“Hell yeah,” I said.
I took a hot shower, found some dry clothes in my locker, and we got a patrol car to run us over to T-Bar Steak and Lounge on Third Avenue.
“I’ve never worked a kidnapping case,” Kylie said once we had ordered our food and had drinks in our hands. “But I’ve seen a lot of kidnapping movies. You know the difference between cinema and the real thing?”
“I’m going to take a wild guess and say popcorn.”
“I’m serious, Zach. In a film, when the family gets their kid back, there’s always all this hugging and kissing and crying, but Hunter and Janelle Alden didn’t even show up at the station to say hello. Two people were murdered. Their son escaped alive. Where was the tearful reunion?”
“Janelle wasn’t home when we were there, so she might not even know yet. And Hunter’s version of a happy ending may be hugging and kissing the money he wound up not paying the kidnapper.”
“Or it’s not a happy ending for Hunter, because whether Tripp was part of Madison’s blackmail scheme or not, he still has plenty on his old man.”
“I thought we had a deal,” I said. “No cop talk at the dinner table.”
“No problem,” she said, taking a generous swallow of her Jack and Coke. “What else can we talk about? Have you heard from Cheryl today? How about that madcap husband of mine showing up unannounced? The divorce lawyer asked for a fifteen-thousand-dollar retainer. Do you think I should—”
“You win. Let’s talk about the case.”
“Cates thinks it’s closed,” Kylie said.
“She’s right. It was a double homicide, and we nailed it. In the process, we broke up the very kidnapping we were told to stay away from.”
“And Tripp Alden was damn lucky that we didn’t listen.”
“Unfortunately, they don’t give out medals for not listening, or you’d have a closet full. Kylie, I know you. You don’t want to talk about the case. You have a theory, and you’re trying to lead me down the path so I can get there on my own, but my brain is fried, so lay it on me before I add alcohol.”
“Okay. I think Tripp Alden was right. Madison was going to kill him, and I think his life is still at risk.”
I set my drink on the table. She had my undivided attention.
“Track with me,” she said. “Madison goes to the house, and Hunter agrees to pay the ransom. His son is tied up in the van. Why doesn’t he go downstairs and give the kid some peace of mind that he’s going to be set free?”
“Because he sucks as a dad.”
“Right, so here’s a different spin on the same question. He’s just coughed up millions to save Tripp’s life. The last thing he needs is for the kid to try something stupid and get himself killed. So why didn’t Hunter go downstairs to the garage and tell Tripp to chill for twenty-four hours? He’s a smart businessman. Wouldn’t that have been the smart way to protect his investment?”
She’d led me down the path, and I hated where it was headed. “Are you saying that the kid knows too much, and Hunter wanted him dead?”
“Not only wanted him dead, but was willing to pay Madison to do it. And he’d have gotten away with it. Desperate father pays ransom, only to have the kidnapper renege on the deal and murder his son.”
Before I could process her theory, my cell rang. It was Sergeant McGrath.
“Zach, it’s Bob.”
“If we’re on a first-name basis, you need a favor. What do you want?”
“The key to Alden’s car. They flatbedded it to the One Oh Five garage, but they can’t start it without that little fob I gave you.”
“Actually, you gave it to my partner.”
“That’s the favor. Make my life easy. You ask her for it.”
“It’s McGrath,” I said to Kylie. “Do you still have the key to the Maybach?”
She dug into her pocket and dropped it on the table.
“Got it,” I said. “And the good news is there’s not a scratch on it. Send a uniform to T-Bar at Seven Three and Three, and it’s all yours…Bob.”
I picked up the key ring. It still had Peter’s gold crucifix on it. “I think we should take this off and get it back to Patrice,” I said.
I grabbed the cross and started to slide it off the ring. It was tight, so I put a little pressure on it. Too much pressure, and it broke into two pieces.
“Klutz,” Kylie said.
“No, I think it’s supposed to come apart,” I said, holding it close to the flickering candlelight to get a better look.
