Sidney Sheldon's After the Darkness (14 page)

The rest of the group sniggered. Gavin Williams's obsession with “breaking” Grace Brookstein had become a running joke. Either Grace didn't know where Lenny had stashed the cash, or she knew but she wasn't telling. Either way, Williams was beating a dead horse and everyone could see it but him.

Gavin didn't join in the laughter. “I have no plans to return to Bedford, Stephen. Your information is incorrect.”

The joker murmured to his partner, “‘Your information is incorrect.' Is he human? He sounds like R2 fucking D2.”

“No kidding,” his partner replied more loudly. “‘Help me, Obi-Wan Brookstein. You're my only hope!'”

More laughter.

Gavin Williams glanced around the table at his so-called colleagues. If he could, he would have ripped every one of their hearts out with his bare hands and stuffed them down Harry Bain's smug, self-satisfied throat till he choked. What did any of them have to laugh about? They were all part of the biggest, lamest operation in FBI history. If he, Gavin, were running the show, things would be different.

Harry Bain said, “Okay, then, so it's all on this trip to Geneva.”

John Merrivale had spent the last three weeks researching a huge swap trade from 2006. The trail led as far as a numbered account in Switzerland, then went cold.

“Gavin, I'd like you and John to make the trip together this time. Two heads may prove better than one.”

John Merrivale failed to hide his surprise. He and Gavin Williams usually worked independently, following up on separate leads. This was the first time Bain had asked them to travel together.

“I'm f-fine to handle the Geneva trip alone, Harry.”

“I know you are. But I'd like the two of you together on this one.”

John Merrivale's relationship with Harry Bain had come a long way since Harry's “bad-cop” interview with him, before Grace's trial. It had
taken months to persuade not just Bain, but the entire task force, that he was on their side, that he was as much a victim of Lenny Brookstein as anyone else. But slowly, with the steady, quiet patience on which he'd built his entire career, John Merrivale had won them over. He was no longer frightened of Harry Bain. But at the same time he didn't want to cross him. John still loathed confrontation. As much as Gavin Williams's dour, monosyllabic presence was bound to ruin the Switzerland trip, John didn't want to fight about it.

Harry Bain said, “We need to build some more team spirit. Bounce ideas off each other more. Somehow we've got to break this deadlock.”

John Merrivale tried to imagine a scenario in which anyone might “bounce an idea” off Gavin Williams.
Bain really must be getting desperate.

 

T
HE FLIGHT FROM
N
EW
Y
ORK WAS
bumpy and unpleasant. John Merrivale felt his stomach flip over with nerves. He tried to make small talk with his companion. “Of course, legally we can't force the Swiss to cooperate with us. But I know the g-guys at the Banque de Genève pretty well. I may be able to p-persuade them to stretch a point.”

Silence. It was like talking to a corpse.

Gavin Williams closed his eyes.
“Persuade them?” “Stretch a point?” They're criminals who laundered Brookstein's dirty money. They should be stretched on a rack till their limbs are wrenched out of their sockets and their screams can be heard from the Statue of Liberty.

“Have you spent m-much time in Geneva, Gavin?”

“No.”

“It's a beautiful city. The m-m-mountains, the lake. Lenny and I used to love coming here.”

Gavin Williams pulled on his sleep mask. “Good night.”

The plane rattled on.

 

J
OHN
M
ERRIVALE WAS BOOKED INTO
L
ES
Amures, an exclusive five-star hotel in Geneva's old town. In the old days, he and Lenny had enjoyed many fine meals in Les Amures's famous restaurant, which had been
built in the thirteenth century and decorated with exquisite frescos, painted façades and art treasures. Lenny used to say it was like eating in the Sistine Chapel.

Gavin Williams refused to join him, preferring the more modest Hotel Eden. It was right on the lake, but Gavin purposely chose a room with no view that was closer to the gym and business center. “We're not here to enjoy ourselves,” he told John tersely.

