The Darlings (33 page)

SATURDAY, 11:01 A.M.

T
he
Wall Street Journal
offices were humming. Duncan was now accustomed to the slower pace of magazine work, and found the atmosphere overstimulating, like children's television or the floor of a casino. Fluorescent track lighting and the omnipresent glow of double-screened monitors lit the large, open bullpen. Televisions hung from the ceilings, streaming information from multiple channels. It had the energy of a young persons' office, though nowadays, all the young people wanted to work for blogs or online news aggregators or social media outlets that Duncan didn't know about. Newspapers were becoming dinosaurs, too large and slow moving to keep pace with the changing environment. Duncan related. He felt like a dinosaur himself, a wooly mammoth loafing about on a glacier somewhere, waiting for the onset of the next ice age.

The thought of Owen working here made Duncan smile. Owen had been Duncan's protégé during the early days at the
New York Observer
. He was like a puppy: endearingly untrainable, endlessly energetic, always with his nose in something. “You're either going to end up in jail, or winning a Pulitzer,” Duncan used to tell him. “Maybe both.”

They had stayed in touch over the years. They met for drinks before industry dinners, grabbed the occasional diner hamburger or dive-bar drink, and every once in a while Owen would introduce Duncan to whichever young thing he was dating that month. Owen still deferred to Duncan for periodic professional advice, though he had long since established himself as a star journalist. This was the first time Duncan had ever asked him to return the favor.

All around the bullpen, journalists were talking on the phone, clicking away at their keyboards. Still, Duncan spotted Owen immediately. He always stuck out like a sore thumb. Even after a decade at the
Journal
, Owen still looked as though he belonged at
Rolling Stone
. His reddish hair hung shaggily around his eyes. He wore cowboy boots and a Marlboro Man belt buckle. Duncan wondered, not for the first time, how he got anyone to take him seriously.

“Come sit,” Owen said, after the two men embraced. He pulled up a couple of chairs around what Duncan gathered was his desk. It was by far the messiest on the floor. “Sorry for the short notice. There's someone I want us to talk to together, so I thought this was the easiest way to do it.”

“Listen, you're helping me here. I really appreciate this, especially given the holiday.”

“Please, you know me. I don't do holidays,” Owen said enthusiastically. It was true; Owen had worked nearly every day that Duncan had known him. “Holidays are for the weak.”

“So what have you got for me?”

“Sol Penzell,” Owen said, leaning back, his hands folded behind his head, “is Carter Darling's lawyer. He's the signatory on all the Delphic offering docs, you know, the stuff they file and send out to investors. And his firm does business with RCM, too. The two of them and Morty Reis are thick as thieves. Anyway, he was my first thought when we talked. I've wanted to do a piece on that guy for God knows how long. Never got enough on him, though. Runs a firm called Penzell & Rubicam. Firm's more like a lobbying firm than anything else. They do a lot of high-level brokering work, connecting high-profile corporate folks to government, that kind of thing. They have some pretty slippery clients.”

“Like who?”

“Remember that DOJ investigation into Blueridge, the private security company that allegedly was stockpiling automatic weapons down in Texas to sell overseas? There was a big brouhaha about it in the media. Some military people came forward and said they were selling weapons to Afghan resistance fighters.”

“That was last fall, no? Whatever happened?”

“Nothing happened. And Penzell is Blueridge's lawyer. Go figure. Here's another one: BioReach, the world's largest agribusiness? I've got a friend who's a journalist for
National Geographic
. Leslie Truebeck. Very cool lady. Nice legs, too. Anyway, she's doing a piece on corporate humanitarian efforts in East Africa. BioReach is the big story over there; they've been partnering with the World Bank to distribute free grain to farmers. They've gotten a bunch of positive PR for it. Long story short, Les does her homework and ends up finding an exec at BioReach who talks off the record. He admits the company's been cooking its books. And worse still, they've been purposefully giving out grain that can't reproduce. So anyone who takes the free stuff cuts down their fields—which is irreparable, basically—and then the next season finds that the grain won't grow back. So now they are hooked on BioReach's grain. Pretty nasty idea, right? Hooking aid recipients on your product? Sort of like big tobacco. Anyway, Les starts to write the article, but she never finishes it. Want to know why? Because the exec disappears. Not just from her radar; I mean, literally. The guy
disappears
. No one's seen him again. Not even his wife.”

“Let me guess: Penzell is BioReach's lawyer.”

“You got it. And even though Les has been screaming bloody murder for a year now, nothing's ever come of it. No investigation, nothing. Maybe he's just super good at his job, I don't know. But I think there's a whole lot more going on below the surface. I mean, guys with briefcases of cash and bodies at the bottom of the East River, that kind of stuff. I could talk about it for hours. Penzell & Rubicam is, shall we say, a pet project of mine.”

“Let's talk about RCM and Delphic instead.”

Owen held up his hands. “All right, all right,” he said. “Just giving you a little of the backstory. I'll cut to the chase in a second. You're going to thank me later, though, so just bear that in mind.”

“Listen, I'll thank you now. All I can say is, I'll get you the exclusive.”

Owen laughed. “Damn straight. Or just get me a date with that lovely young assistant of yours, the one you had call me in the middle of Thanksgiving dinner. Where do you find these women? Craigslist?”

“I'm sorry about that.”

“You never need to apologize for sending pretty girls my way,” Owen said, his blue eyes laughing at Duncan's discomfort, which had appeared in his cheeks in the form of an awkward purplish blush. “Plus, this is a hell of a story.”

“I just wish my niece weren't in the middle of it.”

