The Insider (28 page)

“What’s wrong, Tony?” Oliver asked. The ice in Tony’s glass was shaking wildly.

“Nothing.” He glanced down at his feet, unable to meet Oliver’s gaze.

Oliver took a deep breath, then, out of the corner of his eye, saw the hulk in blue overalls standing in the study doorway holding a revolver. “What the—”

“I’m sorry, Oliver.” Torcelli took a sip of orange juice, then calmly placed the glass on an antique coffee table. “Over the last few weeks I’ve taken matters into my own hands. I had to. It was the only way.”

“I—I don’t understand,” Oliver stammered.

Torcelli glanced at the man in the overalls. “Is everything under control?” he asked.

The man nodded. “The woman and the boy are in an upstairs bedroom,” he said gruffly. “So is a maid. There’s no one else here.”

“Good.”

Despair suddenly turned to rage. “You fucking bastard!” Oliver lunged at Torcelli, but the man in the overalls stepped into the room and aimed the revolver at Oliver’s chest. The action stopped Oliver dead in his tracks, and he stared at the end of the gun, as though hypnotized.

“It’s over, Oliver,” Torcelli said. “You’ve become a liability. You are mentally unstable. The other insiders and I can’t take the chance that you’ll crack under the pressure and give us all away. I’m not going to jail because of you,” he said firmly. “It will look like a robbery. There will be things missing from the mansion that will show up later in Brooklyn and the Bronx. The police will assume that the burglars had planned to commit the crime while everyone was out of the house, but the maid surprised them, then the family came home unexpectedly. Unfortunately, you and your family don’t make it.” Torcelli’s lip curled. “There just isn’t any other way, Oliver. Although from what I know of you, the only murder you care about is your own.” Torcelli motioned to the man in the blue overalls. “Tie him up.”

“David, please,” Oliver begged. “I’ll never say a word. You know that.”

“No,” Torcelli hissed.

The man whipped a length of rope from his pocket and forced Oliver down on the floor, pulling his hands behind his back roughly. For a second the man placed his revolver down on the rug as he bound Oliver’s wrists.

In that second Jay thrust the screen door aside and burst into the study. He had been out on the porch for almost half an hour, his back tightly pressed against the rock wall beside the sliding door, barely obscured from those within. Jay fell against the man in the overalls, taking him by surprise, knocking him away from Oliver and the revolver. Jay scrambled to the gun.

For a split second the man gazed at Jay. Then he smiled, rose to his feet, and lunged, certain Jay wouldn’t fire the weapon.

He was wrong. Jay aimed carefully at the man’s left thigh and calmly squeezed the trigger, hitting his leg and smashing the bone. The man toppled to the floor, grabbing his wounded leg and screaming wildly. The explosion sent Vogel cowering onto the couch.

For several seconds no one moved and the only sound was a long, steady moan from the man on the floor. Blood was pouring from his bullet wound.

Jay reached down and freed Oliver without taking his eyes off Torcelli. “Tie that guy up,” Jay directed, nodding at the man on the floor and tossing the rope to Oliver.

Oliver obeyed quickly.

“Now go get more rope,” Jay directed. “It’s down in the basement where you keep lumber.” He had noticed several coils hanging from nails on the wall on his way into the mansion. “And check upstairs for your family and the maid.”

Oliver raced from the room, panic-stricken.

“Hey, kid, think about what you’re doing!” Torcelli shouted. His calm demeanor was gone.

Vogel sat on the couch sobbing, his face in his hands.

“What will it take?” Torcelli pleaded. “Money? How much? We’ll cut you in. I swear it.”

Jay laughed out loud. Torcelli’s plea was so utterly pathetic he couldn’t help himself. “No way, pal.”

Oliver returned moments later with two long pieces of rope. First he bound Torcelli, then Vogel. When the two of them were tightly restrained, Oliver turned to Jay. “Thank you,” he said. “My family is fine. A little shaken, but fine.” He looked away. “I don’t know how I can ever repay you.”

