Once a Killer (34 page)

The day after Towers was suspended, Michael was summoned into the senior partner’s office. Jenks told him the FBI people he was dealing with were pleased with the cooperation they’d seen from the firm and that their attention was now firmly focused on Towers as their primary suspect. The man heading up the investigation was called Fabrizio Caravini, a senior official, according to Jenks, and someone he knew could be trusted. Apparently, Caravini had given his word that Dudek’s name would be kept out of the whole mess, provided there was ongoing cooperation from the firm and its partners. The first thing Caravini had requested was a meeting with Michael so he could learn more about Towers and the role he’d played on the various transactions. Jenks had assured the Caravini that Michael would be delighted to provide whatever assistance was needed and had committed him to a meeting at Federal Plaza the next day.

What else could Michael do? He had to play along, so he turned up to meet Caravini the next morning as arranged.

“Michael Hoffman?” Caravini asked, collecting Michael from the FBI’s reception area.

“Yes.” Michael rose to his feet.

Caravini extended his right hand. “Thanks for coming in.”

“Anything to help.” Michael shook his hand, but avoided eye contact.

Caravini led the way to his own office. “A coffee would be nice,” he said as they passed Abi’s desk. He glanced at Michael.

“Yes, the same for me, please.”

“Take a seat.” Caravini pointed to the small meeting table in the corner of his cramped office while he closed the door. He grabbed a yellow legal pad and a large file from his desk and placed them on the table as he sat opposite Michael. The spine of the file had a white Avery address label on it. On it was one word, typed in a large, bold font: GRANNIS.

“Art tells me you’re one of his superstars,” said Caravini, slipping off his jacket and placing it on the back of his chair.

“I wouldn’t say that.” Michael couldn’t take his eyes off the file. Clearly, Caravini wanted him to see it. What was on there? Was there anything that might incriminate him?

“Seems as though you handle a lot of Dudek’s major deals.”

“I get my fair share.”

“You must be mighty pissed that some of them have been leaked. I know I would be.”

Abi came in with their coffee mugs and placed them on the table. Caravini appeared momentarily distracted by her rear, which gave Michael a chance to think of what to say.

“Do we know for sure they have been leaked?” Michael was not about to make it easy for Caravini to string up Towers.

“Well, let’s see.” Caravini opened the fat file to a page earmarked with a yellow Post-it note. He started reading the typed sheet in front of him. “Spar’s acquisition of Collar Telecom.” He raised his head. “Is that one of yours?”

Michael nodded.

“That was leaked.” Caravini flicked through a few more pages. “Looks like there were over a million suspicious trades on that one just before the deal was announced.” He turned to a page with another sticker on. “K-Mines. Is that one of yours?”

“Okay. I get the picture. Let’s assume someone’s been talking. How can I help you?”

Caravini closed the file and shoved it to one side. “How well do you know Glen Towers?”

“Very well. I should; I hired him.”

“What’s he like?”

“Bright, hardworking. Clients love him.”

Caravini laughed. “I doubt they will after this.”

“He’s not the one you’re looking for. I know Glen. He’s not like that.”

“You trust him, then?”

“Of course I trust him. Why would I have him working on my deals if I didn’t?”

“You don’t believe he’s capable of leaking information to a third party?”

“No. I’d trust Glen with my life. He’s done nothing wrong.”

“Does he have any money troubles?”

“Not that I’m aware of.”

“No gambling or addiction issues?”

“He’s not like that.”

Caravini gulped some of his coffee. “What do you know about James Grannis?”

Michael hadn’t expected the ninety degree turn. He thought for a moment. “Not much. I know he runs a hedge fund here in town. Why?”

“Ever met him?”

Michael glanced at the file. Did they already know he’d met Grannis? Could he face this one down and get away with it? He lifted his coffee mug and took a slow drink as he considered his response.

“I don’t think so.”

Caravini wrote a note on his pad. “Can you be certain?”

“I’m not sure. I meet a lot of people in my work.”

“What would you say if I told you Grannis was the one receiving the leaked information on your deals?”

“I’d be stunned. I’d want to know how that could have happened.”

“His fund has made tens of millions on the back of price sensitive information on your transactions. Have you really no idea at all how that might have happened?”

“All I know is we’ve had no contact with Grannis in connection with any of my clients. Whether he has some secret access to our data, I don’t know, but I’m certain it hasn’t come from my team.”

Caravini rubbed his chin. “Why did Towers visit Grannis’s headquarters on Cedar Street a few months back?”

“I wasn’t aware that he did.”

“You can’t think of any reason?”

“None. Did he say he did?”

“He said it was for you.”

“I didn’t tell him to go there. I’d have no reason to do that.”

“He says he was carrying out research on Grannis for you.”

“Why would I need that? I’ve never met the man.”

Caravini shrugged. “I’m just telling you what Towers told us. I was hoping you could help us join up the dots.”

“I don’t remember researching Grannis.”

Caravini made another note. “Would Grannis have any reason to contact you?”

“No. He’s not a client, and I don’t know him.”

“So he’s never contacted you?”

“That’s right. I don’t know how many times you need to ask me the same question.”

Again, Caravini scribbled on his legal pad. “So if I told you Towers saw a call from Grannis on your cell phone, I guess you’d deny that?”

“I’ve never had a call from him.”

“So Towers is making that up?”

“It didn’t happen.”

“And yet you just told me you’d trust Towers with your life. Now he’s a liar?”

