The Darlings (19 page)

“Goodness. Why wouldn't he get the office's support? I can't imagine they have bigger fish to fry.”

“Hardly. The numbers are staggering. To put it in perspective, it's the largest financial crime that I've heard of during my entire legal career. He finally appealed to Jane Hewitt last week, hoping she'd cut through the red tape so he could get the indictments out.”

“I am guessing she didn't.”

“Worse than that. David said she was angry in their meeting. He said he felt like he had offended her in some way. She gave him a speech about how a number of factors go into the resource allocation process, there were budgetary issues at play, blah blah blah. She didn't like his ‘renegade attitude.' He left feeling like he'd been fired. It scared the shit out of him. It was the exact opposite response from what he thought he'd get.”

Duncan's brow furrowed. “Maybe she doesn't like having her authority questioned. Or maybe she's embarrassed that if this blows up, it will reflect poorly on the SEC.”

“That's what I thought, too, at first. I mean, we've looked into these guys more than once in the past few years, and no one ever followed up. It's been, actually, a pretty egregious failure on our part. That's a whole other part of the story. At the end of the day, it's just too risky to sit on a fraud of this magnitude.”

“I would think she'd want to pursue it full tilt. We see it all the time: over-eager DAs and judges surge into action right before an election or a promotion. But she's not.” Duncan drummed his fingers against his lips. “Odd, I agree.”

“I know how this sounds, but do you think it's possible that she's being bribed? There was a lawyer—Scott Stevens—who was the only other person at the SEC to ever investigate this fund. One day, he just quit the SEC altogether, and the investigation was shut down. This money manager whom David spoke with said Stevens basically disappeared. He thought that he had been pressured to walk away from the investigation, just like David.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“No. We tried a basic search but didn't have time for much else. We should.”

“I can find him,” Duncan said.

Alexa looked up, hopeful. Then her face grew dark again, like cloud cover over the sun. “I haven't told you the worst part of the story. The principal of the firm—and please, you can't breathe a word of this to anyone—is Morton Reis. Or was, I guess. And when we found out yesterday, Jane went right to David. She wanted to know whom he talked to over there, what he had been doing, as if he had caused it. David said she was irate. She told him she was going to get him fired, that he was out of line, that he was causing more damage by raising this than he could possibly understand. Then on the way out, she told him she was aware of us. Him and me, I mean. The way she said it, well, it wasn't good.” Alexa's hand shot to her forehead, massaging her furrowed brow. “I never thought that our relationship would be used against him. Not like this. He's a mess.”

Duncan's heart was pounding, but he tried to appear calm. “I'm so sorry you are going through this,” he said slowly.

“Either way, I'm scared for him, Duncan. Even if David just drops the investigation and walks away, the fraud will get uncovered at some point. Some point soon, now that Reis is dead. And when it does, David could take the fall.”

“Shouldn't Jane Hewitt take the fall?”

Alexa shook her head. “No way. She's too popular with the new administration. They want her to run the Commission. So they'll find someone else to take the fall, someone less senior, but still important.”

Duncan watched her as she stood and began to rearrange the cheese plate. Her hands moved quickly as she lined up the crackers just so, placing them with nervous precision, then the grapes, washed and full, splayed out against the plate's lip. “Are you sure about that?”

“He's the head of the department. He'll have to explain why the SEC dropped the ball on a multibillion-dollar fraud. But if he pushes the investigation, Jane will fire him. It's clear that she wants to bury this. The only thing he can think to do is to prepare the case and hand it to a friend at the attorney general's office. We've been talking to someone we know over there. That way, David stays out of the line of fire at work, at least until the AG breaks the story. Then he plans to resign, but at least his name will be clear. But it needs to happen now. Like, this weekend. Before the newspapers get ahold of the story and beat us to the punch.”

Duncan nodded, mentally running through his Rolodex to figure out whom to call first. “Let me see what I can find out about Jane Hewitt. I know her, you know. Interviewed her for
Press
. Made of steel, that woman. If she's involved in the case, I have some journalist friends who will get to the bottom of it. They live for this stuff.”

“I hate involving you. I don't even really know what I am asking you for. But I don't know where else to go.”

“Well, I'm not sure what I can offer, yet. But we've got to understand whom you're up against. If she is being bribed or if she's connected in any way to RCM, we need to know.”

Before Duncan could respond, the intercom buzzed through the kitchen, jarring them both.

“You can just send everyone up,” Duncan told the doorman. “No need to ring up again.”

They walked to the front door. “It's all gone so far off the rails,” she said.

