City of Endless Night Page 14

  She nodded. Ozmian enjoyed hostile takeovers almost as much as he enjoyed firing his own employees.

  Now Ozmian came out from behind the desk and took a seat in one of the other chrome-and-leather chairs. His tall, thin frame seemed strung tight as a bowstring, and she could guess why.

  Ozmian gestured at a tabloid that sat on the table between them: a copy of the Christmas edition of the Post. “I assume you saw this,” he said.

  “I did.”

  The entrepreneur picked it up, face contorting into a grimace as if he were handling dogshit, and turned to page three. “‘Grace Ozmian,’” he quoted, his voice full of barely controlled rage. “‘Twenty-three-year-old party girl with no greater aspiration in life than to spend Daddy’s cash, indulge in illegal drug use, and lead a parasitic lifestyle when she’s not in court getting slapped on the wrist for the hit-and-run killing of an eight-year-old boy while driving drunk.’” With a sudden violent gesture, he tore the tabloid in two, then into four, and then threw it dismissively on the floor. “That Harriman just won’t let it rest. I gave him a chance to shut up and move on. But the shit-eating bastard keeps rubbing my face in it, tarnishing my daughter’s good name. Well, his chance has come and gone.”

  “Very good.”

  “You know what I’m saying, right? The time has come to swat him—swat him flat as a mosquito. I want this to be the last filth the scumbag will ever write about my daughter.”

  “Understood.”

  Ozmian eyed his deputy. “Do you? I’m not just talking about putting a scare into him. I want him neutralized.”

  “I will make sure of that.”

  A twitch of the lips that might have been a smile passed quickly across Ozmian’s narrow face. “I presume that, since we last talked about this issue, you’ve been considering an appropriate response.”

  “Of course.”

  “And?”

  “I have something rather exquisite. Not only will it accomplish the desired task, but it will do so with an irony I think you’ll appreciate.”

  “I knew I could count on you, Isabel. Tell me about it.”

  Alves-Vettoretto began to explain, Ozmian leaned back in his chair, listening to her cool, precise voice lay out the most delicious plan. As she continued, the smile returned to his face; only this time it was genuine, and it lingered for a long time.

  30

  BRYCE HARRIMAN BEGAN to ascend the steps to the main entrance of the New York Post building, then stopped. He’d climbed these steps a thousand times over the last few years. This morning, however, was different. This morning, Boxing Day, he’d been summoned to the office of his editor, Paul Petowski, for an unscheduled meeting.

  Such a thing was very unusual. Petowski didn’t like meetings—he preferred to stand in the middle of the newsroom and yell out his commands, rapid-fire, scattering assignments and follow-ups and research jobs like confetti over the surrounding staff. In Harriman’s experience, people were summoned to Petowski’s office for one of only two reasons: to get either chewed out—or fired.

  He climbed the final steps and went through the revolving door into the lobby. Not for the first time since the day before, he felt plagued with self-doubt about his article—and the theory behind it. Oh, naturally, it had been vetted and okayed before publication, as had its follow-up, but he’d heard through the grapevine that it had caused quite a reaction. But what kind of reaction? Had it backfired? Was there blowback? He stepped into the elevator, swallowing painfully, and pressed the button for the ninth floor.

  When he stepped out into the newsroom, the place seemed unusually quiet. To Harriman, the quiet had an ominous undertone: a watching, listening quality, as if the very walls were waiting for something bad to happen. Christ, was it really possible he had screwed up big time? His theory had seemed so sound—but he’d been wrong before. If he got booted from the Post, he’d have to leave town if he was going to find another job in the newspaper business. And with papers everywhere losing circulation and cutting costs, it would be a bitch to land another position, even with his reputation. He’d be lucky to get a job covering the dog races in Dubuque.

  Petowski’s office was in the back of the huge room. The door was closed, the shade pulled down over the window—another bad sign. As he threaded his way between the desks, passing people who were making a show of being busy, he could nevertheless feel every eye swiveling toward him. He glanced at his watch: ten o’clock. It was time.

