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Mulholland made a show of thinking it over. The whole morning so far had been for show—I wouldn’t have been there if he hadn’t already decided to talk about his problem—but the playacting had gone on long enough.

“Please sit, Mr. Vlost,” Mulholland said. “Tell me this. Turbo doesn’t sound Russian—is it really your given name?”

“Some of it,” I said. Mulholland waited for me to continue, but I’d said all I planned to. I saw irritation in his eyes and exasperation in Bernie’s—with me this time. I got ready again to leave.

“All right, Mr. Vlost, have it your way,” Mulholland said. “I take it that what we discuss here will remain between us.”

“That’s right.” I still didn’t like him. I was now ninety-eight percent sure I didn’t want to work for him, but he’d still get the same deal I gave everybody.

He made one more show of thinking it over, rose and walked to the desk again. “Dow’s down two fifty. We’re off four. Screen’s solid red.” He reached in a drawer and returned holding a photograph and a piece of paper. He handed both to me.

“Our daughter. Eva.”

The photo showed a blue-eyed, auburn-haired young woman. A crude snapshot, printed on a home printer, but her beauty was hard to obscure. She was seated on a chair, against a dark brown wall, chest forward, hands behind her back, as if tied there. A
New York Times
covered her lap. The front page was from a few days before. She stared straight at the camera. A man’s hand held a gun to the girl’s left temple. Glock 9 mm. She didn’t look scared or worried or in pain, but there’s always a surreal quality to hostage photos that makes them hard to judge. The picture did capture a funny look in her eyes that took me a minute to place. The look kids in the orphanage got, the orphanage I spent my childhood in, on the rare day when another child’s parents miraculously appeared. A look of longing mixed with hopelessness. A look that said,
Why can’t that be me?
and knew it never would. Not a look you’d expect on a beautiful young woman, daughter of Rory Mulholland, even if she did have a gun to her head.

The note read,

DAUGHTER VERY PRETTY. I VERY HORNY. FRIENDS TOO. WE ALL FUCK HER SOON.

$100,000. USED MONEY—$10 AND $20. WE CALL, BE READY.

NO POLICE. NO TRICKS.

OR WE ALL FUCK HER, THEN KILL HER.

ASSHOLE.

The “asshole” didn’t ring right somehow, but I often have thoughts like that. I ignored this one.

“When did you get this?” I asked.

“Yesterday.”

“You haven’t heard from them since?”

“No.”

“You will soon. They won’t give you much time to think about options. When was the last time you saw your daughter?”

“I … I’m not sure. A few weeks ago. She has her own apartment.”

“How old?”

“Nineteen.”

“Student?”

“Marymount Manhattan. She’s in their theater program.”

The way he said “theater program” indicated he thought it a waste of time and money. He was fidgeting now.

“Any idea why they’d pick on her—or you?”

“None. Eva … she’s my wife’s daughter, from her first marriage. Her husband died.” He had to add that, I suppose, to protect his moral purity. “I adopted her, and … I feel about her as if she were my own.”

That sounded sincere, as much as I didn’t like to admit it. I didn’t doubt his concern—Even so, nothing about this felt right. “What exactly do you want me to do?”

“I thought that was obvious. Find the kidnappers. Bring Eva home. How do you work? Hourly like Bernie? Lower rate, I hope.” He laughed at his second attempt at a joke.

I shook my head. “I charge a percentage—thirty-three percent of what I recover. Plus expenses.” Bernie winced. He knew “plus expenses” meant I didn’t want the job.

The financier came to the fore. “Thirty-three percent—that’s aggressive.”

“Same as a headhunter.”

“But how … In a case like this … How do you put a value on … Eva?”

“I don’t. You do.”

He looked at me squarely for the first time since we’d started talking. I had a mental image of an old-fashioned adding machine in his brain, the kind with rows of buttons and a big arm on the side, toting up sums, calculating how much he could get away with.

“They want a hundred thousand,” he said after a while.

“They’re testing the waters.”

He nodded, as though he hadn’t expected that gambit to work. “I like round numbers. Let’s say a million.”

“If she was my daughter, I’d say two.”

He was halfway out of his chair, sputtering. “That’s six hundred sixty—”

“Plus expenses.”

“That’s…” He searched for the word he wanted as he eased back into his chair. “Usurious.”

