten-year-old cases that are finally cleared, or jot down names from the cemetery, or decide that a drug dealer shot dead was the guy responsible for three uncleared cases…"

He held up his hand to stop her.

"I get it, Judy," he said.

"This won't happen again. Honestly, I didn't know the details. Mayor Search is an idiot. Maybe we should get someone else." He started drumming his fingers on the armrest, plotting.

"Sol." She waited until his eyes focused on her again.

"I'm afraid I do have unpleasant news, and I wanted you to know in person from me before the media gets on it."

He tensed again. He got up and refreshed their drinks as Hammer told him about Blair Mauney III and what had happened this night. She told him about the paperwork in Mauney's rental car. Cahoon listened, shocked, the blood draining from his face. He could not believe that Mauney was dead, murdered, his body spray-painted and dumped amid trash and brambles. It wasn't that Cahoon had ever particularly liked the man. Mauney, in Gaboon's experienced opinion, was a weak weasel with an entitlement attitude, and the suggestion of dishonesty did not surprise Cahoon in the least, the more it sank in. He was chagrined about US Choice cigarettes with their alchemy and little crowns. How could he have trusted any of it?

"Now it's my turn to ask," Hammer finally said.

"What do you want me to do?"

"Jesus," he said, his tireless brain racing through possibilities, liabilities, capabilities, impossibilities, and sensibilities.

"I'm not entirely sure. But I know I need time."

"How much?" She swirled her drink.

"Three or four days," he said.

"My guess is most of the money is still in Grand Cayman, in numerous accounts with numbers that aren't linked.

If this hits the news, I can guarantee that we'll never recover the cash, and no matter what anybody says, a loss like that hurts everybody, every kid with a savings account, every couple needing a loan, every retired citizen with a nest egg. "

"Of course it does," said Hammer, who also was a faithful client of Gaboon's bank.

"My eternal point, Sol. Everybody gets hurt. A crime victimizes all of us. Not to mention what it will do to your bank's image."

Cahoon looked pained.

"That's always the biggest loss. Reputation and whatever charges and fines the federal regulators will decide."

"This isn't your fault."

"Dominion Tobacco and its secret, Nobel-potential research always bothered me. I guess I just wanted to believe it was true," he reflected.

"But banks have a responsibility not to let something like this happen."

"Then how did it?" she asked.

"You have a senior vice president with access to all commercial loan activities, and trust him. So you don't always follow your own policies and procedures. You make exceptions, circumvent. And then you have trouble." He was getting more depressed.

"I should have watched the son of a bitch more closely, damn it."

"Could he have gotten away with it, had he lived?" Hammer asked.

"Sure," Cahoon said.

"All he had to do was make sure the loan was repaid. Of course, that would have been from drug money, unbeknownst to us. Meanwhile, he would have been getting maybe ten percent of all money laundered through the hotels, through the bank, and my guess is we would have become more and more of a major cash interstate for whoever these bad people are. Eventually, the truth would have come out. US Bank would have been ruined."

Hammer watched him thoughtfully, a new respect forming for this man, who prior to this early morning, she had not understood, and in truth had unfairly judged.

"Just tell me what I can do to help," she said again.

"If you could withhold his identification and everything about this situation so we salvage what we can and get up to speed on exactly what happened," he repeated.

"After that, we'll file a Suspicious Activity Report, and the public will know."

Hammer glanced at her watch. It was almost three a. m.

"We'll get the FBI on it immediately. It will be in their best interest to buy a little time, too. As for Mauney, as far as I'm concerned, we can't effect a positive identification just yet, and I'm sure Dr. Odom will want to withhold information until he can get hold of dental records, fingerprints, whatever, and you know how overworked he is." She paused, and promised, "It will take a while."

Cahoon thought of Mrs. Mauney III, whom he had met only superficially at parties.

"Someone's got to call Polly," he said.

"Mauney's wife.

I'd like to do that, if you have no objections. "

Hammer got up and smiled at him.

"You know some thing, Sol? You're nowhere near as rotten as I thought."

"That works both way, Judy." He got up.

"It certainly does."

"You hungry?"

"Starved."

"What's open at this hour," he wondered.

"You ever been to the Presto Grill?"

"Is that a club?" He grabbed his car keys.

"Yes," she said.

"And guess what, Sol? It's about time you became a member."