Dammerman returned to his office just down the corridor from Treadwell’s and shut the glass door. He went to the window and looked north toward the Chrysler and Empire State buildings as he worked to get his thoughts straight.
Things were getting a little too fuzzy around the edges for him, and it gave him the willies. Especially Dammerman’s melting down and ordering Nast taken out, which made no sense at all. As much of an idiot as Nasty had always been, he was a high-profile player in Washington. And making him disappear, though certainly doable, would present a number of problems, not the least of which would be a full-court press by the D.C. police and almost certainly the FBI.
Despite what he had told Treadwell, Dammerman didn’t think he should give any orders right now to make Nast go away like Cassy Levin. It would be too risky.
In ’08 Treadwell was the man, almost single-handedly bringing BP out of the subprime mortgage mess that the company had helped stoke. But now he was caving in, and maybe going to the gala at the Met this evening would help calm him down. He’d always liked the attention from the high society set that his position and his wife’s money gave him.
Attention that Dammerman had always thought was pure bullshit. Personally, he’d never parted with a dime for charity. If the do-gooders wanted to raise money, why not go out and earn it themselves instead of dressing up in tuxedos and holding out their begging bowls?
No one in Queens, where he was born and raised, did silly shit like that.
In the meantime he had to take care of himself with some insurance.
He went back to his desk, where he took one of his burner phones out of a drawer and called Dieter Kristof, his alternate broker, one of the wheeler-dealers who managed off-the-grid transactions with money stashed in offshore banks and other places that the IRS didn’t need to know about.
Kristof was a former BP broker who’d served three years in the medium-security federal prison at Otisville in western New York state for a number of trading violations. He’d never changed his modus operandi, but now he was doing business in Hong Kong, guzzling mai-tais and banging the local girls, whom he impressed with his money.
Treadwell had his own alternate brokers, but for security reasons and just plain common sense neither of them knew who the other dealt with.
Given the business with Heather Rockingham, the flash drive that had somehow gone missing, and Cassy Levin’s ex-SEAL fiancé showing up out of the blue playing the macho man bullshit, Dammerman had decided earlier today to switch gears and reverse his order to short the S&P 500 to the tune of $20 million—betting that the market would take a nosedive.
“Honorable Ho’s,” Kristof answered with his slight German accent.
“Six plum wines to go,” Dammerman replied. It was their code this month.
“It’s a done deal. But it beats the hell out of me why you’d want to unwind this trade. The market is already down twenty percent, so even if it stays there, you’d clean up by morning.”
“I’ve got my reasons,” Dammerman said. “No footprints leading back to me.”
“As usual. But it hurts to think of the serious money that could have been added to your account.”
“Talk to you later,” Dammerman said, and he broke the connection.
Tax havens, especially in Hong Kong, where privacy laws blocked outside taxing authorities such as the IRS from looking into their customers’ affairs, were strictly protected. This was a good thing under most circumstances. But he didn’t want to take any chances right now. It was just a gut feeling, but he’d always gone along with his instincts.
With the way things had been going since noon, Dammerman had decided to bail, just in case, and then try to keep Reid on track. And it wouldn’t be the first time, or probably the last.
In college when they’d first met, Treadwell was a sharp customer—unflappable, self-possessed, charming, but dumb in a lot of ways. Like being caught cheating on a test. Dammerman had been working as an intern at BP, and he’d cooked up a deal that got the professor fired and Treadwell off the hook.
Since then Treadwell had cut a lot of corners, and Dammerman had been right there backstopping him.
But this time was different. Taking out Nast would be a problem. But there were others too. Julia O’Connell was definitely a weak link, especially because of her connection with Betty Ladd, who already had a major issue with Reid. And Butch Hardy, who knew too much, but not the real reason why they were involved with the Russians.
Dammerman phoned Hardy, who was downstairs in DCSS, and asked him to come up.
“Good, I was planning on talking to you anyway. We have a problem.”
“What’s the issue?”
“I’ll be right up,” Hardy said, and he hung up.
Dammerman sat holding the phone to his ear for a beat before he could calm himself enough to put it down without going ballistic. No one hung up on him. No one.
Hardy showed up a couple of minutes later. Still holding himself in check, Dammerman waved him in.
“I can’t get ahold of the Brighton Beach guys,” Hardy said.
“What are you talking about?”
“I called to find out if they’d managed to get the flash drive, but they won’t call me back. I was even going to offer them some extra money. A bonus. But nothing.”
“You told them you wanted them to give back the money we already paid. Why the fuck should they want to talk to you again?”
Hardy spread his hands. “If you told me why the flash drive is so important, maybe I could think of something else.”
“What’s on it is none of your fucking business,” Dammerman shouted, finally losing what little self-control he had left. Failure was never an excuse. Never.
Hardy’s jaw clenched. It was obvious that he didn’t like being talked down to. He was a guy from the streets, and no bullshit top-floor exec was going to treat him that way.
But Dammerman didn’t care. “What’s on the drive doesn’t matter. Nor do I give a shit about your Russian friends. But we do have another problem that might be coming at us sometime tonight.”
“Yes, sir,” Hardy said evenly.
“The problem is Whalen. I think it’s a good bet that he’ll try to get in the building tonight. I don’t want that to happen.”
“I have two officers on eight-hour shifts overnight.”
“I want all hands on deck, and that includes you.”
“Against one man?”
“It’s possible he got the flash drive your Russian pals couldn’t get. I don’t want it anywhere near this building.”
“I don’t give a flying fuck what’s so important on some flash drive, but my people—me included—will need triple pay if we’re going to do an overnighter.”
“I don’t give a damn,” Dammerman shouted. “Why did we pay your douchebag Russians a shit pot full of money to get a goddamn bit of plastic from a corpse? Your people should have put a gun to somebody’s head and demanded to be shown Imani’s body!”
“The morgue is crawling with cops. They would have taken down our guy, or he would have told them God only knows what, which could have led back to us. Or didn’t you consider that?”
“You vouched for them, you fuck head,” Dammerman said. “Spetsnaz and all that horseshit. Now all you’re giving me are excuses.”
“Watch who you’re calling a fuck head, asshole!”
Dammerman got to his feet. “I’ll call you anything I want to call you. I scraped your ass out of the gutter after the department fired you. I gave you your life back along with a lot more pay and perks than you ever got as a cop. And you know what? I can take it away just like that.” He snapped his fingers. “Fuck head!”
Hardy was seething with anger, but he didn’t raise his voice. “Will there be anything else, sir?”
“I don’t care if you have to drive out to Brighton Beach, but I want you to make sure your pals don’t screw the pooch in Jersey tomorrow morning. Can you at least get that much through your thick head?”
Yes, sir,” Hardy said through clenched teeth. “I can get it through my thick head.”
“Then get the hell out of here. And try not to fuck up again.”