It was after six that day when Hauck pulled up across from the two-story white colonial just off the green in Southington, twenty miles out of Hartford. It was a quiet small-town street, a stone’s throw from the town square, a bank and a dry cleaner around the corner.
A white sign that read WARREN C. HAUCK, ATTORNEY AT LAW hung from a post on the gate.
Warren’s white Range Rover was parked next to the house in the small lot. Hauck went up the front stairs and opened the wood-paneled door. There was a small reception area inside. Framed color portraits of well-known golf holes from around the world hung on the walls. The par-3 over the ocean at Pebble Beach. The fifteenth green at Augusta. The road hole at St. Andrews. A LeRoy Neiman watercolor of Jack Nicklaus.
Worth a pretty penny.
The front desk was unoccupied. It was after six. Everyone had gone home.
He knocked.
A hallway led past a staircase to a row of offices in back. A man who seemed to be in his early thirties, in a collared shirt with a satchel slung over his shoulder, stuck out his head. “Help you?”
“I’m looking for Warren Hauck,” Hauck said.
“He expecting you?” the man asked.
“I wanted to surprise him. I’m his brother.”
“Hey!” The young man lit up. “I can see it. I’m Ken Wolfe. I work with Warren.” He pointed down the hall. “He’s straight down there. End of the hall. I was just heading out.”
“Thanks.” Hauck waved, following a voice. “I think I hear him now.”
He went down the hall. He could hear Warren plainly now, on the phone. His office door was open. It didn’t seem as if anyone else was around.
Hauck stuck his head in. The office looked like it might have once been the living room in the house. Large, airy, paneled. French doors led out to a rear yard. His brother had his back toward him in a swivel chair, in a pink knit shirt and one of those headsets on. Cole Haans elevated onto the credenza, facing out the window.
“So listen, I’m gonna have Tom call you about that filing in the A.M.…We’ll button it up with the planning board, then go forward with the petition…”
Hauck knocked on the door.
Warren spun, his eyes arching in complete surprise. He didn’t smile at first. He didn’t wave Hauck in. What he seemed to be doing was ratcheting through his startled brain just why his brother was here.
“Okay, guy, talk soon…” Warren switched off the line. He took off the headset and stood up. “Ty…” His face registered bewilderment. “Jesus, bro, what the hell are you doing here?”
“Can’t a guy just visit his older brother when he’s passing through town?”
“Yeah, right.” Warren grinned, trying to decipher just what Hauck meant. “C’mon in, take a seat. I’m just trying to think if you’ve ever been here before.”
“Long overdue,” Hauck said. He sat down across from him and put his satchel on the floor. Warren’s desk looked like a train wreck—papers, briefs, piled high in towers; an ashtray and a beer bottle. The place smelled like smoke.
“Want something? Bottle of water? Beer? Something stronger?”
Hauck shook his head. “No, thanks.”
“Well, I do. So what have you got in there?” His eyes darted to Hauck’s bag. “Looks like you’re going to trial!” He went over to a small fridge and took out a longneck bottle of Bud Light. “I tried to call you,” he said, throwing himself back in his chair. “When I heard about what happened up there. Jesus, Ty…” He shook his head grimly. “That must’ve been fucking awful. I can’t tell you how sorry I am about what happened to your guy…”
“My guy…?”
“You know, your detective. Munoz, right? Here’s to staying safe…” Warren downed a gulp of beer; with his free hand he tapped a pen against the desk.
“Let me tell you about him, Warren. He worked for me for six years. He almost went to law school himself. He had two young kids. His wife is a wreck. But I guess you know about that kind of thing, don’t you, big brother…” He met his eyes. “He picked up the fucking phone at my house…”
Warren stopped tapping. He stared back at Hauck, put down his beer, leaned back, and put his hands behind his head. “Just why are you here, Ty?”
