“That trust Matthew had in me,” he continued, “was a two-?edger. I got to know all the secrets. But I also got to know all the secrets.”
The ugliest secret, according to Noah Paxton, was that his Midas-?touch boss was driving his company into the ground and couldn’t be stopped.
“Show me,” said the detective.
“You mean, like, now?”
“Now or in a more…,” she knew this dance and let her pause do its work, “formal setting. You choose.”
He opened a series of spreadsheets on his Mac and invited them inside the U of his workstation to view them on the big flat-?screen. The figures were startling. Then came a progression of graphs chronicling the journey of a vital real estate developer who was practically laser-?printing money until he plummeted off a red-?ink cliff, well ahead of the mortgage meltdown and ensuing foreclosure debacle.
“So this isn’t about hard times in a bad economy?” asked Heat, pointing over his shoulder at what looked to her like an escalator to the basement painted red.
“No. And thank you for not touching my monitor. I never understood why people have to touch computer screens when they point.”
“I know. The same people who need to mime telephones with their fingers when they say call me.” When they laughed, she got a whiff of something citrus-?y and clean off him. L’Occitane, she guessed.
“How did he manage to stay in business?” asked Rook when they retook their seats.
“That was my job and it wasn’t easy.” And then, with a disclosure look to Nikki, “And I promise you it was all legal.”
All she said was “Just tell me how.”
“Simple. I started liquidating and divesting. But when the real estate bust came along, it ate our lunch. That’s when we ran into the buzz saw with financing. And then we hit a snag maintaining our labor relations. You may not know it, but our sites are not working these days.” Nikki nodded and swept her glance to Fat Tommy’s champion. “We couldn’t service our debt, we couldn’t keep construction going. Here’s a simple rule: no building, no rent.”
Heat said, “It sounds like a nightmare.”
“To have a nightmare, you have to be able to sleep.” On the office couch she noted the folded blanket with the pillow resting on it. “Let’s call it a living hell. And that’s just the business finances. I haven’t even told you about his personal money problems.”
“Don’t most CEOs build a firewall between their corporate and personal finances?” asked Rook.
Damn good question. He’s finally acting like a reporter, thought Nikki, so she jumped aboard. “I always thought the idea was to structure things so a failure in business doesn’t wipe out the personal and vice versa.”
“And that’s how I built it when I took over his family finances, too. But, you see, both sides of the firewall were blazing cash. You see…” A sober look came over him and his young face gained twenty years. “Now, I truly need assurance this is off the record. And won’t leave this room.”
“I can promise that,” said Rook.
“I can’t,” said Detective Heat. “I told you. This is a homicide investigation.”
“I see,” he said. And then he took the plunge. “Matthew Starr indulged some personal habits that compromised his personal fortune. He did damage.” Noah paused then took the plunge. “First, he was a compulsive gambler. And by that, I mean losing gambler. He not only hemorrhaged cash to casinos from Atlantic City to Mohegan Sun, he bet the horses and on football with local bookies. He was in debt to some of these characters for serious money.”
Heat wrote a single word on her spiral pad: “Bookies.”
“And then, there were the prostitutes. Matthew had certain, um, tastes we don’t need to get into—unless you say so, I mean—and he satisfied them with very expensive, high-?end call girls.”