“I don’t want to talk to you,” she said. “You’re hazardous to my health.”
“I need to see you. We have to talk.”
“Wrong. We have nothing to talk about. You are a menace. I mean it. Don’t call again. Goodbye.”
She pressed the red button on the phone and ended the call. The phone rang again, twice, from the same number, and she let it roll over to voice mail both times. Ten minutes later, there was a call from a “private number,” not otherwise identified. She ignored that one, too.
Marx put on her jeans and black leather and walked the half dozen blocks across Mayfair to the handsome building that housed Alphabet Capital. It was a Friday afternoon and the pubs along the way were already crowded with merry-makers, spilling onto the sidewalks with their pints of beer and their wine coolers. As she threaded the crowds, several men offered to buy her a round.
The police had departed Perkins’s building. When the elevator door opened at the top floor, the Alphabet offices looked depopulated, with perhaps a third of the normal contingent on the trading floor. The boisterous feeling she remembered was gone, too; it had the dazed and enervated look of a business in liquidation. Marx walked toward Perkins’s office. The door was shut and the windows that looked out on the trading floor were curtained.
Perkins’s secretary, Mona, was sitting alone at what had been a bank of three assistants. Her eyes were red from days of sleeplessness and crying. She saw Marx approach and pulled back at first. The American woman was part of the problem that had capsized her boss and his firm.
“Where have you been?” she asked Marx. “You missed all the, what, action, but that’s not quite the right word. More like a typhoon.”
“I was away. What happened? It’s so quiet. It looks like they just had a funeral here.”
“Might as well have been. There police were here all week. They just left this morning. Shut the place down, you might say. Took whatever they liked: half the files, and the proprietor, too.”
“Where’s Mr. Perkins? I’ve been trying to reach him for two days. He doesn’t answer my calls and he doesn’t respond to messages.”
“Don’t you know what happened, miss?”
“No, Mona, I have no idea. I told you, I’ve been away. Where is he?”
“He’s in prison, ma’am. They took him off two days ago. He’s in Pentonville now, or so they say. Mr. Tarullo has been up to visit. He’s the only one.”
“I need to see him. It’s really important. Can you contact him for me?”
The secretary shook her head sorrowfully. Her life had been devoted to making arrangements for people to see Thomas Perkins, and now she was useless.
“I told you, he’s in prison. No phone, no mobile, no visitors that aren’t on the list. You have to apply to the warden. And he isn’t seeing most people, I should warn you, only his attorneys. He thinks it’s better that way, or at least that’s what Mr. Tarullo told us.”
Marx got Tarullo’s number from the secretary and called him. The American lawyer sounded harassed and grumpy. Marx gave him her name and said she needed to visit Perkins in prison, but Tarullo sounded uninterested. Perkins, in his desire to protect her, had never mentioned her name to his lawyer.
Tarullo said he was preparing to leave for the States that night on the last British Airways flight, to “shake the tree,” as he put it.
“Who the hell are you, anyway?” he asked. “I never heard of you. Who do you work for?”
Marx thought a minute. She didn’t have time to play games and neither, evidently, did Tarullo.
“I work for the U.S. government. That’s all I want to say on the phone. But I’m a friend of Mr. Perkins’s, for real, and I suspect he doesn’t have too many right now. I need to see him.”
Now Tarullo was a little more interested. The busy lawyer’s go-away tone changed to something more solicitous.
“You work for a part of the government that doesn’t like to say that it’s the government. Am I right?”
“Yes. ‘I could tell you more but then I’d have to…’ You know the line. Can we talk?”
Tarullo decided to take a flyer. He had to leave for the airport soon, and he needed to know if this call was worth his time.
“Let me ask you something, whoever you are. Do you know anything about someone named Anthony Cronin?”
“Yes. I know all about him.”
“You’re shitting me. For real?”
“Yes. That’s why I need to see Mr. Perkins.”
“Not so fast, sister. Before you see Tom, you’re coming to see me. Can you get over to my hotel right now? I’m catching the eight o’clock flight to JFK, and I have to leave for Heathrow in an hour, max. I’m at the Park Lane Intercon. I’ll be in the bar. Ask the concierge for Mr. Tarullo.”
He was there, waiting impatiently, when she arrived ten minutes later. She didn’t have to ask the man at the desk. It was obvious that the big guy staring at his watch, the one with the slicked-back hair and the look of a superannuated pop star, must be Vincent Tarullo. He had already packed and was dressed for the flight in baggy slacks and a velour jacket. His eyes lit up when he saw her walking toward him.
“Howdy do,” he said, sticking out a meaty hand. “Buy you a drink?”
“I think we’re better off taking a walk,” said Marx, taking his arm. “A lot of people would like to hear what we’re going to talk about.”
They exited the hotel and took the underpass beneath Hyde Park Corner that led toward the green oval of the park. If there was surveillance, it was well organized; there was no sign of anyone following or watching.
“I need to see Tom Perkins,” she began, taking his arm and leaning in close. “I’m part of the reason he’s in this mess, and I think I can help get him out.”
“Where were you when I needed you, lady? The poor man is in prison now. They’re about to nail him with enough fraud charges to put him away for a long time. You picked a strange time to get in touch.”
“I was traveling. I can’t explain any more, except that I was dealing with the fallout from the same mess that got your client in all this trouble.”
They emerged from the tunnel into the light and turned north, heading up a pathway that traversed a bower of trees along Park Lane.
“My client thinks he can get off,” the lawyer said. “He says they’re bluffing. The CIA will never let them prosecute this case because of all the secrets that would come out.”
“Your client is right. This is all a house of cards. He was the cover for something very secret. They used him, and now they want to make him the fall guy. But it won’t work.”
“Oh, yeah? It seems to be working pretty good so far. Why is that going to change?”
“Because I’m ready to talk. I’ll testify in court if I have to. You can tell that to people in Washington tomorrow. Sophie Marx is prepared to testify about everything she knows concerning Tom Perkins and his firm, and its connections to the U.S. government. How’s that?”
“Pretty damn good.”
Tarullo looked at his watch. If he wasn’t in the cab and on the way to Heathrow in thirty minutes, he would miss his flight. He spoke quietly, even in the hush of the wooded glen.
“Level with me. I’m running out of time. Who’s Anthony Cronin? You said on the phone that you knew about him. Where can I find him?”
“You can’t. He doesn’t exist. His real name is Jeffrey Gertz. He’s the one who contacted Tom in the beginning and arranged to use Alphabet Capital as a front company. He’s the one who’s taking it apart now, to cover his tracks.”
“Shit! No wonder nobody had heard of him. Can I use his name when I talk with people in D.C.? It’s G-E-R- T-Z, right?”
“Yes, but be careful. This man is toxic. I mean it. Don’t use his name with people unless you trust them.”
They were moving west now, out of the trees and across the grass toward the Serpentine. Tarullo looked at his watch again.
“Listen, I have to head back now or I won’t get out of here tonight. What can I do for you before I go? What do you need?”
