Reckless (7 page)
Authors: Andrew Gross
This could sink the firm.
“How much are we in for?” Cantwell uttered.
One word fell off the head of trading’s lips.
“Billions.”
O
ver the next days, Hauck began digging into the background of Dani Thibault.
Merrill had given him some things to work with, Thibault’s Dutch passport number and the name of two businesses he supposedly owned: Christiana Capital Partners, of which his business card listed him as managing director and founder, and Trois Croix Investments, Limited, out of Luxembourg (which Merrill suggested was supposedly named after the street in Brussels where Thibault had been born). She also indicated he had served in the Dutch army. “Dani said he was in Kosovo. Part of the peacekeeping forces there.” That was one of the things that initially had set off her doubts. Her lawyer had been unable to find a record of any military service.
That first visit, after Tom Foley had walked her to the door, he came back to Hauck’s office. “Impressive woman, huh, Ty?”
“What’s going on?” Hauck asked him. “I thought we don’t normally handle this kind of thing. It’s pretty routine PI work.”
“Normally we don’t.” His boss stepped over to the door. “But this time we do. You may have had a chance to look over the client list here, Ty.” Of course Hauck had. Talon had a worldwide contract with Reynolds Reid, Merrill Simons’s ex-husband’s firm. “Keep me up to date,” he said, patting Hauck on the back, telling him what a great job he was doing, backing down the hall.
So Hauck started in. He began with the same steps Merrill Simons’s own attorneys had taken. Thibault was a Dutch citizen. But his background was supposedly Belgian. He purported to have ties to the royal family there, the source of his network of contacts and income. He also claimed to have a degree from the London School of Economics.
Hauck began with a criminal history. He put in for it in the U.S. and internationally with Interpol too. He Googled “Thibault.” A trail of gossip references popped up. Linked with Merrill in the society pages. Galas they had attended. Charitable foundation dinners. Prior to that he was seen in the presence of a couple Bollywood actresses and a British female race car driver. The article was headlined 2007’S GLAMOUR COUPLES.
Thibault played in the big leagues.
There was also a series of references and articles in business publications. Thibault’s firm Trois Croix had been negotiating for a small Caribbean resort chain along with a large Spanish retailer. Trois Croix was described as an investment firm based out of Luxembourg and Thibault as a “well-connected Dutch financier.” One article mentioned a series of companies Hauck had never heard of that were part of his holdings: I-Mrkt; Havesham Property Holdings in London; a boutique hotel on Mustique. He was said to have been a board member of several large firms and a former investment manager at Bank AGRO in the Netherlands. Apache Partners, a prominent New York private equity firm, was mentioned as a financial adviser on the acquisition.
An article dated four months later, in something called
Caribbean Business News,
described how the hotel-chain purchase had not gone through and that the company was now seeking another option.
At the end of Merrill Simons’s visit, as she stood up to leave, Hauck had said discreetly, “I don’t mean to trouble you, Ms. Simons, but it would help if I could have one or two additional things.”
She took out her car keys from her purse. “I’m listening…”
“I could use a current cell phone number for Mr. Thibault. And his e-mail account, if you’re okay with that. Banking information…”
“I don’t know…,” Merrill said, appearing a bit concerned.
“It would make things easier,” Hauck said. “I promise, he won’t know.”
“I’m sure you know how hard this is for me,” she said, hesitating. “I have deep feelings for Dani. I’m actually hoping this all is just a small waste of your time…” She went to the door. “Why don’t we just see how this initial pass-through goes?”
Hauck nodded, walked her over to Foley, and handed her his card. He didn’t like what he was doing either. Ripping up the floorboards of someone’s life. Digging into his affairs. On the job, he had done it a million times. But this was different.
Dani Thibault wasn’t under suspicion for committing any crime.
After Merrill had left, Hauck typed in what she had given him, creating a data file.
This time we do,
Tom Foley had said. Take on the PI case. As well as what Hauck saw, with Peter Simons’s ex involved, as an obvious conflict of interest.
He picked up the phone and buzzed Brooke outside. “See if you can get me Richard Snell at our office in London.”