  He approached the door, knocked diffidently.

  “Yeah?” came Petowski’s gruff voice.

  “It’s Bryce,” Harriman said, working hard to keep his voice from squeaking.

  “Come in.”

  Harriman turned the knob, pushed the door open. He took a step in, then stopped. It took him a moment to process just what he was looking at. The small office was crowded with people: not just Petowski, but Petowski’s boss, the deputy managing editor; her boss, the executive editor; even Willis Beaverton, the crusty old publisher himself. Seeing Harriman, they all broke out into applause.

  As if in a dream, he heard the ovation; he felt his hand being pumped; felt hands slapping his back. “Brilliant piece of work, son!” Beaverton, the publisher, told him in a blast of cigar breath. “Absolutely brilliant!”

  “You doubled our newsstand circulation, single-handedly,” said Petowski, his usual scowl replaced by an avaricious smile. “That was the biggest Christmas issue we’ve had in almost twenty years.”

  Despite the early hour, somebody broke out a bottle of champagne. There were toasts; there were plaudits and laudations; Beaverton made a short speech. And then they all filed out again, each congratulating Harriman in turn as they went past. In a minute, the office was empty save for him and Petowski.

  “Bryce, you’ve stumbled on something big,” Petowski said, moving back behind his desk and pouring the last of the champagne into a plastic cup. “Reporters search their entire lives for a story like this.” He drained the cup, let it drop into the wastebasket. “You stay on this Decapitator story, hear me? Stay on it hard.”

  “I intend to.”

  “I have a suggestion, though.”

  “Yes?” Harriman asked, suddenly cautious.

  “This one percenter versus ninety-nine percenter angle. That really touched a nerve. Play it up. Focus on those one percenter predatory bastards and what they’re doing to this city. Guys like Ozmian in their glass towers lording it above the rest. Is this city going to become a playground for the uber-rich while the rest barely scrape together a living in the darkness below? You get what I mean?”

  “I sure do.”

  “And this phrase you used in the last piece, City of Endless Night. That was good. Damn good. Turn it into a kind of mantra, work it into every piece.”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Oh, and by the way: as of now, I’m giving you a hundred-dollar-a-week raise.” He leaned over the desk and—with a final slap to the back—ushered Harriman out of his office.

  Harriman stepped through the door and into the big newsroom. His shoulders stung from Petowski’s hearty blow. As he glanced slowly around at the sea of faces staring back at him—and, in particular, took in the sour expressions of his young rivals—he began to sense, with a kind of golden inner glow, the upwelling of a feeling quite unlike any he’d ever experienced before: intense, total, and consummate vindication.

  31

  BALDWIN DAY DETACHED the five-terabyte external hard drive from the desktop computer and slipped it into his briefcase for the short journey to the top floor of the Seaside Financial Center building near Battery Park. He made the same trip once a day, carrying the precious data that kept the company, LFX Financial, speeding along the highway of profit and yet more profit. On that drive were the names and personal information of many thousands of people his data-marketing team’s research had turned up as leads, or, as they called them in the maze of call center cube farms that occupied three floors of the Seaside complex, “co
lonels.” The leads were mostly retired vets and the spouses of soldiers on active duty. Most precious of all the “colonels” were the widows of vets who owned homes with paid-off mortgages. Every day at 4 PM sharp, Day delivered this hard drive to the executive office suite on the top floor, where the founders and co-CEOs of the firm, Gwen and Rod Burch, had their offices. The Burches would peruse the lists of leads, and they had a nose for sniffing out the best from the extraordinary masses of data. They would pass along their edited and annotated list to the massive boiler room operation of LFX Financial, which would go to work on it, calling thousands of “colonels,” trying to land them as “clients,” although the more appropriate word, Day thought, might be suckers. Every boiler room caller had to sign up at least eight clients a day, forty a week—or be fired.

