The Garden of Betrayal

37

The LaGuardia Motor Court in Queens is an architectural throwback to the 1950s-a rambling, pink-painted, two-story wooden structure that surrounds an asphalt parking lot on three sides, with rooms that open directly to the central lot at ground level and a long, open-air gallery above. My room was upstairs. Four steps carried me from the cigarette-burned nightstand to the peeling veneer of the wall opposite. Another four carried me back. I pushed the yellowed curtain from my window for the tenth time and checked for activity outside. The view was of the half-empty parking lot, a narrow, brown finger of the East River, and the raw concrete buildings of the Rikers Island penitentiary beyond. The only change in the last two minutes was that the lights of the prison had come on, gleaming with a false cheerfulness through the wintry mid-afternoon gloom. A plane roared low overhead from the adjacent airport, making the floor joists tremble. I doubted anyone got much sleep at the LaGuardia Motor Court. The carpet underfoot seemed to seep desperation, and there was something crusted on the curtain. I let the curtain fall, electing to wipe my hand clean on the leg of my jeans rather than wash it. Lord knew I didn’t want to enter the bathroom for any reason. Reggie had been at pains to explain that he was familiar with the LaGuardia Motor Court only because it was owned by the nephew of a city councilperson, and hence one of the dumps where the local court system housed jurors unlucky enough to be sequestered. He’d recommended it as a place that had good sight lines and a management that was simultaneously adept at cooperating with law enforcement and at ignoring most of what transpired. I was too nervous to care much about the ambience, although I felt a vague sense of relief that I’d never been sequestered.

My phone rang as I resumed pacing. I answered it and heard Amy’s voice.

“Everything okay?” she asked.

“Fine,” I said, spotting a cockroach the size of my thumb on the ceiling. “What’s up?”

“Susan called. Walter wants to see you.”

“That’s a surprise.” Alex’s funeral had been held that morning.

“I know. I asked what it was about. All Susan knew was that Walter’s at home in the city, and that he wants you to stop by as soon as possible.”

The hubris that led Walter to believe I’d drop everything and hustle on over to his town house after the way he’d treated me was offensive, and I was more than a little tempted to insist that he call on me instead. Regretfully, I couldn’t afford the luxury of holding a grudge. I still wanted to know who he’d seen and what he’d learned in Washington.

“Not going to work for me. Tell her that I’ll call in later to set something up for tomorrow.”

“You sure?”

“Waiting won’t kill him.” A shadow fell on the window curtain; someone was in the gallery just outside my room. “Text or e-mail me if you have anything else,” I whispered. “I have to go now.”

I hung up without waiting for her answer and moved silently to the door, imagining I could sense someone on the other side. I touched the gun in my pocket to reassure myself. Reggie and Claire had been united in insisting that I carry it, much to my surprise. I took a deep breath and jerked the door open.

Mohler was hunched over on the other side, head angled as if he’d been trying to eavesdrop. He was wearing a black trenchcoat with the collar turned up and a Clouseau-like herringbone hat. Startled by my sudden appearance, he leaped sideways, his stupid hat falling to the ground. My nerves had been stretched taut, but it was impossible to feel intimidated by him. My initial impression came back-he was a little man in over his head. I picked up the hat and offered it to him.

“I know you,” he said, snatching it from me and working his fingers along the brim. “You’re the guy who was in my office the other day. The telephone guy.”

“And I know you,” I answered. “You’re the guy who surfs spanking porn all day and transfers money between numbered accounts once a month.”

His lips twitched, exposing crooked front teeth.

“You’re fucking with the wrong people. You have no idea what kind of trouble you’re in.”

“Maybe not. But I know what kind of trouble you’re in. So, why don’t you come on in, and we’ll talk about it?”

“There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Then why are you here?”

His lips twitched again, but he seemed to have run out of bravado. He entered the room slowly, head darting from side to side. There was nothing to see except the bed, the nightstand, a low chest of drawers, and a green tartan-upholstered chair. I flicked on the overhead light, shut the door, and sat down on a corner of the bed. I figured it had to be marginally cleaner than the chair.

“You’re not any kind of cop,” Mohler said, turning to face me. “You wouldn’t be alone if you were. Which makes you-what? A shakedown artist?”

“An interested party.”

“An interested party who broke into my computer system,” he said, reaching into his shirt pocket and pulling out a hard copy of the e-mail I’d sent him. “And who’s threatening to expose me to the SEC.” He ripped the printed e-mail into pieces and threw it to the ground. “And what’s the SEC going to do about it? My customers and my accounts are all offshore.”

“Then why are you here?” I repeated.

He moved toward me, eyes wild, and I realized how near he was to hysteria.

“Because you don’t understand what you’re doing. Haven’t you wondered what kind of people set up this sort of operation? And what they might do if some small-time nobody threatens to blow it for them?”

