not—help you.” Peter stood and prepared to leave. “This is pointless—”
“Two more minutes.” Dawson reached across and grabbed Peter’s hand.
Peter pulled his hand away. “I told you: go see our attorneys.”
“Your mother sent me some documents, a few weeks before she died.”
The words hit bull’s-eye and Peter sat back down, drawing a skeptical bead on Dawson.
The agent continued: “The papers came anonymously. It took me until this week to track down who sent them. That person was Hannah Neil.”
Peter put his palms on the table and leaned his upper body on his rigid arms. “I don’t believe you.”
“I traced the paper to her law firm—also Stenman Partners’ law firm—the firm you keep telling me to contact. We lifted fingerprints from the letter she sent to my attention. I had them matched with all the employees, but came up empty.”
“Empty? What’s your point?”
“Think about it. I got no matches because your mother is dead. I couldn’t figure it out at first. Then, I checked a list of employees from April. The name Hannah Neil, deceased, jumped at me. It took a while—since nobody at her law firm had any interest in cooperating—but we finally got a match.”
“What was on those pages?”
“Information implicating a couple of clients of Leeman, Johnston, and Ayers in fraud, manipulation, pumping and dumping.” Dawson hesitated to let the revelation sink in, then continued. “Jackson Securities. Man by the name of Cannodine and another by the name of Drucker. I’m sure you remember them both.”
Peter sat up, thinking back to that final morning with his mother. These revelations fit with her anxiety over certain clients. “You’re suggesting what?” Peter asked.
“Did your mother say or leave you anything?”
“No.”
“You sure? Maybe she gave you an envelope. Even someone else’s name—a contact.”
“My mother was upset the day she died, and maybe what you’re telling me has something to do with that. But she didn’t say much of anything. There were no documents, no names.”
Peter didn’t know how to react to this strange man. By people he worked with, he’d been told not to trust Dawson. His ignorance felt like a blessing.
“Here’s my card,” Dawson said, sliding it across the table. “If anything turns up, call. Who knows? One day you might need me as a friend.”
“I won’t need this,” Peter said. “I already told you: I don’t have any information.”
“You never know. Something may—”
“Nothing’s going to show up. Goodbye, Agent Dawson.”
“I’m not going to be far away, Peter. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll eventually come calling. Without someone on the inside, or additional papers from your mother, I’ve got nowhere else to go.”
The words “go to hell” popped into and out of Peter’s head. “You make that sound like some kind of threat,” he said.
“I’m not the one you need to be afraid of. I told you about Cannodine. This Zerets person took out a dozen others in that little massacre. Then there’s your mother and that money manager, Stanley Drucker. People are ending up dead, which means somebody’s playing for keeps. In a way, you’re lucky. Since you don’t have much family, you’re a tougher nut to crack than the others. They’ll go after your friends if they need to, but family—for them, that’s the best leverage.”
Peter tried and failed to control his mounting anger. “Who are you after? Leeman, Johnston, Ayers? Maybe Morgan Stenman? Some other hedge funds? Who? And why?”
Dawson’s flattened palm slammed on the table. “Isn’t it obvious? The bad guys. And that’s
Dawson took a swig of cola. The pause had no effect on his passion. “Originally the bastards were just plain old crooks,” he continued with mounting zeal, “bending laws, trading off inside information. You know, doing all that stuff everybody knows is rampant—stuff we wink at in the locker rooms of our swank country clubs before a round of golf. Well, Mr. Great Expectations, I don’t play fucking golf, and these guys I’m chasing aren’t doing garden- variety lawbreaking any more. They’ve gone big-time on me. Financial titans have married their operations with thugs, using the time-proven tactics of intimidation, elimination, deterrence. Call it whatever you want. And like it or not, you’re the man who’s smack dab in the middle of it all. And that’s likely to make being stuck between a rock and a hard place look like Fiji.”
Peter’s fist clenched. “You tell a good story, Agent Dawson, but it doesn’t wash. The Russian guy who bombed Jackson was a day-trader with documented losses. He blew himself up. There’s not enough jack in the world to pay a guy to do that. That drunk money manager was a loser who simply snapped. I saw that one on television. My mother was an accident. An off-duty cop was a witness.”
Peter rose and took a couple of steps towards the exit.
“Neil!”
Peter turned his head.
“You remember those guys in the savings and loan industry who bought all those crappy junk bonds back in the eighties—many in violation of their charters?” Dawson paused to let the question sink in.
Peter recalled Aimie St. Claire’s stories about Drexel, Burnham, Mike Milken, junk bonds, and the collapse of the savings and loan industry. Only now, nothing about what she had said struck him as funny.
Dawson nodded, as if he heard Peter’s thoughts. “These guys—these crooks—got paid in cash, hot deals, prostitutes, and inside information. All of that for swindling investors and causing the loss of hundreds of billions of dollars. You hear about the New York and LA cop scandals? Undercover agents killing informants, stealing drugs, taking payoffs?
“Yeah. You’ve heard. I ask you: how much does it take to bribe a bad cop to fabricate a story about a widow, crashing into a piling, her car bursting into flames? Ten grand? A hundred grand? A million? Is that a lot of money in your world of high-powered investment? Stenman and her cronies have more millions than most of us have brain cells. No sir, it’s not a lot to spend to squash a threat. And oh yeah, whatever you do, don’t call the SEC without clearing it with me first—we’ve got at least one guy who’s crossed the line. And the longer you wait,” Dawson continued, “the harder it’ll be to get you out safely. Have a nice night, Neil.”
Five minutes later—and just twenty-two minutes after leaving the sports bar—Peter was back. Drinking champagne with Kat, he wondered why she kept asking so many questions about the diminutive insurance agent who had accosted him earlier that evening.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
FOR THREE DAYS, AGENT DAWSON STUMBLED OVER TORN CARPET, watched non-cable television, ate vending machine sandwiches, chewed cinnamon buns with sticky icing glued to cellophane, and drank burnt coffee and warm Diet Coke. He had hoped to hear from Peter Neil before having to return to Washington. It was now clear that such luck wasn’t in the cards. But he had planted a seed, he assured himself. Would it take root in fertile soil? Neil was a bright boy—he’d begin to put the pieces together. The question remained, though: would Neil care? Few people risked everything for principle. Look what happened to his mother. If Neil didn’t come around, could he be blamed?
Such were the thoughts mucking around Dawson’s tired brain during three days of doing just one thing— waiting. Better to leave, he decided. Go back to work as if nothing happened, and be ready to drop everything if and when he got his break.
On the evening of the fourth day, back in D.C., Oliver Dawson wriggled across his kitchen table to hold Angela Newman’s hand. Now that he had made contact with Peter Neil, he needed to ask for her help. Afraid to break the news, he began by beating around the bush.
When Angela couldn’t take any more of his rambling, she said, “Oliver, you have something on your mind. You still like me, don’t you?”
