Montaro Caine (21 page)

“I tell you, Montaro, the behavior of these elements is astounding,” Borceau said once he had sat down in Montaro’s living room, somewhat calmed by the Lillet that Montaro had poured him. “I mean, what is hinted at here is mind-boggling. Their influence on a number of common elements is dramatic. Am I allowed to ask what we’re dealing with?” Caine didn’t respond, so Borceau continued. “Never in all my experience have I seen elements like these. They’re … what I’m trying to say is …”

“I think I know what you’re saying.”

“The damn things are so … How can I say it? So
active
is what they are.
Organic
. Montaro, I don’t know exactly what I mean by this, but this material behaves almost as if it’s
alive
. Does that sound crazy to you?”

“Not at all,” Montaro said.
That’s exactly the word that came to my mind twenty-six years ago
, he thought.

By the time night had fallen, Montaro had long since abandoned any hope of returning home before morning. Though he had little appetite, he had, upon his wife’s advice, forced himself to eat half his dinner of braised Alaskan halibut accompanied by green asparagus risotto. He was just placing his tray, along with the empty bottle of Lillet whose contents Michen Borceau had consumed, out in the hallway for the housekeeping staff to remove when he saw Lawrence Aikens
walking down the hallway toward him in tandem with his assistant, Curly Bennett. He assumed that they were coming to inform him about whether or not they had been able to discover any information about Cordiss Krinkle. And, by the looks of their confident strides, Montaro figured they had.

“You got her?” Caine asked after the men had entered his living room.

“Think so,” Aikens answered, pleased with himself. “That lady is damn impressive, let me tell you. She did a helluva job covering herself, but we got her.”

“Where is she?”

“Europe. Six thousand miles from where she’s supposed to be.”

“Europe instead of California,” said Caine. “Can I get you something?”

“Oh, something cold, maybe,” said Aikens.

“Like what?”

“Like beer.”

“You, Curly?”

“Same for me.”

Caine took two beers out of the mini-refrigerator and handed them to the men before leading them to the couch.

“Well, according to our information,” Aikens began, “she and her man friend have been on the move a lot lately. Right now they’re either in Paris, where they’ve taken a small apartment under another name, or San Remo, Italy, where they might have the same setup. In any case, there was one ‘T’ she didn’t cross; and, if my guts are reading her right, we’ll have their exact addresses in a couple of hours.”

“What ‘T’ didn’t she cross?”

“Remember that loan shark they borrowed the fifteen grand from?”

Caine nodded.

“Well, before they disappeared, they paid him back with a draft drawn on a Liechtenstein bank that was issued at a branch here in the city.”

“An account in Liechtenstein,” Caine mused.

“Yeah, and somehow or other,” Aikens continued, “she managed to finagle herself a secret numbered account. My guess is there’s probably
a hell of a lot more in that account than a thirty-year-old receptionist’s salary would explain. I couldn’t get into the account—I tried but couldn’t come close to cracking it before I had to back off. But I did learn that the bank in Liechtenstein is instructed to make monthly transfers to a bank in Paris and one in San Remo. I couldn’t get the size of the transfers or the amount of her balance, though. Sorry ’bout that, chief, but I’m on it as best I can.”

“And I appreciate it,” said Caine.

Curly Bennett stared at the two other men in the room, feeling uneasy and even somewhat miffed. He had listened intently to Aikens describe detail after detail about Cordiss—her whereabouts, her finances, all information Curly had painstakingly assembled after long hours of persistent digging. Curly had been expecting a little credit: a mention, a pat on the back. Aikens was a good boss in many ways, and Curly knew that lots of men in Aikens’s position would sometimes find it in their best interest not to give credit where credit was due. Still, he felt a little resentful toward his boss for not telling the CEO that it was Curly Bennett and only Curly Bennett who had done the actual work that Aikens was now accepting thanks for.

“Can’t you tell us what this is all about?” Aikens asked Caine now.

“The most I can tell you,” Caine offered, “is that Cordiss Krinkle may have stolen something, a very rare object.”

Aikens looked at Caine, startled, then exchanged a glance with Bennett. “Son of a bitch,” he said.

“What?” asked Caine.

“A rare object like … like … an antique or …” Aikens fumbled for the right word.

“Antique what?” Caine asked.

“Jewelry? Little statues or something?”

“Why do you ask?”

“Her apartment.”

“What about it?”

