Reckless

CHAPTER NINETY-ONE

The resignations of Thomas Keaton and his chief counsel sent shock waves around the world. It was reported they were being held under house arrest, pending a Justice Department investigation into their actions in a conspiracy to defraud the financial markets in which eleven people, including some important figures in the world of finance, had died or were missing.

In New York, the related arrest of Peter Simons, Stephen Cain, and Marshall Shipman on charges of fraud and conspiracy to defraud only made the rumors wilder. The markets plunged 20 percent the next day and were held back from a total free fall only when the Fed announced at midday that it was pumping half a trillion dollars of new liquidity into the ailing economy.

Still, parts of the story were leaking out. Murdered Wall Street traders. An enigmatic Serbian playboy whose past was tied to a bloody massacre in the Bosnian War. A shadowy Middle Eastern financier murdered in his suite at the Waldorf. A wild shoot-out on an Amtrak train. The involvement of the CEO of one of the largest firms on Wall Street, leading all the way to the treasury secretary of the United States.

The president promised a swift and thorough investigation. “The financial markets must be above suspicion,” he declared from the White House lawn. “Its lifeblood is confidence, and confidence will be restored.”

In the meantime, the Department of the Treasury was to be run by Allen Schaper, currently head of the SEC-a corporate lawyer, an economist, a friend of the president.

And himself a former banker at Reynolds Reid.

Eleven people were either dead or presumed dead. Three Wall Street investment banks had gone under, their assets absorbed. Across the globe, millions of people had lost jobs, countless pensions destroyed, life savings halved. Millions of homes foreclosed on, industries set in crisis, bailed out; the deficit soared. On CNBC, Tim Schegel, the noted financial reporter, remarked, “Whatever their crimes, those participants in what is now known as the Gstaad Gang only hastened, in their activities, what was sure to come.” The estimated loss in investor capital related to the economic meltdown was said to be over four trillion dollars.

Across the pond, in London, a related investigation into the unsolved disappearance of Saudi national Mashhur al-Bashir and his family was under way.

Their bodies would never be discovered.

Back in DC, Hauck and Naomi gave two days of testimony to officials at the Justice Department.

By Friday, Hauck was back at his desk.

Tom Foley was the first one there to congratulate him. Hauck thought it the better part of valor not to divulge how sure he was, until right up to the end, that his boss was the intermediary to Red O’Toole. Since word had come out, the phones at Talon were ringing off the hook. A new era of compliance and security and regulation was being promised and the business was coming to them. Foley promised that the firm would indeed be showing its appreciation, reflected in his bonus at year end. He came by later to take Hauck out for drinks.

But by that time Hauck had already gone.

He took the drive out to Dublin Hill Road. To Merrill Simons’s house. At this point it no longer mattered whether Foley gave the okay.

She deserved to hear it firsthand. Dani’s fate. Who he was. What he had been involved in. How her instincts had been right. And how Peter had been involved.

She was in the garden in a pair of white capris and a wide hat, planting begonias. She sat with Hauck on a chaise under an awning and stayed silent for a while after he told her, brooding on the story that might never fully be revealed.

“Two real bastards,” she finally said, shaking her head with a bit of a derisive laugh. “I surely can pick ’em, can’t I?”

Then it seemed to overwhelm her and she took her sunglasses off and wiped away a tear.

“Next time,” Hauck said, shrugging, “maybe you should give Match.com a try.” Merrill laughed. He squeezed her arm.

“Thank you for what you did. I think I may owe your firm some money.”

“Why don’t we just call it a wash?” He winked and got up. “Let’s just see if we can get Uncle Sam to cover the bill.”

CHAPTER NINETY-TWO

A few days later

He sat in the BMW looking out at the pleasant white ranch on the quiet cul-de-sac in Darien.

It was the kind of tree-lined residential street any kid would be happy to grow up on. SUVs, on their way to baseball practice and dance rehearsals, backed out of the driveways. A yellow school bus pulled up at the corner and several kids jumped off with one or two friendly shoves and high fives, then scattered on their way. A UPS truck parked at the curb and the driver waved to the homeowner as he delivered his package.

