House on Fire

8

The waitress brought Sukie’s salad and lasagna and my rigatoni.

We both ate for a while. Then Sukie said, “Wasn’t your father Victor Heller?”

I smiled. “Still is.” That was a matter of public record. And it was a problem for some potential clients, by the way. Victor Heller became symbolic of all that was scuzzy about Wall Street. Would you want to hire that guy’s son?

“I once met your dad. I guess he’s a friend of my father’s. A great big brain, a tiny shriveled heart. A dangerous combination, you know?”

“How’d you meet him?”

“I was doing research for a documentary about white-collar crime.”

“He’s a guy you want to talk to.”

“He told me about you. He’s the reason I’m here.”

“I doubt he recommended me.”

“No,” she admitted. “But I figured you knew something about my world. You grew up with money, didn’t you?”

“Until Dad was arrested.”

Dad was serving a thirty-year sentence in a prison in upstate New York, for wire fraud, racketeering, securities fraud, and income tax evasion. After his arrest, when he fled the country, he abandoned us, left us impoverished. All the property and bank accounts were seized. My mom had to start over, with two young kids, moving in with her mother in Malden, Massachusetts.

“That’s unfortunate for his family.”

“Life is a garden of forking paths,” I said. “I had a happy childhood.”

“Well, we were like that family in that Visconti film, The Damned?”

I shook my head. I hadn’t seen it.

“The rich, doomed industrialist family who were doing business with the Nazis?”

“Okay.” I was being interviewed, and it felt like it. I had to remind myself that she made documentaries. She was probably used to doing deep research and interviews.

“Isn’t your brother in prison too?”

“True.”

“Two brothers and a dad. One of these things is not like the other.”

“I was the family rebel,” I said.

“Your brother carried on the family business?”

“It’s more that my brother bonded with my father in a way I never did. He revered him. They were cut from the same cloth. Is it my turn to ask questions?”

“Go ahead.”

“How am I supposed to get into your father’s home office? Or is that my problem?” I could foresee all sorts of challenges to getting into Conrad Kimball’s inner sanctum undetected. But there was always a way.

“I can get you into the house. You’ll have to get into his office yourself.”

“Will your father be gone?”

“Are you kidding? He’s the star of the show. The center of the party.”

“Party?”

“It’s a party for my father, who’s turning eighty.”

“A retirement party?”

“You obviously don’t know my father. Men like him don’t retire. They can’t.”

“The party’s in the Katonah house?”

She nodded. “I think you’ll clean up nicely. Unlike most private investigators I’ve interviewed for this job. Didn’t you go to Yale?”

“Never graduated. I dropped out.”

“You worked for McKinsey, the management consulting company.”

“A couple of summers. It didn’t take. So you’ll get me invited as a guest?”

“I’m going to bring you in as my date, actually. You’re plausible enough. Anyone who asks, you’re a consultant. With McKinsey. They’ll be too polite to inquire further — at least, overtly.”

“When’s the party?”

“Tomorrow.”