The performance that Saturday evening was perhaps our best one yet. Afterwards I checked my cell phone for messages, only to find that there was one from Buzz Pegram: “Call whenever you can, no matter what time.” I took him at his word.
“I’m closing in on this,” he said.
“You’re kidding.”
“Another two or three hours should do it. Do you want me to call you then, or first thing tomorrow?”
“How early would ‘first thing’ be?”
“7:30, 8:00.”
“Do you ever sleep?”
“Yes, but probably not when you do.”
“8:00 will be fine. Do you really think you—?”
“We’ll see.”
• • •
As tired as I was, I didn’t sleep very well, waking up several times to wonder what Buzz had come up with. At 7:30 Sunday morning, when the alarm went off, I got up, put on a robe, started the coffee, and put a bagel in the toaster oven. At 8:00, while I was eating, my cell phone rang.
“Are you up?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll join you.”
“You’re coming down here?”
“I’m already here.”
“Where?”
“Downstairs. Buzz me in.”
“Okay. By the way, the elevator’s tricky.”
“I’ll manage.”
I quickly put on a pair of trousers, a T-shirt, and a sweater and went to open the door, just as Buzz arrived in the clanking elevator. He had his computer case in one hand and a small paper bag in the other.
“I was just finishing breakfast. Want some?”
He held up his bag. “I brought my own,” he said, whereupon he took out a cup of hot green tea and a prune Danish.
“So you think you’ve found him?”
“Who says it’s a him?”
“I assumed …”
“Just kidding.” He looked around the loft. “Is there a place here I could crash?”
I pointed to the guest room. “But aren’t you going to tell me who it is?”
He opened his computer case and took out a sheaf of papers. “It’s all in here,” he said, and handed me the papers as he started toward the bedroom.
“One minute.”
He paused.
“Let me tell you what I’m planning to do. First, I will read this thing. Then, if it’s what I think it is, I’m going to call my contact, Monaghan, and ask him to contact the two detectives in the 19th and 20th precincts for a meeting as early as possible this afternoon.’”
“Do what you like; at this point, I’m out of it.”
“But I need …” I was talking to empty air. He had gone into the spare room and closed the door.
I made a new pot of coffee, threw away my unfinished bagel and put a new one in the toaster, and went to the sofa to begin reading.
Marshall Bigelow III was born and raised in Wichita, Kansas. The largest bank in the city, CBT, the Commerce Bank and Trust Company, was founded by his great-grandfather. When his grandfather, Marshall Bigelow Sr., was president, the bank lent money to three aviation pioneers: Bill Lear, Walter Beech, and Clyde Cessna, all of whom, in the 1920s and ’30s, started aircraft companies in Wichita. In addition to the bank lending them money, Bigelow’s grandfather invested very profitably in all three companies. Marshall the Third took over in the early 1980s, and under his leadership the bank reached new heights in deposits, income, and trust accounts. It also moved into the late twentieth century in its adoption of the latest in digital and computer technology. Bigelow himself invested wisely in individual opportunities throughout the Midwest. In 1998 CBT was acquired by a conglomerate, and Bigelow retired with a sum estimated at just below $1 billion.
Bigelow and his wife, Constance, were considered model citizens of Wichita and were among the most generous members of the community, both in financial support and participation on boards of charities and nonprofit organizations. Mrs. Bigelow’s particular interests were the local symphony and the garden club. An active member of the Garden Club of America, she eventually served as president of the organization. The Bigelows had three residences: a large home in Wichita, an apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, and a compound in Marrakech, Morocco. The last had been their winter retreat for a number of years.
Bigelow had known both Mulholland and Weatherby for many years, his bank having lent large sums of money to them individually and for their various capital ventures. As their banker he was well aware of the accusations aimed at them from time to time. He himself was never implicated in wrongdoing of any kind.
