The Lasko Tangent (3 page)

“Well, it’s a decent start.” This was said with the cheerful condescension of the bright boy upon whom the teacher would call when no one else knew the answer. I didn’t mind. Greenfeld’s arrogance had an engaging ingenuousness about it.

“Your facts are OK,” he went on, “but they don’t make total sense until you appreciate the context. I’ve had the advantage of seeing the man from time to time. He’s an impressive-looking fellow, large and domineering, with a very deep voice. He projects a great deal of confidence. It always amazes me how much size can do for some people.” Greenfeld was short himself. “Of course, I’m always impressed in meeting prominent people how ordinary most of them are. It’s just that they wanted it more—whatever ‘it’ happens to be. Back to Lasko, I’m told that he also has some social charm. It would be interesting to see what a good psychoanalyst would make of him.” The thought stopped him for a moment, as if he were pondering what a good psychoanalyst would make of the rest of us. A waiter wearing a precariously placed black wig arrived to take our order. We made a quick choice, and the waiter retreated to the kitchen. Greenfeld’s eyes followed him. “Nice rug. Looks like something died on top of his head.”

“What else?”

“The second thing you need to think about is politics. He was in shady land deals in Florida, but was never prosecuted. He sold out his nursing centers at a profit just before an investigation started. His good luck isn’t the whim of the gods. He clearly had some Florida politicians in his pocket. These days he’s got large defense contracts, takes movie starlets to White House parties, and dines with the Pope. These aren’t just products of his boyish charm. He’s a powerful man, tough and ruthless. He’s given off a whiff of corruption for years, but no one ever catches him.” He paused for emphasis. “No one at all. And now he’s friends with the President. I’m not implying anything corrupt. As far as I can make out, the President just likes him. It doesn’t matter that Lasko’s not a very nice man. The President’s not a very nice man, either. And he admires Lasko because he’s richer than shit. Just like the President always wanted to be, but gave up for politics. And Lasko knows the value of a good friendship. So,” he finished wryly, “I wouldn’t count on this one to make your career.”

“Then why is Justice trying to break up Lasko Devices? It doesn’t fit.”

“The lawsuit is why I know all this about Lasko. It was filed during the last administration, before the President came in. He inherited the lawsuit, or it probably would have never been filed. Part of my job these days is to watch that case to see if it’s pushed or dropped. I’m on the lookout for White House pressure, trade-offs between Lasko and the President—stuff like that. The paper’s pretty hot about it.”

“Find anything?”

He shook his head. “Just PR. Lasko very much wants Lasko Devices kept together. A breakup would really hurt him. The philanthropic ventures are Lasko’s effort to be the modern Andrew Carnegie—a benevolent image might help ease his legal problems. He’s hired a New York PR firm to work on it. They schedule his speeches, suggest his seminars, and give other helpful hints. This firm could probably market Richard Speck to the mothers of America, and they’ve done a lot for Lasko. He’s started his own philanthropic group, the Lasko Foundation, and made mental health his special interest. Contributes generously to mental health institutions. So if he ever wants that psychoanalysis, he’s got experts on tap.” Greenfeld had psychiatrists on the brain today. He flashed into instant mockery, his voice acquiring a spurious German accent. “And so you see, my students, how every fact,” he raised his finger in the air, “must be viewed in its context to reveal its true depth and meaning. Otherwise, we are just as ignorant and benighted as when we came and have learned nothing.” He banged a fist on the table in satiric emphasis, stared at it in a parody of thought, then snapped his head up smiling. “So there it is, Chris,” he said in his own voice.

Lunch arrived and surprised us by being good. We ate in grateful concentration, spaced around a discussion of foreign films. We both liked Bertolucci and Truffaut. I thought Fellini was overrated. He thought Buñuel was too bizarre. We ended by agreeing to get dates for the new Wertmuller film. All through it, Lane looked as if he were chewing on a thought with his lunch. The thought popped out over coffee. “Why didn’t you just talk over Lasko with your boys at the commission?” Greenfeld was still on the job; he had a working reporter’s instinct for conflict.

There was no point in explaining Hartex. “I still have newspaper habits, I guess.”

Lane didn’t buy it, but decided to pass for the moment. “You mentioned an investigation over the phone. What’s it about?”