  Day had been looking for another job almost from the moment he discovered what the company actually did. He was desperate to get out of LFX, not because he was underpaid or overworked—he had no complaints there—but because of the kind of rip-off scam they were engaged in. When he first joined LFX as team leader in the high-sounding Department of Analytics and realized what was going on, he was sickened. It just wasn’t right.

  And of course, on top of that there was always a chance the government might take a stronger interest in the LFX shenanigans. After all, it was the Burches he was working for.

  These thoughts went through his mind as he got on the crowded elevator, tapped his security card against the reader, and pressed the button for the top floor. Security was super tight at the company ever since a discharged soldier, suffering from traumatic brain injury caused by an IED in Iraq, barged into the lobby with a handgun, shooting and wounding three people before turning the gun on himself. His name had been on one of those lists Day had sent upstairs about three months before the incident. That was how long it took LFX to take away the guy’s house—three short months. After the shooting, nothing changed at LFX Financial regarding company practices and incentives, except that a fanatical security regime had been implemented and a sense of paranoia had thickened the air. Part of that security regime was the isolation and compartmentalization of computer networks, which was the reason why he now had to transfer data to the executive suite the old-fashioned way: by carrying it up on foot.

  The elevator doors opened into the elegant lobby of the Seaside building’s top floor. The Burches went in for over-the-top opulence, lots of dark wood paneling, gold leaf, faux marble, plush carpeting, and fake Old Masters on the walls. Day passed through the lobby, nodding to the receptionists, and again tapped his card on the reader next to the door. At the prompt he pressed his finger on a fingerprint scanner; the wooden door swung open to reveal the outer executive suite of offices, bustling with the comings and goings of secretaries and assistants. This was the busiest time of day at LFX Financial, just as the contracts were pouring in from the boiler room.

  Day smiled and nodded to the various secretaries and assistants as he passed by on his way to the Burches’ private suite.

  He checked in with Iris, the head office honcho, just outside the door. Iris was a tough old bird, no nonsense, “good people” as they say. Anyone who could survive working this close to the Burches had to be both capable and tough.

  “I think the Burches are in conference,” she told him. “At least, Roland just came out a few minutes ago.”

  “You know I have to deliver this in person.”

  “Just warning you, that’s all.” She looked at him over her glasses and gave him a brief smile.

  “Thanks, Iris.”

  He crossed the plush carpet to the set of double doors that led into the inner sanctum and placed his hand on the cold brass knob. He always felt a twinge at this moment, just before entering. Beyond lay a gilded monstrosity of a space, done up in gold and black and occupied by two truly horrible trolls. Nine times out of ten they never even looked at him when he dropped off the drive, but once in a while they’d throw out a random disparaging comment, and a few times they had dressed him down for some perceived infraction.

  When he went to turn the door, the handle was locked. This was unusual.

  “Iris?” He turned. “The door’s locked.”

  The secretary leaned over the intercom on her desk and pressed a button. “Mr. Burch? Mr. Day is here to drop off the data.”

  She waited, but there was no answer.

  “Mr. and Mrs. Burch?” she asked again.

  Still no answer.

  “Perhaps it’s out of order.” She rose and strode briskly to the door, giving it a firm double rap.

  A wait.

  Another double rap, done twice.

  More waiting.

  “How odd. I know they’re in there.” She tried the handle, tried it again. Then she took the electronic card dangling from her neck, tapped it on the reader, and pressed her thumb.

  With a click the door released.

  Day followed Iris into the grand and vulgar space. For a split second he thought there’d been a new decorating scheme that had done over the room in red. Then he realized he was staring at blood, more blood than he had ever seen in his life, more blood than he thought possible could exist in the two headless corpses that lay on the soaked carpet before his feet.

  Day heard a sigh and turned just in time to catch Iris as she folded and sank toward the floor. He dragged her back out of the room, his feet squishing along the wet carpet. The door closed automatically behind him as he laid her on a sofa in the reception area, to the sudden consternation of everyone in the outer office space. Then he sought out a seat for himself and eased down in it, head in his shaking hands.