A defining moment for Bigelow was his participation in the Vietnam War as a Navy Seal. Through the years Bigelow kept in close touch with his former comrades, attending annual reunions and the like. Along the way he had helped innumerable ex-Seals and others who had been injured or fallen on hard times, not just from that war but from subsequent engagements. As part of this, he set up a rather large charitable foundation dedicated to assisting ex–covert operatives, helping them find jobs and providing financial and psychological assistance.
Thomas Sterling Catlett, known as Tomcat, was a Denver entrepreneur and money manager who headed three major funds: Mile High I, a conservative fund with $48 billion under management; Mile High II, a mixture of high-value and slightly more speculative investments in a portfolio valued at $33 billion; and Mile High III, a higher-risk fund, which managed $29 billion. In business, Catlett ran MAAC, the Mid-America Agricultural Corporation, an agricultural conglomerate, which, along with Archer, Daniels, Midland, was the largest in the country. In creating MAAC, Catlett secured agreements and licenses from thousands of farmers over a fourteen-state area. Catlett himself was said to be worth something between $11 and $12 billion.
Catlett attended the University of Colorado at Boulder, where he was a star athlete in football and track. When he graduated in the mid-1960s, a few years before Bigelow, he also served in Vietnam, eventually joining a unit of the Army’s 5th Special Forces Group. For Catlett, too, this experience had left an indelible mark on his character, and he too continued to stay in close contact with former colleagues, and later supported, financially and personally, ex–special forces troops fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Increasingly, his friends said, Catlett had become disenchanted with what was happening in the United States in its policies with regard to war. The Iraq War, for example, was particularly galling to him: a trumped-up war, he felt, not of necessity but of political chicanery, and the most wasteful, costly, ill-advised foreign policy blunder in our nation’s history.
During his career Catlett crossed paths with both Clifford Mulholland and Wallace Weatherby. In the case of Mulholland, the wife of one of Catlett’s vice presidents had a serious liver condition for which she took a flawed generic drug manufactured by Pharmegen. When she died, Catlett took care of all her expenses, including suing Pharmegen, but, before the suit came to trial, the company declared bankruptcy. When Catlett discovered that Mulholland was a principal investor in Pharmegen, he confronted him with his participation in that company’s unscrupulous and fatal practices. Mulholland’s response was that he was merely an investor, and therefore “not responsible.” This went against all Catlett’s principles of ethical stewardship. He had also learned that Mulholland was an investor in the Mile High II fund, whereupon Catlett sent Mulholland a notice that his $17-million investment in Mile High II was being returned forthwith and that any further attempt by Mulholland to invest in any of the funds would not be accepted.
In the case of Weatherby, it had to do with land leases. Catlett was known far and wide as a preeminently “fair” businessman. In putting together his agricultural behemoth, he made certain that every single farmer who signed on was treated equitably and participated in all profits. A crucial part of this was the lease on the farmer’s property. In reviewing each of their own leases, Catlett’s staff came across other leases on the same properties attempting to secure drilling rights for oil and gas. Many of these, with obscure and opaque fine print, were demonstrably unfair to the farmers and might end up destroying their crops.
Catlett’s conglomerate began actively to review all the leases on land where they were entitled to the agricultural products and discovered innumerable leases that also involved drilling and sometimes fracking. Advising their farming partners of the unfairness of these leases and the need to correct them, they ran afoul of the oil and gas interests. The latter banded together and asked Weatherby, widely admired and considered a true heavyweight, to take the matter up with Catlett. Weatherby flew to Denver and met with him, strongly suggesting that Catlett stick to farming and let energy companies take care of exploration. Weatherby was met with a withering lecture on exploitation. When Catlett discovered shortly after the meeting that the practice had been reduced but not eliminated, he wrote a blistering letter to Weatherby and doubled his efforts to protect his farmers’ leases.