“We're going to get it back on track. I promise.” He pressed his hand firmly on the small of her back. Though she knew his face would light up the moment the doorbell rang, his voice was deadly serious. “No one is going to get away with anything. A lot of people owe me favors in this town. More than you think. If there's anyone I would go to the mat for, it's you.”

She put her hand in his, and held on tight as he opened the door for his guests.

THURSDAY, 11:16 A.M.

Q
uiet was Marion's gift to Sol. She had been asleep when he crawled into bed beside her the night before—it must have been 2 or 3 a.m.—and she was asleep when he went back to work a few hours later.

Sol was sure she had been up for at least a few hours. But she was lingering upstairs, reading maybe or taking a long bath. Staying out of his hair, basically, so he could work. It was this sort of gesture, so subtle that any other person would have missed it entirely, that made him love her after thirty-six years. Not just a warm, familial love, but a deep, rare sort of love. Her body was a mass of lumps and veins, and her hair was like an overgrown shrub most of the time, no longer really worth tending. But still, Sol thought Marion was beautiful.

When he heard her softly padding around in the kitchen, he couldn't wait to see her. Though they had been together since the previous evening, he hadn't really
been
with her. The Morty situation had swallowed him whole.

He hoped she was making coffee. It was less acidic somehow when she made it. Sol made a mental note to thank her for driving last night and for the coffee, if there was any. He never remembered to thank her for coffee.

He found Marion in front of the open refrigerator, her spandexed body sticking out from behind the door.

He patted her on the rear. “Sol!” she exclaimed. “You scared me half to death. I thought you were working.”

“I am,” he said, feeling unusually affectionate. “But I wanted to say good morning.”

Marion's chocolate-brown eyes softened as she smiled. The little crow's feet that sprouted from their corners were so kindly, he thought. He couldn't imagine why she kept threatening to erase them.

“Well, that's nice of you,” she said, leaning in for a kiss. “I hope you got some sleep last night. What time did you get to bed?”

He smiled and wrapped her in a hug so that she couldn't see his face. Marion could always tell when he was lying to her. “I'm fine,” he said. “I got a few hours. You know me. I'll sleep when I'm dead.”

“That's what worries me!” she said and laughed a little. “You need to take care of yourself. You work too hard.”

“No such thing.”

She shot him an admonishing look. “I know,” he conceded. “I know.”

“I'm meeting Judith for spin class this morning,” Marion said, changing the subject. She closed the fridge. “We might go for a bite after, but everything's probably closed.”

Usually, when Marion went “for a bite” she returned home with a shopping bag or two dangling from one arm. She was unable to walk through East Hampton's main drag without buying something. She shopped with heightened abandon in East Hampton. Sol assumed this had something to do with feeling relaxed. She would come to her senses later in the day but by then, it was too late. On principle, Marion almost never returned anything. She didn't like to upset anyone, even salesclerks. Every time Sol went into the closet, he found something else with the tags still on.

Sol usually kept his mouth shut. If he saw it as part of the cost of doing business, he would accept the thirty-dollar spin class, and even the postclass shopping spree.

“There are spin classes on Thanksgiving?”

“There are always spin classes in East Hampton,” Marion said drily. “We're supposed to be at the Darlings' at 6 p.m.?”

“Yes, 6 p.m.”

“Okay, I'll be back by then. I hope everything goes okay today. I set a fresh pot to brew.” She kissed him on the cheek. “How's Julianne?”

“She's holding up. Considering.”

“Have they . . . any word?”

“No,” Sol said. He shook his head sadly. “They're still dredging the river. The storm's making things very difficult, they say.”

“And the memorial service?”

Sol sighed. “It's complicated. Julianne doesn't want to move forward until they've found the body. We're preparing her for the possibility that they may not.”

“Oh,” Marion said. “That's just awful.” Her eyes shone with tears. “When you speak to Carter, tell him they're all in my thoughts.”

“I will.” Sol said. Marion ducked her head respectfully. She offered him a sad smile then turned. Through the open door, he watched her descend the porch stairs to the gravel drive.

“Thank you for the coffee,” he called after her.

“Anything for you, my love,” she called back, and was gone.

Sol never spoke to Marion about his clients. He was naturally circumspect, but his job—and client list—demanded the utmost discretion. Marion knew some of them; some she even considered friends. They had family dinners together and weekends in the Hamptons. She sent gifts for birthdays and children's graduations. But she never pried about their business.