  “What is it?” a secretary asked sharply. “What’s happened?”

  Day’s mind was not clear enough to speak. But it was already evident what had happened.

  “What’s happened?” she demanded again as he tried to clear his head enough to answer while people gathered around, and others approached the closed door to the inner office, hesitatingly.

  “For God’s sake, tell us what happened!”

  Others in the room now rushed to the door of the inner office and tried to open it, but the door had relocked automatically when it shut.

  “Vengeance,” Day managed to say. “Vengeance is what’s happened.”

  32

  AT THE ENTRANCE to the top floor, next to the elevator, the Crime Scene Unit had set up a gowning station, with racks of Tyvek suits, masks, gloves, and booties. Lieutenant D’Agosta donned the full array, as did Pendergast. D’Agosta couldn’t help but notice that the agent did not look good in the suit; not good at all. The baggy outfit looked more like a burial shroud when coupled with his pale skin and gaunt frame.

  They signed in at the makeshift entrance, where Sergeant Curry, already gowned, was waiting for them. The entire floor had been segregated as a crime scene, and the forensic teams were in full collection mode, many on their hands and knees, going over everything with tweezers and test tubes and ziplock evidence bags. Once dressed, D’Agosta paused to watch. They looked good, damn good. Of course, with him and the FBI on-site now, everyone was putting on a show for their benefit, but these were the best the NYPD had to offer and their professionalism was on display for all to see. He wished to hell they would find something solid he could take to the mayor—and fast. This new double homicide probably meant the case would be taken away from him if his team didn’t show serious progress. With luck they’d learn something important from the two who’d discovered the body.

  As D’Agosta looked around, he said, “This is a crazy place to commit a murder.”

  Pendergast inclined his head. “Perhaps it isn’t, strictly speaking, a murder.”

  D’Agosta let this one pass, as he did so many of Pendergast’s other cryptic remarks.

  “You want to walk the whole floor or just see the murder scene?” Curry asked.

  D’Agosta looked at Pendergast, who shrugged almost with indifference. “As you wish, Vincent.”

&nbs
p; “Let’s just have a look at the scene,” D’Agosta told Curry.

  “Yes, sir.” Curry led them across the reception area. The place had the hushed feeling of a sickroom, or a hospital ward for terminal patients, and it smelled strongly of forensic chemicals.

  “There are cameras everywhere,” said D’Agosta. “Were they disabled?”

  “No,” said Curry. “We’re downloading the video from the data drives now. But it looks like they captured everything.”

  “They recorded the killer coming and going?”

  “We’ll know as soon as we take a look. We’ll go down to the security office after this, if you want.”

  “I want.” He added: “Wonder how the perp walked out of here with two heads under his arms.”

  At the far end of the outer offices, D’Agosta spied a man, also in a CSU suit, taking pictures with a cell phone in a ziplock bag. He was clearly not a cop or crime scene investigator, and he looked a bit green around the gills. “Who’s that guy?” he asked.

  “He’s with the SEC,” said Curry.

  “SEC? What for? How’d he get clearance?”

  Curry shrugged.

  “Bring him over.”

  Curry went and fetched him. The man was large and bald with horn-rimmed glasses, wearing a gray suit under his gown, and he was sweating something fierce.

  “I’m Lieutenant D’Agosta,” he said, “Commander Detective Squad, and this is Special Agent Pendergast, FBI.”

  “Supervising Agent Meldrum, SEC Division of Enforcement. Glad to make your acquaintance.” He stuck out his hand.

  “Sorry, no handshaking at a crime scene,” said D’Agosta. “You know—might exchange DNA.”

  “Right, they did mention that, sorry.” The man pulled his hand back sheepishly.

  “If you don’t mind me asking,” D’Agosta said, “what’s the SEC’s interest and who authorized you on the crime scene?”