Some twenty years ago Catlett had built a large home just outside Aspen, Colorado, and fifteen years ago he and his wife had moved there. In the meantime, he had turned the day-to-day operation of his various businesses over to one of his sons, a son-in-law, and various lieutenants. Catlett’s wife, Alicia, died one year ago. They had always been extremely close. For many years she had been deeply involved in the Aspen Institute, and was an active board member as well as chairperson of the Aspen Arts Festival. It should be noted as well that she was a subscriber to the magazine Arts View, published by Lucius Beaufort.
Victor Arundel, a private equity, venture capital entrepreneur known for his aggressiveness and, some would say, ruthlessness, was born in Des Moines, had gone to the University of Iowa and then to the Wharton Business School in Philadelphia, but had dropped out of business school to begin his financial career. Having made and lost several fortunes, he was now in the $4- to $5- billion range. His main office was in Des Moines, but he also had offices in New York, San Francisco, and Charlotte, North Carolina. He bought run-down companies cheaply, using mostly borrowed money, and either closed the companies down and took a huge tax write-off, or cut them drastically before reviving them to the point where he could dispose of them at an impressive profit. Admired by some for his ingenuity and persistence, he had been accused by others of stopping at nothing to get what he wanted, including reneging on agreements whenever it suited him. He had had several brushes with regulatory authorities, in some cases paying substantial fines, and in others escaping punishment, but was never actually forced to admit guilt.
Arundel knew both Clifford Mulholland and Wallace Weatherby. Some years ago he and Mulholland were the major investors in a surgical supply company in Omaha, Nebraska. They turned the moribund operation into the largest medical supply operation in the Midwest before selling it for an impressive profit. In the case of Weatherby, the two of them formed a joint venture in Oklahoma that successfully developed a more sophisticated version of the “Christmas Tree,” a vital piece of equipment necessary for oil drilling.
Arundel had several homes: a Colonial-style mansion in Des Moines, apartments in both San Francisco and New York, and an eighty-acre spread on the Virginia–West Virginia border, where, among other activities, he raised horses. Arundel himself was never in the armed services, but he had a close associate, a man named Henry (Hank) Herkimer, who was in a Special Operations unit that he left under cloudy circumstances. Herkimer was known to have a number of friends on the fringes of Special Forces: men who flunked out, served but were discharged, or turned rogue after serving. Apparently, Herkimer had been involved with Arundel for many years, not in operations dealing with finance, acquisitions, or individual corporations, but as an “enabler,” a trusted associate who assisted Arundel in corporate espionage, in enforcing contracts and the like.
Arundel divorced his first wife some years ago but in recent years had been close to a woman named Anita Gomez who originally resided in Santa Fe. It was not known whether they were actually married or had simply been living together.
Buzz had done his job well enough, but what was one to make of this news? Moreover, two of the men appeared to be upstanding, exemplary citizens, as far from criminals as one could imagine. Could it be true that either one of them had arranged not one but two ingenious assassinations that had rocked the New York arts and cultural establishments? The third man, however, an extremely ambitious and acquisitive entrepreneur, was someone who might have been capable of an elaborate, perhaps deadly, undertaking. In spite of this third possibility, I had misgivings about showing the report to the two detectives in charge of the operation. Thinking it over, I finally decided that, since I had gone this far, I should probably see it through. It was 9:15; I called Monaghan on his home phone. It rang for seven, eight, nine times: maybe he didn’t answer on Sundays. Just as I was ready to hang up, a woman answered.
“Yes?”
I hesitated a moment.
“Is someone there?”
“Mrs. Monaghan?”
“Who’s calling? If this is one of those charities …”
“No. No. It’s Matt Johanssen.”
“Who?”
“Matt Johanssen.”
“Never heard of you.”
“A friend of Detective Monaghan.”
“No one I know.”
“A recent friend.”
“Do you know what day it is, what time it is? My husband … Forget it. Call back.”
I spoke quickly, “Please, Mrs. Monaghan. I know it’s Sunday and it’s early, but this is very, very important.”