“I do,” Jay said coldly. “A man named Kevin O’Shea from the U.S. attorney’s office showed up this morning to arrest me for insider trading.” Jay raised one eyebrow. “I believe he mentioned Bell Chemical and Simons.”

Oliver grimaced. “Oh?”

“How could you set me up that way, Oliver?”

Oliver shook his head. “I’ve asked myself the same question so many times. Each time all I get is a blank.” He put his face in his hands. “I’m sorry, Jay. I wish I could help you.”

“You can. You can give me everything you have on your insider-trading ring.” Jay pointed toward the couch. “On Torcelli and Vogel here, and the other two as well.”

Oliver glanced up. “How do you know about it?” he asked dejectedly.

Jay shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Okay,” he agreed meekly. He hesitated a second, then moved to his file cabinet and removed a slim envelope. He gazed at it for a moment, then walked to Jay and handed it to him. “Here, take it. I don’t want it anymore. Everything you could want is in there, including a copy of Bill McCarthy’s will.”

“Jesus Christ!” Torcelli shouted. “You’re going to screw us giving him all of that, Oliver. We aren’t going to have a chance in court.”

“McCarthy’s will?” Jay asked incredulously, ignoring Torcelli.

“That’s how we were to take our share of the profits,” Oliver explained. “When McCarthy died, the five of us were to receive stock in McCarthy and Lloyd, which the firm would then buy back from us. That way we had an incentive to produce. In fact, the ultimate number of shares each man was to receive depended on the number of tips he gave me and how profitable those tips were. We formed a partnership so we could allocate the shares proportionally.”

“You had to keep a record of each tip provided and who gave you the tip so you could know how many shares to allot to each man at the end,” Jay mused. So that was why Oliver had created the file on the computer disk with the names of the insiders and the companies.

“Yes,” Oliver confirmed. “It was capitalism at its best. Once we were into it, once everyone had provided a tip, no one was going to rat the others out, because that would have meant jail for the rat, too. And there weren’t any money trails. It was beautiful,” he said wistfully.

“Shut the hell up!” Torcelli yelled.

“Incredible,” Jay said quietly.

“Yes, it was.”

“That was a big risk for McCarthy to take,” Jay observed. “To make the insiders part of his will, I mean.”

“Why?”

“You all had quite an incentive to see him die right from the start.”

“Not necessarily. Bill brought in a great deal of business to McCarthy and Lloyd. He was a hell of a rain-maker. Remember, we had shadow shares in the entire firm. We weren’t just taking our cut from the arbitrage desk. At the time we made the deal, M and L wasn’t worth much. We wanted to see the firm grow. Without him, it might have failed.” Oliver hesitated. “And have you ever seriously thought about killing someone, Jay?”

“No.”

“Well, I have. Killing isn’t as easy as television and movies make it out to be. It isn’t natural to take another life. Plus there’s always a trail, no matter how careful you are. Especially if you hire someone else to do it. And the death of someone as well connected as Bill McCarthy would have mobilized a lot of law enforcement officials who might have found that trail.”

“Not if his death was assumed to be an accident.”

“Mmm.”

“What?” Jay could see that Oliver was holding something back.

Oliver glanced at Torcelli, then back at Jay. “Bill wasn’t stupid. He had told an attorney he knew very well to independently investigate his death no matter what the police report said. Bill made certain I knew that so nobody would try anything stupid. Of course, he never told me who the attorney was.”

It occurred to Jay that Barbara had probably called the police by now. She was a practical woman and she would have heard the gunshot, even upstairs in the huge house. But he had several more questions he had to ask Oliver. “What about the money McCarthy and Lloyd sent to EZ Travel in Boston?”

Oliver looked up, a blank expression on his face. “What are you talking about?”

“The travel agency in Boston that M and L owns. The one Bullock is CFO of. Why does M and L send so much money to it?”

“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”

Jay glanced at Torcelli and Vogel. They wore puzzled expressions as well. Then it hit him. “Are you certain McCarthy is in Louisiana?”

“Yes, but don’t go down there,” he said, anticipating Jay’s next move.

“One more question, Oliver,” Jay said quickly, ignoring the warning. “Why did you set me up to take the fall?”

