Money to Burn

21

I SPOKE TO ERIC FROM THE BACKSEAT OF A TAXI. GOING BACK INSIDE Saxton Silvers headquarters seemed like a bad idea. If the warning not to talk to the FBI meant anything, it was clear that someone was watching me pretty closely.

“Eric,” I said, “I think Sonya’s car must be bugged.”

That was the only conclusion I could reach; it was the one way that guy could have known what the lawyer from Cool Cash had told me about revenge. I laid it all out for Eric, telling him about that morning’s conversation in the seeming privacy of Sonya’s car, about the strange guy who’d burned money in front of me at Sal’s Place last fall, about the latest text. And then I put it all together.

“That firebomb in the elevator came after I met Sonya and Stanley Brewer outside the FBI field office. I think it was intended to convey the same message that was made explicit in the text: Don’t go to the FBI. I want to set up another meeting with Agent Spear, but obviously it has to be secret.”

“No,” said Eric.

“What?”

“The guy warned you not to go to the FBI. We don’t know what kind of nut job we’re dealing with. Send me the text message. I’ll take care of it. You stick with your plan. Get a lawyer. I’ll deal with the FBI.”

“Thanks,” I said. Nothing more I could say.

The cab let me off on Eighth Avenue. Two minutes later I was in Papa’s room at the Days Inn. He and Nana had an “Internet special” that was barely big enough for the king-size bed I was sitting on.

“Hey, check this out,” he said, grinning as he emerged from the bathroom. “Little bottles of shampoo and conditioner. And they’re free. I love this place.”

It was a tongue-in-cheek remark, Papa’s way of saying, Don’t even think of pulling out your wallet and trying to move us over to the Ritz.

Nana took her turn in the bathroom. When we were alone, Papa sat beside me on the edge of the mattress. He put his arm around my shoulder and said, “You look really stressed. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

I was suddenly twelve years old again, back in my little bedroom in rural Illinois with the best listener on earth. He couldn’t possibly relate to the whole story, but merely sharing the gist of it made me feel better. Some things never changed.

Papa considered my words, then asked, “What is the one thing that would help you the most right now?”

“A lawyer, I guess. Sort of a legal jack-of-all-trades. I definitely need someone who can deal with the FBI, and if Mallory is serious, it looks like I’ll need a divorce lawyer, too.”

“How much does someone like that cost?”

I drew a breath. “A decent criminal defense lawyer in a white-collar criminal investigation like this is probably going to ask for a hundred grand up front.”

Papa’s jaw dropped, but he seemed to put the figure aside.

“Have you thought about calling your brother?”

He meant my half brother. At the time of my birth, Papa’s only daughter had been an unmarried junior at DePaul University. Two years later she married a man who was not my biological father. My half brother and half sister came along in rapid succession. I was six when our mother lost control of her car on the Kennedy Expressway in an ice storm. She was killed instantly. My stepfather-funny, but he was just “Daddy” to me before Mom died-got engaged to a woman who promptly announced that three kids in their instant family was one too many. It was then that I moved to a small town north of Chicago to live with Nana and Papa.

“I haven’t spoken to Kevin in years,” I said.

It had been four years, to be exact-since Ivy’s disappearance, when Kevin turned into an asshole.

“Maybe that should change,” said Papa. “He is family. And he practices right here in the city.”

“Please don’t push this. I don’t need another complication-especially family.”

“You’re right. Let’s you and I talk this out for a minute. It sounds to me like someone is setting you up to look like the bad guy.”

“The financial assassin of my own firm,” I said.

“So let’s think logically. Any successful man naturally has enemies. Who are yours?”

I shook my head slowly, thinking. “I am head of the firm’s Green Division. That doesn’t make Big Oil too happy.”

“Yeah, right. And come June I’m going to muscle out a bunch of twenty-year-old stars and become a starting pitcher for the Chicago Cubs. Come on, think. There has to be someone you stepped on or maybe even squashed-not on purpose, of course-on your way to the top.”