“I’d say he was mistaken.”

“The same way he was mistaken about visiting Cedar and researching Grannis for you?”

“That’s right. We all make mistakes.”

“It wouldn’t be difficult to check the phone calls to your cell phone.”

“Look, I don’t know what Glen told you, but I haven’t received any calls from Grannis.”

Caravini opened up the file again and took four sheets of paper off it.

“Okay, Michael,” he said. “It’s time to cut the bullshit. We know you’ve been meeting with Grannis. I just wanted to give you the opportunity to come clean with us.” He pushed the papers to Michael’s side of the table. “That’s a record of all the times we’ve recorded you meeting him. To save you the effort of reading it, we’ve seen you eight different times, either at Cedar Street or in Brooklyn.”

Michael’s neck muscles twitched as he stared at the log of times and places in front of him.
Jesus. They know everything.
How could he deny it all now?

“Towers has been working for us for weeks,” Caravini said, piling on the pressure. “He was never our real suspect. You are.”

“Ugh?”

“Towers has been our eyes and ears at the firm, providing the additional proof we needed to support our case against you.”

Michael’s heart was about to explode in his chest. He closed his eyes. That’s why Towers had been behaving strangely over the past few weeks and why he’d reacted in such a weird manner when he and Jenks grilled him. It all made sense now.

“You’ve been under surveillance for months. We know everything.” He took a photograph off the file and slid it over. “The good news is we’re not going to do you for criminal damage.” Caravini smirked.

Michael looked at the photo. It showed the rear end of a black car with a dent in the trunk and scratches leading from the dent down to the fender.

“What is this?”

“That was our car you damaged when you threw a shovel at it outside your home.”

Michael felt cold. “That was you?”

Caravini nodded. “We’ve been trailing you for weeks—at home, as well as the office. We have enough on you to prove you’ve been conspiring with Grannis as part of his insider trading scam for some considerable time.”

Michael dropped his head into his trembling hands. “My God!”

“We have enough evidence to lock you away for ten years, maybe longer. I can’t wait to announce that the lynchpin of this criminal conspiracy was a rainmaker at the venerable firm of Dudek, Collins, & Hamilton.”

Chapter 47

T
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was compelling, particularly when he had corroboration from Towers. And it turned out that it was Caravini’s people who’d been trailing Michael all this time, not Rondell’s. They certainly had enough against him now to guarantee a long term in prison.

It was funny; Michael had never imagined the nightmare ending this way. All along, he’d most feared what Rondell could do to him and his family. That overwhelming fear had so distracted him that he hadn’t thought too much about being caught by the FBI and the realities of going to prison. He’d been incarcerated before and knew how hard that would be, particularly on Caroline and the girls.

“Can I make a call to my wife?” Michael’s voice was weak, his head still reeling in shock. The last thing he wanted was for Caroline to learn of this from someone else. It chilled him to think of a stranger turning up at their home and telling Caroline her husband was under arrest, charged with a serious crime. At the very least, he owed her an explanation and an apology for the hell he was about to put her through. But that explanation could only go so far. It was bad enough that she was about to learn she was married to a criminal. He was not about to make things worse by telling her what Rondell had over him that drove him to do it in the first place. While the thought turned his stomach, he’d sooner have her think he did it for the money. Even that she’d find incomprehensible, but the whole truth would be devastating. Michael would do anything to shield her from that. Anything.

“Why do you need to speak to your wife?” Caravini asked. “She can’t help you.”

“I’d like to be the one to tell her I’ve been arrested. That’s all I’m asking.”

“Right now, you’re not under arrest.”

Michael didn’t know how to respond. How could he not be under arrest?

“Sure,” Caravini continued, “we have enough evidence to charge you, but there may be another way out of this mess for you.”

Michael raised his head out of his hands. “Another way?”

“Depends how much you want to help us.”

Michael sat upright. “I don’t follow.”

“You’re not the one we’re after. While it would be good profile for us to skewer a Dudek partner’s head on a pole, and we may yet have to settle for that, Grannis is the one we really want. Our investigation has highlighted how wide his connections go. There’s little doubt he’s at the center of the biggest international insider trading operation we’ve ever seen. I don’t know how much you realize it, but Grannis has many more Michael Hoffmans out there feeding him information. Then there are the serious criminals providing him with funds that we can get to through him.”

“And you want me to help bring him down?”

“You got it. You help us indict Grannis—” Caravini pointed to his file, “—and all this goes away for you. You get to carry on as you are now. You get your life back.”

Helping Caravini now was a chance for Michael to pull back from the cliff edge, to avoid wiping out his career and, potentially, his marriage. Certainly, it would spare Caroline the horror of discovering her husband was a securities fraudster today. It was a seductive offer, one he badly wanted to accept. But if he agreed to become the main witness against Rondell, his whole life would be destroyed anyway when Rondell came seeking revenge. Rondell would have nothing to lose by telling Caroline everything about his past. When that happened, Michael’s family would be lost forever.

“I don’t think I can help you,” Michael said, rubbing his scalp with his palms, his elbows resting on the table. “It isn’t that simple.”

“This is not an offer we’re going to leave open, Michael. You agree to help us now, and you get to go home today. If you don’t, then you can kiss goodbye the chance of seeing your two daughters grow up. Can you imagine the hell they’ll go through, once everyone learns their father is a convicted criminal? It seems a simple-enough choice to me.”