The Dark Tide Free for a Limited Time (7 page)

It took him by surprise that night, Hauck decided as he dabbed at the canvas in the small two-bedroom home he rented on Euclid Avenue in Stamford, overlooking Holly Cove.

Another marina scene. A sloop in a harbor, sails down. Pretty much the same scene from his deck. It was all he ever painted. Boats…

Jessie was in her room, watching TV, sending text messages. They’d had a pizza at Mona Lisa in town and went to the new animated release. Jess pretended to be bored. He’d enjoyed it.

“It’s for, like, three-year-olds, Daddy.” She rolled her eyes.

“Oh.” He stopped pushing it. “The penguins were cool.”

Hauck liked it here. A block from the small cove. His little two-story sixties Cape. The owner had fixed it up. From the deck off the second floor, where the living room was, you could see Long Island Sound. A French couple lived next door, Richard and Jacqueline, custom furniture restorers—their workshop was out in their garage—and they always invited him to their parties, full of lots of people with crazy accents and not-half-bad wine.

Yes, it took him by surprise. What he was feeling. How he had noticed her eyes—brown and fetchingly wide. How laughter seemed a natural fit in them. The little lilt in her voice, as if she weren’t from around here. Her auburn hair tied back in a youthful ponytail.

How she stuffed that raffle ticket into his pocket and tried to make him smile.

Unlike Beth. When
her
world fell apart.

Hauck traced a narrow line from the sailboat’s mast and blended it into the blue of the sea. He stared. It sucked.

No one would exactly confuse him with Picasso.

She had asked him if Jess was his youngest, and he had replied, pausing for what seemed an eternity—
my only
. He could have told her. She would have understood. She was going through it, too.

C’mon, Ty, why does it always have to come back to this?

They’d had everything then. He and Beth. It was hard to remember how they were once so in love. How she once thought he was the sexiest man alive. And he, her.

My only…

What had he forgotten at the store that made him rush back in? Pudding Snacks….

Jamming the van hastily into park. How many times had he done that—and it stayed? A thousand?
A hundred thousand?

“Watch out, guys. Daddy’s got to back out of the garage….”

As he headed back to the garage, receipt in hand, wallet in hand, they heard the shriek. Jessie’s.

Beth’s frozen eyes—
“Oh, my God, Ty, no!”
—as through the kitchen window they watched the van roll back.

Norah never even uttered a sound.

Hauck laid down his brush. He rested his forehead on the heel of his hand. It had cost him his marriage. It had cost him ever being able to look in the mirror without starting to cry. For the longest time, being able to put his arms around Jess and hug her.

Everything.

His mind came back to that morning. The freckles dancing on her cheek. It made him smile.

Get real, Ty…. She probably drives a car worth more than your 401(k). She’s just lost her husband. A different life, maybe.

A different time.

But it surprised him as he picked up the brush again. What he was thinking…what it made him feel.

Awakened.

And that was strange, he decided. Because nothing surprised him anymore.

December

Their lives had just begun to get back on some kind of even keel. Sam was applying to colleges, Tufts and Bucknell, her top choices. Karen had made the obligatory visits with her.

That was when the two men from Archer knocked on her door.

“Mrs. Friedman?” the shorter one stood at the door and inquired. He had a chiseled face and close-cropped light hair, was wearing a gray business suit under a raincoat. The other was gaunt and taller with horn-rim glasses, carrying a leather lawyer’s briefcase.

“We’re from a private auditing firm, Mrs. Friedman. Do you mind if we come in?”

At first it flashed through Karen’s mind that they might be from the government fund that was being set up for victims’ families. She’d heard through her support group that these people could be pretty officious and cold. She opened the door.

“Thank you.” The light-haired one had a slight European ac
cent and handed her a card. Archer and Bey Associates. Johannesburg, South Africa. “My name is Paul Roos, Mrs. Friedman. My partner is Alan Gillespie. We won’t take too much of your time. Do you mind if we sit down?”

“Of course…” Karen said, a little hesitant. There
was
something cool and impersonal about them. She glanced closer at their cards. “If this is about my husband, you know Saul Lennick of the Whiteacre Capital Group is overseeing the disposition of the funds.”

“We’ve been in touch with Mr. Lennick,” answered Roos, a little matter-of-factly. He took a step toward the living room. “If you wouldn’t mind…”

She took them over to the couch.

