supply black women to Bob Cooper through the good offices of your seminar scams.'
'My seminars are not scams,' O'Mara said.
I ignored him.
'In return for which, I suspect, but can't prove yet, he turned a blind eye to what was going on with Rowley and Eisen.'
'We were doing nothing illegal,' Bernie said.
'Meanwhile, in my theory, Gavin, being Cooper's keeper, so to speak, got wind, because getting wind was his job, of some problems. Something was wrong in the company's cash flow, some of the company's top executives were living sort of exotic sex lives.'
'Our sex life is our private business,' Ellen said.
'There is nothing illegal about it,' Bernie said.
The little dab of saliva was still there at the corner of Lance's mouth. But he wasn't saying fuck you to me at the moment, which seemed progress. O'Mara was quiet too, but his shoulders had grown more rigid. He was probably the smartest of the group, and he might have known, while the rest of them were still denying it, that the jig was up.
'And his own beloved Yale buddy and CEO was exercising some sexual bad judgment of his own. Now, it would have been one thing if Gavin hadn't cared about Cooper. And it would have been something else if Cooper didn't want to get elected senator, and, later, president.'
'I'm not going to listen to any more of this,' O'Mara said, and stood up stiffly.
I t was an empty gesture, and it was almost as if he knew it. 'We won't let you leave until we're finished,' I said.
O'Mara looked at me for a moment and then at Hawk. Hawk smiled at him and gave a little what-can-I-say shrug. O'Mara shook his head wearily and sat back down.
'But Cooper did want to be senator, and did want to be president; and Gavin did care about him, and maybe about being close to a guy who was president. So he hired a couple of private eyes to follow some wives around and see what he could learn about the wife-swapping. Meanwhile, Marlene Rowley came to believe that Trent and Ellen had stepped out of bounds in the wife-swapping deal, and Marlene decided to secure her position in case of divorce proceedings, so she hired me to follow Trent in case he and Ellen decided to walk into the sunset together. Incidentally, clever devil, he told each of the private eyes he was the aggrieved husband so he wouldn't blow his position and bring shame to Coop and Kinergy.'
They had all given up posturing. They seemed if not actually interested, at least accepting of the proposition that they had to listen to me.
'Now here's what I don't know, but seems a good guess. Things are going swimmingly for Eisen and Rowley. They know that Kinergy is going to implode pretty soon. But they are successfully keeping stock prices up, and unloading their stock in smallish batches so as not to cause a stir on Wall Street.'
I paused and looked at them. Then I looked at Hawk.
'I always hoped,' I said to Hawk, 'that I'd have a case where one day I could use the phrase `cause a stir on Wall Street.' '
'Not much left to live for,' Hawk said.
'So,' I said to the group again, 'it's a kind of race to get their money out before the company went bankrupt. And they're winning the race, but Rowley gets an unfortunate case of conscience. We're destroying a great company, he says, employees will lose their pensions, he says, we can't do this, he says.'
I stopped and looked at Eisen. 'Something like that?' I said.
E isen didn't speak. He just shook his head, trying to look bemused and disgusted. He looked scared to me.
'So he says he's going public, going to tell the SEC, whatever, and, Bernie, you find that unacceptable. It'll cost you millions of dollars. It might cost O'Mara and Devaney millions of dollars, in any case, you have to do something. My guess is that you went to O'Mara, and O'Mara turned to his in-house serial killer, and Lance, of course, is about to wet himself at the prospect of indulging his hobby and pleasing his lover at the same time.'
When I said 'lover' Ellen Eisen's head jerked around toward O'Mara. I looked at Hawk. He raised his eyebrows and nodded. He'd seen it too.
'You didn't know that Darrin and Lance are a couple?' I said.
E llen looked at O'Mara.
'Darrin?' she said.
'Matters of the heart know no restrictions,' O'Mara said.
I t was limp, but the best he could do. I think he knew it was limp. I think he knew it was all going to go south, and take him with it. And I think he had given up, and most of what he did now was reflexive motion. Ellen stared at Lance.
'Him?' she said.
O'Mara didn't bother to answer.
'And just what was going to happen to us when the time came?' Ellen said.
This time Bernie's head jerked around. 'What time came?' he said.
I looked at Hawk. He grinned. It was beginning to boil.
'When you got the money,' she said.