Heaven forbid.

John thought again how much Lenny would have despised Gavin Williams. His joylessness. His anger. Wandering alone around Geneva's chilly, medieval streets after dinner, he thought how much more fun the trip would have been had Lenny been with him.

 

“W
HAT DO YOU MEAN
I
'M NOT COMING
?”

Gavin Williams looked fit to be tied. He and John were breakfasting together at Gavin's hotel, prior to the meeting with the people from the Banque de Genève.

“I have a r-relationship with the bankers. They're more likely to trust me if I g-go alone.”

“Trust you?” Gavin Williams balled up his napkin in his fist.

“Yes. Banking, especially in Switzerland, is all about t-trust.”

Gavin Williams thought furiously,
You were the right-hand man to the biggest thief of all time, and you have the nerve to pontificate about trust? Even now, even after Quorum's disgrace, it's still an old boys' club, isn't it? You're still one of them—a banker—and I'm not.
Out loud he snapped, “Don't patronize me, John. I've written textbooks on Swiss banking.”

“Marvelous. Then you know what I'm talking about.”

“These
people
you claim to have a relationship with are money launderers. They are scum and their trust is worth nothing. I will attend the meeting, whether they like it or not.”

John Merrivale could not resist a fleeting, triumphant smile. “I'm afraid you won't, Gavin. You see, I already cleared it with Harry Bain. I'm g-going alone. You're to follow up on any information I get out of them. Take it up with Harry if you're not happy.”

“How can I take it up with Harry?” Gavin spluttered. “It's three in the morning in New York.”

“Is it?” John smiled again. “What a pity.”

 

T
HREE DAYS LATER THEY FLEW BACK
to the States.

John Merrivale reported to Harry Bain: whatever money Lenny had stashed in Geneva was long gone. Some of it was paid out to investors in returns. The rest was siphoned into property deals in South America. Gavin Williams would fly to Bogotá tomorrow to see what he could uncover.

Harry Bain put his head in his hands.
Bogotá. And so it goes on.

“I'm s-sorry about Geneva, sir. I really thought that might be a breakthrough.”

Harry Bain hated the way John Merrivale insisted on calling him “sir.” Nobody else did. He'd told Merrivale to cut it out months ago, but it was like a verbal tic with the guy. Subservience was second nature to him. Not for the first time, Harry wondered what on earth had attracted a type A man's man like Lenny Brookstein to this weak, milquetoast number cruncher. It didn't make any sense.

“It's okay, John. You did your best. The bureau appreciates your efforts.”

“Th-thank you, sir. I'll keep trying.”

Yeah. We're all trying. But there are no prizes for effort. Not in this life.

“John, do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

John looked momentarily taken aback.

“Does it ever get to you?”

“Does what ever get to me?”

“You must have lost millions because of Lenny Brookstein, right? Tens of millions.”

John Merrivale nodded.

“You see your entire life's work destroyed, your good name dragged through the mud. Doesn't it, I don't know…test your faith in humanity?”

John Merrivale smiled. “I'm afraid I've never had much f-faith in humanity.”

“Okay, then. In friendship.”

In a flash, the smile was gone.

“Let me tell you something about friendship, Mr. Bain. Friendship is everything.
Everything.
It's the only thing that really m-m-matters in this world. People can say what they like about me. But I'll tell you this. I'm a loyal friend.”

He turned and walked away. Harry Bain watched him go.

He felt uneasy, but he had no idea why.

 

I
N A HOTEL BATHROOM
in B
OGOTÁ,
Gavin Williams stood under a cold shower, scrubbing his body with soap. It was so hard to stay clean in this filthy world. Colombia was the greatest cesspool of all. Every aspect of life here was diseased, tainted by greed, infected with corruption. It made Gavin sick.

As he scrubbed away, cleansing his soiled body, Gavin's thoughts turned to John Merrivale. John had humiliated him in Switzerland. No doubt he thought he'd had the last laugh. But Gavin Williams knew better.

