law.
Timing was important. My object was to be sitting in the parking lot of the regional DEC office in Stony Brook at four in the afternoon. This was another big hole in the plan, another uncontrollable variable. I’d considered calling Dan or Ned to see if Zack Horowitz would be in the office that day, but that seemed even riskier. So instead I kept the cell phone charged and at the ready.
At four-thirty the place started emptying out. I tucked into a parking spot where I was shielded, but could still see the faces of people coming down the front path. I didn’t see Dan or Ned, to my relief. But I did see Zack at about quarter to five. He had a briefcase and a sports coat draped over his arm. I waited as long as I dared, then got out of the car and walked up to him. He stopped cold.
“You know who I am now, don’t you,” I said to him.
Zack was a trim, good-looking guy. He was maybe a few years older than me, but staying out of the ring had done a lot to preserve his face. He had light eyes, thinning but adequate dark gray hair and angular features. I liked his voice. It was a soft tenor, articulate, though graced with Long Island inflections.
“I knew then,” he said. “I have a good memory for names.”
“So you knew I’d be back.”
“I hoped you wouldn’t,” he said.
“I need you to come with me,” I said, which caused the first look of alarm to cross his face. “Right now.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“I don’t have everything, but I’ve got enough to send your life into hell starting from the moment you walk away from me,” I told him, holding up Jackie’s cell phone.
“How do I know that?”
I handed him a copy of the phone records. As he studied them, little pink clouds formed on his cheeks.
“This will effectively destroy my life,” he said calmly.
“It has to happen eventually. I can do it with you or without you. The latter could be worse, but I have no guarantees. If you come with me now I promise to do what I can to help you through it.” I looked at my watch. “You can take the next thirty seconds to decide.”
“You’re asking an awful lot of a person who doesn’t know you.”
“Okay,” I said. “Think about the ones you do know. How’s that been going for you? Do you think helping me is gonna be worse?”
He studied me.
“My wife will wonder where I am,” he said.
“Call her and tell her you’ll be late. Very late.”
I pointed to the Grand Prix and told him to lead the way. All the way he looked poised to make a run for it. But he got in the car and let me drive him out of there. I told Eddie to leave him alone, but Zack said it was okay, that Eddie probably smelled his golden retriever. Then he called his wife and gave her what sounded like a believable excuse for not coming home right away. I didn’t know if it was or not, but now that this plane was off the ground there was no going back.
“Should I be afraid for my life?” he asked quietly.
“Not from me,” I said. “This isn’t a kidnapping.”
“More of an extortion,” he said.
“Okay, I guess, technically. I’d like to think of it as leveraged persuasion.”
He seemed to relax a little at that. He was obviously alarmed, but he did a good job of containing it. Zack was a very controlled guy. I wondered if it was a skill acquired over years of staring into menacing shadows.
“Whose idea was the bank scam? Yours or Roy’s?” I asked him.
He still had his jacket draped over his arm. He slid it off and put it in his lap.
“Wonder Boy’s,” he said. “Though I planted the seed by showing him how to make decent returns on extremely short-term investments, even with puny interest rates. All you needed was a wad of stagnant cash, which was ever-present in the institutional accounts. We used to go out to lunch and talk about it. I liked being this guy’s mentor. He was so anxious to learn. And in those days I liked showing off. Like a jackass.
“I got him involved in the routine sweeps we had going with a few companies, the teacher’s union, some other stuff. All pretty small potatoes. And then he comes to me and asks that question you can never even think about when you’re a banker. ‘What if we borrow some of the Town’s money and do our own little twelve-hour sweep? You’re the Town Treasurer. Who’s going to stop you?’ I thought he was kidding, but he was serious. I don’t know, bravado, boredom, who knows. I thought, yeah. Just once. So we did it. It was exhilarating. We didn’t take any of the money. The Town was the sole beneficiary. It was just to do it. So we did it again, until it became routine. We set up a small ledger account to take in the proceeds. I was actually thinking I’d spring it on the Board of Trustees some day, hand them a nice hunk of dough, smooth over the fact that we were sending the municipality’s entire working capital to God knows where every night.”
“Enter Jeff Milhouser.”
“He’d gone to Roy first, thinking a junior loan officer would be an easier touch. He thought I’d be the stone wall, if I’d even talk to him. He was already skating on thin ice with the board after some goofy deal with road salt. The guy was always working some angle, but he had friends all over town, including on the board, and frankly things weren’t very well monitored in those days.”
“Roy cooked up the scheme.”
“Sure. He was ready to go to another level, way beyond anything I ever thought of. For me it was just a game. Roy had much greater ambition than that.”
“So I hear,” I said.
“I didn’t know they were doing it until it was underway. Roy swept one of the big Town accounts, but instead of sending it out to the investment houses it went right into Milhouser’s account and from there into a six-month CD. Just long enough to produce the paperwork that would satisfy the underwriters that he was good for a big loan. I know this because my signature was on Milhouser’s loan application. Roy stuck it under my nose, told me what they’d been doing, and essentially said either I sign it or he’d blow the whistle on the sweeps game. I couldn’t believe my ears. I told him he’d go down with me, but he pointed out that I was the head of lending. He was just a junior guy following instructions. And by the way, he’d kept meticulous accounting of every unauthorized transaction, none of which carried his name, all of which carried mine.
“For the next few months I did everything I could to cover the Town’s reduced working capital, but it was impossible. I hardly said another word to Roy Battiston, or Milhouser. The fools assumed I’d be able to keep a lid on everything, that I’d have to because my career and reputation were at stake. But I couldn’t.”
“So you cut a deal,” I said.
“It wasn’t easy. Milhouser was furious. But I got him to understand that while he had hooks in me, I had hooks in him. If we cooperated we’d get through it with minimum damage. If we fought, it’d be mutually assured destruction.”
“So,” I said, “the deal was you’d guarantee the bank wouldn’t press charges. You’d take the hit with the Town for sweeping the Town accounts, but he’d have to cop to borrowing the funds to collateralize his loan. Since they were stuck in a CD there was no way around that. You’d also threatened the bank’s board with a public relations nightmare if they made too big a deal over it. It was in everyone’s interest that the whole matter die out quickly and quietly. That included, of course, both you and Milhouser leaving Town government.”
“Very good, Sam,” said Zack. “You must know something about small-town politics.”
“Nah. But I’m a quick learner. Speaking of which, I think I also know what Roy got out of the deal.”
“My job,” said Zack, with a bitter laugh. “That was his goal all along. All he wanted was to trap me in something he could use to pry me out of there. I’d already put my neck in the noose the first time I made an unauthorized investment. Milhouser, a skunk of the same stripe, just facilitated the execution. I had to leave anyway. The bank manager worked out a resolution, which he agreed to do for the same PR reasons as the Town. But he needed my head as part of the bargain. I was happy to give it to him and get the hell away from Southampton. And Roy Battiston.”
“Not far enough, apparently,” I said.
“The second stupidest thing I ever did was not moving to Montana or Costa Rica. I tried, but my wife wouldn’t leave Long Island, and I couldn’t tell her why we should. As long as I was nearby, and in government, that
