The Insider (7 page)

“Good,” Nikolai said, with a smile that revealed a set of square, gray teeth like cinder blocks.

Will slowly rose to his feet. Nikolai and Yuri now focused on Katya, who was sitting on the side of the bed, pulling her long T-shirt down over her knees.

“We will talk to Katya alone now,” said Yuri, addressing Will.

Katya's eyes were on the floor. Will couldn't tell what she was thinking.

“So you can get the fuck out of here,” Yuri continued. “We know where to find you. We've got your card.” He snapped the card with his index finger for emphasis.

For the second time in the past twenty-four hours, Will surprised himself. “I'm not leaving her alone with you two.”

Yuri slapped his forehead with his palm in sheer incomprehension. “The ingratitude of the fucker!
Kaifu.
”

“What?” Will said, reflexively.

“You must be high!” Yuri exclaimed.
“Kaifu!”

Nikolai smiled dimly at Will's foolishness, but decided to humor him. “Okay. Yuri, take him out in hall while I talk to Katya.” Nikolai grabbed a dish towel from the kitchen counter and threw it at Will. “For your head.”

“It's okay,” Katya said to Will. “I'll be fine.”

Yuri took Will by the arm and led him to the open door. “See? She is going to be fine. You, I am not so sure about.”

Nikolai pulled the door shut, leaving Will standing in his boxer shorts with Yuri in a dingy hallway dappled with shafts of morning sunlight. Will mopped the blood from his face with the towel and attempted to locate the cut on his temple with his fingers, the pain sharpening as he got closer. The bleeding had slowed. Three quarters of an inch to the right, though, and he might have lost an eye. He began to sort out the bundle of clothes in his arms and get dressed.

Will strained to hear what was being said inside the apartment, but all he could make out was the vague rumble of Nikolai's voice.

A woman emerged from an apartment a few doors down, hair still damp, with a coffee mug in hand. As she locked her door, she looked up to observe Will holding a bloody towel and doing a one-legged dance as he pulled on his pants.

Yuri stared at the woman with an unblinking gaze that could be read as a threat.

The woman locked her door and walked briskly away, apparently deciding that she wanted no part of whatever was going on.

Yuri stared at Will as he got dressed, and he wondered if he was about to get punched again.

Finally, Yuri spoke. “Is that wool?”

“Yeah,” Will said, curious where the conversation was headed.

“Looks a little heavy for spring.”

“Not in San Francisco.”

“Where'd you get it?”

“Brooks Brothers.”

“That's what I thought. Not bad,” Yuri conceded. “But I like something a little more tailored. Hugo Boss.”

Yuri had nothing else to say to Will as they waited in the hallway. Yuri removed a small plastic bottle of hand sanitizer from his jacket and rubbed some in his hands, giving off the smell of alcohol. When Will had put on the clothes, he was left without shoes, socks, or a tie, which had all been kicked under the bed in Katya's apartment before he hid in the bathroom.

After about ten minutes, the door to Katya's apartment opened and Nikolai emerged. Katya stood behind him in the doorway, holding the rest of Will's clothes. Her eyes were red, but she appeared unharmed. Her face seemed unsettled.

Nikolai said to Katya, “Give him his things.”

“I'm not leaving yet.” Will wanted to talk with Katya out of the presence of Yuri and Nikolai.

“It's okay,” Katya said. “You should go. We can talk later.”

He studied her, then Yuri and Nikolai, and concluded from everyone's demeanor that the incident was over. “Okay. I'll see you soon.”

Yuri rolled his eyes at Nikolai, seemingly exasperated by Will's belief that he had a choice in the matter.

Katya closed the door, which was followed by the sound of two locks and a chain being hastily secured.

Will put on his shoes and socks and shoved the tie into his jacket pocket.

Nikolai patted Will on the shoulder. “I know you don't think so right now, but you are going to like doing business with us. You will see. We are not bad guys. We will talk again soon.”

