The 6:20 Man

Chapter 48

On the train back to the city Devine called Dr. Wyman’s office with a request to speak to him about Ewes.

However, he was told that Wyman was not available. Devine then left his name and number and asked if the doctor could contact him when he had the chance and that it was important. The receptionist said she would pass along the information and then she hung up.

Okay, so much for that.

He got off the subway at Broadway and walked until he reached the Lombard Theater. Godot was still playing for the next week or so. He walked around the front of the building and took in the marquee, the ticket office, the stanchions, and the people scurrying around.

Ewes had been interested in this play for some reason. She had walked into Jennifer Stamos’s office and told her to go see it. Now that Stamos had told him that she and Ewes were in love, her confiding in Stamos made sense. But the more he thought about it, the more Devine was convinced that Ewes had told Stamos more. He didn’t believe Stamos’s explanation that Ewes was trying to protect her by keeping her in the dark. If Ewes had told Stamos to check out the Lombard Theater, he was sure she would have told her lover why.

Then something occurred to Devine, and he groaned, chastising himself for not thinking of it earlier. He took out his phone, did a Google search, and found his answer.

The Lombard Theater was owned by... the Locust Group. Ewes’s interest had nothing to do with the play. It had everything to do with the property. The nicely rehabbed property.

Christian Chilton’s property on the Upper East Side — the Locust Group. Montgomery’s walk-up — the Locust Group. The Lombard Theater — the Locust Group.

He looked up and down the street. What else did the Locust Group own? And what was the connection to Cowl and Comely? He had told Campbell that he had thought of a way to get inside Area 51. Maybe the answers to his questions would be found there.

During their meeting at the restaurant, Devine had made a request to Campbell for some equipment he would need. Then he looked on his phone and found the nearest Apple Store for the other item he required.

Later, back at his cubicle, Devine took out his phone and texted a message to the same number from which he had received the summons to meet with Brad Cowl.

His thumb hovered over the Send key, then he pressed it and put his phone away. He spent the rest of the day laboring over work that he couldn’t have cared less about. All around him the other Burners were going full bore, analyzing data from all four corners of the earth. Every dollar to be made, every dollar to be paid, every dollar to be lost. That was, ultimately, what it was all about. As he had heard Brad Cowl say in an interview with CNBC once:

“The first billion is the hardest to make. After that, it gets a lot easier.”

I’m sure it does, asshole.

At seven that evening, when he was looking at his phone clock and thinking about leaving, the text came in:

Smart guy, thought Devine. He wants me to work overtime just for the honor of meeting him. But then again, no Burner got paid overtime. The only one who made money off that extra work was the firm of Cowl and Comely. But he was glad it was later, because he hadn’t gotten the item he needed from Campbell yet. It was supposed to have arrived by now. Without that, his plan was dead. A bead of sweat appeared on his forehead. Now he had to confirm something else. Again, without it, his plan was useless. Normally he would have all his ducks in a row before executing a strategy. But here it wasn’t possible. It was a classic chicken-and-egg problem.

He texted Michelle Montgomery and asked her to let him know if she would be once more escorting him to his meeting with Cowl.

Come on, come on. Please.

Ten minutes later he got an affirmative on that from her.

He felt tremendous relief. Without her his plan had no chance of working. It still might not have a chance, depending on how good or bad his powers of persuasion were.

Next, he googled the name Anne Comely. He had done this before and found nothing. The result this time was the same. Even Emerson Campbell and his people could find nothing on the woman.

He then googled Bradley Cowl and found about ten billion results. Maybe one for each dollar the man had.

He sat back and thought about this. Morgan and Stanley. Plenty of stuff on both people, now long dead. Same for Merrill and Lynch. The defunct Lehman Brothers, the same. J. P. Morgan was a real guy. E. F. Hutton as well. Hell, even Harley and Davidson, if you ventured outside the financial world.

But Cowl and Comely, apparently not so much. And he doubted he was the first person to wonder about that. He did another search focused more on that inquiry and found a video from six years ago that Cowl had done with the Wall Street Journal. The reporter had asked Cowl about his “partner.”

Cowl’s response had been interesting. Without directly addressing the question, he had said, “Partnerships can be of many different varieties. It can simply be an idea or a perspective.”

When the journalist had asked him point-blank if Anne Comely existed and, if so, where and who she was, Cowl had terminated the interview.

As the video ended, Devine thought he could see just the barest of smiles on Cowl’s features.

At seven fifty, Devine finally received a text from Campbell.

Thank you, Jesus.

He left the building, walked around the corner, and passed a man who had just left a paper bag on a stone wall. Devine gripped the bag as he walked by and looked inside it. The object was small and wafer thin. He surreptitiously palmed it, then threw the bag in the trash and bent down as if to tie his shoe. He slipped the device into his sock and pushed it down until it rested inside his shoe.

He had no formal training as a spy, but he had spent years as a soldier in the Middle East. And those wars weren’t just about carrying guns and shooting at the enemy. They had been about gathering information, getting Afghans and Iraqis in villages and towns and cities and deserts to trust him and provide intelligence. And he had participated in a number of info drops where he knew he was being watched and had to carry it off in a way that would not cause harm to him, or death to his informants.

He returned to work, feeling better about things.

At 8:58, the door opened and there stood Willard Paulson. He motioned to Devine, who put on his jacket, grabbed his briefcase, and waved to the remaining Burners. Two of them, a man and a woman, looked up at him curiously. He’d had beers and meals with them, not many, but a few. They had vented about Cowl and Comely, about the oppressive workload, the ungodly competitiveness abounding in this building, and the insecurities they all possessed about not being good enough to make the cut.

And yet he knew little about their personal lives, and they knew next to nothing about his. It was just that way here. As a soldier, he had known pretty much every personal detail of the men and women with whom he served. It was just a totally different reality on Wall Street, where literal walls were set up everywhere.

And I hope to breach a big one tonight.