A kid would be lucky, Hauck thought as he focused on the clean white house, a plastic soccer goal set up on the lawn, to grow up in such a place.

A few minutes passed and a silver Volvo wagon came down the block. It made a sweeping turn into the driveway Hauck had pulled up across from. The white electric garage door went up. The wagon parked outside. A gangly black Labradoodle jumped out and happily pranced around the lawn, followed by a boy, around eight, his mop of sandy hair reminding Hauck so much of his mom’s. An oversize A-Rod jersey on. He had a knapsack slung over his shoulder and before he ran inside after the dog, he gave a soccer ball on the lawn a pretty fair wallop and sent it flying over the plastic goal, over the chain-link fence into the neighboring yard.

The boy put his hands to his face like he’d screwed up, but the older man, Marc’s father, merely came up and put his arm around his grandson and drew him to his chest.

“You see that shot, Grandpa?”

“Seemed like a goal to me.” His grandfather made a face as if impressed. “That’s how I used to kick ’em back in the day.” He mussed the kid’s hair. “Around the Civil War.”

The kid smiled guiltily. “Sorry.”

Watching from his car, Hauck felt his eyes well up with tears. The older man said to the boy, “You go inside. You’ve got homework to do. I’ll go over to the Kendells’ and retrieve it.”

The boy yelled, “Thanks, Grandpa,” and ran into the garage.

Hauck stepped out of the car. The older man came down the driveway toward him. Hauck was about to go up to him. He had practiced in his mind what he would say, how he would handle it. But he felt something, a sudden caution, rooting his feet. A memory rushed into his mind and it made him stop.

April took him outside the dry cleaner’s to the street. “There’s someone I want you to meet…”

She took him over to the Mercedes, the soft freckles on her cheeks seeming to beam, and looked at the boy sitting in the rear car seat.

“His name is Evan…Evan Ty Glassman.”

Hauck stared at the child and before he could wave hi, before he could even speak, he knew. He knew what it was April had brought him out to see and with a glisten in her eye, what she was trying to say. A wave of emotion hit him head-on.

“He’s your gift to me, Ty…To all of us. Something I can never repay.”

“You don’t have to repay me for anything, April…”

He looked at her. Then back to the boy. There were parts of who he was inside he felt he owed to her. There were parts of her he felt as close to, even after all these years, as if they were part of his own skin.

“The only reason we have him is because of you. Because of what you did. Every once in a while I just look at him and it takes me back. We both made it through, didn’t we?”

He looked at her, his heart expansive. “Yeah, we did.”

She opened the door and the four-year-old finally looked up. “Hi, Mommy.”

“Evan, I want you to meet a friend of mine. Lieutenant Hauck. He’s a policeman here in town. The top cop, I hear.”

“In my own mind, at least,” Hauck said, chuckling. He winked at the young boy. “Hey, guy.”

Evan smiled.

He saw what he’d once found so special about his mother in the softness of Evan’s green eyes and his light brown hair.

“He’s beautiful,” Hauck said. “Thank you.”

“No, thank you, Ty.” Her eyes grew shiny. “I don’t know what to say…”

He put his hand on April’s cheek and let it rest, their eyes meeting, really meeting, for the first time in years. Since she had turned and saw him across from her in her hospital bed. A moment that seemed so far away now. “You promise me, Ty, that you’ll keep an eye on him. If anything ever happens to me.”

Proud-proud of her as well-he nodded. “Of course. I promise.”

I’ll do whatever it takes.

Marc’s dad came toward him as he wound around the fence to retrieve the ball. Maybe he saw Hauck staring. Maybe he noticed the look that was on his face, that made him appear lost.

“Looking for someone?” the older man came up and said.

I did it for him, April. For the boy. How much Hauck wanted to tell him. How much he felt in his heart like he was about to burst. But not now. One day he would find a way in. He’d offer to take him to a game, introduce himself as an old friend of his mom’s. Tell him a story. But not now. He fought back tears.

I did it for him, April.

“No, not lost.” Hauck smiled. “Just passing through.”