Hardscrabble Road(102)
“I’ve got something better than connections,” Ray Dean said. “I own a fifteen percent interest in the bank. In trust, mind you, and I can’t sell it, but there it is. It’s all right, you know. You could get this information with a court order. We don’t allow absolute bank secrecy in the United States, for which I am truly grateful. If it makes you feel any better, my father is probably grateful, too.”
“Why did you want a list of people connected to the disappearance of Sherman Markey who had accounts with your father’s bank?”
“Because the nuns got an offer for the property Drew Harrigan parked with them,” Ray Dean said, “and the offer came through the Markwell Ballard Bank. Which, by the way, is why you could get the information with a court order, and why I could get it. The person who gave it to me knew that my father was going to have one of his patented fits as soon as he found out about it. And trust me, my father’s patented fits are something to see.”
“I’ve heard about them. He won’t have a patented fit about your obtaining the information and giving it to me?”
“I was hoping you wouldn’t say anything about my giving it to you,” Ray Dean said, “and he won’t mind that I went and got it. He’ll probably think it means I’m finally taking an interest in the family business, which I’m not. It’s not that I look down on the family business, or anything like that. It’s just that I’m not cut out for it.”
“Why would you look down on the world’s most important investment banking firm?”
“You’d be amazed at how many of the people I went to prep school with would do just that. Take a look at that list, Mr. Demarkian. It’s interesting.”
Gregor Demarkian picked up the list off the table and began to read it, and Ray Dean, finally relaxed, looked around the restaurant with more interest and concentration. At a table near the center of the room there were three extremely old women, all thin to the point of emaciation and all wearing black. Something at the back of Ray Dean’s head labeled them the three witches from Macbeth and started waiting for them to leap up and chant. He looked around some more and found mostly small groups of people having breakfast quietly, but somehow all together, as if they all knew each other.
Gregor Demarkian had put the list back on the table. Fr. Tibor Kasparian was trying to read it without looking as if that was what he was doing. Ray Dean turned his attention back to them.
“It’s a very interesting list, Mr. Ballard.”
“Call me Ray Dean. Or call me Aldy. Most of my life, I’ve been known as Aldy. I know it’s an interesting list.”
“Drew Harrigan isn’t on it,” Gregor Demarkian said. “Is that because he’s dead?”
Ray Dean shook his head. “Drew Harrigan couldn’t get an account at Markwell Ballard if he offered to die for it. The bank has criteria for accepting accounts, and the criteria are so outrageous that nobody can meet them. I mean nobody. My father can’t meet them. Bill Gates can’t meet them. Somebody like Drew Harrigan couldn’t come close.”
“But Mr. Harrigan is likely to have had a lot more money than, say, Dr. Richard Alden Tyler.”
“Sure,” Ray Dean said. “But it’s not about money. In the world my father lives in, everybody has money. My father has, uh, principles, about who he will enable to get richer and who he won’t. He wouldn’t touch the Drew Harrigan/Rush Limbaugh/Ann Coulter axis with a ten-foot pole. Not that he’s much in favor of Democrats, either, you understand. Do you know why I starred Jig Tyler’s name?”
“No,” Gregor Demarkian said.
“Because I’m pretty sure he’s the one who made the offer on the land to Our Lady of Mount Carmel Monastery.”
Now, Ray Dean saw, he had Gregor Demarkian interested. “That’s not legal, is it, to ask about a particular transaction like that? Or to tell me. You really do need a court order for that sort of thing.”
“I didn’t ask for it directly,” Ray Dean said. “They wouldn’t have given it to me if I had. But I grew up around people who know how to ask the questions that will get them the answer without crossing the line, and I got this one. Look at that list. There’s Neil Savage.”
“Yes, I noticed that,” Demarkian said.
“Savage almost certainly didn’t make the offer,” Ray Dean said, “because he’s Harrigan’s attorney, and doing that under the circumstances would have been illegal and it would probably have gotten him disbarred.”
“If it ever came out,” Demarkian said.