Yuri and Nikolai walked with Will down the worn stairs, emerging on Pacific Street, blinking in the bright morning light like three businessmen commencing their workday. Yuri pointed up the street. “We're parked up this way,” he said matter-of-factly. “Which way are you headed?”

Without hesitation, Will pointed in the opposite direction. As he walked away, he had the growing realization that he had been had.

It was one of those crisp, perfect mornings that San Francisco produces so effortlessly in the spring. Will watched the drivers on their way to work, hands on the wheel and eyes fixed on the middle distance, gliding through the comforting autopilot of the daily routine, just as Will usually did on a Tuesday morning.

But this was not a typical Tuesday morning. It was eight thirty. Will was standing on the corner of Polk and Broadway waiting for a taxi to pass, rumpled and unshaven. As he dabbed at his forehead with a bloody dish towel, he had the inescapable sense that all of the terrible things that had happened to him in the past forty-eight hours were somehow connected.

Being framed for Ben's murder. Taking over the Jupiter transaction from Ben. Picking up Katya in the club and her “guess” that he was working on the Jupiter deal. The inopportune appearance of Yuri and Nikolai and their interest in Jupiter. Following this reasoning to its logical conclusion, it seemed likely that Yuri, Nikolai, and Katya had played some part in Ben's death.

He needed time to think, to shuffle these facts until he could discern more of the pattern. But there was no time for that. He had to be at his office in Embarcadero Center by nine, looking sharp, to negotiate the merger of Jupiter Software and Pearl Systems. After the meeting, he would have time to consider whether he should report Yuri, Nikolai, and the whole bizarre series of events to Detective Kovach, Don Rubinowski, and perhaps even the SEC.

Across the street was a drugstore. He rushed in and bought toothpaste, a toothbrush, shaving cream, a comb, bandages, and a disposable razor.

With his purchases in a paper bag, he flagged down a taxi. The cabbie was a sun-baked, bearded man who appeared to be made out of the same faded, dirty material as the taxi's upholstery. Will asked to be taken to the Hyatt Regency, which was across the street from his office building. The cabbie glanced at his bleeding head but was undeterred; he had clearly seen worse.

Will pulled out his phone and dialed the cell number of David Lathrop, the CEO of Jupiter Software. They had spoken only once before, when Will had called to inform him that he would be taking over as lead counsel on the deal.

“David? Hi, this is Will Connelly.”

“I hope you're a quick study, Will,” David said.

“I've done my homework. I've been through all of Ben's files and notes. Any final thoughts before our meeting?”

“Not really. I was just about to walk over to your offices. I had a breakfast meeting with the bankers.” Will read David's terseness as nerves.

“I have a little point of strategy I want to discuss with you.”

“What do you have in mind?”

“You said that when you and Ben were over at their attorneys' offices, they kept you waiting for nearly a half hour while they talked.”

“That's right,” David said. “What a chickenshit little maneuver that was.”

“Well, I think we should let them sit for about that long in our conference room before we make our entrance. I know it sounds petty, but you have to set a tone with these guys. Every time they push us, we have to push back. They want this deal to close as badly as you do.”

The cell phone signal wavered as faint street sounds cut in and out. If David decided that they should arrive at nine sharp, he knew there was no way he could be there in time. That would not make much of a first impression.

“I like it,” David said. Will could almost hear him grinning on the other end of the line. “I knew there was a reason why I pay your firm so much money.”

“When they arrive, I'll have my secretary take them into the conference room and tell them we're in a meeting. You can take your time getting over here. We can meet up at around nine twenty-five or nine thirty.”

“See you then.”

The taxi pulled into the driveway of the Hyatt. Will handed the driver some bills and hit the ground running.

He did not want to use the restroom in the firm's offices to clean himself up. They would immediately assume that he had gone on some kind of postpartnership bender, which, admittedly, was not far from the truth.

