She fought down the urge to gag. ‘I’m sorry. I really don’t feel very well. If you don’t mind, I think I’d like to go to bed.’
The sooner today was over, the better. After the meeting with the lawyers, she’d felt lower than she had since the day the coast guard told her the awful news. The whole world was talking about this stupid money. As if I care about the money! All I want is for Lenny to walk back through the door.
A maid appeared in the doorway. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt, Mrs Merrivale. But there’s a policeman at the door. He says he has urgent business with Mrs Brookstein.’
Instinctively Grace panicked. ‘No! Tell him to go away. It’s late. Tell him to come back in the morning.’
Caroline laughed. ‘Don’t be silly, Grace. It’s the police, not a social call. You must go out and meet him.’
‘No, please, Caroline. I can’t.’
Caroline was unmoved. ‘Melissa, show the officer in. Tell him Mrs Brookstein will be with him momentarily.’
A few minutes later, Grace walked nervously into the entryway. She expected to find an aggressive FBI agent there to interrogate her. Instead, she was greeted by a shy young man in uniform. As soon as he saw Grace, he took off his cap politely. Grace felt the tension in her shoulders begin to ease.
‘Good evening, Officer. You wanted to see me?’
‘Yes, Mrs Brookstein. I, er … I have some news for you. It’s about your husband. Perhaps you’d like to sit down?’
Irrationally, Grace’s heart soared.
He’s alive! Lenny’s alive! They’ve found him! Oh, thank God. Lenny will come back and everything will go back to the way it used to be. We’ll have our homes again and our money, no one will hate us anymore …
‘Mrs Brookstein?’
‘Oh, I’m fine, thank you. I’ve been sitting all day. You say you have some news for me?’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ The young man looked at his shoes. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this. But this afternoon the Massachusetts coast guard recovered a body. We believe the remains to be those of your husband, Leonard Brookstein.’
Donna Sanchez enjoyed her work at the city morgue. Her friends and family couldn’t understand it. ‘All those dead people. Aren’t you creeped out?’ Their reactions made Donna smile. A heavyset Puerto Rican woman with fat, sausagelike fingers and a round, doughy face, Donna had grown up in a big noisy family before starting a big noisy family of her own. Outside of work, the sound track to Donna Sanchez’s life was screaming children, smashing crockery, beeping car horns, blaring television sets. Donna liked the dead because they were silent. The city morgue on Clarkson Avenue in Brooklyn was white, clean and orderly. It made Donna feel peaceful.
Of course, she still had bad days. Even after eight years, the sight of small children’s bodies could make Donna choke up. Some of the accident victims were pretty gruesome, too. And the suicides. The first time Donna saw a ‘jumper,’ she had nightmares about the mangled corpse for weeks afterward: bones erupting through the skin, skull collapsed like a rotten melon. Normally, drowning victims were among the easiest to deal with. Immersion in cold, deep water tended to delay decomposition. Donna also noticed that many of the water-dead had a happy, almost beatific look on their faces.
Not today’s body, though. The revolting, waxy hulk lying on the slab had no face. The fish had seen to that. All that was left beneath the ravaged stump of a neck was a great, bloated midsection. The left arm and hand were miraculously intact, but the rest of the limbs had gone, snapped off like crab claws. It was, as Donna’s friends would have said, creepy.
‘Are they really dragging his poor wife in here?’ Like everyone else at the morgue, Donna Sanchez knew that the cops believed the body was Lenny Brookstein’s. That’s why it had been brought back to New York, almost two hundred miles from where it washed up on the Massachusetts coast. ‘No one should have to see their loved one like this.’
Duane Tyler, the technician, sneered. A handsome black kid, fresh out of high school, Duane was a born cynic. ‘Save your sympathy, Donna. One thing Grace Brookstein ain’t is poor. You know what they saying? This son of a bitch ripped off thousands of people. Ordinary people.’
‘I know that’s what they’re saying, Duane. It doesn’t mean it’s true. Besides, so what if he did? It’s not his wife’s fault.’
Duane Tyler shook his head pityingly. ‘Don’t you believe it, girl. You think the wives don’t know? Those rich white bitches? They know. They all know.’
Harry Bain and Gavin Williams were in the district attorney’s office.
It was common knowledge that Angelo Michele’s parents were two of the many New Yorkers facing ruin because of Lenny Brookstein. Angelo was the best legal brain in New York City, but Harry Bain wondered whether, in this case, his judgment might be clouded. The D.A.’s opening words did not reassure him.
‘Well, I wanted Brookstein’s head on a plate. Looks like I got the next best thing. His torso on a slab.’
‘It might not be him,’ said Harry Bain. ‘His wife’s on her way to identify the body. What’s left of it. Then we can conduct the autopsy.’
‘Good.’
It was the job of the FBI task force to find the missing Quorum money. But it was Angelo Michele’s job to prosecute those responsible for the theft. Part of him was pleased they’d found a body. The possibility, however remote, that Lenny Brookstein might have somehow escaped and be living the high life on a private atoll in the South Pacific had been keeping Angelo awake at night for weeks. But another part of him felt robbed. If Lenny Brookstein was dead, he couldn’t be punished. Somebody had to be punished.
‘Have you got any further with Merrivale or Preston?’
‘No.’ Harry Bain frowned. ‘Not yet.’ He had personally interviewed the two senior Quorum execs a total of six times, but was no closer to untangling the mystery of how Lenny Brookstein had managed to spirit away such insane amounts of money. Instinct told him that both men knew more than they were telling. But so far, he couldn’t prove it. ‘Agent Williams has uncovered something interesting, though.’
Angelo Michele looked at Gavin Williams. The man gave him the creeps. He was more like a robot than a human being. When he spoke, it was in a monotone, studiously avoiding eye contact.
‘It appears that in the week before his death, Leonard Brookstein changed the company structure at Quorum. Effectively, he arbitrarily stripped John Merrivale of his partnership status.’
‘Damn it.’ Angelo Michele shook is head.
Harry Bain cocked his head to one side. ‘That’s bad?’
‘Sure. If Lenny Brookstein was the only legal partner, it’ll be almost impossible to indict, much less prosecute, the other players. Short of seventy billion showing up sewn into Merrivale’s suit pants, we’re fucked.’
‘He
