The Garden of Betrayal

34

“Thanks so much for your time,” Claire said, her voice tinny and muffled on the cell phone’s speaker. “You’ve been really helpful. I’ll let you know if we end up taking the space.”

“Do,” a woman replied. “It’d be nice to have some new neighbors.”

I heard the sound of a door being opened, and then Reggie’s hoarse whisper from the second cell phone.

“Claire’s coming out.”

I glanced at Kate, who was sitting next to me in the front seat of our car. We were in an open-air garage in White Plains, New York, twenty miles north of the city. The two cell phones were balanced on the armrests between us. The prospectus Peter McKenzie had e-mailed me from Hong Kong identified the firm that originally funded Petronuevo as Ganesa Capital. According to their corporate records, Ganesa had a single small office on the fifth floor of an ugly concrete building three blocks away from where we were now parked.

“You get everything?” I asked Kate.

She looked up from the computer in her lap and nodded.

“Where are you, Reggie?” I asked.

“We’re just stepping into the stairwell.” His voice sounded from both speakers now, distinct on one and muted on the other. “I’m going to give you to Claire.”

“Were you able to hear?” she asked.

“Yes. No problem.” Claire had her phone clipped to her skirt at the small of her back and hidden by a jacket. “You want to review names?”

“I think I have it. The woman I spoke to is Sue Dye. Her boss is Mike Paulson, and he manages SureView Insurance. The building maintenance guys are Rahim and Joe.”

SureView was on the fourth floor of the building, directly below Ganesa.

“Right,” Kate confirmed, following along on her screen. “And the temp agency they use is People Now, on Mamaroneck Avenue.”

“So, what do you think?” I asked nervously. “You ready to tackle Ganesa, or you want a little more time to recover?”

“I’d rather get it over with,” Claire said.

“Any sign of trouble, or anything that doesn’t feel right, and I want you out of there immediately. You have difficulty leaving and you shout for Reggie. He’ll be right outside in the hall. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

“Give me to Reggie again, please.”

“Mark?” he said.

“You’re going to take care of her if there’s a problem, right?”

“Absolutely. Don’t worry about anything. She’s doing great.”

I heard their footsteps on the stairs, and then another door opening and closing. My palms were sweating, Reggie’s assurances regardless. I couldn’t believe Claire had talked me into letting her do this.

“She’s headed in now,” he murmured.

“Hi,” Claire said. “Rachel Whitson. I’m temping downstairs at Sure-View Insurance.”

“Ellen Cho,” a woman answered. “Nice to meet you.”

“Sue asked me to come up because we noticed some water dripping into our phone closet. She talked to the building guy-Rahid?”

“Rahim.”

“And he said that he and Joe would be up in about ten minutes. But Sue wanted me to let you know, in case you have a leak.”

“I haven’t noticed anything.”

“My husband’s a plumber. You mind if I just check the sink in your pantry?”

“Please.”

“Your pipes are dry,” Claire said a minute later. “And there’s no water puddling under the dishwasher. But I’m turned around. If the pantry’s here, where’s your phone equipment?”

“There.”

“Should we take a quick look? I really like your hair, by the way. Do you get it done locally?”

I was amazed by how calm she sounded.

“Thanks. At a place called Isobel’s, on Main Street in Dobbs Ferry.”

“You live there?”

“For about six years now.”

“My husband and I are in the Bronx. We’re always talking about moving out, but it’s hard, because we have so much family nearby.”

“Dobbs Ferry is only fifteen minutes from the Bronx on the Saw Mill River Parkway. It’s a nice place. You should drive by and take a look.”

“You’re right, we really should. Your equipment closet seems dry also. It must be something in our ceiling-maybe a drain line from somewhere. So, how do you commute here from Dobbs Ferry?”

Fifteen minutes later Reggie and Claire were in the backseat of the car. I leaned over the front seat to give her an awkward hug and a kiss.

“You were great.”

“Thanks.” She took a yellow pad from the seat pad and began sketching. “It’s even smaller than we thought. Reception area, conference room, office, pantry, equipment closet. The door to the office was shut, but I could hear a guy talking inside. And I didn’t spot any special security gear-no cameras or anything like that.”

The guy she’d heard was presumably Karl Mohler, president of Ganesa. We hadn’t been able to learn much about Mohler or Ganesa other than his name and the location of the office. According to their corporate registration and the Petronuevo prospectus, Ganesa ran offshore investment funds, which meant it was almost entirely unregulated.

