The Day Trader (28 page)

“Good.”

“The lawyers need to draft some paperwork. Partnership documents or something, I think they said, but we ought to be ready to go by next Friday.”

“Okay.”

“They want to pay you two percent a year. Two hundred grand. They’ll pay you a hundred up front every six months. If you do well, you can keep five percent of the profits too. How about it?”

“Make it six and we have a deal.”

There’s a momentary silence at the other end of the phone, then Vincent’s laugh comes booming into my ear. “Negotiating with me, huh?”

“Hey, I’m going to make these people lots of money,” I say. “They need to understand that. I’ve already shown what I can do.”

“All right,” he agrees, still chuckling. “Six percent.”

“We should get together to talk about details,” I suggest. “About setting up accounts and all.”

“How about dinner tomorrow night?”

“Good. I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon. We’ll figure out a place then.”

“Sounds good.”

I give Vincent my cell number, then clip the phone to my belt before heading out into the bright sunshine from beneath the roof that spans the length of the strip mall. As I approach my Toyota, I notice a man standing beside the driver-side door. “Can I help you?” I ask as I near him. He’s a burly man, almost as tall as me, with a gut and thinning hair.

“Augustus McKnight?”

“Yes,” I answer, turning cautious at the sound of my name.

“I’m Scott Snyder,” he says in that tough Brooklyn accent I heard on my voice mail yesterday morning. “I left a message for you Thursday at your office but didn’t hear back, so I figured I’d track you down. I’m representing Great Western Insurance Company in the matter of the death benefit claim you made. I hope you don’t mind meeting like this, but I know we all want to get this matter cleaned up as quickly as possible. Great Western certainly does.”

“I’m not sure what you mean by ‘matter.’ ”

“There’s still a few i’s to dot and t’s to cross.”

“How did you find me?” I ask uncomfortably, putting the plastic bag with the cell phone box and the owner’s manual down on the Toyota’s trunk. I hold one hand over my eyes to shield them from the glare of the bright sunshine.

“I stopped by your house this morning just as you were leaving, so I followed you to the BMW dealership,” Snyder explains, moving to the back of the Toyota so we’re standing face-to-face. He holds out his hand and we shake. “That’s quite a nice car you’re buying. I wish I had that kind of money. What do those 330s run nowadays? Forty grand or so?”

“Around that.”

“Well, I didn’t want to interrupt the deal. That’s why I waited until now to talk.” He points down at the new cell phone clipped to my belt. “Did you just buy that too?”

“Uh-huh.”

“That’s AT&T’s new top-of-the-line product, isn’t it?”

“Yep.”

“I hear they have lots of features. That’s got to be another expensive toy.”

“What can I do for you, Mr. Snyder?”

“As I said on my voice mail message, I have a few questions I want to ask you.”

“What about?”

Snyder’s gaze drops to the pavement as he does a terrible impression of a man who cares. “About your wife’s murder,” he explains, lifting his eyes back up in time to catch my reaction.

“Let me get this straight. You work for the insurance company?”

He shakes his head. “No, I work for an investigative firm. We’re located downtown. We specialize in workmen’s comp claims, but we take on other work as well. Surveillance. Loss recovery. Insurance companies hire us to make sure people aren’t defrauding them.”

“What do you want to know about my wife’s murder?”

He shoves his hands in his pockets and his shoulders slump as he tries to strike a nonaggressive pose. “Look, I know how difficult this is, but when someone dies under questionable circumstances, the insurance company has to investigate the incident to protect itself. I’m sorry to dredge up bad memories but this just has to be done.”

“The police are already investigating my wife’s death. Why does the insurance company have to do it too?”

“That’s just the way it is. Especially with a million bucks on the line.”

“Okay.” I try to smile politely, but I’m sure he can see my aggravation. “What can I tell you?”

“You want to go to a coffee shop or something and sit down?” he asks, scanning the strip mall. “Maybe get something to eat?”

“Nope.”

“Okay.” He nods, probably annoyed that I won’t buy him lunch. “Where were you the night your wife was murdered?”

I stare at Snyder for several moments before answering, rage building inside me. “Does the insurance company actually think for one minute that I might have killed my wife?” I ask, my jaw tight. “Is that what this is all about?”

