The Doll Brokers (20 page)

“What…” Ann trailed off to swallow convulsively. “What do you mean?”

Jonathan turned back to the notices on the wall without answering. He hated the gripping feeling in his gut.

“You meant something,” she said. “That comment had intent.”

“Jesus, Ann, I just get tired of you lambasting Pat all the time. What do you think that does to Mom?”

“I never say it to her.”

He knew that. At least he had never heard her. Things inside him twisted harder. “Whatever.”

“No. Not
whatever
. I want to—”

A sharp knock on the door interrupted her. Emeril Lacey came into the room.

Ann moved automatically to meet him. She glanced at Jonathan as she passed him, trying to tell him with her eyes that they'd finish their own business later.

“Thanks for coming,” she said to the lawyer.

The man shook her hand, then strolled a little further into the room, stopping at the table. He was broad and tall. Ann had never seen him in anything but a charcoal-gray suit, but tonight he was in jeans and a sweatshirt.

“It's what you pay me for,” he replied. “Though, under the circumstances, I've brought someone a little better versed in this sort of thing.”

She felt her knees go soft with relief. He had brought a criminal lawyer. “Who is it? And where is he?”

“His name is Frank Ketch and he's with Detective Rondgrun now. I went to law school with him. He's one of the best in his field.” Lacey pulled out a chair and sat. “I've got to tell you that Patrick is going to need him on this.” His gaze moved to include Jonathan as well. “It looks like the D.A. has managed to put together some substantial evidence already.”

It occurred to Ann then that she didn't know most of the details. She sat, lowering her head into her hands. “Tell us.”

“Starting with the least serious of the charges, his blood-alcohol level was 2.2 when they picked him up. He should have been comatose. He says he was at Amoroso's on Fifth. He left there late this afternoon and was headed out of the city.”

“He doesn't drive in the city,” Jonathan interjected.

“The authorities have impounded a pearl-gray Volvo wagon, registered in his name.”

Jonathan sat. He did it hard. “Yeah, that's his.”

“He was going out to the warehouse late today.” Ann pushed a few strands of hair away from her face. “He'd want the car for that.”

“Well, he never made it,” Lacey said. “He got maybe ten blocks before they pulled him over. Someone called in to say that Patrick was driving under the influence. The call was traced to a pay phone in the bar. A patron obviously watched him stagger out of there.”

Ann hadn't meant to glance at Jonathan again. Maybe it was the sound he made. A grunt that broke off too fast.

“Go on,” he said to Lacey. “I want to hear the rest.”

“A patrol unit stopped him and he was reportedly belligerent. He tried to run, to take off on foot. The ensuing fight gave them cause for search-and-seizure. They found cocaine in his briefcase—in the car—a quantity that puts him in the area of intent-to-distribute. And they found a warrant issued in Hong Kong for his arrest.”

“Huh?” Ann looked at the lawyer and waited.

“What does it say?” Jonathan asked.

Lacey turned back to him. “Apparently your brother finagled the rights to some doll that he had no business negotiating for.”

Ann felt the room reel.

The lawyer shuffled some papers aside. “I have the name of the doll,” he said. “Oh, yes. Here it is. Baby Talk N Glow.”

B
y the time they accompanied Lacey out of the room and were told they could see Patrick, the tension between Ann and Jonathan had reached the saturation point. It was after midnight and Ann was exhausted and on edge. Filled with hurt and confusion, she grappled with the idea that Patrick might have been trying to sabotage Baby Talk N Glow.

“Right down there,” the policeman said, pointing at a narrow hallway leading off the bullpen.

Patrick was being held in a room with a cage. There were four green plastic chairs, a single, barred, grime-streaked window. The walls were shades of old concrete, mottled gray and brown. As soon as Ann stepped over the threshold, the reek of him hit her—the sour sweat of fear and vomit laced with cognac. He'd taken off his suit jacket; it was hanging on the back of a chair. His white shirt was torn at one elbow, while a streak of something black cut a diagonal line across his chin.