A
t the same time, Hauck did his best to keep his hand in the Glassman murders as well.
He couldn’t put away the image of April. It dogged him—the sweet, bright eyes that shone back from the photographs of her. The light touch of her hand on his when they had last bumped into each other in town.
It’s been what, Ty
—she beamed, happily—
four years…??
Five.
They had met in a support group Hauck had gone to for a while after Norah was killed. He couldn’t escape the dreams that made him constantly relive it. Grief that wouldn’t go away. Blame unwilling to soften. By then, Beth and he had given up. September 11 had brought with it a whole new scrapbook of faces and lives he had been unable to save. Names of the unaccounted for he was charged with following up on. Frantic loved ones calling in. Not knowing. It was as if he was trying to find a glimpse of Norah, his dead daughter, in every face, every call he fielded.
Only two out of two hundred he followed up on ended up being found alive.
It just got to him. For the first time in his life what was constraining him was greater than what he could do. One day he put in his notice. Out of nowhere, he walked into the office of the assistant chief of the NYPD and told him he couldn’t do it anymore. Their shining star. He had made detective, got fast-tracked into management, faster than anyone before. His career had arced upward in a steady, unflagging line.
As part of the settlement he agreed to talk it out with someone. A police shrink. The doctor urged him to come to the group. Just to show he didn’t need it, he went.
Hauck didn’t think about those years much anymore. The Dark Ages, he liked to call them. Depression. Maybe it was a chemical thing, lurking in his brain for years. Maybe it was like the towers, the well-built wall he had erected around himself—sports hero, Colby grad, the pretty wife, the picture-book family, his career—all brought down. Leaving ashes behind.
Whatever it was, he had built himself back up. He had moved away, to Greenwich. Found a new home. Slowly found new people to love. Rebuilt his career. Clearly, his life was moving upward once again.
The Dark Ages.
The memories were back again.
He remembered watching her from across the circle of twelve patients. She was both pretty and at the same time quiet, hurt. Their eyes met with a brief smile. Both of them saying, in the way everyone there seemed to say,
I really don’t belong here, you know.
“April,” Dr. Paul Rose said, “we have a few new people here. Would you give us a little about yourself and tell us why you’re here?”
“Sure,” she said, shrugging diffidently. “I’m, uh,
Frasier
got canceled on Thursday nights, so I was free…” There were a few polite laughs. “Sorry,” she said, flattening her lips. A delicate light shone on her face.
Then she told everyone about her darkness.
The Glassman murders received a lot of attention. Marc Glassman’s notoriety and position made all the cable news shows and the front page of the
Wall Street Journal
. The FBI was involved. Along with the SEC. It seemed unbelievable that Marc Glassman had turned out to be some kind of rogue trader. That he had cost Wertheimer Grant billions of dollars. What kinds of controls were there? Now the firm hung on the verge of collapse. Rumors were everywhere. THE MURDER THAT MAY SINK ONE OF WALL STREET’S MOST RESPECTED FIRMS, the
New York Times
headline read.
All sprung from a local crime spree that had gotten out of control.
Finally Hauck knew the right thing was just to stay out. He made his decision. Let the right people back at Havemeyer Place handle it. He walked away. He had Annie.
April, could you tell us why you’re here…?
Hauck recalled that most mornings Steve Chrisafoulis dropped off his daughter at the high school before heading into work. A few days after the story broke he waited for him, until he saw the blue Chrysler minivan pull up and Emily jump out and shut the door, merging with a group of kids on the sidewalk. She waved. “Bye, Daddy…”
Steve waved back. “See you tonight, hon…”
Hauck stepped up just as he was rolling up the window.
“Funny, I didn’t know you had kids in the school here.” The detective smirked with a roll of his cynical eyes.
Hauck shrugged. “Can’t help myself. Sometimes I still hang around here, just to make sure everything’s okay.”
“You better watch yourself. Someone may get the wrong idea and you’ll get yourself arrested, Ty.”
“Look, I know it’s awkward to talk to me on this, Steve.”
“It’s not awkward,” the detective said. “It’s more like inappropriate. You’re not wearing a badge now.”
