Money to Burn

27

THE COFFEE ASSAULT FORCED ME TO BACKTRACK TO THE GYM FOR another change of clothes. I knew there were clean socks and underwear in the suitcase Mallory had packed for me, but only upon my return did I discover that it contained only socks and underwear. It was as if Mallory had yanked a drawer from the dresser, dumped it into a suitcase, and called it quits.

Man, she’s pissed.

I arrived at my brother’s office a few minutes late, dressed in the same slacks and sport coat that I’d worn to di

“Are you supposed to be Crockett or Tubbs?” he asked when he came out to greet me in the lobby. We stood facing each other for a moment, neither of us sure if we should shake hands or embrace. Then Kevin came forward and gave me a hug. It felt a little awkward, and we both seemed relieved to have that part over with.

“Come on back,” he said.

I followed him down the hall, and he pointed out the autographed sports memorabilia on the walls, as if we were a couple of kids on the way to his playroom. His office at the end of the hall was not exactly Eric Volke’s spread, but it was nicer than I’d expected. Silk rugs, custom draperies, tasteful antiques. I would have guessed a decorator’s hand, except there were too many family photos around. I ca

“How are Nana and Papa?” Kevin asked as he closed the door.

“Fine,” I told him, and suddenly I realized that my brother and I were alone in the same room for the first time in I couldn’t remember how long. He gestured toward the armchair, offering it to me, but I wasn’t ready to sit.

“How’s Janice?” I asked.

His answer was way too long, and as he rambled on, my gaze was drawn to those framed family photos that Mallory’s decorator would have deep-sixed on day one. Kevin and Janice. Kevin and his golden retriever. Janice in her wedding dress. The older photos were on the credenza, and I walked behind his desk and picked up the one in a silver frame. It had to be at least twenty years old. Kevin, our younger sister, my stepfather, and their stepmother. The four of them together, smiling widely and standing in front of the Eiffel Tower. I had a similar photo of me with Nana and Papa buried somewhere in a box of mementos-except that the Eiffel Tower we saw was at Epcot Center, and we spent the night at the Howard Johnson’s in Kissimmee.

Kevin walked toward me and said, “That was my middle-school graduation trip.”

“Nice.”

I placed it back on the credenza, and silence came upon us.

“Michael, let me just say-”

“I don’t want to go there,” I said.

“Please, listen to what I have to say.”

I looked away from the eight-by-ten of Daddy Warbucks on vacation with his chosen family and pretended not to know where this was going. I knew.

“Doing divorce work has given me some valuable insights,” he said. “Every family has problems. Ours is no different. We just have to get past the silly old jealousies.”

My anger shot up. “You think I’m jealous of you?”

“I think my growing up rich and your growing up poor is one of the reasons you went to work on Wall Street. Maybe you don’t call it jealousy, but it’s something.”

“I call that complete nonsense.”

“So do I. Right up there with the stupid jealousy I had for you when we were growing up.”

That took me aback. He smiled a little, clearly hoping to draw one out of me. I didn’t exactly light up, not sure where he was going.

“Did you ever stop and count how many houses I had lived in by the time I graduated from high school?” he asked.

“Not really.”

“Six,” he said. “And you know why? Because Dad was always trading up. Every house we lived in was a stepping-stone to more land, more bedrooms, a better neighborhood. It was never home.”

“Nana and Papa bought their place in 1957. They only moved to Florida when I went away to college.”

“Exactly. Never once was the house you lived in up for sale. When I was thirteen, about to change houses for I think the fifth time, I remember Papa telling me the story about the developer who came knocking on your front door.”

Now I did smile. “All the farmland around us and all the old houses in the neighborhood were being bought up to build new family homes on three-acre lots. Papa was the only guy in the subdivision who wouldn’t sell. The developer finally came by with his checkbook and said, ‘Okay, old man. You win. You’re the last holdout. What’s your price?”

“And when Papa told him there was no price,” said Kevin, clearly having heard every detail, “the developer said, ‘You don’t understand: Money is no object.’”

We were sharing a smile now, as I finished the story. “And Papa looked at him and said: ‘You don’t understand: This is not an object.’”

For the first time in years, my brother and I laughed together, and I felt good about that.

“Now, can we move forward?” said Kevin.

In his mind, clearly it was “problem solved.” He didn’t seem to understand that while laughter was good medicine, medicine wasn’t always a cure-especially when the diagnosis was completely off.

“Sure,” I said, happy to shift gears. He offered me a seat again, and we each took a matching armchair, facing each other.

“Let’s start with this sequence of threatening messages,” he said, a yellow legal pad in his lap.

I gave him the longer version of the money-burning ceremony at Sal’s Place, the flaming package, the most recent text-and finally the FBI’s discovery of the listening device in Sonya’s car.

“Looks like Chuck Bell may have been right,” said Kevin.

“How so?”

“If someone is bugging the general counsel’s Mercedes, maybe your identity theft is linked to a larger attack against Saxton and Silvers. I’ll follow up with the FBI.”

“You want me to be part of that?”

“Negative. I don’t want you talking to law enforcement.”

“Did you hook up with the detective who came by my apartment?”

“I did.”

“Does he think I killed Chuck Bell?”

“I’m not sure. It may have been just a pretense, but he said the reason he went to your apartment was to follow up on the incendiary package you received yesterday morning. They have an interesting lead. It was white phosphorous, which is pyrophoric.”

“What does that mean?”

“It ignites simply when exposed to the air. The police presume it was inside some kind of vacuum-sealed plastic liner, and when you tore open the package-poof. Flames. Once it combusts, it’s hard to extinguish.”

“I’ll vouch for that.”

“Highly toxic, too. You’re lucky you got out of that elevator so quickly.”

“So what leads are the police chasing?”

“White phosphorous is very hard to get your hands on, unless you have something to do with the munitions business. Russian or Israeli, most likely.”

“Munitions business? Doesn’t sound like anybody I know.”

Kevin pulled his trusty Mont Blanc from his breast pocket, ready to take notes. “We’re getting ahead of ourselves,” he said. “Let’s start at the begi

I talked, and my brother occasionally jotted down a word or two. At nine forty-five he let me switch on the television for a quick market check. FNN was broadcasting in split-screen format, an aerial view of the Chuck Bell homicide scene on one side, the NYSE trading floor on the other, as if to pose the question, Can you name the real crime scene? We had the sound muted, but the news was clearly bad on both sides.