Killer Look

THIRTY-TWO

We were back in the reception area of the WolfWear offices, where the flower arrangements were beginning to look as dead as the man they were meant to honor.

The receptionist-not the young woman who had greeted us on our first visit-was ferrying vases back and forth from the restroom to empty them, so we had a quiet place to talk.

“How’d you come up with all that financial fraud stuff, Coop?” Mike asked.

I had never worked in the white-collar crimes division of the DA’s Office, but many of my good friends did. The time we spent together brainstorming on trial strategy and sitting in on one another’s courtroom arguments kept me conversant with the case issues.

“Don’t you remember Enron? I must have paid attention because it broke while I was in law school, so we had lectures about it back then.”

“It was an energy company, wasn’t it?” Mercer said.

“Yes. One of the world’s largest natural-gas and electricity businesses. You want to talk global? I guess that’s what made me think of Enron. It was huge at the time,” I said, “in building pipelines and power plants and things like that.”

“Then it began to lose money,” he said.

“Yes, its debt was tremendous. Even the sale of major operations-like what Hal Savage wants to do-would not have solved Enron’s problems,” I said. “So the chief financial guy set up a very creative accounting fraud-one of the best examples of willful corporate fraud and corruption ever.”

“Here all this time, Wolf gets credit for being the creative brother, when maybe Hal outdid him in original thinking,” Mike said. “How did Enron manage it?”

“I’ll have to pull out my law books. I know the financial guru set up offshore entities, and he put all the debts and losses into those accounts. As for assets, he greatly inflated them, and even made some up out of whole cloth.”

“They had fictional business accounts, right?” Mike asked. “They just eliminated unprofitable entities from their books. But nobody got murdered.”

“No, no. But it was a public company, unlike WolfWear, so the top executives began selling off huge amounts of stock when they got wind of the hidden losses,” I said.

“Insider trading.”

“That’s it. The stock plummeted from ninety dollars a share to less than a dollar, but not before the insiders and their families had sold off everything they had, knowing what was about to happen. How’s twenty-five years in jail?”

“About what the sentence would be for murder. In Hal’s case, twenty-five to life would be a death sentence,” Mike said. “You like him for Wolf’s murder?”

“I’m just keeping all our balls in the air,” I said as the receptionist returned with another empty vase and headed back to the bathroom sink with some drooping red roses.

“You’re saying Wolf had his eye on the need to expand into other markets, and to the design end of the business,” Mercer said. “That he left the financial health of the business in Hal’s hands.”

“That’s what it sounds like,” I said. “I’m back to Chapman’s Rules of Homicide Investigations. First is that there are no coincidences. We have a father and daughter both dead, and that fact can’t be a coincidence. We all agree on that. On to rule two. There are four motives for murder: greed, jealousy, lust, and revenge. I’ll throw in a pure hate crime, but that’s not what we’ve got here.”

“Go on.”

“If Tanya Root was an isolated case, I’d start with lust, of course. But we have no evidence of that, and never will. With Wolf’s death, I’d eliminate that completely.”

“Jealousy?” Mike said.

“Tanya might have been jealous of the two siblings who didn’t seem to know she even existed, but that certainly doesn’t explain why she wound up dead first.”

“You like revenge.”

“Whichever way you look at this,” I said, “there’s a strong element of greed involved. And maybe a twinge of revenge. Not the voodoo kind, just a straightforward settling of scores.”

“There are so many people we haven’t talked to yet,” Mike said.

“George Kwan is one of them,” I said. “What does he know about the WolfWear financials? How does Kwan Enterprises benefit if Hal Savage-or someone else there-is in command of the company?”

“Depends on who you cast your vote for as the weakest link. Hal? Reed? Take your best shot.”

“Let’s find George Kwan. Do you know where his offices are?”

“I know they work out of a townhouse on the Upper East Side,” Mercer said. “It’s supposed to be loaded with security and harder to penetrate than Kim Jong Un’s palace.”

The receptionist was back with another empty vase, heading for some gladioli that were emitting a foul odor from the corner of her desk.

“Excuse me,” I said. “We were supposed to meet with George Kwan, but I didn’t put his address in my contacts. Have you got a phone number for him?”

“Not for him personally,” she said. “I can give you his office number.”

“Thanks. And the address, too. It’s East Seventy-Fifth Street isn’t it?” I asked as she pulled up her phone list on the desktop.

“Seventy-Eighth Street, actually. Mr. Kwan is out of the country for the weekend. I don’t think we’re going to see him until Monday night. You know, at the Met.”

“Of course,” I said, thanking her for the phone and street numbers as she went back about ditching the flowers.

Kwan Enterprises wouldn’t put up the money for the big launch, but it made sense for George and his crew to be there in the front row to promote their planned venture.

“Ah, the inscrutable East,” Mike said. “Where’s George when we need him?”

“Stop with the political incorrectness,” I said. “We’re the only ones who can hear you, and we’re over it.”

“Let’s give the townhouse a shot. He can’t be the only Kwan in the enterprise.”