Chapter 21
Kat didn’t want to go.
Bork Investments was located in a sleek über-skyscraper on Vesey Street and the Hudson River in Manhattan’s Financial District, a stone’s throw away from the new World Trade Center. Kat had been a fairly young officer on that bright, sunny morning, but that wasn’t much of an excuse. When the first tower was hit at 8:46 A.M., she was sleeping one off only eight blocks away. By the time she woke up and fought through her hangover and got down there, both towers were down and it was too late to do anything about the dead, especially her fellow officers. Many who died had come down on their own from a lot farther away. She hadn’t made it in time.
Not that she could have done anything anyway.
No one could in the end. But the survivor’s guilt stayed with her. She attended every cop funeral she could, standing there in uniform, feeling like a complete fraud. There were nightmares—almost everyone who was there that day had them. In life, you can forgive yourself for a lot, but for reasons that made very little rational sense, it is very hard to forgive yourself for surviving.
It was a long time ago. She didn’t think about it much anymore, maybe around the anniversary. That outraged her on another level, the way time does indeed heal wounds. But since that day, Kat stayed away from this area, not that there was much reason for her to come down here anyway. This was the land of the dead, the ghosts, and the power suits with the big money. There was nothing here for her. Lots of the boys from her old neighborhood—yes, some girls too, but far fewer—had made their way here. As children, they had admired and feared their cop and firemen fathers and grew up wanting to be nothing like them. They went to St. Francis Prep and then to Notre Dame or Holy Cross, ended up selling junk bonds or derivatives, making a lot of money and getting as far away from their upbringing and roots as they could—just as their fathers had run from their fathers who had toiled in mills or starved in lands far away.
Progress.
We have this sense of continuity and nostalgia in America, but in truth, every generation runs away from the one before it. Oddly enough, most of the time, they run to someplace better.
Judging by his plush office, Martin Bork had run to someplace better. Kat and Brandon waited in a conference room with a mahogany table the size of a landing strip. There was a food spread waiting—muffins, donuts, fruit salad. Brandon was starving and started wolfing down the food.
“How do you know him again?” Kat asked.
“He’s our family financial adviser. He worked with my dad at a hedge fund.”
Kat didn’t know exactly what a hedge fund was, but the phrase never failed to make her cringe a little. She checked out the view of the Hudson River and New Jersey in the distance. One of those mega cruise ships floated north toward the piers off Twelfth Avenue, in the fifties. Passengers on deck waved. Even though there was no way they could see into this building, Kat waved back.
Martin Bork entered the room and gave a tight “Good afternoon.”
Kat had expected Bork to be some fat cat with plump fingers, a tight collar, and a stroke-red flush in his skin. Wrong. Bork was short and wiry, almost like a bantamweight boxer, with olive-toned skin. She guessed his age at a youthful fifty. He wore funky designer glasses that would probably have worked better on a younger guy. There was a smoothness to his face that indicated some kind of cosmetic treatment, and a diamond stud in his left ear that traveled quickly from hip to desperate.
Bork’s mouth dropped open when he saw Brandon. “My God, what happened to your face?”
“I’m fine,” Brandon said.
“You don’t look fine to me.” He started toward him. “Did someone hit you?”
“He’s fine,” Kat assured him, not wanting to get off track here. “Just a minor accident.”
Bork looked dubious, but there was nowhere else to go with this. “Let’s sit.”
He took the seat at the head of the table. Kat and Brandon grabbed the two chairs closest to him. It felt weird, three people at a table that could probably hold thirty.
Bork spoke to Kat first. “I’m not sure why you’re here, Miss . . . ?”
“Donovan. Detective Donovan. NYPD.”
“Yes, sorry about that. I don’t quite understand why you’re a part of this, though. Are you here in some official capacity?”
“Not yet,” she said. “This is more informal.”
“I see.” Bork put both hands together in a prayer gesture. He did not bother looking at Brandon. “And I assume that this has something to do with Brandon’s call to me earlier today.”
“We understand that a quarter of a million dollars had been removed from his mother’s account.”
“Do you have a warrant, Detective?”
“I do not.”
“Then not only am I under no obligation to talk to you, but it would be unethical to say more.”
Kat hadn’t really thought this through. She had come down here buoyed by Brandon’s enthusiasm for his money discovery. Since the ATM withdrawal, there had been no activity on her credit cards or checking accounts. But yesterday, Dana Phelps made a “wire transaction”—that was how it was listed on the online statement—for approximately $250,000.
“You know the Phelps family, correct?”
He still had the prayer position going. Now he leaned it against his nose as though this were a tough question. “Very well.”
“You were friends with Brandon’s father.”
A shadow crossed his face. His voice was suddenly soft: “Yes.”