The bottom leg of the cross had slid off like the sheath to a sword. Except that instead of there being a blade inside the sheath, there was a USB port.
“It’s not your average crucifix,” I said, handing it to Kylie. “This one’s also a flash drive.”
Chapter 74
“Hallelujah,” Kylie said, holding up the cross. “And I swear to God we’re going to do this one by the book.”
“Not a hundred percent,” I said. “The book says we have to clear it with the captain and an ADA before we chase down a judge to sign a search warrant.”
“I believe that rule is flexible,” Kylie said, looking at me with a straight face. “Especially if it’s a Saturday night, it’s snowing, and you know that Cates will tear you a new one if she thinks you’re making Alden the target of a witch hunt.”
We wolfed down our dinner, returned the fob to McGrath, and made our way to West End Avenue, where Leah LaBreche, the on-call judge, was waiting for us.
“Sober as a judge” does not always apply at ten o’clock on a Saturday night, but Judge LaBreche was a new mom, so she was awake, alert, and had a few questions before she’d sign.
“A flash drive?” she said. “At this hour? Why couldn’t this wait till morning?”
Kylie launched into a rapid-fire explanation, throwing around phrases like “double homicide,” “high-profile kidnapping,” and “close friends of the new mayor,” and ending with “Our commanding officer thought it was important enough to drive through a snowstorm to get your signature.”
If Judge LaBreche had any further questions, she didn’t get to them. A baby started crying, and her focus shifted immediately.
“It’s my son Landon. He’s teething,” she said, taking the pen from Kylie.
She signed, and we left.
Lying about Cates could get us disciplined, but the search was now legal. Nothing we found could be suppressed.
“My place or yours?” Kylie asked as soon as the judge closed her door.
We had no idea what we were looking for, and we didn’t know if we’d recognize it if we found it, but we knew we wanted someplace private if we did. We decided on my apartment.
I plugged the flash drive into my computer and double-clicked on it. None of the folders were locked. “God bless Irene Gerrity,” I said. “She doesn’t believe in passwords.”
“Or she did,” Kylie said, “but somewhere along the line she realized she’d never be able to remember them.”
Irene had it all perfectly organized. Eight folders, each one labeled. I clicked on the one marked Phone Calls, and dozens of MP3 file icons popped up.
I played one.
“Mr. Joost. This is Leviticus.”
I had no idea who Joost was, but Leviticus’s voice was unmistakable. Hunter Alden. We listened to the rest of the call.
“It seems like an everyday stock deal,” Kylie said, “but based on what Irwin Diamond taught us about insider trading, I’ll bet Mr. Joost is somewhere in Switzerland, and the SEC will have no record of Leviticus or the transaction.”
We played three more, but it was like looking at the ticker tape crawling along the bottom of the screen on CNBC. All the information is right there, but I didn’t have the chops to make sense of it.
“Refresh my memory,” I said. “Do you remember the difference between puts and calls, or do I have to get Warren Buffett on the phone?”
“If you buy a put option, you’re betting that the stock is goin
g to go down,” Kylie said. “If it does, you make money. A call option is the opposite. You bet on a stock you think will go up.”
We listened to six more phone calls, but they only made things murkier. Alden wasn’t betting on one stock. He was buying puts on a dozen different companies, and calls on a bunch of others.
I opened the folder marked Puts and clicked on a spreadsheet. Irene had it all organized—dates, prices, profits.
“Talk about the rich getting richer,” Kylie said. “He made fifty-seven million dollars.”
“Look closer,” I said. “It’s five hundred and seventy million. Every single stock he said would go down tanked.”
“It has to be insider trading, but how did he know the inside dope about so many different companies?”
I opened the Calls spreadsheet. Sure enough, every stock Alden had bet on to go up had taken off, and he’d made another four hundred and forty-two million.
“It adds up to over a billion dollars profit,” Kylie said. “In what—a month?”