“Settle down, Mr. McKnight,” Snyder advises, his manner turning tough for the first time.

“I didn’t kill my wife.”

“Uh-huh.”

I take a deep breath. “I don’t really understand what you’re after, Snyder. The facts are that my wife is dead and she had a valid policy with Great Western. She was murdered. The police have confirmed that. She didn’t commit suicide. Great Western can’t wriggle out of their obligation on that technicality. So no matter what lies the insurance company might try to invent, they owe me the money.”

“Actually that’s not true,” Snyder says, smiling the same smug smile Harry gave me when he realized I had been snagged by a state trooper as we tore over that bridge doing ninety.

“What do you mean?”

“There are laws in Washington, D.C., and Virginia called slayer statutes. Slayer statutes prevent anyone who has caused bodily harm to another individual from benefiting monetarily. So a person can’t collect the proceeds of a life insurance policy if they were directly responsible for the death of the insured.”

I blink several times. The sun is really bright today. “I didn’t kill Melanie. I’ve told the police that several times.”

“How many times?” he asks, pulling a small notepad from his pocket.

“Several,”
I repeat tersely.

“Reggie Dorsey is the lead detective on this case, right?” Snyder asks.

“Yes. Do you know Reggie?”

Snyder smiles as he opens the notepad. “Reggie and I go way back. He’s a good man. He’ll find your wife’s killer, Mr. McKnight. I’m sure of that.”

“Have you spoken to him?”

“Yes, we’re in contact.” Snyder flips back several pages, checks something, then looks up at me. “Where were you the night your wife was killed?”

“At home.”

“Did you go anywhere after work?”

“No.”

“You went straight home?”

“Yes, well . . . well, no, not exactly straight home.”

“What do you mean, not exactly straight home?” he asks.

“It was a terrible day at work so I went for a drive.”

“A drive?”

“Yes, a drive. Is that all right with you?”

“Sure it is.” Snyder pulls a pen from his shirt pocket and starts scribbling. “Where did you drive?”

“Out to the country. Out to Winchester.”

“Why Winchester?”

“Why not?” I ask angrily.

“There’s no reason to be defensive, Mr. McKnight.”

“I’m not being defensive. I just don’t appreciate these questions.”

“Uh-huh,” he agrees, not really listening to me. “Winchester is about seventy miles west of the city. Over the mountains, correct?”

“Yes.”

Snyder flips a couple of pages farther back and studies his notes for a moment before beginning again. “It says here that you were fired from your job the same day your wife was murdered. Is that why you took the drive? To cool down after being fired?”

“Fired? I wasn’t fired. I quit.”

“That’s not what a man named Russell Lake told me. I believe he’s your ex-boss,” Snyder says. “Mr. Lake said you physically assaulted him and he was forced to terminate you on the spot.”

“He’s lying! I resigned—”

“He also informed me that your wife had asked you for a divorce the night before, and that you were understandably disturbed about that. He said that you told him you”—Snyder looks at the pad again— “ ‘weren’t doing well.’ Is that true? Is that what you said?”

I stare at Snyder for several moments without responding. Russell Lake is taking revenge for not getting a cut of the Unicom profits.

“A man named Frank Taylor also informed me that your wife had asked for a divorce the evening before you were fired,” Snyder continues. “He was your wife’s boss.”

A burst of red flashes before my eyes at the sound of Taylor’s name. “All right! Yes, Melanie said she was going to leave me that night! But we would have worked things out.”

“You must have been very upset,” he says, showing no reaction to my outburst.

“Of course I was.”

“At the time of her murder, was your wife having an affair with a man named Vincent Carlucci?”

My eyes snap to Snyder’s. “No! Who in the hell told you that?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Snyder says with a wave of his hand.

“It does to me.”

“Forget it. Now, did you stop anywhere while you were on this drive to Winchester?” Snyder continues. “Can anyone confirm your whereabouts that night? If someone could, that would be really helpful. Otherwise, while I may believe that you were tooling around the countryside working off steam, the executives at Great Western may not. They tend to be pretty skeptical about these things.”

“I wanted to be alone. That was the whole point.”

“Right. Alone.”

For several moments we stare at each other, then he slowly closes his notepad and nods. “Thank you for your time, Mr. McKnight. I’ll be in touch.”

