Everything was a blur, including the ride out to Connecticut. I didn’t ring the bell at von Oehson’s house in Darien, I pounded on the door until my fist nearly bled. All the rage I had for him, the anger—it was beyond anything I’d ever felt, with only one exception. The fury I now felt for myself. How could I have let this happen?
I didn’t think about who might answer the door. I didn’t care. I was too busy thinking everything else through, how von Oehson had pulled it off. Foxx had the endgame down, but there were still dots to connect. One of them was Brunetti. For sure, he was in on it.
The mob boss, who had more security tech on his gambling boat alone than most maximum-security prisons, used a remote keystroke-logging software program. It was able to track and record every letter and number that Dorian Laszlo had input to initiate the transfer of the fifty million to him. That was their back door. That’s why he had insisted up front that there be no third-party institution involved, no shell company or phantom investment fund. Brunetti needed to be paid directly from the central bank of Hungary.
But the software he used, sophisticated as it is, only gets you to that back door. It doesn’t get you in. The Magyar Nemzeti Bank isn’t like an ordinary bank, with savings and checking accounts that you can simply withdraw from as you would an ATM, if you happened to know the password. The only money that goes out has to be allocated. In other words, Laszlo was able to transfer the fifty million to Brunetti because the amount had already been set aside for her by the bank.
So how did Brunetti—or, I should say, von Oehson—turn fifty million into fifty billion?
And if that was his plan all along, there was an even bigger question.
What kind of a man kidnaps his own son?
The door opened, and I was suddenly face-to-face with the one person who could tell me.
“What are you doing here?” asked von Oehson. “Did I not pay you enough?”
He was still smiling, but it was forced. Very forced. The personification of cool and collected knew he had a problem at the mere sight of me. Damage control among the very wealthy has a certain look to it. You might say it looks a lot like a very forced smile.
I didn’t wait for the invite to step inside. I didn’t wait for anything. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he’d said the first day we met. “Taking a swing at me?”
My fist, still balled from banging on the door, connected all four knuckles flat against his chin, the force dropping him like a house of cards. He landed with an echoing thud inside his cavernous foyer, his head smacking hard against the shiny white marble. For a few seconds, I stood and watched as blood trickled slowly from the side of his mouth. The plum-red drool was the only thing moving on him.
“Get up,” I said, stepping over him and into the house. “You and I are just getting started.”