“It better be.”
Then I heard hoarse voice. “Florence, who is it?”
“You find out.” Presumably she was handing the phone to Monaghan.
“Monaghan here.”
“Kevin, it’s Matt Johanssen.”
“What in God’s name—?”
“I know, I know. But hear me out.”
“We’ve already solved this thing; the man’s in jail.”
“This is the other one.”
“What other one?”
“The museum murders.”
“That’s not my case.”
“I know, but I had a hunch about it.”
“What kind of hunch?”
“The person who did it.”
“If this is some kind of joke …”
“Kevin, I promise. I got someone, a computer genius, to run a program, and he came up with a weird answer.”
“If it’s weird, why do you think it’s correct?”
“It’s so off the wall it could just be the key.”
“Matt, the best minds in law enforcement have been on this for two, almost three weeks now.”
“This is outside the box.”
“So?”
“It just might be the answer.”
“Even if it was, why call me?”
“What I would like is for you to get in touch with the detectives at the 19th and 20th precincts. Tell them I have new, crucial information that I think might solve the case.”
“Then what?”
“Arrange a meeting with the two of them and you and me.”
“For when?”
“This afternoon.”
“You’re kidding me.”
“These guys have been knocking themselves out with no progress, nothing, zilch, day after day. Besides, the more time that goes by, the better chance this person has to cover his tracks.”
“Where would this meeting take place?”
“Anywhere they say—67th Street, 82nd Street.”
“Let me think about this.”
“Kevin, believe me. If we can do this, I’ll never ask another favor as long as I live.”
“We? What’s this ‘we’? I’m not part of this.”
“You have to be.”
“Why?”
“To vouch for me, to tell them I’m not a kook. Besides, I don’t want to face those two alone.”
“You’re asking a lot.”
“Don’t I know it? And if this doesn’t work out, I’ll be the sap of all times.”
There was a pause, a long pause. Then he spoke: “All right, I’ll call them, but if they say no, that’s it. What time were you thinking about?”
“Whenever they say. Tomorrow if we have to.”
“I’ll call you back, but it may take time.”
“I’m right here.”
• • •
At 11:40 Monaghan called. “You’ve got two very upset chief detectives.”
“I can imagine.”
“Let’s only hope this will prove worth it. We’ll meet at 2:30 at the 20th precinct, on 82nd between Columbus and Amsterdam.”
“I’ll be there. I know you’ve gone out on a limb—way out—and I can’t thank you enough …”
“Don’t say it.”
“I won’t.”
He had already hung up.
I went to my copier and began running off five copies of the report Buzz had given me. At 1:30, just as I was about to wake Buzz, I heard the shower running. Ten minutes later, he emerged.
“Get some sleep?” I asked.
“Great bed,” he said. “Great shower. Hope you don’t mind.”
“Not at all. They’ve called a meeting—three detectives and me. At the 20th precinct.”
“You won’t dare—?”
“What?”
“Bring me into this.
“No way.”
“You swear.”
“Absolutely. But suppose they ask a question I can’t answer?”
“You can call, but under no circumstances let them know who I am or how to reach me.”
“You have my word. One thing we haven’t mentioned is a price, what all this cost.”
He thought a moment. “As I told you, if it was the firm, it would be $150,000 an hour.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Is that what it’s going to cost the NYPD?”
“This was me, not the firm. Let’s say $15,000 plus $5,000 for the report.”
“That’s either way.”
“What do you mean, ‘either way’?”
“Whether or not this is our man.”
“Look …” he began to protest.
“I’m kidding.” I said, “Of course, either way.” I held up a copy of the report. “Dare I ask how you did it?”
“It would take as long as it took me to do it, and, with all due respect, you wouldn’t have the slightest idea what I was talking about.”
“I’m sure you’re right.” I said. I was suddenly aware of the time. “I have to be going.”
“So do I.” We both headed to the door.