“Yeah, him and that so-called CFO. Another real creep. They got stir-fried together against a mountainside.”
“Accident?”
“Why? You thinkin’ I did it?” She stopped and cackled, then it quickly developed into a nasty smoker’s hack.
He waited till the wracking noise stopped, then said, “Just, you know, it’s a little weird. We’ve tried to track down several of Primo’s board members from those years. Three of them-Nussman, Kohlman, Grossman-they’re all dead.”
“Are they?”
“Very.”
“Too bad.” Didn’t sound that way, though.
“Unhealthy place to work, huh?”
“Are you through?” she asked, stirring in her chair.
So far he had nothing. She was wearing her affection for Jack on her sleeve. Nothing interesting was going to come from the old hag unless he played it a little smarter. He gave her a hard, menacing stare as if he already knew the truth. “Thing is, a few sources told us there were serious tensions between Jack and your boss.”
“What sources?”
“I’m afraid I can’t divulge that.”
“You need to talk to better people, bud. As I remember, Jack was too canny to get caught in Kyle’s crosshairs. Real smart boy, that one.” She stood and brushed a few ashes off her coat.
“Then maybe you can help me here. Do you remember any of Jack’s close friends in the firm?”
A quick shrug. “He was an associate, I was the boss’s assistant. Wasn’t like we went out for drinks every night. I was too old for him anyways.” She finished off her cigarette and lazily tossed it into a clump of wild bushes.
“Please, this could be helpful. A few people dumped on Jack. Personally, I like him. I’d just like to balance the ledger a bit.”
Marigold thought about it a moment. She obviously didn’t trust him, but wanted to do Jack as much good as she could. “This is all I’ll tell ya. Talk to his assistant.”
“You have a name?”
“Yeah. Su Young… something. Chinese, maybe Korean.”
“How about an address?”
By now she had her back turned and was walking back to the house. “Lazy government bastards,” she remarked over her shoulder. “Go find her yourself.”
18
The Pentagon office of the Defense Criminal Investigative Service was located in room 5E322, on the fifth floor, almost midway on the outermost ring, indisputably the least desirable location in a building known for its lack of pleasant accommodations. The fortified doors hid a windowless warren of cubicles, in essence a large walk-in safe due to the sensitive nature of the work done inside these walls.
The room was designed for no more than twenty. Currently, forty investigators and assistants were crammed and pigeonholed into the space, at risk of suffocation.
Nicholas Garner, chief of the financial crimes division, cursed as he banged a shin on a stray chair, and fought and squeezed his way through the terrible sprawl of office furniture. He finally reached the seventh cubicle on the left, where he dropped an armful of papers on the desk. “I need you to plow through this.”
“When?”
“Today, Mia.”
Mia pushed away what she was doing and looked up. “What is it?”
“Mendelson Refineries.”
“Is this a quiz?”
“Midsize refining outfit. Located in Louisiana. Place called Garyville.”
“Is there some particular suspicion I’m supposed to hunt down?”
“You tell me.”
She picked up the thick stack of papers and began riffling through the pages. It was a chaotic mess-financial spreadsheets, billings, invoices, payment slips. Nicky had apparently ordered one of the overworked assistants to make a mad dash through the procurement directorate and dredge up every piece of paper dealing with Mendelson Refineries. It would take hours to go through it all. Then many more hours to separate the wheat from the chaff in a frenzied hunt for real evidence, if indeed any existed inside this mass of garbage. “Another inside tip?” she asked, sounding annoyed.
A quick nod. “Hotline, again. Male voice, anonymous, the usual. He swore up and down Mendelson’s cheating us blind.”
Mia sipped a Diet Coke and rolled her eyes.
Garner offered a stiff, apologetic smile. “I know, and I’m sorry. We did get a trace this time.”
“And where did it originate?”
“Pay phone outside Garyville. Maybe another prank, might be real. Standard rule applies-you don’t check, you don’t know.”
The hotline was a great idea that was rapidly souring into a dispiriting disaster. Sources were supposed to call the hotline number to report abuse or financial shenanigans, and this would trigger an investigation. The ratline, it was called. All tips were confidential and this was the beauty of it. No names, just blame.
The past few months, however, the hotline had been inundated with a suspiciously large number of reports of abuse or thievery. The callers were nearly all anonymous. All the calls had to be painstakingly looked into; very few panned out.
The heads of the DCIS now suspected that the industries that did business with the military were adding a new wrinkle to their never-ending ways to screw the government-send the investigators chasing after a flood of false leads and empty claims, and they would become too busy to watch and catch the real crooks. It seemed to be working, unfortunately. The room was full of bloodshot eyes. Sick days were shooting through the ceiling. Morale was sinking. Worse, since the calls picked up, overall convictions were down thirty percent.
Mia stared back in mock frustration. “Why me again, Nicky?”
Garner ignored the look and the comment. “The source claimed Mendelson’s undercutting deliveries by two percent. Last year, the Navy bought a hundred million in jet fuel from the company. All told, about two million in fraud.”
“Wonderful.” At thirty-one, Mia Jenson had four years of practicing law in the private sector, and now two hard years under her belt laboring in the trenches of the DCIS. It was a small agency with big responsibilities.
And by almost every measure, Mia Jenson was its most bizarre member.
A graduate of Dickinson College, early, compacting four years into three, then she attended Harvard Law, where she shot to the top of the class. Not number one, but an incredibly close number two, and had she not overloaded on securities courses, number one would’ve eaten her dust. She concentrated on corporate and contracts; two of her case studies made the law journal. She was associate editor of the law review her final year.
Beautiful, brilliant, fluent in two languages, she was courted and offered an associate job by twenty top firms. Almost all offered six figures with a dizzying array of perks.
She interviewed them. She spurned all offers to visit their firms; she insisted they come to her, peppered them with questions, and made it clear she was picky.
They didn’t mind, or at least they pretended not to. She was hot, she was in demand. They wanted her.
She turned down the top fourteen offers and settled eventually on a small, quirky boutique firm in D.C., at half the salary of her top offer, but the promise of a fast track to partnership. The money meant nothing to her, she insisted. The challenge and the nature of the work were all that mattered.