Oliver glanced down at the Persian rug. “It was you or me, pal,” he whispered, “and that’s all I know.”

Jay shook his head and turned to go, then hesitated. “Oh, by the way, Oliver, I heard on the news this morning that a Japanese company made an all-cash takeover bid for TurboTec. The offer price was triple Friday’s close.”

Five minutes later Jay was tearing down the long driveway in the Suburban past a blur of white fences. On the passenger seat beside Jay was his briefcase, now stuffed with material that would prove his innocence as well as indict the insiders. He’d left Oliver in charge of Torcelli, Vogel, and the wounded man in the blue overalls—which probably wasn’t very smart—but he had no choice. The police would reach the estate soon, and he had one more place he had to get to without any delays.

As the Suburban crested a rise in the driveway, Jay saw a silver sedan heading straight at him. He slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop on the driveway less than a hundred feet from the silver car, which had screeched to a stop as well.

Sally jumped from the passenger side of the sedan before it had stopped moving and sprinted toward the Suburban. “Jay!” she screamed. “It’s me!” Ten feet from the Suburban she came to a halt, frozen by what she saw— Jay pointing a revolver at her. “What are you doing?”

“Don’t come any closer,” he warned.

“Jay, let me explain,” she begged. “I’m not who you think I am.”

“I know that,” he said icily.

“You have to listen to me,” Sally yelled frantically. “We need your help. You’re inside and you don’t even know it.”

“I know all I need to know.”

“I’m here to help you.”

“You set me up. That’s a hell of a way to help.”

“Jay, I—”

He didn’t wait any longer. He punched the accelerator and swerved onto the freshly mowed grass between the driveway and the fence, barely avoiding Sally as the vehicle lurched forward.

As the Suburban roared toward the silver sedan, the sedan’s driver’s-side front door opened and Kevin O’Shea jumped out, pistol drawn. For Jay, it seemed the last few feet to the sedan took an eternity. He watched O’Shea pull the gun up and take aim. The Suburban suddenly seemed to be standing still even though he had the accelerator pressed to the floor. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.

Suddenly O’Shea scrambled on top of the sedan without firing and the Suburban raced past, tearing the sedan’s door away as if it were attached by paper hinges. And Jay was gone in a whirl of sticks, stones, and dust.

“Damn it!” O’Shea shouted, jumping down. He tried to get into the car but couldn’t. The seats were covered with shattered glass. And the car wouldn’t have been able to keep up with the Suburban because the back left tire had been blown out by the impact of the crushed door against it. He glanced at Sally, who was kneeling on the ground. “Let’s get up to the house and call for backup.”

Oliver gazed out over the Connecticut countryside from the roof of the mansion. He didn’t know why, but he liked high places these days. The only problem with the view from up there was that if he looked hard, he could just make out his father-in-law’s chimney across the treetops.

“Oliver, what are you doing?” Sally climbed onto the roof twenty feet away, steadying herself uncertainly on the five-foot-wide flat area that ran the length of the top of the mansion. She was followed onto the roof by O’Shea. A hysterical Barbara had directed them up there. “Come down,” Sally pleaded.

For a long while Oliver stared at them as if he wasn’t quite certain who they were. Then he raised the revolver and pressed the barrel to his head. Abby was gone, his career was finished, his reputation was destroyed, and Junior would leave with Barbara. There was nothing left.

Once a day for the last five days he had pressed the barrel of this gun to his head and squeezed the trigger, and five times the gun had only clicked. Only one of the gun’s six chambers was loaded, and the first five had proven empty. It was fitting, he thought as he squeezed, that the gun hadn’t fired before now. Then everything went black.

Sally screamed and turned away, putting a hand to her mouth as Oliver’s limp body tumbled from the roof. As the corpse hit the ground the sound of the shot echoed away through the trees.