“I’ve wondered about who they are. Why don’t you tell me?”

He took a step backward, toward the door.

“And end up dead? I don’t think so.”

It was the reaction we’d expected.

“You’d be more persuasive if you brought some of these bad men with you,” I said, deliberately provocative. “All I’m seeing is a broken-down stock jockey.”

He flinched as if I’d slapped him and began digging a hand purposefully in his other pocket. My heart rate jumped. The unmanageable risk at the core of our plan was that Mohler proved to be violent himself. It was why Reggie and Claire had insisted on the gun. I rose, groping for my weapon, but Mohler beat me to the draw.

“Take it,” he said, thrusting a fat white envelope toward me. “That’s ten thousand dollars. It was all the cash I could get on short notice. I can get more, lots more, but you have to be patient. You have to work with me on this.”

I pushed the envelope away and settled back down onto the bed, trying not to betray how scared I’d been.

“Why?” I demanded. “So these guys you claim to work for won’t kill me? Stop bullshitting me. If you had that kind of muscle at your disposal, you wouldn’t be trying to pay me off.”

Sweat shone on his forehead. He held the envelope out again, his hand trembling.

“Work with me, because we’re in this together now. If they knew I’d been careless, they’d kill me, too.”

I took the cash from him and tossed it on the bed.

“Sit,” I ordered, pointing to the chair. “You have to answer a few questions before we strike any kind of deal.”

He collapsed onto the chair.

“First, tell me how you got involved in this whole thing.”

He edged forward and began working his fingers nervously along the brim of his hat again.

“Why do you care?”

“Because I want to know who I’m becoming partners with.”

He nodded rapidly, as if eager to persuade me of his cooperativeness.

“I was working as an account rep at Dean Witter back in the mid-nineties. I signed a couple of geriatrics as clients and did a few trades to try to make them some money.”

“But it didn’t work out,” I prompted, having heard similar stories innumerable times before. “So you did a few more trades and lost more money. Someone complained.”

“Right,” he said, sounding bitter. “The compliance guys at Dean Witter accused me of churning. They ratted me out to the SEC. The SEC investigated, and suddenly it was securities fraud because there was a problem with some statements. I got a call from the U.S. Attorney, offering me two to four years in jail if I took a deal and threatening me with five to seven if I didn’t.”

“What did you do?”

“I was still trying to figure it out when I got a call out of the blue from some lawyer I never heard of. He said he could get me off, and that I had friends in high places. I didn’t know much, but I knew I didn’t have any friends in high places.”

“Let me guess. Your problems went away.”

“Right. The SEC backed off, so the U.S. Attorney dropped the case. I even got severance from Dean Witter. It was sweet.”

He smiled at the recollection, still gleeful at having put one over on the powers that almost crushed him.

“But your new friend wanted a return favor.”

The smile vanished, replaced by a look of resignation.

“I was kind of into the whole thing at first. Nice office, good salary, no pressure. Once a month I have to figure out how to allocate trades between a bunch of different accounts, to move the right amounts of money back and forth. It was easy. But it’s been the same thing for ten years now, and I got to admit, it gets kind of old.”

“No special projects?” I asked, thinking of the Petronuevo transaction.

“A little private equity sometimes. Most of the time I don’t even get to read the paperwork. I just sign where I’m told to sign.”

“Told by whom?” I asked, circling back to the only question I genuinely cared about.

He shook his head, looking scared again.

“Fine,” I said, trying another tack. “Just explain how it works.”

He nodded rapidly again.

“I get most of my instructions on the phone. And there’s a guy who comes around to collect signatures. Mr. Smith, he calls himself, like it’s a big joke.”

“Nice guy?”

He shook his head sharply.

“Not a nice guy?”

“It’s why we have to be careful. You don’t know these people.”

“Tell me.”

He dropped his eyes to the carpet nervously.

“Smith wanted me to sign some legal papers a couple of years ago. They were in French. I asked how I was supposed to sign if I couldn’t read them. ‘With a pen,’ he told me. I said no. I’d signed all kinds of stuff before, without ever reading any of it. But it was the way he was always treating me, like I was a complete nobody. It made me mad.”

“What did he do?”

Mohler glanced up and fixed me with a pathetic smile.

“He put a knife to my throat and made me hold my left hand in a desk drawer, and then he slammed the drawer shut.” Mohler held the hand up, so I could see it. Two of the knuckles were badly misshapen. “I don’t ask any more questions.”

I almost felt bad for him.

“How do you get in touch with Smith if you need to speak with him for some reason?”

He opened his mouth to answer, but a noise from the door interrupted. A key turning in the lock. The door opened, and a man entered. Mohler moaned in fear. The man was wearing a baseball cap pulled low and had a wide, shiny scar stretching from his mouth to his left ear.