“Off the record, we have an anonymous tip that someone was trying to maneuver the market price of Lasko stock. We don’t know whether it happened, or if Lasko’s involved if it did.”

Greenfeld fell unconsciously into his press conference rhythm. “So why all this interest?”

“Just background,” I said. I looked uncomfortably back at Greenfeld. But his eyes were fixed over my left shoulder. They stayed there long enough to make me curious. “What did you see, Lane? The Vice-President in drag?”

“Nothing that interesting. But someone you might run into. Robert Catlow.”

“Who’s he?”

Greenfeld kept on looking. “One of the unofficial White House talent scouts. Very influential. He helps clear appointments to top federal jobs, like to your commission. Has a private law practice here in town. Also represents your friend Lasko. I wonder which hat he’s wearing today.” He squinted slightly. “You know the guy with him?”

I half-turned. Greenfeld pointed me to a fiftyish man in a dark blue pinstripe. He was talking easily across a corner table. I felt a small start of surprise at his listener. Apparently, Greenfeld didn’t know Joe McGuire on sight.

I felt the silence and turned back to my coffee. “Fairly mediocre-looking fellow,” I said casually. It was an effort; I felt as though I had just opened a closet full of dead rats. McGuire and Lasko’s lawyer. It wasn’t a new twist. I’d seen months of work go down the tubes in two hours at the Sans Souci, while the poor sucker who had done the work bolted a bologna sandwich at the agency cafeteria, fighting the flies for possession of the table. Sometimes the sucker had been me.

Greenfeld looked a moment longer before our waiter reappeared with our tab. I took the check by way of penance for pretending I didn’t know McGuire. In turn, Greenfeld overtipped the waiter. “That was for a hair transplant,” he explained on the way out. McGuire was still hunched in conversation as we passed. The other man was talking intently now. Neither looked up.

We stopped outside the door.

“Good luck,” Greenfeld said. “I hear that your what’s-his-name—McGuire—keeps pretty close tabs on you guys.”

It was droll, in an unfunny way. “I think it’s safe to say that he’s involved.” Greenfeld missed it, as I intended. Still, I felt a little rotten. I was more of a bureaucrat than I realized. Or perhaps I just wanted this one to myself. It was already too crowded, and the McGuire part was pretty thin.

Greenfeld was looking reflective, as if he were combing through the file drawer he kept in his head. “You know,” he finally said, “back when Lasko was building up, one of his competitors refused to sell his business. One night the guy was stabbed to death coming out of a warehouse. The cops fooled with it and finally wrote it off as an attempted robbery. But the deceased still had his wallet. And Lasko bought the business. Cheap.”

That stopped me. “Is that for real?”

“As always.”

I smiled. “In a couple of weeks, you’ll probably find me at the bottom of a lime pit, rooming with Jimmy Hoffa.” It wasn’t my brightest remark. But right then it was just another chat with Greenfeld.

Greenfeld’s wry look had returned. “Anyhow, let me know how this one goes.” Either Greenfeld was curious, or Lasko was a safe subject.

I nodded. “What I can. And I’ll call you about the film.”

He eyed me for a moment. “Good enough.” He smiled. “Well, back to the Hill. I haven’t bagged my daily quota of lies, evasions, cretinism, and horseshit.”

I wasn’t so sure about the lies and evasions. But he was off, walking with the tensile alertness of the inquiring reporter. I watched him for a while. He was all self-possession. No one would think to ask him about Lynette.

Four

I was back at my office before I remembered to check my mail. It was consistent with the rest of the day. The first two letters were from Hartex stockholders reminding me that I had sold them down the river. The less enthusiastic one was from an ex-stockbroker taking exception to my police state methods, with a copy to the American Civil Liberties Union. The return address on its envelope read “Danbury Federal Penitentiary.” I filed it in my wastebasket. Then I scrawled “Attention: Joseph P. McGuire” on the Hartex letters and put them in the interoffice mail. It seemed the least I could do.

The telephone message was better. Jim Robinson had something for me, it said. I cut through hallways left, then right, and knocked on the door marked “James H. Robinson, Senior Investigator.”

“Come in.”

Robinson sat in a rabbit warren of an office, wearing glasses and his habitual look of quizzical bemusement. It changed to a grin when he saw me through the stacks of paper on his desk. “Christopher Kenyon Paget,” he intoned. “Last of the independent men.”