The bathroom door opened. Nana stepped out, clad in the same bathrobe she’d owned when I was in college. A silk cap preserved last Saturday’s trip to the beauty parlor. She’d gone every week, worn the same hairstyle, for as long as I could remember.

“Bedtime, boys,” she said.

I rose and gave her a kiss. Papa walked me to the door. Nana had her hearing aid out, so we didn’t have to worry about her overhearing.

“Where you sleeping tonight?” he asked.

“I thought I would check at the desk and see if they had any vacancies.”

He gave me a hug and whispered in my ear: “Call Mallory.”

I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to do, but I told him I would, said good night, and rode the elevator down to the front desk. The hotel was completely booked-it must have been the little bottles of free shampoo-so it was on to plan B for sleeping arrangements. Some of Papa’s optimism must have rubbed off on me. I called Mallory, and when she didn’t pick up, I hesitated before leaving a message on the answering machine. Then I found myself sounding more like my grandfather than myself, saying the things I probably should have said more often in my marriage to Mallory.

“I just wanted to let you know that I love you,” I said. “Please, let’s talk in the morning.”

Five minutes later I was in the backseat of another taxi headed up Eighth Avenue. There were two hotels on the West Side that got so much business from Saxton Silvers that they almost had to accommodate me, even if I did show up without a reservation. The cab was one of thousands in the city that had gone high-tech. A touch-screen monitor embedded into the bulkhead bombarded me with ads for credit cards and refinancing opportunities. Strapped into my seat, I felt like Alex undergoing aversion therapy in A Clockwork Orange. The ads stopped, and Taxi TV switched to actual television programming. I was hoping for the Food Network or maybe Lucy and Ricky. Naturally, I got a five-minute snippet from Bell Ringer. I suddenly had a change of plans.

“Make that Fifty-seventh and First,” I told the driver.

Chuck Bell had been featured two months earlier in New York magazine, with several pictures of him in his penthouse apartment. It turned out that we were practically neighbors. The cab dropped me in front of the building, and I asked the front desk attendant to ring Bell’s apartment for me.

“Tell him it’s Michael Cantella.”

Three minutes later, Chuck Bell and I were alone in the cavernous lobby, seated facing each other on matching chrome and strap-leather chairs. He seemed energized-hopeful that another Saxton Silvers insider was about to spill his guts.

“Can we talk off the record?”

“No,” he said. “But I’ll make you the same promise I made to my other source: I won’t reveal your identity.”

“That’s actually what I’ve come here to talk about: your source.”

He was suddenly cautious. “What about my source?”

“I’m asking you to go on the air and state in no uncertain terms that Michael Cantella is not your source.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you know who your source is, and you know it’s not me.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “I’m a journalist. I’m never going to reveal a source, not even under a court order.”

“I’m simply asking you to reveal that I am not the source. Even Woodward and Bernstein were willing to do that much when they confirmed that Al Haig and others were not Deep Throat.”

“And they were lucky it didn’t blow up in their faces. I’m not interested in playing a public process of elimination that will inevitably lead to the disclosure of my source. Besides,” he said with a wry smile, “how do I know you’re not a source for my source?”

I watched him closely, wondering if he was merely taunting me or trying to tell me something. Bell rose, and so did I. He took a business card from his pocket and wrote a number on the back of it.

“This is my cell,” he said. “Call me if you decide we should talk.”

I didn’t take it. He placed it on the glass-topped table between us and left it there.

“Be sure to watch me again tonight at eleven-thirty,” he said. “This story is getting so much bigger than FNN. I’m hosting a round-table discussion about Wall Street on network television.”

He turned and headed to the elevator.

When he was gone, I took the card with his cell number and tucked it into my wallet. I didn’t want to take it, but he’d managed to make me feel as though I’d need it-a feeling that triggered a sinking realization as I left his building. Chuck Bell was poison. Rat poison.

And I was the little mouse running blindly through the maze.