I went back to the Phone Calls folder and organized the icons by date. The first one was time-stamped September 4, 2001, at 8:11 a.m. The last was October 12 at 11:09 a.m.
“It took him all of five weeks,” I said. “Except…”
The words wouldn’t come out. In fact, I was afraid if I opened my mouth I would throw up.
I tapped the computer screen. “Look at the dates,” I managed to say.
Kylie followed my finger. “Oh God,” she said.
Alden had bought furiously from the fourth through the tenth and started selling everything off on the seventeenth.
And, of course, there were no transactions on September eleventh or the entire week that followed. America had been closed for business.
We went back and looked at all the stocks Hunter had bet against. American Airlines, United, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, AXA—all the stocks that had plummeted after the towers came down. And then we looked at the list of stocks he had bet on. Raytheon, United Technologies, Northrop Grumman—and a list of other companies that America turns to when it gears up for war.
“Hunter Alden knew about 9/11 a week before it happened,” Kylie said.
I put my hand to my mouth and nodded.
“Zach, it’s beyond evil. He made a billion dollars exploiting what he knew, and then he was willing to let his son die to cover his tracks.”
I still couldn’t speak. I ran to the bathroom and managed to get there just in time to blow my T-Bar steak into the toilet.
Chapter 75
“Everyone wants to get rich,” Hutch Alden had told Hunter when the boy was only ten years old. “They start out poor, they reach for the moon, and if they fall on their asses, what the hell? They go back to being poor. You’re different. You’re starting out rich. Your job is to stay that way.”
“How do I do that?” Hunter had asked.
“I’ve got twenty-six rules. I’ll teach them to you.”
Three decades later, Hunter Alden was finally putting rule number eighteen to the test. Always have an exit strategy.
He first started planning an escape route on September 12, 2001. He knew there would be an attack on American soil, but even he had been shocked by the magnitude. He knew if the day ever came when his connection to 9/11 was at risk of being leaked, he’d have to leave the country.
Today was that day, and as soon as the storm lifted, he was flying to Cuba. Permanently. The U.S. and Cuba had an extradition treaty that was over a century old, but with no diplomatic relations, it was as intimidating as a jaywalking ticket.
Hunter filled two suitcases with bare essentials. It was wrenching, but the alternative was unthinkable. Robert Vesco and Marc Rich had been smart enough to get out while they could. Bernie Madoff stuck around and got 150 years in prison. Hunter knew he had only two choices: spend his days on the beach in Playa Varadero, or in a cell in Otisville.
The doorbell rang. It was Findley.
“Crazy night to be going to the airport,” he said.
“Did you tell my father I’m borrowing his car and driver?” Hunter said.
“Come on, sport,” Findley said. “How far do you and me go back? I been covering your ass since before you figured out how to wipe it. You said keep it on the down low, so that’s what I done. I didn’t tell Mr. Hutch, I didn’t tell Lorna, I didn’t tell nobody. Like usual, it’s just between us chickens.”
He picked up the two suitcases that were sitting at the front door and put them in the trunk of the Cadillac. Then he came back and walked Hunter to the car.
“And what’s with the hush-hush, anyway?” Findley asked once he got behind the wheel. “You know your father would give you the shirt off his back. He don’t care if I give you a ride to the airport.”
“Hutch and I don’t see eye to eye on this deal I’m going to close. It’s just going to upset him if I tell him I’m going.”
“Your secret’s safe with me, sport,” Findley said. “It’s going to take us a good hour to get to HPN. Even then, you’ll be lucky if they got a working runway. Why don’t you take a load off and pour yourself a drink? I got a fresh supply of your favorite.”
Hunter opened the bar and took out a bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue. “It’s not as fresh as you think,” he said. “Somebody’s been at it.”
Findley laughed. “That somebody was me. All I had was one lousy shot, and that was two days ago, so I’m safe to drive. But if you run out of booze before we get to Westchester, I’ll find a liquor store and pick you up another one.”