“You have a lovely home, Mrs. Friedman,” Roos told her, looking around intently.

“Thank you. You said you were auditors,” Karen replied. “I think my husband was handled by someone out of the city. Ross and Weiner—I don’t recall your firm’s name.”

“We’re actually not here on behalf of your husband, Mrs. Friedman”—the South African crossed his legs—“but on the part of some of his investors.”

“Investors?”

Karen knew that Morgan Stanley was Charlie’s largest by far. Then came the O’Flynns and the Hazens, who had been with him since he began.

“Which ones?” Karen stared at him, puzzled.

Roos looked at her with a hesitant smile. “Just…
investors.
” That smile began to make Karen feel ill at ease.

His partner, Gillespie, opened his briefcase. “You received proceeds from the liquidation of your husband’s firm assets, did you not, Mrs. Friedman?”

“This sounds more like an audit.” Karen tightened. “Yes. Is there something wrong?” The funds had just been finalized. Charlie’s share, after some final expenses to close down the firm,
came to a little less than $4 million. “Maybe if you just told me what this is about.”

“We’re looking back through certain transactions,” Gillespie said, dropping a large bound report in front of him on the coffee table.

“Look, I never got very involved at all in my husband’s business,” Karen answered. This was starting to make her worried. “I’m sure if you spoke to Mr. Lennick—”

“Shortfalls,
actually,” the accountant corrected himself, clear-eyed.

Karen didn’t like these people. She didn’t know why they were here. She peered at the business cards again. “You said you were auditors?”

“Auditors, and forensic investigators, Mrs. Friedman,” Paul Roos told her.

“Investigators…?”

“We’re trying to piece through certain aspects of your husband’s firm,” Gillespie explained. “The records are proving to be a little…shall we call it
hazy.
We realize that as an independent hedge fund, he was not bound by certain formalities.”

“Listen, I think you’d better go. I think you’d be better off if you took this to—”

“But what is clearly inescapable,” the accountant continued, “is that there seems to be a considerable amount of money
missing.
”

“Missing…”
Karen met his eyes, holding back anger. Saul had never mentioned anything about any missing money. “That’s why you’re here? Well, isn’t that just too bad, Mr. Gillespie? My husband’s dead, as you seem to know. He went in to work one morning eight months ago and never came home again. So please, tell me”—her eyes burned through him like X-rays, and she stood up—“just how much money are we talking about, Mr. Gillespie? I’ll go get my purse.”

“We’re speaking of two hundred and fifty million dollars,
Mrs. Friedman,” the accountant said. “Do you happen to keep that much in cash?”

Karen’s heart almost stopped. She sat back down, the words striking her like bullets. The accountant’s expression never changed.

“What the hell are you saying?”

Roos took over again, edging slightly forward. “What we’re saying is that there’s a hell of a lot of money unaccounted for in your husband’s firm, Mrs. Friedman. And our clients want us to find out where it is.”

Two hundred and fifty million.
Karen was too stunned to even laugh. The proceeds had been finalized without a hitch. Charlie’s entire business was barely larger than that.

She looked back into their dull, unchanging eyes. She knew they were implying something about her husband. Charlie was dead. He couldn’t defend himself.

“I’m not sure we have anything further to discuss, Mr. Gillespie, Mr. Roos.” Karen stood again. She wanted these men to leave. She wanted them out of her house. Now. “I told you, I never got involved in my husband’s business. You’ll have to address your concerns to Mr. Lennick. I’d like you to go.”

The accountants looked at each other. Gillespie folded his file back into his briefcase and clasped it shut. They rose.

“We don’t mean any insult, Mrs. Friedman,” Roos said in a more conciliatory tone. “What I would tell you, though, is that there may well be some sort of investigation launched. I wouldn’t be spending any of those proceeds you received just yet.” He smiled transparently and glanced around.

“Like I said, you have a lovely home…. But it’s only fair to warn you.” He turned at the door. “Your personal accounts may have to be looked at, too.”

The hairs on Karen’s arms stood on edge.

It took just minutes, frantic ones, for Karen to get Saul Lennick on the phone.

It was hard for his office to find him. He was out of the country, on business. But his secretary heard the agitation in Karen’s voice. Finally they tracked him down.

“Karen…?”

“Saul, I’m sorry to bother you.” She was almost on the verge of tears. She told him about the upsetting visit she’d had with two men from Archer.