I shrugged. Bernie looked pained. “The eighteen percent your bank charges on credit card debt is usurious—especially when the money costs you three—but people pay it.”

“That’s completely different. That’s…”

“The market economy?”

He was scowling again. Bernie was pretending to look out the window—through the drawn curtains.

“I may have been raised on Marxist-Leninist claptrap, as you call it, but I understand the market economy as well as the next guy, including the law of supply and demand. There’s only one of me. I don’t have partners or associates or employees. What you see is what you get, but that by definition limits the supply. I also have one-of-a-kind technology that’s not cheap. On the other hand, people lose things all the time. You’re the first one today. Could be a half-dozen more by sundown. I choose the cases I take on. Usually because they interest me or they pay well.”

“I gather I’m in the second category,” he said.

“You’re not in either category yet.”

A new look came over Mulholland’s face, one that said I’d finally hit home. “All right, Mr. Vlost, have it your way. Good day.”

He stood and walked to his desk. He had the same look on his face when I left, but I didn’t know if it was for me or the sea of red on his computer screen.

CHAPTER 3

Bernie caught up as I was waiting for the elevator, his round face several shades of red and purple.

“God damn it, Turbo, what the hell’s got into you?”

“I told you I didn’t want to work for him.”

“You did a hell of a job telling him, too.”

“He doesn’t want to pay the freight.”

“Can you blame him? Six hundred sixty-six thousand dollars?”

“Plus expenses.”

“Yes, I know. Plus the goddamned expenses.”

“I don’t work cheap.”

“Unless you choose to.”

I’d done a job once for a friend of Bernie’s wife, an artist with a small trust fund whose husband had taken her money and decamped to Las Vegas. I found him before he lost it all, but there wasn’t much left, and it was pretty clear that was what she’d have to live on. I refused payment. She gave me a painting that I like a lot. It hangs in my office. Barbara Kordlite never misses an opportunity to remind her husband what a great guy I am. One reason he puts up with me.

“I’m not working cheap for a man like Mulholland.”

The elevator door slid open. Bernie put out a hand. “Sorry, we’re not leaving just yet.” The door closed again.

“Look, Turbo, Rory’s a proud man, like you. You ought to recognize that. Stubborn, too, just like you. Yes, he’s got people around him all day telling him how brilliant he is, a problem you don’t have, but that goes along with being the kind of guy he is. Cut him some slack. His bank’s on the ropes. His daughter’s been kidnapped. He’s worried. Since he’s the largest client of Hayes & Franklin, when he has worries, I get ulcers. And you, my friend, are supposed to be the solution to his problem and the tonic for my gut, but you have to decide you’re not going to like the guy and then you have to prove to yourself that he really is an asshole so you can tell yourself how you were right all along. You’re the one who’s acting like a stubborn ass.”

I laughed. That’s the thing I love about Bernie. He gets right to the heart of the matter, and he isn’t afraid to tell you exactly what he thinks.

“Stubborn Russian asses turned the course of the Great Patriotic War.”

“So you’ve told me—a dozen times. It’s still World War II to me, and D-day the turning point. Come on, Turbo. If I can fix it with Rory, will you at least finish hearing him out?”

I made a small show of thinking it over. Moscow was tugging hard, but those ghosts could wait another few days. I wasn’t going to turn Bernie down. “Okay.”

“Good. Be right back.”

I waited in the small vestibule, half hoping Mulholland proved as stubborn as Bernie said he was and half wondering what about the man made me dislike him. The sanctimonious questioning made it easy to find him objectionable. Half a lifetime under Soviet rule led me to distrust anyone who takes overt pride in his or her beliefs, be they religious, political, or whatever. Then there were those eyes. I was thinking about them and getting ready to call the elevator again when Bernie returned, smiling.

“All set,” he said, leading the way back inside. “Watch your step, though. I think he kind of likes you.”

*   *   *

Mulholland came across the carpet this time, hand extended. I took it, and we all went back to the same chairs we were sitting in before.

“This may sound like impertinence,” he said. “I don’t mean it that way. Your son—how do you get on with him?”

That wasn’t any of his damned business, but I sensed he was either sincerely curious or looking for some common ground between us. Anyway, I was on my good behavior now.

“I haven’t seen him since he was two.”