Hunter unscrewed the cap and poured the Scotch into a crystal rocks glass. He leaned back in his seat and tipped the glass, letting the whiskey slide down his throat and warm him from the inside.
Findley watched him through the rearview mirror. “From the expression on your face, it looks like I have me another satisfied customer.”
Hunter took another swallow and felt the Blue magic working on his brain. “That’s what I always liked about you, Findley,” Hunter said. “You always took good care of me.”
“That I did, sport. And we had a lot of good times together,” Findley said, keeping one eye on the road and the other on the mirror. His mind flashed back to the six-year-old Hunter, laughing and singing as they drove off to kindergarten.
Hunter downed his drink, grabbed the bottle, and tried to refill his glass. His hand dropped to his side, and the bottle crashed to the floor.
Findley pulled the car over and turned around. Hunter Alden was unconscious on the backseat. The booze and the drugs had worked fast.
“I’m sorry, sport,” Findley said, tears streaming down his cheeks. “You been like family to me. Always have. But not anymore.”
Chapter 76
Hunter Alden opened his eyes and strained to sit up, but a dozen thick rubber tarp straps lashed him to the table.
“Findley,” he screamed.
No answer.
He stared straight up, turning his head left, and then right, as much as he could. The room was so big and the straps were so tight that he couldn’t twist far enough to see the walls. Just a few recessed lights, set on dim. He tilted his chin to the ceiling and rolled his eyes back so he could look behind him.
And there, fifteen feet over his head, was a disco ball. It wasn’t moving, but by shifting his gaze, he could watch the light reflect off the thousands of tiny mirrored facets. Where the hell was he?
“Findley,” he called out again.
“Findley is not here,” a voice said.
“Whoever you are, untie me,” Hunter bellowed. “Now.”
“I can’t do that, Mr. Alden,” the voice said.
“Show your goddamn face.”
A tall figure wearing scrubs and a surgical mask stepped up and leaned over the table just enough so Hunter could look straight up at him. The man lowered his mask.
“You’re Peter’s brother,” Hunter said.
“Patrice Chevalier. Doctor Patrice Chevalier.”
“I don’t know where I am, and I don’t know how I got here, but get me the hell out of here.”
“You’re in a hospital in Brooklyn.”
“A hospital?” Hunter said, jerking his eyes upward to the glitter ball.
“A makeshift hospital,” Chevalier said. “Most of the time it is Klib Zanmi Ayisyen, a Haitian friendship club.”
“Well, it’s not coming off very freaking friendly. Cut me loose, you son of a bitch. I don’t know what you want from me, but tying me down is not the smartest way to negotiate.”
“My brother spent so many joyful nights here,” Patrice said. “It’s one of the few places in the city where people of the Haitian diaspora can come together and connect with their roots, their traditions, their culture.”
“I was good to your brother,” Hunter said. “I put a roof over his head, food in his belly, money in his pocket, and every time he had his hand out because there was a flood, an earthquake, or a goddamn cholera epidemic, I wrote him a check.”
“Did you love him?” Patrice asked softly.
“What kind of a dumbass question is that?” Hunter said, pressing his body hard against the rubber bonds. “He was an employee. I treated him fair, paid him well—did he ever complain about me?”
“Tripp loved him.”
“Is that why you’re doing this? Madison is dead, so now Tripp recruited you to bleed money out of me?”
“I don’t want your money.”
“Then what do you want?”
“Limyè!” Patrice called out.
The room flooded with bright light, and two more people in full operating room attire entered. One man, one woman, both black.
“Oh Jesus, what are you doing?” Hunter said.
“I’m doing what I’m trained to do. Did you know that Peter paid for my medical school education?”
“Listen to me. I didn’t have anything to do with his death. I swear.”
“Of course you did. A single butterfly flapping its wings in one part of the world might ultimately cause a hurricane in another part of the world. It’s called the butterfly effect. But you are not a butterfly, Mr. Alden. You are a bull. And the evil you do wreaks havoc and destroys lives around the globe.”