matter of life and death. Granted, the Gracefield standards were probably more strictly enforced.
He wavered.
“All you have to do is go to where he’s eating and tell him Sam Acquillo is downstairs. If he says who the heck is that?’ you’re in the clear. How bad could that be?”
I was grateful that he bought the concept. I didn’t want to have sock him in the nose, which I was prepared to do right at that moment, something else I’d have to regret for the rest of my life.
He was gone just a few minutes. When he reappeared in the reception area he snuck in behind a small bar and grabbed a leather-bound menu. He handed it to me.
“The specials are inside,” he said, formally, as he led me down the hall. “The duck confit seems to be the most popular item.”
“Excellent,” I said. “I love duck. My dog ll sometimes snatch one out of the lagoon. Fry it right up.”
We went up two flights of stairs, down a hallway lined with oil paintings of seascapes, gaff-rigged racing yachts and Atlantic waterfowl and into a large, brilliantly lit room. An octagon, with windows on every side. I recognized it as the building’s tower, from a glimpse of the club you could catch over the hedges when you drove down Gin Lane. I’d been catching that glimpse my whole life. It was remarkably strange to be looking at it from the inside out.
Burton was sitting alone at a round table, carving some meager little mound of oiled foliage on his plate, an ice bucket with an open bottle of white at his right elbow.
“Sam,” said Burton, getting up from the table and warmly shaking my hand, “what a pleasure.”
I had to hand it to the guy in the white bow tie. He stood calmly at attention, ready to take it like a man.
I jerked my thumb at him.
“This guy’s good, Burt. Really looks after the place. Tell management he’s a keeper.”
The guy gave a neat little bow.
“And you should know, Sam. A man of your worldliness.”
“You people have Absolut?” I asked the guy. “On the rocks. No fruit. Just a swizzle stick.” He nodded a brisk little nod and gratefully took the opportunity to spin on his heel and beat it out of there.
“This is delightful,” said Burton. “The food here is really quite good, for a club. Just stay clear of the duck. Too fatty.”
“I’m sorry to bother you,” I said. “We just need to catch up.”
He was chewing, so he twirled his fork in the air as a way of saying, “Forget about it.”
“You know this Jonathan Eldridge thing,” I said to him. “It’s messing me up.”
He nodded eagerly.
“I have some information for you,” he said. “I called you, but you weren’t there, and of course you don’t have an answering machine. Or email.”
“That’s what they tell me.”
“I was about to drive over there. Meant to do it today, actually.”
He shoved the salad out of the way and took the silver cover off a plate filled with pasta, vegetables and what looked like chunks of lobster and crab.
“Here,” he said, scooping a mound of the stuff on to a dinner plate, “take this. I’ll eat off the serving dish.”
I didn’t argue with him.
“Thanks. Looks great.”
The guy in the white bow tie reappeared with my drink. Burton told him to bring another plate of what we were eating and shooed him out of the room.
“So what do you got?” I asked him.
“You can’t repeat this, but Mr. Fleming is a week or two away from a full-scale racketeering indictment. I think my theory was correct. Whatever information the State investigators pulled from Jonathan Eldridge’s computer has provided the basis for the action. They’re quite happy about it. I know it’s not your principal concern. Nothing new on the car bombing.”
“Anything come up about his relationship with Jonathan Eldridge, or his brother Butch?”
“You told us to focus on your hostiles, as you put it. Found more evidence to the contrary regarding the brother.”
“Jonathan took good care of him. I know that.”
“Oh, yes. To a fault. At least in the eyes of the State investigation.”
Burton grinned at me over the top of his pasta.
“Really.”
“You really can’t repeat this. In fact, we aren’t even having this conversation. Not for my sake, for the chap who spilled it to me.”
“I’m cool, Burt, you know that.”
He nodded emphatically.
“I do,” he said. “It seems the forensic accountants, going through Jonathan’s financial records, determined that a few days before he was killed he used substantial assets from his cash reserves at Eagle to take positions within three sub-accounts.”
“Substantial?”
“Seven figures substantial. Given that there was no other accounting irregularity, this stuck out. Apparently, Jonathan was scrupulous in his bookkeeping. Had a very straightforward, conservative methodology. Left little room for shenanigans. So, this big transfer stuck out.”
I struggled to remember Jackie’s explanation of Jonathan’s system, trying to visualize the structure in my mind.
“The cash account was a just a big pool that held all the money that flowed in and out of the sub-accounts. Just a holding tank. As long as the in and out is tracked and accounted for, doesn’t mean a thing.”
“That’s right.”
“So this big transfer could have been a routine occurrence. He was just caught between moves. If he hadn’t been killed, he would have reconciled everything. Nothing illegal in that.”
“Not at all. Especially when you consider that a sizeable percentage of that cash account belonged to Jonathan himself. With his wife. More than enough to cover the transfer to Butch. It was his money, theoretically. Could do anything he wanted with it.”
“So why did the forensic accountants think it was important?”
Burton shrugged.
“He’d never done it before. At least never with numbers that large. That’s what they look for. Anomalies. Deviations from patterns. Hiccups in the system. This was a very big one.”
“Who owned the three sub-accounts?”
“Butch Ellington for one. That I remember. The other two names are in a file back at the house.”
“Neville St. Clair and Hugh Boone.”
“Something like that. Interesting names.”
I started getting the feeling I used to get when troubleshooting process systems, that I’d solved the problem but didn’t know it yet. That my unconscious had already drawn the conclusion, and was now just hanging around waiting for the cognitive department to catch up. I drank some of the vodka to hasten the transition.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why indeed.”
“The Feds have released all those assets. Who picked up the shortfall?” I asked.
“Jonathan’s estate. As I said, he had more than enough to cover the delta.”
Some time during the conversation another mounded plate of pasta and seafood appeared in front of me. I only noticed it when I caught myself pulling on the edge of the tablecloth so hard I was dragging everything across the table.
“Who authorized that?” I asked, though I already knew.
“The lawyer for the estate. Szwit. Gabriel Szwit. Has an office in the Village. A good litigator, they say. He’s done some pro bono for this little effort I set up with the public defenders office in Suffolk County.”