CHAPTER 27

The tiny shrimping town of Lafitte wasn’t difficult to locate. It was right there above the Sportsman’s Paradise logo on the map Jay had purchased at the New Orleans airport. A fifty-mile shot straight south from the city led through a dense swamp on a lonely twisting road that brought Jay right to the town’s waterfront and Henry’s Landing—Lafitte’s combination general store, watering hole, and boat launch. After a few ice-cold beers—on Jay’s tab—the grizzled commercial fishermen sitting at the bar were only too eager to provide him directions to a small lodge they claimed to know about deep in Bayou Lafourche on the other side of the bay. The men agreed on directions to the lodge up to a point, then opinions diverged when disagreements arose concerning canal names, courses, and bearings. When the disagreements escalated to the point of no return, Jay quietly paid his tab and slipped out of the establishment. As near as he could tell, the men’s directions were very close to those he had overheard Oliver give that morning to the two men sitting on the couch in his study.

By the time he slipped out of the bar at Henry’s Landing, it was after ten-thirty at night, too late to fire up the ski boat he’d rented and head west across the bay to search for Bill McCarthy—there were unlighted well-heads out there that could send a boat to the bottom in seconds. So he rented a room for twenty-nine dollars at a motel two doors down from the landing, careful to set his wristwatch alarm for four o’clock the next morning. He was physically and mentally exhausted after driving from Oliver’s estate in Connecticut to Philadelphia—to evade authorities who might be waiting for him at the three New York metropolitan airports—and then flying to New Orleans and driving to Lafitte. The last image in his mind as he drifted off to sleep only moments after collapsing onto the motel bed was the wild look on Sally’s face as he’d ignored her plea to stop the Suburban and listen to her explanation.

After buzzing across the bay in the gray light of dawn at forty miles an hour and navigating a maze of waterways, Jay felt he was close. He’d headed up several isolated canals off a larger channel, but they had ended abruptly after a mile or so. However, this one seemed to hold better prospects. It was a little wider and deeper, and floating on the water’s surface he noticed several shredded lily pads, signs that a boat had been through there recently. He glanced up into the moss-covered branches, then at the black mud bank as a small alligator slipped into the water, startled by the boat.

Jay slowly rounded a bend and saw the lodge. On the dock, sitting in a green lawn chair smoking a cigar, was Bill McCarthy. As Jay drew near, McCarthy remained seated, puffing on the cigar. Jay steered the ski boat to the dock, jumped up onto the pier, and lashed cleats at the boat’s bow and stern to cleats affixed to the dock.

“Hello, Bill,” he said calmly.

“Hello, Mr. West.”

McCarthy’s southern accent seemed suddenly more acute, as if his speech had been affected by being out in the bayou. “Nice morning.”

“It certainly is.” McCarthy surveyed the landscape, then pointed the smoldering cigar at Jay. “You’re quite a resourceful young man.”

“Thanks,” Jay responded evenly, inspecting the area around the lodge for anyone who might be lurking in the dense woods surrounding it on three sides.

McCarthy leaned over and spat into the murky water swirling slowly toward the bay with the outgoing tide. “I assume you’ve traveled out to my little corner of the world to ask me a few questions. But, more important, to warn me about an assassin who’s coming to kill me,” he said, wiping his lips with the back of his hand.

Jay blinked in amazement. “How did you know?”

“I always figured the insiders would cave when the pressure got bad. That was always the risk. But the reward was worth the risk. They made me quite a bit of money.”

“Well, I guess I don’t have to warn you, then.”

“No, you don’t. I heard the assassin’s boat last night about ten minutes before he got here, just like I heard yours.” McCarthy laughed and pointed at the water in front of the lodge. “He’s out there somewhere, probably in a couple of pieces by now. Gators like human meat, though they tend to let the water soften it up for a few days before they consume it. They tear a body into a few pieces, wedge them under rocks or logs, then come back later to gorge.”

Jay checked up and down the canal. It occurred to him that the assassin’s boat should have been in view. He assumed that the Boston Whaler moored to the dock was McCarthy’s.

“Even though I told him about the attorney, Oliver sent the man to kill me,” McCarthy said to himself, puffing on his cigar. “But I knew he would someday.” His voice rose. “That was always the key. I knew he would.”

“It wasn’t Oliver.”

“No?” McCarthy seemed surprised.