John Merrivale had patronized the wrong man.

He would live to regret it.

G
RACE'S FIRST YEAR AT
B
EDFORD
H
ILLS
passed quickly.

Most long-term prisoners looked back on the first twelve months of their sentence as the worst. Karen described it to Grace as “like cold turkey, except you're not withdrawing from drugs, you're withdrawing from freedom.” It was a good analogy, but Grace didn't feel that way. For Grace, the first year of prison was like awakening from a lifelong slumber. For the first time, she was seeing life as it really was. She was surrounded by women from ordinary backgrounds, poor backgrounds. Women who had grown up less than twenty miles away from where Grace grew up, but who lived in a world as foreign and alien to her as the rice paddies of China or the deserts of Arabia.

It was wonderful.

In her old life, Grace now realized, friendships had been a mirage: fragile, hollow alliances based solely on money or status. At Bedford Hills, she observed a different kind of female friendship, one born of adversity and strengthened through suffering. If someone said a kind word to you here, they meant it. Slowly, cautiously, Grace began to forge bonds, with Karen, with some of the girls she worked with in her new job at the children's center, even with Cora Budds.

Cora was a mass of contradictions. Violent, moody and uneducated, she could certainly be a bully, as Grace had learned to her cost on her sec
ond night at Bedford. But Cora Budds was also a loyal friend and devoted mother. After Grace's suicide attempt, Cora's maternal side took over. It was Cora, more even than Karen Willis, who had led the campaign to change their fellow prisoners' minds about Grace Brookstein. When a group of women at the children's center froze Grace out, refusing to talk to her or even eat in the same room, it was Cora who confronted them.

“Give the bitch a chance. She din' steal nuthin'. You kidding me? She wouldn't know how.”

“She's rich, Cora.”

“She ain't even a mom. How'd she get a job in here? The warden's showing her favors.”

Cora Budds said, “Lemme tell you something. The warden wanted her dead. Tha's why he sent her to me. But I'm tellin' yous, Grace is okay. She ain't the way they made her out to be in court and on TV. Just give her a chance.”

Slowly, grudgingly, the women began to include Grace in their conversations. Winning their acceptance, and later their affection, meant more to Grace than she could express. Society had labeled the women of Bedford Hills as criminals, as outcasts. Now, for the first time, Grace wondered if perhaps it was
society
that was criminal, for casting them out in the first place. Grace had lived the American Dream all her life. The fantasy of wealth, freedom and the pursuit of happiness had been her reality since the day she was born. Here, at Bedford Hills, she witnessed the flip side of that golden coin: the hopelessness of poverty, the unbreakable cycle of fractured families, poor education, drugs and crime, the iron grip of gang culture.

It's all just a lottery. Prison was these women's destiny, the same way wealth and luxury was mine.

Until someone stole it from me.

Grace was luckier than most inmates. She had something rare and priceless, something that other girls at Bedford would have given their eyeteeth for: a sense of purpose. Here, in jail, Grace finally had something to
do,
other than shop for designer clothes or plan her next dinner party. She had to find out what really happened at Quorum. It wasn't about freedom. It was about justice. About truth.

If Grace had to pick one word to describe how her first year in prison
made her feel, it would have been
liberated.
That, perhaps, was the greatest irony of all.

 

F
ROM NINE TILL THREE EVERY DAY,
Grace worked at the children's center. The work was rewarding and fun. Kids came in daily to spend time with their mothers, and though the bond between parent and child was usually obvious, both sides sometimes struggled to fill the hours in such an artificial environment. Grace's job was to make that easier by providing some structure: story time, reading lessons, art classes, anything that moms and kids could enjoy together without having to think too hard about where they were and why. The children's center was the only place at Bedford Hills where inmates were allowed to dress in “outside” clothing, provided for them by the Sisters of Mercy. Sister Theresa, who ran the facility, made a strong case to Warden McIntosh. “The children are frightened by the uniforms. It's tough enough rebuilding maternal relationships without making Mommy
look
like a stranger.”