Marion was the listening type. She had been a family therapist for fifteen years. She was retired now, but she still continued to volunteer as a grief counselor at Beth Israel Medical Center. Though Sol never spoke of his own work, he was quick to praise Marion's at parties, or to clients. He was happy whenever she she came up in conversation.

Her practice had put him through law school. Their first years of marriage had been a struggle, a constant flow of work and bills. She never complained. Sol often marveled that she had stayed with him all that time. Part of the joy of making as much money as he did now was watching Marion thrive in her volunteer work. By the end of the year, construction would be completed on the Marion and Sol Penzell Wing of Beth Israel Medical Center. They had been working on it for five years, and talking about it for nearly fifteen. It was their baby, she said. The baby they couldn't have themselves. He liked it when she bought herself nice things; certainly she deserved them. She had given him so much, and he wanted to give her back everything he could.

It had been many years since he'd left life at a large law firm to form Penzell & Rubicam LLP, a small boutique firm that specialized in securities enforcement and litigation, white-collar defense, and government relations. His partner, Neil Rubicam, ran the firm's Washington, D.C., office, which, if you asked Neil, was the firm's headquarters. Neil was more of a showman than Sol. He took pleasure in being interviewed on the courthouse steps, and he favored custom-made suits and bold ties that photographed well. On the wall behind his desk, Neil had framed clippings that mentioned the firm, or more specifically, mentioned him. Sol thought this was an amusing and somewhat juvenile practice. The only things on Sol's wall were a photograph of Marion and his certificate of admission to the New York State Bar. Most of Penzell & Rubicam's real successes were by their very nature unknown to the public. The high stakes court battles were important, of course, and served to garner the firm's sterling reputation. But keeping their clients out of court—and out of the limelight—was the firm's forté.

The most lucrative of Penzell & Rubicam's victories were the ones about which no one, except the client and a small handful of attorneys under Sol and Neil's management, would ever know. These were settlements negotiated in the shadows, the kind where money simply disappeared into numbered offshore bank accounts. Sometimes no money exchanged hands at all, except of course to Sol, who was compensated handsomely for the representation. Instead, billion-dollar relationships were forged, debts of gratitude incurred, favors curried. The fact that he received no recognition for this work, not even from his wife, was, to Sol, a small price to pay for the privilege of doing the work he did. While he loved the practice of law, his work now was far more sophisticated than a traditional legal practice. It was negotiation at the highest level, a form of extralegal deal brokering that made him a very powerful man.

They ran the two offices like two discrete firms. Neil was in charge of the high-visibility litigation practice in Washington, and Sol spearheaded a hybrid advisory business that served the biggest names on Wall Street. While functionally independent, the arms were complementary; Sol and Neil often worked in tandem on different aspects of a client's business. Sol looped in Neil when a client looked as though he might be headed for litigation, and Neil called Sol for behind-the-scenes negotiations, M & A advice, and crisis management. Publicly, Sol was happy to let Neil be the firm's front man. To the firm's most valued clients, discretion was mandatory, and Sol was their guy.

Carter kept Sol on retainer, consulting him on everything from dealings with FINRA and the SEC to dealings with Ines. Admittedly, Sol often found the latter to be stickier. Over the course of their thirteen-year business relationship, Sol had seen Carter through marital peaks and valleys. There were times when Sol had braced himself for Ines to leave, but she never did. This was different. Ines was tough as hell, but this would be a test for the strongest of wills. Sol wasn't sure that Ines could withstand the coming storm. He wasn't sure any wife could.

“Let's hope she's got some Silda Spitzer in her,” Neil had said the night before. He had been shooting hoops in his office with his mini basketball; Sol could hear it as it bounced off the rim.

“Take me off speaker. Did you get PR lined up?”

“Relax.” Neil's voice came in clearer now. “I have Jim working on it. I think his firm does the best work in corporate damage control. I've been using them a lot lately.”

“I can imagine.”

“He's the best.”

“We'll need it.”

There would be more than rumors about Carter this time. In a matter of weeks, maybe days, the Darlings would be exposed to immeasurable intrusion from the press, the authorities, friends, and strangers. Their personal lives would be on display. Many would relish the fall of such a privileged family. The baseline assumption, Sol knew, would be that Carter was guilty.

He was trying to cut a deal as fast as he could so that wouldn't happen. He had made some headway with Eli Sohn, his contact at the attorney general's office, but they weren't there yet. A deal couldn't be cut until tomorrow, at the earliest. Carter would have to show up in person, hat in hand. Unfortunately, Carter wasn't great at hat in hand.