The Garden of Betrayal (16 page)

“To make clear that you’re to keep me posted on any conversation you have with him regarding his personal issues.” He did a slow tour of the wall, coming to a halt in front of a map occupying the central position. “Saudi Arabia?”

“Message received,” I said. “Thanks for stopping by.”

He touched one of the brightly colored 3-D representations of Saudi oil fields surrounding the map.

“And this is what?”

“Work.”

“Hmm …” He bent closer, examining the legend on the lower-left corner of the colored printout. “Yellow is oil, blue is water, and green is sedimentary rock. Geological studies?”

I crossed my arms and stared at him. He moved left, peering at a spreadsheet.

“‘Net yield by month in hundreds of thousands of barrels,’” he read. “I thought the Saudis didn’t make public their production data?”

“They don’t.”

He turned from the glass wall to scrutinize me.

“More manna from Narimanov?”

There were two possibilities. Either he knew I’d received the Saudi information from Theresa, and was trying to play me for a fool, or he didn’t. If he did, nothing I told him would be news. If he didn’t, it was marginally more likely that Alex had been straight with me. I was tired of guessing at everything. I decided to find out which.

“No,” I said. “Another source.”

He whistled softly.

“You’re kind of on a hot streak, aren’t you?”

“Maybe. There are complications.”

“Such as?” he asked, settling himself in an empty seat.

I got up to close the door and then sat down opposite him. It took me about five minutes to explain how I’d come by the data, referring to Alex as “my friend” and Theresa as “the expert.” His face was a mask.

“The thing that’s making me most uncomfortable is that Simpson’s entire argument yesterday was predicated on assumptions about the very data that just fell into my lap. It seems like too much of a coincidence. I’m betting that there’s something going on behind the scenes.”

“Let me guess,” Walter said, waving a hand at the documents taped to the wall. “The work you’ve done makes the senator seem prescient.”

“A proper analysis would take weeks. But the short answer to your question is yes. My quick-and-dirty read is that the Saudis are likely to begin experiencing serious production declines in about five years. There’s no way the Western economies can retool that quickly, which pretty much guarantees massive dislocation unless the United States adopts Simpson’s plan or something similar.”

I paused for a reaction, but Walter kept quiet. I wasn’t sure what to think. He rarely showed emotion, so it was no surprise that he was taking the news calmly. I had to push harder to get him to show his hand. If he’d arranged for me to receive the data, he’d want me to believe it.

“My best guess is that the same source who gave me this information also fed it to Simpson, and—if so—that Simpson took steps to check it out. Simpson is on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. I’d love to know what the CIA or the NSA had to say.”

I let the observation hang, waiting for Walter to volunteer a connection. He was plugged in, but not plugged in enough to do fact-checking with our intelligence agencies. If he suggested he’d look into it and then came back the next day to give me the high sign, I’d know something suspicious was going on. Walter pondered for a moment and then shook his head decisively.

“You’ve got this backward.”

“What do you mean?”

“Think about it. That story you told me about how ‘the expert’ got hold of the data and decided to pass it along doesn’t smell right, and you know it. That’s why you’re so suspicious, and why you’re hell-bent on trying to confirm the information from other sources.”

I nodded tentatively, wondering if this was some kind of double fake.

“So, what’s your hypothesis?”

“Simple. This is the kind of data that
originates
in the intelligence community. Isn’t it a lot more likely that the CIA or the NSA obtained the information in the first place, realized the potential ramifications, and then posted the Select Committee? And that Senator Simpson, who’s running for president, saw an opportunity to pre-position himself as the candidate with the visionary policy?”

“But that would mean—”

“That Simpson leaked the data himself. Exactly. Or, more likely, his pet weasel White. Because otherwise the voters wouldn’t know the senator was such a visionary, would they? And,” he continued, holding up a finger to forestall any interruption, “having decided to leak it, who better to give the information to than someone close to me? That way he’s really killed two birds with one stone. He shows up on Tuesday and hand-sells his energy security scheme to me and my associates, and you waltz in on Wednesday and tell me that he’s right to be concerned. Simpson gets the data into the public domain and locks up big-money support at the same time.”