“Small could be good or bad,” Reggie said. “Less people to worry about, but anybody you bump into is likely to ask what you’re doing. In a big office, everybody assumes someone else knows why you’re there.”

“You’re the guy who doesn’t like the alternative,” I reminded him.

“The alternative,” he repeated. “You mean breaking and entering?”

“Enough,” Kate said, rolling her eyes. “We’ve been over this a million times. What about the equipment closet?”

Claire flipped a page and began sketching again.

“It was like you said. A white TV cable connected to a box mounted on the wall, and then a red computer cable connecting that to another box, and then another red cable connecting that to a panel with a whole bunch of blue wires coming out.”

“Modem, router, switch,” Kate said, leaning over the seat and pointing to each of the items Claire had drawn in turn. “Was there a brand name and a model number on the router?”

“Cisco two-five-oh-two.”

“Good,” Kate said, turning around and tapping at her laptop again. “Connection’s slow through my cell phone, but I should have the manual in a few minutes.”

Reggie’s phone rang. He checked the number and then answered it.

“Uh-huh,” he said, motioning to Claire for her pad and pen. “Right. Right. Got it, thanks.”

He hung up and tore the piece of paper he’d written on from the pad.

“Ellen Cho. Lives at one-oh-eight Northmeadow Avenue in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Two cars registered to the address-a black ’06 Audi A4 sedan and a red ’03 Volvo wagon. I got plate numbers on both. I’m betting she’s the wagon.”

Claire had learned that Ellen parked in a lot two streets over. I turned the key to start my engine and dropped the transmission into gear.

“So, let’s go find it,” I said.

Reggie, Kate, and I stepped off the elevator and onto the fifth floor of Ganesa’s building forty-five minutes later. Reggie pointed right, indicating a dark wood door that had GANESA CAPITAL spelled out in stenciled gold letters, and then led us left, toward the fire stairs. Once in the stairwell, Kate perched on the steps and opened her laptop while I stripped off my winter coat. Reggie examined me critically. I was wearing a red polo shirt with a Verizon logo, khaki pants, and tan work boots. Reggie had supplied the shirt, courtesy of a friend in the city’s Special Investigation Unit. SIU was the outfit that did all the wiretap work for the NYPD.

“You look too white-collar,” he said. “You need a tattoo or something. Maybe a beer gut.”

“Not much I can do about that now. You got the belt?”

He lifted a small duffel bag from his shoulder and handed it to me. I extracted a leather lineman’s belt loaded with tools and a dangling line tester and strapped it around my waist.

“Too tight,” he said. “Loosen it up a little bit, so it hangs down some.”

I did as he suggested.

“Better. You good to go?”

I took a deep breath and nodded.

“Kate?”

She gave him a thumbs-up, eyes fixed on her computer screen.

“Okay, then.”

He took his phone from his pocket and dialed.

“Ellen Cho, please… This is Sergeant Landon of the New Rochelle Police Department. I believe you own a red Volvo wagon, New York plate number CSN one-one-three-six… Probably not. It’s just that one of our patrol cars found your license plate in the parking lot of a 7-Eleven off the Post Road this morning, and we wanted to let you know that we have it, and to make sure that you drove the car out that way… Really? Has anyone else driven the car?… Well, I hate to say it, but that actually is kind of troubling, because the two things that occur to me are that somebody stole your plate, or maybe even that someone stole your car… I’m absolutely sure. I’ve got the plate right here in front of me. When did you last see the car?… Uh-huh… Right. That’s exactly what I think you should do. If the car’s there, don’t worry about it. One of my guys lives out in your neck of the woods, and I’ll have him drop the plate off this afternoon on his way home. On the other hand, if the car’s missing, you should probably head over to the White Plains police department as soon as possible and file a report… Right. They’d be the ones to handle it… You’re welcome. We’re happy to help. Have a nice day.”

He hung up and looked at me.

“She’s on her way.”

I exited the stairwell, duffel bag in hand, and began walking slowly toward Ganesa’s office. A flustered-looking Asian woman in her mid-thirties opened the door when I was about ten feet away.

“Hi,” I said. “You with Ganesa?”

“Yes.”

“Verizon,” I said, pointing at the logo on my shirt. “People downstairs had a leak and their phone system shorted out. Conduit carrying your lines got wet, too. We need to run a few quick tests before we try to power their system on again.”

