his hands over his head.
“Good decision,” Will told him.
Darla rushed up the aisle with a handful of plastic wrist restraints, and with the help of other passengers, the three friends were cuffed. Will lowered his weapon and slid it back under his coat then called out to the marshal, “We’re clear back here.” Breathing heavily, he lumbered back to his seat to the accompaniment of thunderous applause from the entire cabin. He wondered if he’d be able to get back to sleep.
The taxi pulled away from the curb. Even though it was evening, the desert heat was still stunning, and Will welcomed the frosty interior.
“Where to?” the cabbie asked.
“Who do you think’s got the better room?” Will asked.
Darla pushed at his ribs playfully. “An airline room or a government one, it’s probably the same.” She leaned in and whispered, “But honey, I don’t think we’re going to notice.”
They were looping around the perimeter of McCarran heading toward the Strip. Parked next to a remote hangar, Will noticed a cluster of three white 737s, unmarked except for red body stripes. “What airline is that?” he asked Darla.
“That’s the Area 51 shuttle,” she replied. “They’re military planes.”
“You’re joking.”
The cabbie needed to participate. “She ain’t kidding. It’s the worst-kept secret in Vegas. We got hundreds of government scientists who commute there every day. They got alien spaceships they’re trying to make work, that’s what I hear.”
Will chuckled. “I’m sure whatever it is, it’s a waste of taxpayer money. Believe it or not, I think I know a guy who works there.”
Nelson Elder presided over a culture of fitness. He vigorously exercised every morning and expected members of his senior management team to do likewise. “No one wants to see a fat insurance guy,” he’d tell them, least of all him. He had a gold-plated prejudice against the unfit that bordered on revulsion, a vestige of growing up poor in Bakersfield, California, where poverty and obesity commingled in his hardscrabble mobile home park. He didn’t hire obese people, and if he insured them, he made damn sure they paid hefty risk-adjusted premiums.
His bronzed skin still tingled from his three-mile run and stinging steam shower, and as he sat in his corner office, with its fine view of chocolate-brown mountains and an aquamarine finger of Lake Mead, he felt as well physically as a sixty-one-year-old man could. His tailored suit form-fitted his tight frame and his athletic heart beat slowly. Yet mentally he was in turmoil, and his cup of herbal tea was doing little to settle him.
Bertram Myers, Desert Life’s CFO, was at his door panting heavily and sweating like a racehorse. He was twenty years younger than his boss, his hair wiry and black, but he was a lesser athlete.
“Good run?” Elder asked.
“Excellent, thanks,” Myers answered. “Had yours yet?”
“You bet.”
“How come you’re in so early?”
“F.B. fucking I. Remember?”
“Jesus, I forgot. I’m going to hop in the shower. Want me to sit in?”
“No, I’ll handle it,” Elder said.
“You worried? You look worried.”
“I’m not worried. I think it is what it is.”
Myers agreed. “Exactly, it is what it is.”
Will had a short cab ride to the Desert Life headquarters in Henderson, a bedroom town south of Vegas near Lake Mead. To him, Elder looked like something out of central casting, a prototypical silver-fox CEO, easy with his wealth and station. The executive leaned back in his chair and attempted to lower Will’s expectations. “As I said on the phone, Special Agent Piper, I’m not sure if I can help you. This may be a long trip for a short meeting.”
“Don’t worry about that, sir,” Will replied. “I had to come out here anyway.”
“I saw in the news that you’d made an arrest in New York.”
“I’m not at liberty to comment about an ongoing investigation,” Will said, “but I think you can assume if I thought the case was wrapped up, I probably wouldn’t have come out here. I wonder if you could tell me about your relationship with David Swisher?”
According to Elder, there wasn’t all that much to tell. They had met six years earlier during one of Elder’s frequent visits to New York to meet with investors. At the time, HSBC was one of multiple banks courting Desert Life as a client, and Swisher, a senior managing director at the bank, was a rainmaker. Elder had gone to HS BC ’s headquarters, where Swisher led a pitch team.
Swisher followed-up aggressively by telephone and e-mail over the next year and his perseverance paid off. When Desert Life decided to place a bond offering in 2003 to fund an acquisition, Elder chose HS BC to lead the underwriting syndicate.
Will asked if Swisher had personally traveled to Las Vegas as part of that process.
Elder was certain he had not. He had a firm recollection that the company visits were handled by more junior bankers. Apart from the closing dinner in New York, the two men didn’t see each other again.
Had they communicated over the years?
Elder recalled an occasional phone call here and there.
And when was the last?
A good year ago. Nothing recent. They were on each other’s corporate holiday card lists but this was hardly an active relationship. When he read about Swisher’s murder, Elder said, he had of course been shocked.
Will’s line of questioning was interrupted by his Beethoven ring tone. He apologized and switched off the phone, but not before recognizing the caller ID number.
Why the hell was Laura calling?
He picked up his train of thought and fired off a list of follow-up questions. Had Swisher ever talked about a Las Vegas connection? Friends? Business contacts? Had he ever mentioned gambling or personal debts? Had he ever shared any aspect of his personal life? Did Elder know if he had any enemies?
The answer to all these was no. Elder wanted Will to understand that his relationship with Swisher was superficial, transient and transactional. He wished he could be more helpful but plainly he could not.
Will felt his disappointment rise like bile. The interview was going nowhere, another Doomsday dead end. Yet there was something niggling about Elder’s demeanor, a small discordant something. Was there a note of tension in his throat, a touch of glibness? Will didn’t know where his next question came from-maybe it sprung from a well of intuition. “Tell me, Mr. Elder, how’s your business doing?”
Elder hesitated for more than an imperceptible moment, a long enough pause for Will to conclude that he’d struck a nerve. “Well, business is very good. Why do you ask?”
“No reason, just curious. Let me ask you: most insurance companies are in places like Hartford, New York, major cities. Why Las Vegas, why Henderson?”
“Our roots are here,” Elder replied. “I built this company brick by brick. Right out of college, I started as an agent in a little brokerage in Henderson, about a mile from this office. We had six employees. I bought the place from the owner when he retired and renamed it Desert Life. We now have over eight thousand employees, coast- to-coast.”
“That’s very impressive. You must be very proud.”
“Thank you, I am.”
“And the insurance business, you say, is good.”
That tiny hesitation again. “Well, everybody needs insurance. There’s a lot of competition out there and the regulatory environment can be a challenge sometimes, but we’ve got a strong business.”
As he listened, Will noticed a leather pen holder on the desk, chock-full of black and red Pentel pens.
He couldn’t help himself. “Could I borrow one of your pens?” he asked, pointing. “A black one.”
“Sure,” Elder replied, puzzled.
It was an ultrafine point. Well, well.
He reached into his briefcase and pulled out a sheet of paper in a clear plastic cover, a Xerox copy of the front and back of Swisher’s postcard. “Could you take a look at this?”
Elder took the sheet and retrieved his reading glasses. “Chilling,” he said.