“Who?”

“They’re from something called Archer and Bey Associates. They’re auditors, forensic investigators. It’s says they’re out of South Africa. They said they spoke with you.”

He made her go through every detail again, injecting a few sharp questions about their names and specifically what they said.

“Karen, listen. First, I want to assure you this is nothing you have to be concerned about. Harbor’s partnership dissolution is moving along smoothly, and I promise you it’s one hundred
percent by the book. For the record, yes, Charlie may have taken a few losses at the end. He bet pretty heavily on some Canadian oil leases that took a hit.”

“Who
are
these people, Saul?”

“I don’t know. Some overseas accounting group, I suspect, but I’ll find out. They could have been hired by some of Charles’s investors over there, hoping to hold up the process.”

“They’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, Saul! You know Charlie didn’t handle money like that. They were making these insinuations, warning me not to spend any of the proceeds. That’s Charlie’s money, Saul! It was creepy. They told me our personal accounts might be examined, too.”

“That’s not going to happen, Karen. Look, there are some details pending that someone could make some issues on if they wanted—”

“What kind of details, Saul?” She hadn’t heard any of that before.

“Maybe some plays one could question. A glitch or two in one of Charles’s lending agreements. But I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. This isn’t the time.”

“Charlie’s dead, Saul! He can’t defend himself. I mean, how many times did I hear him fretting over goddamn nickels and dimes for his clients? Fractions of a fucking point. And
these
people, making innuendos like that…They had no right to come here, Saul.”

“Karen, I want to assure you there’s no basis at all to what they’re talking about. Whoever they are, they’re just trying to stir up trouble. And they just went about it the wrong way.”

“Yeah, Saul, they did.” The fury in her blood began to recede. “They damn well did go about it the wrong way. I don’t want them back in my house again. Thank God Samantha and Alex weren’t here.”

“Listen, I want you to fax me that card, Karen. I’ll look into it from here. I promise, I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

“Charlie was a reputable guy, Saul. You know that better than anyone.”

“I know that, Karen. Charlie was like a second son to me. You realize I always have your interests at heart.”

She pushed the hair off her face to cool herself down. “I do….”

“Send me the card, Karen. And I want to be the first to know if they contact you again.”

“Thank you, Saul.”

Suddenly something strange came over Karen, an unexplainable rush of tears. Sometimes it just happened like that. Out of nowhere. The thought of having to defend her husband. She let a few seconds elapse on the line while she regained control.

“I mean it, Saul…. Really, thank you.”

Her husband’s mentor told her softly, “You don’t even have to say it, Karen.”

H
E DIDN’T HAVE
the heart to tell her now. Or the will.

Lennick replaced the house phone in its cradle in the Old World lobby of the Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel in Munich.

A week ago his contact from the Royal Bank of Scotland had called, one of the lenders he had arranged for Charlie, who advanced his firm funds. It sounded perfunctory. The banker had a tone of slight concern.

A random check of an oil tanker by a customs official in Jakarta had reached their attention.

Lennick’s heart had come to a stop. He wheeled around back to his desk. “Why?”

“Some kind of discrepancy,” the banker explained, “in the stated contents of the cargo.” Which was declared to have been 1.4 million barrels of oil.

The tanker was found to be empty, the bank official declared.

Lennick had turned ashen.

“I’m sure there’s simply been some kind of mistake,” the Scottish banker said to him. It seemed that 1.4 million barrels at sixty-six dollars per had been previously pledged by Charles Friedman as collateral against their loan.

The banker cleared his throat. “Is there any cause for alarm?”

Lennick felt a shiver of concern race down his spine. He’d look into it, he told the man, and that was enough to make the banker feel appeased. But as soon as he put down the phone, Lennick closed his eyes.

He thought of Charlie’s recent losses, the pressure he’d been under. The pressure they’d all been under. How heavily he’d leveraged up on his funds.

You stupid son of a bitch, Charlie.
Lennick sighed. He reached for the phone and started to dial a number.
How could you be so desperate, you fool, so careless? Don’t you have any idea who these people are?

People who didn’t like to be looked into. Or have their affairs examined. Now everything had to be reconstructed.
Everything, Charlie.

Even now, weeks later, in the Vier Jahreszeiten’s lobby, the banker’s all-too-delicate question made Lennick’s mouth go dry.

Is there any cause for alarm?