“I’m here because for weeks I’ve been trying to find some connection between the Pequot Woods and the murders of David Sanger and Keith Kramer—other than the horseshit I’ve been stepping around that they were party to some gambling scam up there. So I’ve been going through Joe Raines”—Hauck shrugged—“and some of the people on the board up there, Bill Turner of Heritage Financial, Senator Oren Casey, that dealer who was killed, Pacello…Trying to figure out what they would all have to hide that would be worth this kind of killing for. Looking for the thread that knitted it all together…”
“Oh, yeah,” Warren said, jiggling his pen again. “And what’d you find?”
“You, Warren.” Hauck stared back at him. “I found you.”
Warren grinned and made the kind of defensive, deep-in-the-throat chuckle that comes when someone’s brain is desperately groping for what to say. He rocked back in his chair, crossing his legs. “You found me?”
“I’ve had my people scouring over the Pequot Woods’s records. The board of directors, the council of overseers. DR-17 was just doing the dirty work for Raines. They tried to make the Sanger shooting look like a payback of some kind. So if it wasn’t about gambling, what was it about? There had to be something he found out. Something worth killing for. So what…?”
“Is that a question, Ty, or are you just trying to piss me the fuck off?”
“I’m afraid it is a question, Warren.” Hauck’s blood started to heat. He leaned over and opened the flap of his case. He pulled out the large sheath of papers Steve Chrisafoulis had arranged for him—two dozen documents and affadavits filed on behalf of the casino, going all the way back twelve years to the original sovereign nations filing to the federal government by the Pequot tribe. He dropped the stack on the desk. “You’ve been there every step of the way, Warren. When you worked for Parker, Kegg, up in Hartford, they represented the tribe. You became one of the lawyers of record. Your name’s right there on the filing. You handled several of their motions. Tax-exempt requests, land swaps…”
Warren didn’t reply.
“And then when you went on your own…,” Hauck went on, “you continued doing work for them. Senator Casey is on the board of overseers there, and guess what turns up? You’ve done work for him too. Bill Turner of Heritage. He’s a member of the board. It was his company that paid Paul Pacello off when he left the casino. And lo and behold, he happens to be on your client list too. Seems you handled a real estate trust for him.” Hauck’s gaze bore into him deeply. “See where we’re going now?”
“Yeah, and it all proves what, I’m trying to figure out. I’m a lawyer. I get paid to represent people. Where you’re going—”
“Where I’m going”—Hauck leaned forward, his tone hardening—“is someone tried to kill me the other day in my own home. Me, Warren! And then it sort of hits me, I’ve been looking for this common thread linking everything together, coming up blank…And here it’s been right under my nose all the time. In plain sight. I looked at everything I had, every which way I could find, and didn’t see it.
“And then I looked twice.”
Warren’s fists tightened and he rocked back in the chair. “And what is it you see, little brother?”
“You. Suddenly you just drop back in my life. With some tale of woe about how your life is falling apart. So I call Ginny. And you know what? She didn’t know shit about some real estate investment that got in between you…”
“I wish you hadn’t done that, Ty…”
“I think you have a pretty fair idea what the fuck’s going on, Warren. Just what these well-heeled clients of yours have to hide. And I think it has something to do with Senator Casey, not gambling at all, and that you’re up to your dick in the middle of it and that that’s why you showed up again out of the blue. And you know what? I’m not going to stop…I’m not going to get out of your face until I know what the hell is going on.”
Warren laughed. “This is all a little crazy, Ty. I’m thinking you kept some of that shit we were smoking at your house, ’cause this is all nuts…”
“You better hope it’s nuts.” Hauck felt the heat of anger on his face. “You better hope I’m fucking crazy…”
Warren just stared, trying to form a response, until Hauck could see it plainly in his eyes.
All of it.
He was totally involved.
Whatever was holding Hauck together snapped. He lunged across the desk, taking his brother by the collar, pulling him out of his chair and back across the desk.