“Well, listen to this: Yesterday afternoon, I lob in a call to Sol Penzell. I thought maybe I could shake him up a little. I leave a message with his secretary saying that I'm with the
Wall Street Journal
, and would he like to comment on the article that I'm writing about allegations of fraud and conspiracy at RCM and Delphic. You could tell that really took the wind out of her. Twenty minutes later, I get a call from a random cell phone number. It's Yvonne Reilly, the secretary.”

“That's interesting,” Duncan said. “The secretaries always know everything, don't they. What did she ask?”

“She starts peppering me with questions. Who's running the investigation? Is Delphic under investigation, or just RCM? What about Penzell & Rubicam? She was nervous as hell. Anyway, I did my best to scare the shit out of her, you know, without really saying much of anything.”

“Gentlemanly of you.”

Owen rolled his eyes. “Oh please. If anyone taught me how to pressure a source, it was you. Took a little cajoling, but I worked the Barry magic on her. Anyway, she agreed to meet with me. She wouldn't really say much over the phone, but I got the sense that she has a serious story to tell. I thought you might like to come along.”

Duncan whistled. “I think I owe you more than an exclusive. Is she coming here now?”

“I'm going to meet her in twenty minutes. Ready for a walk down Wall Street?”

“More than ever.”

Later, when Duncan sat down to describe Yvonne for the article in
Press
, the first word that came to mind was
nondescript
. She was of medium height and build, with hair that was neither orange nor yellow, but a sort of faded, fried in-between. She could have been thirty-five or fifty. She had spent too much time in the sun. It showed on her face and on the backs of her hands. Tanning was perhaps her only real act of vanity. Her nails were short and bitten to the quick, working-girl fingers. Duncan always noticed everyone's hands. He thought they said a lot about a person, whether they were vain or nervous or practical or well taken care of, which is why he still got a manicure twice a month. Yvonne looked like any other secretary, one of the herd that crossed over through the tunnels, across the bridges, twice daily on their way in and out of Manhattan.

Nondescript, but he knew exactly who she was the moment he saw her.

Because it was the Saturday after Thanksgiving, the Financial District was thinly populated. Duncan was relieved to see that Fraunces Tavern, a pub Owen frequented and Duncan was sure he had suggested, was open. It was a watering hole during the week for Goldman Sachs bankers, but on the weekends, it wasn't highly trafficked. Particularly before noon. The lights were on but there didn't seem to be any patrons. A good place for an anonymous conversation.

Yvonne was finishing a Camel outside on the cobbled street. The wind had picked up off the river and felt piercingly cold against the skin. Her shoulders hunched up around her ears. It was too cold to be outside for long. She was either a serious smoker or very nervous; Duncan suspected both.

“Are you Yvonne?” Owen said, when she looked up. She had smoked the cigarette down to the filter. She took a last drag and stubbed it out beneath her toe.

“You didn't say you were bringing a friend,” she said, and cocked her head to one side. Her hands were stuffed deep into her pockets. She withdrew one reluctantly to shake hands with them both, but returned it with the speed of a card dealer in Vegas.

“Duncan Sander, Ms. Reilly,” he said, holding open the door for her. “After you.”

“Duncan's a friend but also a colleague,” Owen said. “He's an exceptional journalist. He's been working on this story with me, so if it's all right with you, he'll stay for our talk?”

Yvonne's eyes darted across Duncan's face, assessing him. “I know who you are,” she said. She dropped her
R
's almost imperceptibly, so that
are
sounded more like
ahhhh
. Duncan saw the flash of a gold cross, tucked into the collar of her blouse. It was the only jewelry she was wearing besides her wedding band.
Boston Irish
, Duncan thought.
I bet she has five kids at home. Goes to Mass every Sunday.

“You're that magazine guy, I forget which one.” She didn't sound impressed, but Duncan nodded his head humbly anyway.

“Yes, ma'am. Can I get you a drink from the bar?”

She hesitated and then said, “Water's fine.”

“I'll have a Sam Adams,” Owen said. “You sure you don't want one of those? It's noon somewhere in the world. As my father used to say.”

“What the hell. I'll need a drink after this.”

“Three Sam Adams, coming up,” Duncan said.

When he returned, Yvonne was picking apart a cocktail napkin and rolling its remains into tiny white balls with her fingertips.

“I want you to understand Sol,” she was saying to Owen. She paused as Duncan pulled up a chair. Her voice was low and tense, and Owen was leaning in on his elbows in order to hear her. “I know what you must think of him. Or of me, for that matter, working for him for so long. But he's a good man. Or he can be. He cares about the people in his life. He's taken care of me for over fourteen years. Not just paying me well. Though he did that, too, and I've been able to give my boys more because of it, more than I ever thought I could. I have two, you know.” Her eyes darted inquisitively between them like a bird's, sizing them up. “The younger one, well, he was a real premie. A lot of complications. I went into labor while I was in the office, right there at my desk. It was real touch and go, you know, from the beginning. I almost died from losing so much blood. Sol got us in with the head ob-gyn at Mount Sinai. Private room, whole nine yards. I was pretty out of it but all I could think was, ‘We can't afford this!'” She laughed, her eyes softening. “I had never stayed in a room that nice, not even on our honeymoon. Anyway, at the end of it, the hospital wouldn't charge us. The doctor, he wouldn't either. Someone told us that the office had taken care of it, but I knew it was Sol. I asked him about it, but he just kept saying that the insurance picked it up. Course that wasn't true. We both knew it, but that's just the thing about Sol. He does some really incredible things for people, and he doesn't even want the credit.”

“You called me, Yvonne,” Owen said. “Let's talk about why.”

She took a deep breath. “You got kids? Either of you?”

They shook their heads in unison.

“Well, I'd do anything for mine. I've seen a lot of stuff come across my desk, you know, in the last fourteen years. But some of the stuff that's been going on lately, well. And if what you're saying is true, that there's an investigation and all that, I'd rather not be caught in the middle of it.”