Feast of Murder(16)

“—all of them know, unless a matter’s been stamped confidential. And this one hasn’t. I don’t even know if it matters if anyone knows. Jon said to keep it tight, but he wasn’t fanatical about it. You know how he can get. It wasn’t like that. I don’t even suppose he’ll really mind. But I really mind. I keep thinking I have to know. Especially now with this thing with McAdam.”

“It was probably McAdam who leaked the news about McAdam,” Charlie said. “How long have we known Donald?”

“Too long,” Calvin said. “You’re right, of course. He leaked the news himself. He would.”

“Do we at least have the deal signed, sealed, and delivered?”

Calvin shook his head. “Jon wouldn’t hear of it. He gave McAdam the copies of the agreement and a stamped, self-addressed envelope—self-addressed to the firm, that is—and told him to go home and think it over very carefully. McAdam thought he was nuts and so did I, but Jon is Jon. But I thought you knew all this. I thought you brought all that stuff out to Jon when you went to Danbury.”

“I went to Danbury yesterday,” Charlie said, “but the papers were in an envelope. I didn’t open it. I was too busy trying to find a way to carry Jon’s bridge in that flimsy little box without breaking it myself.”

Calvin laughed. “Jon broke it. The same day you brought it to him. We got there this morning and one of his cheeks was sucking in like an old man’s. God. All the time we were there, I was wondering. Whether the rumors are true, if you know what I mean. Whether it was McAdam who shopped Jon to the Feds.”

Charlie was startled. “I don’t think so,” he said. “If that had been the case, I don’t think McAdam would have gotten his deal. Do you?”

“I don’t know.”

“I know,” Charlie said with conviction. “If that had been the case, Jon would have hired a hit man if he’d had to, but McAdam would be dead. I think it’s just more of those rumors you’ve been worried about. And the fact that McAdam has shopped everybody else to the Feds.”

“Maybe you’re right.”

“Of course I’m right,” Charlie said. He got up off Calvin’s visitor’s chair and shook out his pants until the pleats were hanging straight. Calvin kept the air-conditioning in the offices up so high, Charlie always felt like wearing a sweater, no matter how hot it was outside. He checked his back pocket to make sure he had his wallet—he had been losing weight lately and things had been falling out of his clothes, often in the most awkward places—and began to drift toward Calvin’s door.

“So,” he said, “I guess I’ll be heading on home. Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?”

“I’m due up at the club to play bridge,” Calvin said, “and I have to clean up here. We’re getting old, Charlie.”

“Oh, I already got old,” Charlie said. “I’ve been enjoying my golden years with scarcely a break for months now.”

“Do you mind it, Charlie?”

Charlie didn’t answer. He was already out in the hall, for one thing. For another, it was a complicated question to answer. It was far more complicated, for instance, than the possibility that Donald McAdam might have turned Jon Baird in to the federal authorities for insider trading.

That, Charlie was sure, wasn’t possible at all.

If it had happened at all, Jon Baird wouldn’t have needed a hit man. He’d have found a way to kill Donald McAdam with his bare hands.

Since Donald McAdam was alive and well and soon to be in possession of twelve and one half million of Jon Baird’s dollars, Charlie dismissed the allegation out of hand.

He found it far more pleasant to plan what he would wear for all those days on Jon’s little boat, a modern-day Pilgrim to an upmarket Plymouth Rock.





8


In the end, Donald McAdam decided not to wait. The envelope was lying there on his occasional table, and his mind kept going back to it, worrying at it, gloating over it, no matter what. He had waited a long time for his twelve and a half million dollars. Now that he had it he wanted to have it, all wrapped up, beyond the possibility of anything going wrong. Exactly what could go wrong, he didn’t know. The papers were there and Jon had signed them. As soon as McAdam signed them himself, the money would belong to him. It was just that he had been around long enough not to trust Jon Baird.

He laid out five short lines of cocaine on the marble surface of the small table he kept pushed against the wall of windows that looked out across Manhattan. Now he stopped in the middle of reaching for his silver straw and changed his mind about how his day would end. He got up and got the envelope from the occasional table, looked curiously at the mason jar full of marmalade, and brought them both back.