It was a neat hypothesis, but there was a piece that didn’t track.

“You’re forgetting that the expert was introduced to me by a friend. It’s a big stretch to think Simpson was able to find a pliable expert who happened to know a friend of mine.”

Walter gave me a pitying look.

“Occam’s razor,” he said.

Occam’s razor: Any explanation of a phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible. I thought about it for a few seconds and felt sick.

“Simpson didn’t find an expert who knew a friend of mine. He found a friend of mine who was willing to lie about knowing an expert.”

“Simpson figured you’d be suspicious. An introduction from a friend gave the expert credibility.”

Between the fatigue and confusion, I felt as though my head were going to explode. Walter’s argument made sense, but the very fact of his putting it forth made it less likely that he was the one who’d asked Alex to lie about knowing Theresa. Which meant that White or Simpson had somehow gotten to Alex? How? In exchange for what? Walter read the emotion on my face and grinned.

“You know the old saying,” he said. “If you want a friend on Wall Street, buy a dog.”

I wasn’t able to muster a smile.

“Well,” he said, getting to his feet. “I think we both know what to do next. I’ll talk to other members of the Senate Select Committee and see what I can learn. Even if we’re right that Simpson leaked the data, it doesn’t necessarily follow that it’s true. It would be an elegant little political trick to release deliberate disinformation, just the sort of thing White might cook up. Any mention of imminent energy shortages in the press would be enough to scare the bejesus out of most Americans, no matter who subsequently denied it. And that alone would work mightily to Simpson’s benefit. You talk to your ‘friend’ and see if you can get him to come clean. Let me know if you need any assistance.”

“What kind of assistance?” I asked dully.

“Fred and Frank. They’re pretty good at finding hidden connections.”

Frick and Frack. They’d hinted to me in the past that they were available for work in the gray zone, trawling vulnerable computer systems for confidential information. Even if I thought they’d keep Alex’s identity secret from Walter, I wasn’t ready to sic them on him.

“I’ll be okay on my own for now.”

“Fine …”

There was a tap on the door. Walter opened it. Amy was standing outside.

“I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, “but Susan’s looking for you. She needs to speak with you right away.”

He turned his head toward me.

“Come see me tomorrow mid-morning and we’ll compare notes. I’ll have talked to some people by then.”

I nodded, and he left.

“And Reggie wants you to call him on his cell,” Amy continued, addressing herself to me. “He said it was important.”

“Thanks.”

She closed the door as I dialed Reggie’s number.

“Mark?” he said, answering on the first ring. “Where are you?”

“At the office.”

“Are you alone?”

“Yes,” I said. “Why?”

“I hate to have to tell you this, but Alex Coleman is dead.”

“I can’t believe it,” I said for the tenth or eleventh time. We were in Reggie’s car, across the street from my apartment building. All he’d been able to tell me thus far was that Alex had been found dead in his bathtub.

“It’s hard,” he said. “I’m sorry. I know he was a good friend of yours.” His phone rang and he checked the number. “This is my buddy at the Nineteenth Precinct. Give me a few seconds here.”

I opened the car door and got out, needing the air. We were on the west side of the street, adjacent to the stone wall bordering Riverside Park. I sat down on a bench and buried my head in my hands, attempting to come to grips with what had happened. I was shivering despite the winter sun on my back. I’d tried to be a friend to Alex—to advise him as best I knew how, and to do what I could to bolster his confidence. Ultimately, though, we’re all alone in the world, and there’s a limit to how much any one person can do for another. I choked back a sob, thinking of Alex as I’d first known him—the intelligence, the warmth, and the promise that had never been fulfilled. Reggie got out of the car a few minutes later and sat down next to me.

“I have some details if you want to hear them.”

“I guess.”

He took a minute to light a cigarette.

“Time of death won’t be officially established until the autopsy, but the tech on the scene makes it sometime early this morning, most likely between twelve and three. There was a half-empty fifth of vodka on the bathroom floor next to the tub and an open bottle of sleeping pills on the vanity. The immediate cause of death looks to be drowning.”