“In fact,” Kat said, weighing her own words before letting them out, “of all the people the Phelpses could have trusted to handle their affairs, you were the one the family chose. That says a great deal not just for your business acumen—let’s face it, there is no shortage of supposed geniuses down here—but my guess is that they chose you because they trusted you. Because you cared about their well-being.”
Martin Bork let his eyes slide over to Brandon. Brandon just stared back at him. “I care about them very much.”
“And you know that Brandon and his mother are close.”
“I do. But that doesn’t mean that she shares all of her fiduciary matters with him.”
“Yes, she does,” Brandon said, trying to keep the whine out of his voice. “That’s why she gave me the passwords and account numbers. We don’t keep secrets like that.”
“He has a point,” Kat added. “If his mother wanted to transfer money without his knowledge, wouldn’t she have used another account?”
“I can’t say,” Bork said. “Perhaps Brandon should call her.”
“Did you?” Kat asked.
“Pardon?”
“Before you made the transaction. Did you call Mrs. Phelps?”
“She called me,” he said.
“When?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss—”
“Could you call her now?” Kat asked. “I mean, just to double-check.”
“What’s going on here?”
“Just call her, okay?”
“What will that prove?”
“Uncle Marty?” All eyes turned to Brandon. “I haven’t heard from her in five days. It’s like she just disappeared.”
Bork gave Brandon a look that aimed to be sympathetic but landed firmly in the patronizing camp. “Don’t you think it’s time to cut the apron strings, Brandon? Your mother has been lonely for a long time.”
“I know that,” Brandon snapped. “Don’t you think I know that?”
“I’m sorry.” Bork started to rise. “For reasons both legal and ethical, I can’t help you.”
So much for trying the nice route. “Sit down, Mr. Bork.”
He stopped mid-rise and looked at her, stunned. “Excuse me?”
“Brandon, wait out in the hall.”
“But—”
“Go,” Kat said.
She didn’t need to tell him twice. Brandon was out the door, leaving Kat alone with Martin Bork. Bork was still half standing, his mouth agape.
“I said sit down.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Bork asked. “I’ll have your badge.”
“Yeah, that’s a good one. The badge threat. Are you going to call the mayor or my immediate superior? I love both of those lines too.” She gestured to the phone. “Call Dana Phelps right now.”
“I’m not taking orders from you.”
“Do you really think I’m here as a favor to her kid? This is an ongoing investigation into a dangerous series of crimes.”
“Then show me a warrant.”
“You don’t want a warrant, believe me. You see, warrants require judges and then we have to go through everything, every file in your office, every account—”
“You can’t do that.”
True. It was a bluff, but what the hell. Better to come off a little crazy, a little unhinged. Kat lifted the receiver. “I’m asking you to make one call.”
Bork hesitated for a moment. Then he took out his smartphone, found Dana Phelps’s mobile number, and dialed it. Kat heard it ring once and then the voice mail picked up. Dana Phelps’s happy voice asked the caller to leave a brief message. Bork hung up.
“She’s probably on the beach,” he said.
“Where?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss it.”
“Your client transferred a quarter of a million dollars out of this country.”
“Which is her right.”
Realizing he said too much, Bork blanched as soon as the words came out of his mouth. Kat nodded at the mistake. So the money had been sent out of the country. She hadn’t known that.
“It was completely on the up-and-up,” Bork said, his explanation coming fast. “This company has a protocol with a transfer this substantial. Perhaps in the movies, it can be done with a just a few clicks on a computer. But not here. Dana Phelps made the request. I personally spoke to her on the phone about it.”
“When?”
“Yesterday.”
“Do you know where she called from?”
“No. But she called from her own cell phone. I don’t understand. What do you think happened here?”
Kat wasn’t sure how to answer. “I can’t reveal the full extent of my investigation.”
“And I can’t tell you anything without Dana’s permission. She gave me strict instructions to keep this confidential.”
Kat cocked her head. “Didn’t you find that odd?”
“What? Keeping things confidential?” Bork considered that. “Not in this case.”
“How so?”
“It isn’t my job to judge. It is my job to honor the request. Now if you’ll excuse me . . .”
But Kat still had one major card to play. “I assume you reported this transaction to FinCEN?”
Bork stiffened. Pay dirt, Kat thought. FinCEN stood for the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a scary division of the Department of the Treasury. FinCEN looks at suspicious financial activity in the hopes of combating money laundering, terrorism, fraud, tax evasion, stuff like that.
“A transaction this big,” Kat said. “It has to send up a red flag, don’t you think?”
Bork tried to play it cool. “I have no reason to suspect that Dana Phelps has done anything illegal.”
“Okay, then you won’t mind me calling Max.”
“Max?”