“No. It was another member of the ring.”

McCarthy’s eyes narrowed. “Must have been Torcelli. He’s the only other one of them with the balls to pull off a stunt like that.”

Jay shrugged. “I only know the names.”

“Torcelli’s a big guy. About six and a half feet tall.” McCarthy gestured with his hand.

“That sounds right.”

McCarthy smirked. “I never did like Torcelli.”

“You knew about the ring the whole time, didn’t you?” Jay asked.

“Of course. My name’s on the door. I know about everything that goes on there.” McCarthy checked his wristwatch. “Speaking of which, you must have done quite a job evading Kevin O’Shea and his friends from the New York City police department. If I’m not mistaken, he was going to arrest you yesterday.”

“He tried.”

McCarthy laughed again, this time loudly. “Like I said, you are a very resourceful young man.” McCarthy flicked an inch-long ash into the water. It hissed when it hit the surface. “How in hell did you find out about them sending the assassin down here?”

Jay quickly related pieces of the previous day’s events.

“I knew they’d come after me sooner or later,” McCarthy repeated. “I mean, it only made sense. Ultimately, that should have been their plan. It would silence me permanently and get them their money.” He glanced up at Jay. “I assume you know about the will and all of that.”

Jay nodded. There was silence for a few moments, then he spoke. “Why was I set up?”

“That’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it?” McCarthy was enjoying the conversation, with each man trying to determine exactly what the other knew. “There’s a simple explanation, but that simple explanation leads to a whole different world, which is so much more complex.” His voice changed slightly. “Do you know about that world?”

“I have an idea.”

“Damn.” McCarthy shook his head, impressed and for the first time slightly uneasy. “I had a bad feeling about you that day Oliver brought you into my office. He said you were sharp. I should have gone with my gut and never hired you.” He gazed at the sun, now above the horizon. “Was that you who broke into Maggie’s Place in South Boston a couple of days ago?” he asked.

“Yes.”

McCarthy grunted. “Well, the simple answer to your question is that you were set up to take the insider-trading fall for political reasons. As you know, I’m pretty well connected in Washington, and I’ve made significant contributions to my political party, on the order of ten million dollars a year for the last few years. The Justice Department uncovered Oliver’s insider-trading ring back in March, but I was able to arrange a deal using my contacts in the capital to soften the blow.”

“And I was the fall guy.”

“That’s right,” McCarthy affirmed. “By the time I found out about the investigation into insider trading at M and L, it had already reached a point where someone had to be indicted, and of course my friends couldn’t allow McCarthy and Lloyd to continue to operate its sinfully profitable equity arbitrage desk. The agreement was that we would halt the operation and offer up a sacrificial lamb, as the feds termed it. As I said, it was all politically motivated.” He hesitated. “The investigation was turned over to Kevin O’Shea after I arranged my deal. He knew exactly what was going on and kept things contained. You were hired for the express purpose of taking the fall.”

“Sally Lane was involved as well, I assume.”

McCarthy nodded. “Oh, yes. She worked for O’Shea. She obtained a computer disk of yours and made several incriminating telephone calls from your apartment.”

“I know.”

“That way, when you purchased Bell Chemical and Simons, O’Shea would have an airtight case against you.”

“I would have rotted in jail,” Jay said, tight-lipped.

“I believe they were talking about a twenty-year sentence,” McCarthy said indifferently.

“I can’t believe my government would do that to me.”

“Believe it, Jay,” McCarthy said smugly. “Scientists might tell you that the world revolves around the sun, but they’re lying. It revolves around money.” McCarthy exhaled slowly. “It wasn’t anything personal, Jay. It never is.”

“But that isn’t the real story, is it?”

McCarthy shook his head. “No, it isn’t.”

“The real story involves South Boston, EZ Travel, the Donegall Volunteers, and destroying a peace process. Isn’t that right, Bill?”

McCarthy grimaced. He’d thought it only fair to answer Jay’s questions about the insider-trading ring, but now he was feeling uncomfortable. “Yes,” he replied tersely.

“How did it start?”