“Snyder!” I call as he walks away.

“What?”

“If Great Western doesn’t pay the life insurance proceeds to me, who gets it?”

“The secondary beneficiary,” he says, opening his pad once more and glancing at it. “That would be Frank Taylor.”

CHAPTER 17

I’m not a self-centered man. I care deeply about the feelings of others, so I try very hard never to be arrogant. But the few times in my life I have been, when I’ve made the mistake of getting even the slightest bit cocky, it seems like I’ve been punished for it right away.

I remember tackling the other team’s quarterback near the end of a rainy game in high school, and after I’d picked myself up off the soggy turf, I raised my arms in celebration and did one of those victory dances over him, screaming and pounding my chest. I even ran my hand across my throat with the slash sign to show that the game was over because we were so far ahead. We were crushing those poor bastards. On the next play I got hit so hard by one of the opposing linemen on a crack-back block, I had to be carried off the field on a stretcher. Or so I was told. I didn’t remember the hit. I didn’t even remember my name for two days.

Now it’s happened again. This morning I sped away from a state trooper at a hundred miles an hour, bought a flashy sports car, and thought I was a big shot while I negotiated with Vincent on my new cell phone about my fee to manage his investors’ money. Then thirty seconds later, boom, I’m confronted by Scott Snyder, who’s going to do everything he can to keep me from getting the million dollars out of Melanie’s insurance policy. He didn’t say that, but I could see it in his eyes.

It isn’t as if Snyder has a good reason for wanting to keep me from getting the money either. We’d never even met before this morning. In fact, I bet if Snyder got to know Taylor at all, he’d want
me
to have the cash because he’d realize that Taylor is one of the most contemptible human beings on earth. So the only explanation for what happened in the parking lot must be that some greater power sent Snyder to cut me back down to size as I was congratulating myself on how far and I’d come so fast. It’s just like what happened on the football field with the crack-back block. If there is anything that might turn me to religion, it’s that pattern of arrogance and setback. Maybe someday I’ll learn.

After my run-in with Snyder, picking up the BMW turns into a chore. I try to concentrate as Harry sits with me for an hour and takes me through the car’s options, explaining every detail about my new machine. But my excitement of a few hours ago is gone, replaced by an eerie sense of dread. I can’t focus on what he’s saying because I’m wondering what I’ll do if the insurance company denies my claim and gives the money to Taylor. I’m wondering how Reggie would interpret that outcome too.

And I’m trying to figure out why Taylor is the second beneficiary on Melanie’s policy. I vaguely remember Melanie saying something about her mother being second the night she was filling out the applications last spring. But I wasn’t listening very hard because I thought the whole damn thing was so ridiculous. Melanie had to actually place the application down directly in front of me, put a pen in my hand, and force me to sign my name on the bottom line that night.

From the dealership I drive my new car directly to Bedford. There are several more companies I want to analyze so that when I get the ten million dollars from Vincent’s investors, I’ll be ready to go. More important, I’m finding myself drawn back to the scene of yesterday’s events, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s because once the police were certain I was unharmed, they ushered me right out of the conference room and didn’t give me a chance to really reflect on what had happened. I have to see the spot where Slammer pulled the gun on me, the spot where Daniel fell, what’s left of the window Slammer crashed through, and I have to look down those nine stories from the conference room to the hard pavement below.

I learned a lot about myself yesterday. I learned that I wouldn’t cower in fear when a gun was pointed at me, that I would act to save others even in the face of grave danger to myself, and that I could still feel compassion for a man who had threatened to kill me only moments before.

Bedford’s lobby door is propped open by a two-by-four so I don’t need my swipe card to get inside. When I push through the swinging doors and walk onto the trading floor, I see that there’s a cleaning crew hard at work scrubbing the place where Daniel died. They’re using a big industrial carpet cleaner, and over the loud hum of the machine, I hear the banging of hammers and the whining of a circular saw coming from the conference room. The smell of sawdust hangs heavy in the air and the carpet is marked by dusty footprints. Michael Seaver is determined to be back up and running first thing Monday morning as if nothing happened, but all of this activity seems kind of disrespectful. Maybe Roger was right. Maybe Seaver should pay for what happened.