Grace loved the feel of ordinary cotton against her skin. She loved the cheerful routine of the work: planning activities, laying tables with jars of paint, brushes and paper, playing games with the kids that she remembered from her own childhood. Most of all, she loved the kids themselves. When Lenny was alive, she'd never felt the desire to have children. But now that he was gone, it was as if a switch had flipped inside her. All her natural, maternal feelings came flooding out.

Working at the center, Grace was aware of a feeling of inner peace, a sort of low hum of contentment that followed her everywhere. It was the only place she could shut out thoughts of Lenny, and John Merrivale, and how he had betrayed them. In her simple cotton blouse and long wool skirt, it was hard to distinguish Grace from the nuns who ran the center. It occurred to her that prison life was not so unlike the world of the convent: enclosed, ordered, the days made up of a repeated series of simple, satisfying tasks. At the children's center, Grace felt the same deep peace of a nun fulfilling her vocation. Except that she had not found God. Hers was a mission of a different kind.

The only downside to Grace's work at the center came in the form of Lisa Halliday. Another A-Wing lifer, Lisa had been sent to Bedford
Hills after an armed robbery that left a store clerk permanently paralyzed. An aggressive bull dyke with close-shaven blond hair and a livid scar across her chin, Lisa Halliday was viewed as a leader by the prison's white inmates, a small but vocal minority. Inmate leaders played an important role in the running of any prison, something Warden McIntosh understood only too well. He had given Lisa Halliday a cushy work detail, and the job at the children's center had appeased her for a while. Until Grace Brookstein showed up. Lisa Halliday made no secret of her loathing for Grace, whom she considered to be Cora Budds's “pet” and a traitor to the white girls at Bedford. Not to mention a stuck-up bitch who'd somehow gotten the warden wrapped around her little finger. Lisa never missed an opportunity to bully Grace, or to try to get her into trouble.

The real work of Grace's days began after three, when she was allowed two hours in the prison library. Davey Buccola had promised to help her, but Grace had heard nothing from Davey in months. Impatient to make some progress, she devoted all her free time to researching Quorum. There was a lot to learn. Following Davey's advice, she had started at the beginning. She read about the stock market, what it was and how it worked. She discovered for the first time what a hedge fund actually
did
—it had never occurred to her to ask Lenny. She researched endless articles on the economy. In the past, terms like
credit crunch
and
bailout
had washed over her. Grace had no idea what they actually meant. Now she made it her business to know. She wanted to understand why companies like Lehman Brothers had failed. Why so many people had lost their jobs and their homes because of Quorum. The first few months were like painting the background to a huge canvas. Only once she'd finished the sky and the stormy sea could Grace begin work on the ship itself: the fraud that had brought her here. That, of course, was the most intricate, difficult part of the picture.

The main problem with hedge funds, Grace learned, was that they operated behind a veil of secrecy. Top managers like Lenny never gave away their investment strategies, let alone specific details about individual trades. And that was perfectly legal.

Karen Willis asked Grace, “So how did people know what they were buying into? If it was all such a big secret.”

“They didn't,” said Grace. “They looked at past performance and took a bet on future performance.”

“Like betting on a horse, you mean?”

“I suppose so. Yes.”

“Kind of a big risk, don't you think?”

“That depends on how much you trust the manager.”

People had trusted Lenny. They had trusted Quorum. But something had gone terribly wrong. The more she studied the press reports, the more Grace understood why the FBI had failed so singularly in their attempts to trace the missing money. With so much secrecy and funds passing between countless different accounts, onshore, offshore, all over the planet, it was like combing a beach for a specific grain of sand. Shares were sold before they had been bought, creating “phantom” profits that were then leveraged, multiplied three, four, ten times before being reinvested in derivative structures so complicated they made Grace's eyes water.