“I was there.” Curly shot Aikens a glance and his boss corrected himself. “
We
were there, me and Curly. For fifty bucks, her janitor let us look around her apartment while the couple she leased it to was out. There were some books there—only about two dozen in the
whole place—and at least ten of those were about artifacts, antique coins, jewelry, collectors, that kind of stuff. I wondered if it was her hobby. The janitor didn’t know. I thumbed through a couple of the books. Some pages were dog-eared, and there were scribbles here and there.”

“Can you get those books?” Caine asked.

Aikens looked at Curly, who checked his watch, then nodded, but neither man moved.

“Can you start getting them now?” asked Caine.

Aikens rose, then spun toward the door with Curly at his heels. “I’m on it,” he said, then correcting himself, he said, “
We’re
on it.” And with that, the two men were out the door.

A
LAN
R
OTHMAN WAS GETTING READY TO LEAVE HIS OFFICE AT
Fitzer Corporation for the night when he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket. Assuming that his wife was calling to remind him once again not to be late to the Four Seasons, where they would be meeting her parents for dinner, Rothman figured he would let the call go straight to voice mail. But when he checked the caller display, he instantly answered the phone.

“What’s up?” he asked, then heard a familiar female voice on the other end of the line.

“Are you free?”

“I’ve got a dinner with Lauren’s folks at six-thirty,” he said. “Why?

What’s up?”

“An important matter needs your attention.”

“Important?” he asked. “How important?”

“Very important.”

“Be there as quick as I can,” Rothman said.

Less than half an hour later, Rothman used his own key to let himself into an apartment located above a used-record store in Greenwich Village. The apartment was small but tidy and well-insulated from the sounds of Thompson Street below.

“That you?” The same familiar voice called from the bedroom as Rothman shut the door behind him.

“Yeah, hon.”

Michen Borceau’s secretary, Gina Lao, had changed from her work outfit to the halter top and shorts she usually wore to the gym. She embraced Rothman and kissed him forcefully. When he had freed himself from Gina’s arms, his tone became more businesslike. “So, what’s up?” he asked.

“I think something major is happening,” Gina said.

“How major?” asked Rothman.

“Major major,” she said. “Want me to fix you a drink?”

Rothman shook his head. He had already been wondering how he might explain the aroma of Gina’s lavender perfume on his jacket and he didn’t want to explain the scent of alcohol as well. It wasn’t like Gina to ask to see him outside of their usual rendezvous times, so he assumed that Gina had to discuss something that was related to Fitzer Corporation and, unlike his erratic boss Montaro Caine, he didn’t feel he needed to drink while discussing business.

“This may sound crazy,” said Gina. “But I think Caine has found a miracle material.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rothman’s tone was curt.

“I don’t have all the pieces, so I can’t give you the whole picture, but from what I can tell, it sounds like something amazing.” Gina was more animated than Rothman had ever seen her as she went on to discuss all that she had overheard Borceau saying about the slivers of coins that Caine had asked him to analyze. Caine had warned Borceau to keep all aspects of the analysis secret. “Don’t discuss this with anyone,” he had said. But that hadn’t kept Borceau from discussing the matter with himself out loud and at length and sometimes in French, a language Gina had studied in college.

Still, the more Gina told Rothman about what she had heard Borceau saying, the more skeptical he became. He furrowed his brow. Then, he chuckled.

“This material, have you actually seen it?” he asked Gina.

“No.”

Rothman’s chuckle grew into a hearty laugh.

“Alan!” Gina snapped sternly.

But Rothman couldn’t help smiling. He could sense what he felt certain to be Caine’s desperation, which would inevitably lead to what Rothman had been helping to plan for more than a year—Richard Davis’s takeover of Fitzer with Rothman as his second in command. “What’s that son of a bitch up to now?” Rothman wondered aloud.

“I don’t think you should laugh this off, Alan,” Gina said. “I heard exactly what Borceau was saying. He said ‘miracle material.’ ”

“Miracle material?” Rothman laughed. “Out of where? Caine’s desperate and your boss is a drunk. It’s a diversion tactic, honey. I know how Caine’s mind works. I’ve been studying it for years.”

“Alan, yes, he’s up to something, but it’s not what you think. Just listen …”

“He’s up to exactly what I’ve been saying all along. Games, playing for time.”

“I don’t think so.” Gina sat Rothman down on her couch and told him about the man and woman who had visited Caine and Borceau.

