The Prince of Risk

27

Astor stepped over Penelope Evans and leaned onto the bed to pick up the magazine.

“Hey!” shouted Sullivan. “What did I say about not touching anything? Use a handkerchief, or better yet, just leave things be.”

Astor pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and used it to retrieve the magazine. Information Technology Today was not exactly what he figured a thirty-five-year-old woman read in her spare time. The magazine lay open to an article titled “Next-Generation Solutions for Connecting Devices.” The first paragraph discussed a company in Reston, Virginia, called Britium. It began, “This cutting-edge software has fundamentally changed the way devices and systems connect, integrate, and interoperate with each other and the enterprise.” It got worse from there. He skimmed the remaining pages with an eye toward one word: Palantir. He put down the magazine disappointed.

A stack of paperbacks was piled high on the night table. Most were crime fiction by best-selling authors. The books confirmed his first thought. She did not read Information Technology Today for fun.

Astor poked his head into the bathroom. He saw nothing of interest and retreated through the bedroom and turned into the hall. He found Penelope Evans’s office on the opposite side of the corridor. Thick curtains stifled the daylight. A lamp burned on the desk, illuminating a raft of papers. In the room, it was still night.

Astor approached the desk cautiously, keeping in mind Sullivan’s admonition not to touch anything. He had never been arrested, but as a registered representative of the New York Stock Exchange and a principal of the National Association of Security Dealers, his fingerprints were on file and easily retrievable. Again he wrapped his fingers before thumbing through the stacks. There were articles downloaded from a variety of newspapers and periodicals, the subjects ranging from the latest batch of Silicon Valley startups to the growing influence of sovereign wealth funds on Wall Street to local concern over the sale of a chunk of Icelandic soil to foreign buyers.

Iceland?

Astor sorted through a stack of annual reports perched on the corner of the desk. The first few came from high-tech companies listed on the NASDAQ. There was a manufacturer of silicon wafers, a provider of routers and switches-something that would be classified as “Net infrastructure”-and an aerospace company involved in the manufacture and launch of communications satellites. He thumbed through the first few pages of each. Again he was unable to find any mention of Palantir. Nor did he find anything that struck him as sinister or alarming, or that in any way might be related to his father’s murder. In fact, the reports had nothing in common except the fact that they all concerned newly listed companies, the oldest having gone public a year earlier.

Thinking this might be the thread, he checked to see if all shared a common underwriter. They did not. A dozen different banks had participated in bringing the companies to market. He knew the underwriters to be upstanding firms.

Astor continued checking the annual reports, if less studiously. The emphasis was on technology, but there were more traditional industries as well, and these companies were not exclusively American. There was a South African mining company, an Australian maker of heavy equipment-tractors, trucks, backhoes, and the like-and a well-known German manufacturer of electronic components, primarily high-fidelity audio and communications equipment. It was only as he replaced these that he noted that the reports dated back several years. The most recent came from 2008.

He looked again at the German electronics company’s report and remembered that the organization had been taken private by a well-known private equity firm several years back. Other than that, nothing.

A laptop sat open on the desk. Astor clicked the mouse and the screen blossomed to life. Another article, not about “next-generation connecting devices” but a piece from the Financial Times about the Flash Crash of May 2010, which occurred when a breakdown in the orderly matching of buy and sell orders caused the Dow Jones Industrial Average to plummet a thousand points in minutes, only to regain two-thirds of the loss minutes later.

“The cause of the sudden precipitous decline had been thought to be a single faulty sell order that in turn triggered computer-driven programs to rush thousands of sell orders to market. A new analysis suggests that the cause might have stemmed not from the first massive sell order but from an error in the New York Stock Exchange’s proprietary trading platform…”

Astor consulted the laptop’s History panel, scouring the list of websites Evans had most recently visited. Not annual reports this time, but corporate websites. A manufacturer of silicon wafers and another of microchips, both stalwarts of Silicon Valley. A petroleum company. An American glass manufacturer with ties to the computer industry. They might be a crosscut of the NASDAQ. Tech heavy, to be sure, but not exclusively.

Still no mention of Palantir. Still no common thread.

Sullivan poked his head into the room. “Time’s up.”

“That wasn’t ten minutes,” said Astor.

“Who cares about ten minutes? Don’t you got ears?”

It was then that Astor heard the siren. The wail came and went, still far away.

“Who called?”

“My guess? The killer. He’s watching the house.”

“But why?”

“That’s a no-brainer. He doesn’t want us to find anything.”

“I need a second,” said Astor.

“We don’t have a second,” said Sullivan, taking hold of his arm and yanking him away from the desk.

Astor wrested free and returned to gather up the annual reports as well as the articles Evans had printed out. “You said look for clues. These are clues.”

“I said look. Not steal. That’s obstruction.”

“I’ll let you explain once we’re arrested.”

Astor brushed past the detective and continued down the hall to Evans’s bedroom. Something in the first few paragraphs of the article Evans had been reading had stuck in Astor’s mind. He wasn’t sure what had caught his attention, only that it might be important. “Get that magazine on the bed,” he said. “My hands are full.”

Sullivan stood frozen in the doorway, as if nailed to the floor. “We don’t have time.”

“Just do it.”

“But-”

“I need it.”

Sullivan swore under his breath, then pried his feet loose and retrieved the magazine.

The sirens were louder now. Not one but two police cars.

Astor stopped at the bottom of the stairs, frightened, unsure whether to leave the house the same way they’d come. Sullivan nearly knocked him to the ground in his rush for the front door. “Forget the back,” he said. “Move.”

Astor slammed the front door behind him. As he ran to the car, he realized that he had dropped the handkerchief somewhere inside the house. He climbed into the passenger seat as Sullivan started the engine. In a burst of acceleration, the Audi crested the driveway and turned onto the street. Astor twisted in his seat to look over his shoulder. He caught sight of the first police car, but only for a second. The next, the Audi slid around a curve, and an army of trees blocked the road behind them from view. He remained in that position, watching, waiting, expecting at any moment to see the police car round the bend, lights blazing, siren going full-force. No one followed.

Astor put on the safety belt. He sat still, gazing straight ahead, saying nothing as he played back the last seconds in the house: the rushed theft of the annual reports, the mad scramble down the stairs and out the front door. He did not know where he’d dropped the handkerchief.

Sullivan looked shaken. “Take my word, Bobby. We did the smart thing.”

Astor didn’t respond. It wasn’t the handkerchief that bothered him. It was plain and white and lacking any monogram. It was something else. Something worse.

“What is it, kid? What’s wrong?” asked Sullivan, patting his leg in a fatherly manner. “Had enough of playing cop for one day?”

Astor looked away. In his mind’s eye, he was replaying the moment when, in his hurry to leave the house, he’d placed his bare left hand flat against the inside of Penelope Evans’s front door.

He could still feel the door’s smooth texture beneath his fingertips.