“My boss is on a call, and I have to go run an important errand. Can you come back in twenty minutes?”

“Folks downstairs are out of business without their phones. And I’d hate to bring their system up and take yours down.”

She hesitated a moment and then nodded.

“All our equipment is in the closet to the left of the pantry. You need me to show you?”

“No. Everything comes out of the same chase on this side of the building. And I think I’ve been here before-your boss is Karl somebody, right?”

“Mohler,” she confirmed. “Make sure you pull the door closed behind you when you leave, please.”

“Will do.”

She hurried off toward the elevator as I stepped into the reception area. The decor was generic-beige walls and carpet, mahogany-veneer trim, and a couple of framed posters from Monet’s water lily series, one of which looked to be hung upside down. The interior door that led to Mohler’s office was still closed. I made my way to the equipment closet as quietly as possible, both hands pressed to the sides of my belt to prevent it from clattering. The router was where Claire had indicated, and looked exactly like the picture in the manual Kate had shown me. I picked it up, tipped it facedown, and gently inserted a paper clip into the pinhole in the back, performing what Kate had called a “hard reset.” A hard reset restored the router to its factory settings-including the factory issued password, which Kate had also found in the manual. The power light on the front of the router cycled from green to red to flashing yellow. Flashing yellow meant it was rebooting. Setting the router down, I reached into the duffel and pulled out a compact wireless access point with network and power cords wrapped around it. The access point went on the shelf next to the router, the network cord connected it to the switch, and the power cord went to an available outlet. I did a quick scan, making sure everything looked right, and then took my phone from my pocket and texted the word “done” to Kate. Everything else was up to her. Our plan was that she’d connect to the access point wirelessly from the stairwell, log in to the router with the default password, and then alter the settings so she could riffle through Ganesa’s records over the Internet, hopefully learning who Mohler worked for. The green transmit light on the access point began flashing-Kate had connected.

“Can I help you?”

I jumped involuntarily. A guy I assumed had to be Mohler was standing in the hall outside his office door, blocking my exit. He was a few inches shorter than me, skinny, and had a pointed nose that made him look like a rodent. My first thought was that I could probably take him in a scuffle. My second was that it was just me and him in the office, and that it might be a heck of a lot easier to just bang his head against the wall until he told me what I wanted to know. The original original plan-before breaking and entering-had been exactly that. Reggie had nixed it, and Claire made me promise to play it cool.

“You surprised me. People downstairs had a leak, and their phone system shorted. We’re just checking your equipment to make sure you don’t have a problem when we bring them back online.”

He glanced over his shoulder toward the empty reception area.

“Who let you in?”

“I bumped into your assistant in the hall. Ellen? She said it would be okay.”

He nodded expressionlessly. I couldn’t tell if he was curious or suspicious or just bored. The worst case was that he’d recognize me. My image hadn’t been in the media for ages that I knew about, but some people were good with faces. If he did, I was going back to plan number one. One of the tools on my belt was a twelve-inch crescent wrench. I tried to remember the Scottish word Narimanov had taught me- “laldie.” A beating with a pipe wrench. I reckoned the tool on my belt would serve in a pinch.

“The Internet went down in my office. You know anything about that?”

“I pulled the cable for a second to test it. Everything in the chase got wet. Should be back up now. Sorry I didn’t give you a heads-up-your assistant said you were on the phone.”

He took a couple of steps forward and peered into the closet. The wireless access point I’d installed was in plain view. I wondered if he knew what he was looking at.

“Seems dry to me.”

“Leak was downstairs,” I said, letting myself sound a little peevish. It was probably a mistake to be too polite. I unclipped the line tester from my belt and turned my back to him. “Be done here in a minute.”

I attached the leads to one of the phone blocks and peered at the display on the tester, willing Mohler to walk away. Fifteen seconds passed with agonizing slowness. If he asked me to explain what I was doing, I wouldn’t have any choice but to hit him, because I didn’t have a clue. I heard the door to his office close just as the phone on my belt began vibrating. Kate had responded with the same message I’d sent her-“done.”

It took only a few seconds to unhook my gear and pack up. Kate and Reggie were waiting for me by the elevator.

“Any problems?” Reggie asked.

“I saw Mohler.”

“You get any kind of read on him?”

“Little man in a little office. There has to be someone bigger behind him.”

Kate touched the bag that held her computer.

“We’ll know soon,” she said.