Will entered the hotel's soaring atrium lobby and ducked into the restroom, which was empty. He assessed his appearance in the mirror. The cut on his temple was actually fairly small and no longer bleeding. Nikolai's punch hadn't left any bruising, and as far as he could tell, none of his ribs were cracked. Will quickly brushed his teeth, shaved, combed his hair, straightened his tie, and dusted himself off.

He reviewed the results in the mirror. His suit was still a little wrinkled, his eyes were bloodshot, and he was certain to get some questions about the bandage, but he was presentable. Now if he could only calm his nerves. His hand trembled slightly from residual adrenaline and he gripped the sink to make it stop. He checked his watch: nine twenty.

Leaving the Hyatt, he crossed Sacramento Street to Embarcadero Center. The four massive, white towers of Embarcadero Center lined up like dominoes. It seemed that nearly every law firm in San Francisco had an office somewhere within the complex. Will dashed up the steps and pushed through the revolving door into the stark lobby, which was composed of large blocks of white stone that made the place look like some kind of twenty-first-century version of a Mayan temple.

Riding the elevator up to the firm's offices, Will took a deep breath and composed himself. He strode purposefully through the hallways, avoiding eye contact. The last thing he wanted right now was to be waylaid by some partner who hadn't gotten around to congratulating him yet. In the unspoken language of law firms, it was understood that when someone was power-walking through the hallways, it meant that they were under a deadline and not to be interrupted.

Will arrived at the desk of his secretary, Maggie Bozeman, a plump woman in her early fifties with a tumbleweed frizz of light brown hair. She wore granny glasses and a parachute-sized paisley skirt. Maggie was a former flower child who had miraculously managed to maintain both her job and her idiosyncratic ways through fifteen years at the firm. Maggie's longevity was attributable in part to the fact that she was smarter and more capable than most of the firm's paralegals. It also didn't hurt that the office administrative staff zealously protected the jobs of senior secretaries. Will had developed a grudging appreciation of Maggie's talents as a merciless grammarian.

Maggie looked up from her computer, revealing an upper lip coated with cranberry-colored Jamba Juice. “The group from Pearl has been in the conference room for twenty-five minutes. Didn't seem too happy to be kept waiting,” she noted, with a hint of reproach.

“Good,” Will said.

“Oh, and David Lathrop just arrived. He's in the soft seating area,” Maggie added. She looked Will over, noticing the bandage on his forehead. “Have fun last night?” she added blithely.

Will shot a look at Maggie that was intended to have the devastating intensity of an industrial-grade laser. As usual, Maggie remained impervious, so he entered his office to gather his papers for the meeting.

Whenever visitors entered his office for the first time, they found it difficult to take their eyes off the windows, which offered a magnificent view of the utilitarian gray spires of the Bay Bridge. Will was usually too busy to even notice whether the sun was shining.

Will's files for the merger transaction were labeled “Project Zeus,” the firm's code name for the Jupiter deal. He always joked about the code names that were given to M&A deals involving the firm's publicly traded clients—it all seemed just a little too much like a bad spy novel. In any event, the secretaries, office staff, and anyone else who was remotely interested could easily figure out what deals were in the works. Today, the use of code names didn't seem like a joke.

With his draft agreements and negotiation notes in hand, Will went to the reception area to greet Jupiter's CEO. Given the way things were going, Will viewed the negotiation session as just another opportunity for the next unpleasant surprise. Someone was trying to ruin his life and he couldn't rule anyone out at this point, including his own client and opposing counsel.

He found David Lathrop in the reception area halfheartedly thumbing a copy of
Forbes
. David was a small man with lank, brown hair who looked unassuming enough in his olive khakis and black-framed nerd chic glasses. But if the industry press were to be believed, David was fluent in the languages of both the Wall Street analyst and the programming geek. He was touted as a true scientist-businessman—a hybrid as rare as the minotaur or the gryphon.

“Well, there he is, the master of psychological warfare,” David said, rising and shaking his hand. “What happened to your head?” he asked, pointing at the bandage.

“It's nothing. I was working out and got a little clumsy.”

“Hey, you're not in your twenties anymore. At our age, everything comes with a price.”