With seventeen years of pent-up anger, Ann moved close and slapped him. “What the hell have you done?” she demanded.

Jonathan came up behind and gripped her shoulders, pulling her back.

“Don't touch me,” she warned, twisting from his grasp.

To her disgust, Patrick began to cry. His face contorted and he dropped his head so his chin hit his chest.

“Maybe we should all calm down,” said the other man in the room, someone Ann had barely noticed.

Now she looked at him. He was scarecrow thin and very tall. His clothing seemed to both balloon and bag on him. He had wispy, straw-colored hair, and he wore heavy, dark-rimmed glasses. His eyes blinked myopically behind the lenses, but his gaze was steady.

“You're Frank Ketch,” she said.

He nodded. “I think I can help, if you'll let me. Patrick tells me he doesn't have the funds himself to retain me.”

Ann's gaze jumped to Pat again. “What did you do with the hundred thousand?”

His head snapped up but his gaze cut away guiltily. “Ah, Jesus,” he said. “Jesus Christ.”

She heard Jonathan's intake of breath behind her. Patrick
had
taken the money. But why?

Ann couldn't stand the smell of him, but she went down on her haunches beside his chair. She had to see his eyes. “Look at me,” she said. “Where is it? Damn it, what did you do with it?”

“That's not the issue here, Ann.” Jonathan's voice was raw.

“It is,” Pat said hoarsely. “I mean, it could be. I think someone is trying to … ruin me.”

Ann felt woozy, as if she could keel over at any moment. “What are you saying? That someone is
blackmailing
you? Who?”

“Richard Salsberg. He's a lawyer I went to for help in arranging the bank loan. I gave him the first fifty. It should have been done. He called today and wanted more.” He was still drunk. He was slurring his words and rambling.

“What kind of a bank would—” Ann broke off, the words gathering like thorns in her throat. “Oh, dear God.” She spun away. She couldn't look at him.

A whining tone came to Pat's voice. “Every other bank turned us down. I had to do something drastic.”

Ann jerked back to him. She hadn't known it was possible to be this angry. “No, everyone else did
not
turn you down! You never even went to Margin! You had an appointment with them that you didn't keep!”

“Fuck you, Ann,” he spat suddenly. His gaze went feral and shot to Jonathan. “Or is that your job?”

She didn't actually see Jonathan move. There was a blur in a corner of her vision. Then Patrick was out of his chair, hoisted in the air by his shirtfront. Jonathan shook him viciously, then thrust him back down.

Ketch took a step as though to move between them, then apparently thought better of it.

“Pat.” Jonathan's voice was a low, dangerous vibration. “You're not exactly in a position to be alienating someone who might be willing to help you.”

Patrick looked in Ann's direction. “If she had just backed off on the doll, none of this would have happened! It's
you
, Ann. It's always about you, from the day you walked into our lives!”

“Knock it off!” Jonathan warned.

The room pitched into silence. Jonathan had come to her defense again, Ann realized, and she didn't know what make of it.

“What do we do now?” Jonathan asked Ketch.

“First, you retain me,” the lawyer said.

“Of course. How much?”

“Twenty-five thousand to start. It's non-refundable, even if he's not held over for trial. If he is, I'll need another twenty-five. Then ten when half of that is whittled away, and so on until this is resolved.”

“Give me until the end of business tomorrow.”

Ketch nodded. He looked at Patrick. “I'm afraid you'll be staying here tonight.”

Pat had folded into his chair. Now he came out of it like someone had set it on fire. “No, I can't! I didn't do anything. The cocaine isn't mine. I know nothing about that subpoena from Hong Kong!”

“I could get a judge to hear this tonight on the DUI but not on the cocaine charge. I'm sorry. These things take time.”

Ann thought Patrick was going to grab the lawyer. “I keep telling you! I don't know where that cocaine came from!” He looked like he was going to cry again. “Salsberg is doing this to me. I don't know why.” He turned bleeding eyes to Jonathan. “Don't leave me here alone.”

Jonathan stared at him for a heartbeat. “Well, I'm sure as hell not going to cozy up to you in that cell,” he said, sticking a thumb in the direction of the cage.