“They shut themselves off in the lab, just the three of them,” Gina said. “Michen wasn’t even allowed in.”

As Gina continued to talk, Rothman became increasingly curious. “This man and woman, who are they?” he asked.

“Their names are Herman Freich and Colette Beekman,” said Gina.

“What’s their business?”

“I’ve got no clue.”

“Had Borceau ever seen them before?”

“No. Never.”

“So, this ‘material,’ ” Rothman asked, “where is it now?”

“It seems like the man and woman brought it with them when they came and took it with them when they left. But Caine kept some slivers of it for Michen to analyze.”

“And your boss analyzed these microscopic slivers Caine conveniently left for him and found them to be made of miracle material?” Rothman asked.

Gina was growing irritated. For years, she had been attempting to
plot ways to secure herself a more important position at Fitzer, which had a lot to do with why she had been sleeping with this smug married man for the past year. And now, this same man was dismissing all she had learned with his trademark smirk. “Stop jumping to conclusions,” she told him. “Don’t be so sure of yourself all the time. Something bizarre is happening and I think it’s for real. Borceau has been in the lab working by himself night and day.”

“You mean he’s been drinking night and day,” Rothman said, but Gina waved off the remark. “He won’t let anybody in there,” she said. “Before he went to meet Caine at his hotel, he seemed so fired up I thought he was going to explode. ‘Miracle material,’ he kept saying.
Miracle material
.”

“Well,” said Rothman, “don’t you think it’s a little unusual for this miracle material to suddenly pop up and find its way into our lab just when Caine is hanging on by a thread?”

“It didn’t just ‘pop up.’ He’s known about it for twenty-six fucking years, Alan.”

Gina’s reply jerked Rothman to attention.

“Are you ready to listen now, hotshot?” she asked.

“All right,” replied Rothman. Now, he found that he actually did need a drink. He got up to fix himself one in the kitchen before he sat down again beside Gina on the couch.

“So, okay, where did he find this material?” Rothman asked.

“In a coin,” Gina told him.

“A coin?”

“Yes, a coin.”

Rothman listened as Gina told him about the call Caine had asked her to make to Dr. Chasman. “Then, I called Nancy and asked her for a rundown of his appointments in case Michen wanted to reach him in a hurry, and she told me about his meeting with Dr. Mozelle,” Gina said. “Mozelle’s not Caine’s regular doctor. In fact, Nancy had never heard of him.”

“What about Freich and Beekman?” Rothman asked. “Are you sure Caine didn’t know them?”

“Positive. They had to be strangers because he ordered Lawrence Aikens to dig up everything he could about them.”

“Aikens?”

“I’m sure he’s come up with something by now. We need to find out what it is.”

“Aikens is a creature of Caine’s. He won’t tell us anything.”

“I know,” said Gina. “But if he has information you need, there might be other ways of getting it.”

“I’m listening.”

“Aikens has an assistant,” said Gina.

“Right. Curly Bennett,” said Rothman. “But he’s Aikens’s boy.”

“Yes, but he’s also very ambitious and he doesn’t think Aikens appreciates him. And then there are other things.”

“What are other things?”

“Like he’s young and single and likes to hit on women at company parties.”

Rothman was beginning to get the idea. “I see, and what else?”

“What else does there need to be?” Gina asked.

Rothman noticed the familiar curl at the corner of Gina’s mouth, and from the sensuous movement of her lips he knew immediately what she had in mind. As Gina leaned into him, he felt his phone vibrating in his pocket, but he didn’t stop to look to see who was calling him. He could be a little late to dinner tonight, he thought, to hell with his wife and her parents.

W
HEN
C
URLY
B
ENNETT RETURNED HOME TO HIS ONE-BEDROOM
apartment on East 37th Street, he felt pleased with himself, much the way he always felt after a fruitful day on the job. He and Aikens had, once again, greased the palm of the janitor to obtain the books they had seen at Cordiss Krinkle’s subleased Manhattan apartment and had delivered them directly to Montaro Caine. The apartment was a mess and Curly doubted that the tenants would have noticed a few missing books. While Aikens had stayed with Caine to pore over the books, Curly went back to his office where he tracked down addresses for Cordiss in Paris and San Remo. All things considered, this had been the kind of day Curly liked. In the absence of any recognition from the executive suite, he stood ready to give himself a generous pat on the back.