 

D
AVEY
B
UCCOLA FINALLY CAME TO VISIT HER.
From the look on his face, Grace could tell he had news. She could barely contain her excitement.

“It was John Merrivale, wasn't it? He stole the money. I knew it.”

“I don't know who stole the money.”

Grace's face fell. “Oh.”

“My investigation took a different turn.”

Davey's expression looked sober, his lips pressed together in a grim line. Grace's stomach began to churn.

“What do you mean? What sort of a turn.”

Davey thought,
When I walked in here, she looked so happy. I'm about to blow her world apart. And what if I'm wrong?
Then he thought,
I'm not wrong.
He leaned across the table and took Grace's hand.

“Mrs. Brookstein.”

“Grace.”

“Grace. I'm sorry to have to tell you this. But I believe your husband was murdered.”

“I'm sorry?” The room began to spin. Grace clutched the table for support.

“Lenny didn't kill himself.”

“I know that. It was an accident. The storm…” Her words trailed off into silence.

“It wasn't an accident. I spent months looking into Merrivale's activities at Quorum,” said Davey, “but I found I was chasing my tail. So I decided to look at your husband instead. I went back over his disappearance, the investigation, what happened on Nantucket the day of the storm. Finally I looked at the autopsy.”

Grace swallowed. “Go on.”

“It was a shambles. A joke. Death by drowning was assumed because the cadaver was washed up and because there was water in the lungs. When all this Quorum shit came to light, they ruled suicide because they figured there was a motive. But water in the lungs doesn't necessarily mean the person drowned.”

“It doesn't?”

“That body had been in the water for over a month. Of course the lungs were saturated. The question you need to ask yourself in a death like this is how did the person
get
into the water in the first place, and was he alive or dead when he got there.”

“So you think…”

“I think your husband was dead before he hit the water. There was no blood in the lungs. Drowning at sea, in a heavy storm like that…the pressure of so much water entering the lungs so suddenly would almost certainly cause a hemorrhage.”

“
Almost
certainly?”

“It wasn't just the lungs. There were other signs, the bruises to the torso. Scratches on the fingers and upper arms that could have been indicative of a struggle. And the way the head was severed. I saw the pictures. Just look at the vertebrae. That wasn't
fish.
Not unless the fish had a guillotine. Or a meat cleaver.”

Grace put her hand over her mouth and retched.

“Oh, shit, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to be so graphic. Are you okay?”

Grace shook her head. She would never be okay again. She took a deep breath, struggling to control her emotions.

“Why didn't any of this come out at the inquest?”

“Some of it did. The bruising was mentioned, but dismissed. No one
wanted to see the truth. Not at that time. You have to remember, your husband was the most hated man in America. Maybe it was just easier to think of him as a suicide, a coward, rather than a victim?”

“Easier?”
Grace's head was spinning. It was all too much to take in.

Davey said, “I wanted to tell you first. I know it's a hell of a shock, but this is actually good news. I think we have enough here to ask to have the inquest reopened, Grace. It would be the first step toward launching a murder investigation.”

Grace was silent for a long time. At last she said, “No. I don't want the police involved.”

“But, Grace…”

“No.”

Someone had killed Lenny. Butchered him like an animal and tossed him into the waves. What use were the police, or the courts, or the whole corrupt, disgusting so-called justice system?
What justice was there for Lenny, or for me? America damned us both, for no better reason than that it was “easier.” They let Lenny's killer walk away and left me here to rot. Well, damn America. The time for justice is past.

Davey was confused. “What
do
you want me to do?”

“I want you to find out who did it. If it was John Merrivale or someone else. I want to know who killed my husband. I want to know how he did it, and why. I want to know everything and I want to be sure. I'm not interested in reasonable doubt.”

Davey said, “Okay. And then?”

“And then we'll think about next steps.”

And then I'm going to kill him.