McCarthy leaned forward and began to stand up, then relaxed into the chair again. What the hell—Jay West wasn’t leaving Bayou Lafourche alive. “Five years ago McCarthy and Lloyd was in terrible financial trouble, and so was I. The firm was struggling, and I had directed our equity group to make an all-or-nothing bet on a company down in Florida that I thought would save us. I thought that company’s stock was about to take off, but I was wrong. In fact, the company tanked very soon after we invested in it. The company’s executives attempted to attract other investors to keep it afloat, but they were unsuccessful and the company spiraled down toward bankruptcy.” McCarthy pursed his lips. “If that Florida company had gone down, McCarthy and Lloyd would have gone down as well.”

“What happened? How did you keep the company out of bankruptcy?”

“The company’s executive team traveled to the island of St. Croix to meet with a wealthy individual investor, but he decided against the opportunity after a day-long presentation.” McCarthy swallowed hard. “After the presentation the executives boarded a Gulfstream and headed back to the United States. Thirty-two minutes after takeoff, the plane blew up, killing all of them,” McCarthy said calmly.

Jay anticipated the motivation for the bombing. “There must have been key-man insurance policies on the executives.”

McCarthy nodded. “Yes, there were huge life insurance policies on each executive. The total proceeds from the policies were enough to pay off all the creditors and make a large dividend payment to McCarthy and Lloyd. It didn’t make M and L wealthy, but it tided us over.” His upper lip curled. “There were investigations into the crash, but nothing ever came of them. What was left of the plane and the bodies fell into an area of the Atlantic Ocean that was very deep and was known for its strong tides. There was nothing left to find by the time investigators arrived.”

“I wouldn’t have guessed that you knew people capable of doing something like that.”

“I didn’t,” McCarthy said firmly, as if that was worth something. “They approached me. They blew up the plane. They killed Graham Lloyd, because he never would have agreed to anything like that. They purchased his fifty percent interest from his widow. They did it all.” He hesitated. “None of it was my idea.”

“Who are ‘they’?” Jay asked quietly, amazed that McCarthy could rationalize away his culpability so easily.

McCarthy gazed out at the water. He loved this place so much, yet he wouldn’t see it again for a long time, possibly never. “The Donegall Volunteers,” he finally said. “It’s a splinter group of the provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army. Let’s just say they didn’t agree to the peace accord ratified last year.”

“Named for Donegall Square, the central square of Belfast, the capital city of Northern Ireland.” Jay had done his research Saturday at the library before meeting Sally.

“That’s right,” McCarthy said. “My family is originally from Northern Ireland, and I still have many relatives there. Six years ago one of those relatives introduced me to a man who said he could help me out with my problems. I didn’t pay much attention to him the first time we met, but as the situation at McCarthy and Lloyd became worse, I had no choice but to listen.” He shook his head. “Sometimes I wish I’d never laid eyes on him.”

“The Donegall Volunteers must have been very well funded,” Jay went on, digging for as many answers as McCarthy would yield.

“Not at all. They actually had very little in the way of financial resources at that time. The entire faction consisted of less than a hundred people,” McCarthy explained. “In fact, the entire reason for their interest in becoming my partner was to amass wealth. They saw Wall Street as a way to accumulate a war chest very quickly.”

“How could they have afforded Graham Lloyd’s fifty percent if they weren’t well funded?”

“McCarthy and Lloyd was worth almost nothing at that point. The Donegall Volunteers quietly scraped together three million dollars. Graham Lloyd’s wife was ecstatic when we offered her that much. You can’t continue to fight a war on three million dollars, but you can buy into a failing investment bank. Now M and L is worth close to a billion dollars. And they can have their war.”

“So you hired Oliver specifically to arrange an insider-trading ring.”

“That’s right. On orders from the Donegall Volunteers. They saw insider trading as a way to jump-start the firm, and they didn’t care that it was illegal. If the firm was caught trading on the inside, the Donegall Volunteers would simply fade into the shadows. It wasn’t as if they were scared of committing a white-collar crime. Hell, they were out killing people like my partner and the men in the Gulfstream.”