“Jesus.” I had an abrupt, vivid mental image of Alex’s face staring up at me from beneath a rippling sheet of water. I shook my head violently, trying to clear the vision. “Did he leave a note?”

“You think it was suicide?”

“I don’t know.” An accident would be easier for Walter and Alex’s mother to accept. “What do your guys think?”

“They’re withholding judgment. The apartment’s torn up pretty bad.”

“Torn up how?”

“Like someone was searching for something.”

A sudden thought jolted me upright.

“You’re not suggesting he was murdered?”

Reggie shrugged.

“No sign of violence on the body, so it seems unlikely. Maybe he searched the place himself, looking for a hidden bottle or an old love letter. Drunks rip stuff up all the time. We’ll know more when the medical examiner and the forensic guys report back.” He started to take another hit from the cigarette and then flung it away irritably. A woman passing by with a dog gave him a dirty look. “The hard drive’s missing from his computer.”

“So, someone else was with him.”

“Not necessarily.”

I glanced over at him.

“Listen.” He sighed. “A guy gets wasted and starts thinking about offing himself, maybe he begins to worry about what he’s leaving behind. These days, everybody’s secrets are on their computers. Did Alex have a technical background?”

“A master’s degree in economics and an undergraduate minor in computer science.”

“There you go. He must have known that it’s tough to completely erase things from a hard drive. The safe thing to do if you want to cover your tracks is to pop the drive and get rid of it. We’re checking trash cans in a ten-block radius.”

“What kind of secrets are you talking about?”

“What kind of secrets does any guy have? Porn’s always a good bet. He might have been into nasty stuff, like pictures of little kids.”

I flinched reflexively.

“I’m just speculating,” Reggie added quickly. “I’m just saying there
might have been stuff he didn’t want his parents or friends to find out about when he was gone. You never know.”

Maybe his secret was that he’d done an under-the-table deal with a U.S. senator to help get him elected president. I rolled the notion around in my mind uneasily, unsure whether to mention it to Reggie. If Alex had been murdered, or driven to kill himself, the police needed to know everything. If he hadn’t, I didn’t want to drag his name through the mud with a lot of wild speculation. I felt as though I needed to talk things through with Walter.

“At any rate,” Reggie continued, “that’s all I have right now. The investigating officers will probably want to interview you at some point. I mentioned that you were a friend of his.”

“That’s fine,” I said apprehensively.

“Good, then. I gotta run. You gonna be okay?”

“Yeah. I might sit here awhile, though.”

“No problem. We still getting together with Gallegos tomorrow morning?”

With everything else going on, it had slipped my mind.

“Sure,” I said, not wanting to postpone. “Meet at the diner?”

“Nine o’clock. You talk to Claire and Kate yet?”

“No. I’m waiting for the right moment.”

I left unsaid that just then, I couldn’t imagine when the right moment might be.

Dinner with Claire and Kate and Phil was a challenge. I didn’t mention Alex’s death, not wanting to cast a pall on the evening. I decided to tell them the next morning, before they had a chance to read about it in the paper.

Phil sat in Kyle’s old seat at the dining-room table. The good news for the evening was that he wasn’t shy. He got started on the year he’d spent traveling and told story after story about Third World misadventures, making Claire and Kate laugh. I smiled along as best I could. Claire had a second glass of wine and then a third, something she almost never did. Seeing her animated made my heart ache with nostalgia. Midway through dinner, I caught Kate looking at me with concern, which made my heart ache for a different reason. She was too young to be so finely attuned to unhappiness.

I quickly lost a game of Risk after dinner and retired to the bedroom, leaving the three of them to scheme cheerfully toward world domination at the kitchen table. I was dozing fitfully when Claire came to bed. She reached for my hand in the dark and pressed it to her breast. I unbuttoned the neck of her chemise slowly, desiring her but careful of her mood. She knelt upright and pulled the chemise overhead with a single fluid gesture, and then shifted sideways to straddle me. We made love silently, her head burrowed against my chest.