“You don’t find it just a shade peculiar how this break-in seemed to bust the Wertheimer thing wide open?”
“
Peculiar?
I also think it’s peculiar how the safe in the house was emptied and the drawers were rifled through, Ty.”
“Any thoughts on what they might have been looking for?”
Now it was Steve who shrugged. “Money, jewelry. Call me crazy…Look, I really gotta get on to the office now.”
“How’s the boy? How’s he doing?”
“Spooked.” Chrisafoulis nodded. “Like anyone might be. He’s with his grandparents up in Darien. One day he’s gonna have to come to terms with what he saw in there. The rest of his family murdered. How’s your kid doing, Ty?”
“Jessie? She’s doing great, thanks. Starting high school this year. You said the kid had taken some pictures…Anything ever pan out?”
“Ty, you’re asking something I can’t divulge. You know that. This is the second time you’ve pumped me for what’s going on. Want to let me in on the story, dude?”
Hauck bent down at the window. He met the new head of detectives face-to-face. “You remember that career night we did at the high school a year or two back?”
“Yeah.”
“April Glassman set it up. We just got friendly.”
“Friendly…?”
“Not that kind of friendly, Steve. We just had a cup of coffee. Bumped into each other once or twice. Started talking. You know how it is; sometimes you just find a person you can open up to. Stuff comes out.”
“Pretty gal.” Chrisafoulis’s mustache twitched, amused. “Look…” He reached across to the passenger seat and unfastened his case. He lifted out a large white envelope. “Fitz finds this out, I’m gonna have you barred from the office Christmas party, you understand?” He grinned. “I know how tough it is to find someone you can open up to.”
“Got it.” Hauck smiled and met his eyes. “Thanks.”
“We blew up the shots.” Steve lifted out a series of eight-by-ten photos. “He snapped them off from the upstairs window overlooking the drive.”
The first was a shot of the backs of two men, wearing masks and what seemed to be dark work uniforms, one carrying a black trash bag, heading away from the house. The second shot showed them climbing into a black SUV at the end of what Hauck recalled was the Glassmans’ long driveway. “A Chevy Suburban,” Steve said. “Too bad the plates were obscured. Would have made things easy. Amazing what these little buggers will do, huh?”
Hauck flipped through the photos and the last ones were tight blowups of the first. Magnified around fifty times. The two men hurrying off. The first just had the side of one of their faces; he had taken off his mask. White. Thirties. Looking away from the camera. Not much there.
The last one did have something distinguishing. It was a close-up of the perp’s neck. He was white as well. A knot of hair, braided up like in a small ponytail, peeking out from under the mask.
And something on the back of his neck.
“We thought it was a birthmark or something,” Chrisafoulis said, seeing Hauck pause. “But the lab was able to enhance it. Turned out to be a tattoo.”
“Like a dragon’s tail?” Hauck asked, squinting.
“Or the tip of an arrow. Hard to tell. You know the only reason I’d even show you these is what you did for me. This stays between us, right? You got your own job now. You left. This one’s mine.”
Hauck handed him back the photos. “Not much of a getaway bag for all that loot,” he said skeptically.
Chrisafoulis looked at him. Steve might have been new to the rank and all the crap it brought with it, but he’d been a detective in the city for fifteen years, knew his work as well as anyone and exactly where Hauck was heading. “Okay, there was something I might not have mentioned…Upstairs. By the wife and daughter. We did find something unusual, now that I think of it.”
“What?”
“You know how the drawers were all rifled through, stuff thrown about? But right on the dresser we found a jewelry case. Rings, bracelets. Some pretty juicy stuff left in it.”
Hauck winked. “They must’ve been in quite a rush.”
“Yeah.” The head of detectives nodded. “Quite a rush.”
Hauck tapped on the edge of the window and stood up. “Thanks. Pretty resourceful kid, that boy, wouldn’t you say?”
“Yeah,
very.
” The head of detectives bore in on him as he turned the ignition and put the car in gear. “I feel a little strange saying this, Ty, but try not to do anything that might tick you off if
you
still had this job.”