“Five people are dead, Warren! Do you understand? Someone tried to kill me in my own home! I lost a friend. A cop. And now I want to hear it from you. No bullshit. No pretending you don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, Warren. You’re my goddamn brother! So tell me! Who’s behind it? I’m going to find out. What the hell is going on?”
“What is it you’re going to do, Ty?” He looked back unrepentantly. “You going to take me in because I happen to have a few influential friends?”
Hauck threw a punch to the side of Warren’s face. His head rocked back and Hauck hit him again, his knuckles finding bone, splitting open Warren’s cheek. Papers and affadavits flying off the desk. The phone clanged to the floor.
“I’m your goddamn brother, Warren! Don’t you understand that? That man was my friend. I told him to meet me there. I called him from the street. I set off that bomb. What happened there was meant for me. Me, Warren…Don’t you see what you’ve done?”
“I told you to get out,” Warren said, glaring back.
Hauck threw him with everything he had against the wall. Warren fell. Framed mementos and diplomas crashed to the floor.
“I told you to take the job!” Warren glared back at him. “I tried to warn you, Ty. I know these people. Why didn’t you just listen to me? I told you to take the fucking job!”
Hauck lunged again and lifted him against the wall. He punched him again, this time in the hollow of the stomach. Warren let out a gasp, bent over.
“I’m bringing you in,” Hauck said, pulling him back up. “Your life is fucking done, Warren. You’re going to tell us. One way or another, it’s coming out. What was going on?”
“Ty, please…” His brother’s eyes stiffened between denial and tears. “Can’t you see. Can’t you fucking see? I tried to warn you. I know these people. I know what they’re capable of. I know who you’re pushing up against, Ty.”
Hauck grabbed him by the face and reared back his fist again. He held—fingers clenched, twitching, eyes welling with burning tears. Of rage. “Who, Warren, who…? Who am I pushing against?”
“Ty, I can’t.” Warren helplessly shook his head.
Hauck raised back to punch him one more time. Warren didn’t make a move to resist. Hauck just stood there, the tide of anger and grief and powerlessness heating to a boil. He wanted to smash his brother’s face. His breaths churned like turbines. Then finally he just dropped his fist and shouted, “God damn it!” Let Warren sink to the floor.
Hauck looked down at his brother, seeing him in a different way than he had ever seen him before. Not the strong, familiar lines of his father, the seductive charm, the chummy brown eyes. Something different. Something weak and unfastened and way over his head.
Scared.
For the first time in his life Hauck felt stronger than him. His legs grew heavy and limp. He sank to the floor himself, across from him. “God damn you, Warren.”
“I never meant to hurt you, Ty. You have to believe that. I’m so sorry. I truly am. I wish I could undo what’s gone on. But I can’t. I tried to protect you.”
Hauck sat there looking across at his brother. A welt had come out on his eye. “What the hell’s happened, Warren?”
Warren closed his eyes and rested his head on his hand. “I don’t know.”
Suddenly the trill of a cell phone rang. A Bach melody—“A Lover’s Concerto.” Warren’s.
Both sets of their eyes went to it. It was on the floor near Hauck’s feet. When he had pulled Warren over the desk it must’ve fallen out.
He didn’t know what made him look.
Maybe the glimpse of fear in Warren’s face, eyes darting toward it. Maybe just the frustration of everything else. Not knowing if he was judging his brother unfairly. If he had gone insane.
Whatever it was, Hauck reached, and as he was about to kick it across the floor, his eyes locked on the caller ID.
“Oh, Jesus, Warren…”
A sinking sensation fell in Hauck’s gut. His gaze froze directly on his brother. Suddenly, Hauck’s mind raced back to images of when they were kids: sharing the same room, brushing their teeth in their pajamas, trading secrets in their bunk beds before they fell asleep. A perfect spiral Hauck had once flung that landed in his brother’s arms. Warren, dancing a celebratory jig, spiking the ball on the street. Oh yeah! Oh yeah!
That all seemed so distant now.
The name on the caller ID was Tom Foley.