Blood in the Water(96)

“I don’t think I understand you,” Miss Vaile said.

Horace smiled, and went to the coat rack to get his coat. Except for the very top of the summer, he always wore a coat, and the coat he always wore was a Chesterfield. He always wore gloves, too.

“Do you remember a man named Henry Carlson Land?”

“Do I remember him?” Miss Vaile said. “He’s still in all the papers. He gives press conferences from prison. You have to wonder how so many people could be so fooled so much of the time.”

“They weren’t fooled,” Horace said. “At least, a lot of them weren’t. The small fry were, I suppose. They didn’t know who they were dealing with. It’s the great vice of most small investors. They don’t really want to be bothered with their money. But the rest of them, the banks, and the brokerages—well, those people knew. They were just trusting to their ability to make it out in time. And most of them were wrong.”

“I still don’t understand,” Miss Vaile said. “Did Henry Carlson Land—was Waldorf Pines one of his properties? Are we about to go bankrupt? Is that what the problem is?”

“Absolutely not,” Horace said. “Henry Carlson Land didn’t own properties. He just pushed money around. Until it all disappeared, of course. That’s what you must never forget, Miss Vaile. Don’t ever rely on the appearance of wealth. The appearance of wealth is easy enough to fake.”

“You’re making me very nervous,” Miss Vaile said. “I wish you wouldn’t.”

“Then I’ll stop,” Horace said. “It’s about time I got home, at any rate. I’ll see you in the morning, Miss Vaile.”

Horace left the building, but he did not go home. Home was, after all, still Waldorf Pines, and he had no intention of being caught on Waldorf Pines’s security cameras making a phone call in the middle of the night.

Instead, he left the clubhouse and went right across the parking lot to the front gate. He said hello to the night guard and kept on walking. He walked down the long, curved road that led away into Pineville Station. The night was cold and his shoes were hard. There was a slight wind blowing against his face as he went.

He went down the road and down the road and down the road. At about a fifth of a mile from the gate, the road curved sharply to the right. He went all the way around the curve until he came to a small copse of trees that he knew could not be seen from the entry to Waldorf Pines. He went into the trees and made sure he was well away from the road.

When he was sure he could not be seen by anybody, he pulled a cell phone out of his coat pocket and turned it on. It was not his usual cell phone. He had bought this one, prepaid and anonymous, the day after the bodies had been discovered, just in case.

All it would have taken to ruin the entire plan, of course, would have been to find that there was no cell phone reception in the copse. Fortunately, the reception was just fine. It was better than it was at Waldorf Pines, and Waldorf Pines did a lot to make sure its reception was as good as money could buy.

Horace flipped to the little address book. There was only one number there. He had programmed it into the phone on the day he bought the phone. He had been wearing his gloves on that day, too, and he was fairly sure that nobody he knew was watching him.

Of course, that had been in the King of Prussia Mall, so there was no reason to worry that somebody he knew would be watching him.

Horace punched in the call and waited. The phone rang and rang and rang, and he felt suddenly irritated that he couldn’t know if the person on the other end was also hearing the ringing. He wondered what he would do, and when, if the person he wanted didn’t answer. He’d gone to some trouble to find out the best time to call.

A moment later, the phone was picked up, and a man said, “Philadelphia Inquirer. Martin Roark.”

“Mr. Roark?” Horace said.

“Who’s this?” Martin Roark asked.

“It doesn’t matter who this is,” Horace said. “It matters that I have information you want. About, let’s call them ‘the malefactors of great wealth.’”

“Who is this?” Martin Roark asked again.

Horace sighed. “I’m the person who can tell you how to find Mrs. Henry Carlson Land.”





FIVE

1

It was rare that Gregor Demarkian had one of those nights when he just couldn’t sleep. On most nights, he didn’t even toss and turn. Bennis said she was fascinated with the way he could just lie back still and drift off without so much as a crossword puzzle to relax him. Gregor said that he didn’t need to relax, because he was usually so tired that the chance to sleep was like being hit over the head with a two-by-four.