Patrick focused on the wire mesh. He blanched, covering his face with his hands.

“Look—may I speak to you in private?” the lawyer said, motioning Ann and Jonathan to step outside.

Once in the hallway he advised them that Patrick was in no condition to respond to their questions tonight. “Let him sleep it off,” he suggested. “Once he sobers up I'll get more out of him.”

Ann turned, abruptly began to walk away. Her head was splitting. Her world was coming apart, yet she regretted her impulsiveness. She shouldn't have struck Patrick, shouldn't have allowed her feelings to get the better of her.

Her footsteps echoed. Despite the harsh words between them, she half-wished Jonathan would catch up to her, whisper something kind in her ear.

But silence followed her outside. Ann stood quietly for a moment, feeling completely alone, wondering what the future had in store for them all.

J
onathan watched Ann walk out of the precinct and was tempted to go after her. It was late and he was past the point of being tired. Too much had been spoken in the heat of anger. He wanted to apologize. But the predicament his brother had put them in weighed heavy on his mind. Personal feelings would have to be ignored.

He said goodnight to the lawyer and went outside to hail a cab. It was getting colder. Winter wasn't too far away. He didn't need to think twice about where he had to go. If he was going to find a way to exonerate his brother he would have to do so fast.

The street was deserted when the taxi left him off at Hart Toy's office. He reached into his pocket to retrieve a set of keys his mother had recently provided him, then entered the elevator and pushed the button for his floor. What would he find? Would it be worthwhile? He didn't know, but anything was better than just sitting around, waiting for events to play themselves out.

He hit the light switch, walked into Patrick's office and right over to the three-drawer gray file cabinet next to his brother's desk. He put the key in the lock and pulled the top drawer open.

Almost an hour later, having waded through file after file of bank dealings and financial reports, Jonathan was past the point
of boredom. He finally removed his coat and sat down in the chair behind Patrick's desk.

Leaning back, he allowed his mind to drift. It didn't take long for him to remember the horrible look on Ann's face when she confronted his brother at the police station. It only made matters worse that Jonathan had wrongly insinuated that she had never pulled her own weight, or that she was somehow implicated in Matthew's death. What the heck was he trying to pull?

That damn pride of his. Familial loyalty overriding his feelings for Ann. Sooner or later he would have to come to grips with those feelings. Sooner or later he would have to face the truth. But not now. Now he had to focus on the situation at hand.

New York was the least likely city in the civilized world where someone would call the cops because a man staggered out of a bar drunk. After all, there were always cabs available. So Patrick had to have been drinking with someone, someone who set him up. His brother admitted taking the hundred thousand dollars to pay off the lawyer who had helped him solidify the loan with the bank. But he vehemently denied any knowledge of the cocaine and whatever it was that the Hong Kong authorities were trying to implicate him in. It was a stretch to think that Patrick had suddenly gone from being a common drunk to a drug dealer and conspirator.

Reluctantly, Jonathan stood and went back to his chore at the file cabinet. He began examining each of the bank covenants they had agreed to over the years, the lines of credit that had been approved or disapproved. This took the better part of another hour. The second drawer revealed the agreements they had signed with the retail trade, be it Walmart, Toys ‘R' Us, Target, or Browns. Warehouse allowances, advertising allowances: all documented and set in stone. The only time he paused was when he found the letter from Gerry McGuire, about Hart Toy being fined because they had shipped one day early. He remembered
Ann's conversation with the man, and McGuire's promise that this fine and others would be reversed.

The third drawer contained most of the contracts they had signed with inventors and manufacturers. There was one for their line of basic dolls. Another detailed the acquisition of Moonlight, their hugely successful board game. It was no surprise to Jonathan that most of what he was looking at originated in Eastern Asia, predominantly China. While Hong Kong still contained many of the head offices, manufacturing facilities had gravitated to areas that had sprung up and blossomed in recent years: Shenzhen, just across the Hong Kong border and designated as a Special Economic Zone, being the most notable.