I expected a look of exasperation, even hostility, but I swear the black eyes softened, then dampened, in sympathy, perhaps even sorrow. Maybe Bernie was right and I was being stubborn.

“My fault entirely,” I said quickly. “I made mistakes. I won’t bore you with the details. A lot of them don’t make much sense anymore. A day doesn’t go by when I don’t think about the things that happened and what I could’ve—should’ve—done differently.”

I definitely saw black kindness now. I looked for sincerity behind it. That’s the toughest thing to fake. To my surprise, that was there, too. Another point for Bernie.

Mulholland sensed my investigation and misread it. “I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I didn’t mean to pry. We all make mistakes, I … Being a good parent is…”

I waited for him to finish one sentence or the other, but he stared off into the dark room, lost in his own thoughts. I kept thinking about that look and why I’d told him as much as I had. Maybe underneath it all, I liked him, too?

After a moment, Bernie cleared his throat, and Mulholland seemed to return to the present. The black eyes regained their hardness.

“I apologize for my earlier outburst, Mr. Vlost. This has been a difficult day—one of many. Of course your fee is not an issue. I must ask, however, that you keep this matter entirely between us. I believe what the kidnappers say—about the police. No one must know, including my wife. She’s been under tremendous strain, for which I feel responsible. My business problems. She and Eva had a huge fight the last time Eva was here, which is why we haven’t seen her. I’m very afraid Felix will think she’s to blame for what’s happened.”

“Felix?”

“Her given name’s Felicity. She won’t use it.”

“What did they fight over?”

“It’s not important. Felix and Eva … they have a complicated relationship, like many mothers and daughters, I suppose. Theirs has a tendency to erupt from time to time.”

“You’re sure it has no bearing? It’s possible Eva could—”

He cut me off. “I know what you’re going to say, and I don’t believe it. She may have her issues, but she’s not that kind of girl.”

I tried to remember when the word “issue” replaced “problem” in the American branch of the English language. As if nomenclature could make either go away. Not enough Americans read Orwell. I let it go—I could find out plenty about whatever problems Eva had in due course and make my own assessment as to what kind of girl she was.

“You need anything else from me?” Mulholland said.

“I’ll need to borrow the picture.”

“I don’t see—”

“I’m only interested in where and when it was taken. I’ll make no copies, and I’ll return it as soon as I’m finished.”

“I’m going to assume you’re a man of your word.”

Mulholland had a way of ending every sentence with a grimace as if he expected you to take issue with what he’d just said. He didn’t make it easy to get along.

A knock on the door made us all turn. The man in the silver tie entered and crossed the big carpet, looking left and right and wringing his hands. He whispered a few words in his employer’s ear and hurried back the way he’d come. Black turned to midnight as Mulholland swung toward Bernie.

“You said we had a deal with her.”

“Victoria? We did. We do.”

“Not anymore. The FBI is on its way up.”

“That can’t be. I—”

Mulholland started issuing orders, the anger in his voice replaced by cool efficiency. Bernie nodded, making a mental list, as he searched his pockets until he found his cell phone. A plan was being put into motion.

“Get hold of Coughlin and O’Neal at the office,” Mulholland said. “They’ll know what to do.”

Bernie was punching a number into the phone. “We’ll have to put out an announcement. No question this is a disclosable event.”

“I know. We have a crisis plan. Supposed to be for the plane going down or something like that, but it’ll serve the purpose.”

“I’ll get Alan and his team downtown ASAP,” Bernie said. “You won’t be there any longer than necessary.”

Another knock. We all stood as the door opened and six men in suits came in, all looking this way and that before their eyes settled on the three of us.

“Rory Mulholland?” the largest of the men in suits said.

“That’s right.”

“You’re under arrest. Come with us, please. Taylor, read him his rights.”

I’d heard Mulholland say “FBI,” but it hadn’t registered he meant
that
FBI. The idea of him being hauled away in handcuffs was too incongruous. These men clearly belonged to the SUVs downstairs, though, and they were here on official business. I looked at my watch. Almost ten thirty. What had they been waiting for? The Cheka would have hauled Mulholland out of bed in the middle of the night, locked him in Lubyanka or Lefortovo, and not let him sleep again until he confessed to whatever crime they were convinced he had committed. But this was America. Perhaps the Justice Department had its rules of etiquette.
Bankers should not be busted prior to ten o’clock in the morning.