“More like ‘eunuch to the King.’ See the Hartex settlement?”

He nodded, still smiling. “Sit down, Chris. This one may be better.”

I sat, glad to see him. Robinson was late thirtyish, round faced, and his short brown hair was dashed with early grey. The quizzical look gave an impression of ineffectual kindness. It hid a retentive memory and an encyclopedic knowledge of stock swindles. These traits served an indispensable talent: a feeling for the logic of events. Robinson could do with three or four facts what prehistorians achieved with stray dinosaur bones: project a complex structure revealing the hidden whole. I had tried this analogy on him once at the end of a tough case. He had grinned then, too, and told me that I had much the same talent. It was one of the finer compliments I’d ever had.

Robinson was waiting. It struck me that he seemed pretty pleased with himself.

“Get a break on the Lasko case, Jim?”

“Maybe. Remember Sam Green?”

“Sleazy Sam? Sure. The kind of guy who would hang around playgrounds with candy bars if he didn’t have stock fraud to keep him busy. What does he have to do with this?”

Robinson donned a magisterial expression. “I’ll take it in order. First, the price of Lasko stock rose sharply between July 13 and 15. Six points in two days, from ten to sixteen. But there weren’t any big developments, good news, or any other reason why the price should go up like that. The price went up because the volume of stock transactions on the Exchange nearly doubled. There was a hell of a lot of demand for the stock. Again, no reason. But all that artificial demand drives the price up. So, I checked the records from McGuire. It turns out that three brokerage firms had big buy orders for Lasko stock on the fourteenth and fifteenth. Between them, they account for the doubled volume. So I called friends at the firms. Guess who placed each order?”

“Green?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Any notion why?”

“There are several possibilities. I’ll give you one. I got to thinking about the dates—why the fourteenth and fifteenth. I remembered them from somewhere else. So I checked our files on Lasko Devices. On July 16 Lasko Devices offered 300,000 new shares to the public. Because the price of new shares is based on the market price of the stock the day before the offering, each share sold at $16 instead of $10, which was the market price two days earlier. Six more bucks multiplied by 300,000 shares means that Lasko Devices made an extra $1,800,000 on the offering. All because of Sam Green.”

“So your thought is maybe someone at the company put him up to it.”

“It’s possible.”

I leaned back. “Let’s see how that works. Green could have waited for the offering and bought it cheaper. So the timing stinks. What bothers me is Lasko. Lasko Devices doesn’t need another $1,800,000. They’re making money. And with his antitrust problems over at Justice, he doesn’t need more problems with us. Besides, it’s pretty crude.”

Robinson took off his glasses and inspected them for smudges. He found one and rubbed absently. “I never would have found it except that McGuire got that tip.”

“Still, I wonder why my genius boss, Feiner, didn’t catch it. He has market watch people monitoring the stocks for things like this.”

Robinson shrugged. “I never speak ill of the dead. It’s my theory that Feiner suffered brain death years ago.”

I smiled. “OK. A few questions. Why would the company go to Sam? And what’s in it for him? As I recall, he had one foot in jail the last go-around, before he wangled immunity by trading in his friends.” I paused. “How many shares did Sam buy?”

“About 20,000.”

I multiplied. “Even accounting for the rise in price, that’s about $300,000. Where did he get all that money?”

Robinson looked curious himself. “Which is why you should run Sam in here for some questioning, under oath.”

“I’ll do that.”

Robinson was looking at me askance, waiting. I went ahead, anyhow. “Did you check out Mary Carelli?”

He thought for a second, then faced me with bright, candid eyes. “Anyone else, Chris, and I’d figure this for bureaucratic dirt gathering. But you neglect your self-interest to the point of irresponsibility. You’re investigating Mary Carelli like you’re investigating Lasko. Look, you’re the brightest lawyer I’ve seen here. Don’t screw yourself up. You’ve got to learn to let things go that can’t be helped.”

I tried to find a way to ask for help. And to tell him that I appreciated the concern. But I couldn’t seem to combine them. He saw my confusion. “Chris, what do you want to be doing five years from now? Private practice? You could make a lot of money. You could do well here, too, if you wanted. You’ve got a great record.”