Money to Burn

“It’s why we’re safe-at least for a little while. The cops can’t find us if we stay put, and McVee won’t touch us so long as they think Ivy might show up here, or that we might lead them to her.”

“That means I didn’t hurt anything by telling Kevin to give McVee’s name to the FBI.”

“In the short run, no. In the long run, you pretty much cinched it that they’ll kill all of us. I just hope it’s not at the hands of Ian Burn.”

Burn had told me his name last night, but I hadn’t shared it with Olivia. “How do you know Ian Burn?”

“How do you think?”

“I’m through guessing.”

She put her foot up on the bed and rolled up her pant leg to the knee. The scar on her shin bone wasn’t that big-about the size of a half dollar-but the crater was deep and grotesque, as if the flames had burned into the bone.

“I’ve met him,” she said.

I was speechless. I’d heard that women had a higher pain threshold than men, but napalm burning a hole into your shin had to be even beyond childbirth.

“I’m sorry, Olivia. When did that happen?”

“After Ivy’s memorial service.”

“Burn paid you a visit?”

She nodded. “My decision to cremate Ivy’s remains and scatter them in the ocean made McVee suspicious. He seemed to think that I was trying to close the book on any further DNA testing. He was right, of course. But when Burn couldn’t get anything out of me, that served as confirmation enough that Ivy was really dead.”

“Back up a sec,” I said. “How did you get the first DNA test to come back with a match for Ivy?”

“We’re talking about a crime lab in the west Caribbean, Michael. Think of the Natalie Holloway case-that young girl from Alabama who went to Aruba on a high school graduation trip and vanished from the beach one night. Never found a body, no charges ever stuck. The incompetence on some of those islands is surpassed only by the corruption. Money talks.”

“So…whose body was inside the shark?”

“There never was a body,” she said. “It was two pelicans and a half-eaten dolphin.”

“So the ashes that we scattered were what?”

“Flipper and his flying friends. I know that sounds crazy, but the shark was an afterthought. The plan we originally came up with was for Ivy to disappear, lost at sea. But we were afraid that McVee would never stop looking if there was no body.”

“So the shark with the phony human remains was a way to have a body without having a body.”

“Right. Kind of an interesting story how the shark idea came to her. Ivy attended an art exhibit with Marcus McVee before his suicide.”

“With Marcus?”

“She worked for him, Michael. Anyway, the exhibit included that Damien Hirst piece, a dead shark suspended in formaldehyde in a vitrine. A fourteen-foot tiger shark, to be exact-‘something big enough to eat you,’ was what Hirst was after. I think Steven Cohen eventually paid eight million for it.”

Cohen was a hedge-fund superpower who had amassed a collection valued in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Marcus McVee was kind of a mini-Cohen. For some of these hedge-fund guys, art was a passion. For others, art was simply the new precious metal: a material object that was valuable, available only in limited quantities, and sellable in a recognized market.

I was still processing all that-including the fact that Ivy had gone to an art exhibit with Marcus McVee-when Mallory’s cell rang, displaying Kevin’s number. I let it ring through to voice mail and dialed Kevin on the landline.

“What’s up?” I said.

“Nana and Papa are missing.”

That was a jolt I didn’t need. “What do you mean, missing?”

“I wasted an hour trying to unravel this, and finally it took a friend in law enforcement to get through the red tape. They never got on the plane.”

“What happened?”

“I have no idea,” said Kevin. “Did you tell anyone they were on that flight?”

“Just my regular driver who took them to the airport. I told him to call you if anything went wrong.”

“Who bought the tickets?”

“I cashed in miles by phone.”

Ivy’s warning was suddenly burning in my ear: They must be intercepting your messages! They might even be listening right now!

“McVee could have gotten the information,” I said, “if his men were eavesdropping on my cell.”

“Paranoid conspiracy theories are not likely to fly with the police. Especially ones that come from a fugitive and his brother, even if I am your lawyer.”

“Then you should be the one to deal with the cops. I can’t go to them anyway, unless I want to be locked up. That’s a good division of labor.”

“What division? What are you going to do?”

“Find our grandparents. Any way I can.”

51

ERIC VOLKE ENTERED THE GLASS SKYSCRAPER VIA THE BOWELS OF THE parking garage through a door marked DELIVERIES. Saxton Silvers’ main entrance on Seventh Avenue was still blocked by hordes of reporters, cameramen, photographers, confused employees, desperate clients, and the just plain curious. Volke wasn’t sure why, but he was thinking of men-boys-like Michael Cantella’s grandfather at the age of nineteen or twenty, storming the beach on D-Day, watching their friends die, carnage all around. Climbing out of his limo and sneaking up the rear service elevator, he felt like a complete coward.

The bankruptcy lawyers had filed a Chapter 11 petition-the largest in U.S. history-at nine A.M. The CEO was dealing with the firm’s partners and major stockholders. It wasn’t specifically in Volke’s job description to address the employees, but they were owed at least that much. He went from floor to floor, meeting with large groups of dazed traders, managers, and others who slowly came to realize that they were wasting their time listening to management and should have been typing a résumé. A few were loyal to the end. One of the traders gave him a bronze plaque that had rested atop her desk for six years, a quote from Act II, Scene II of Julius Caesar that Eric had referenced in one of his many inspiring speeches: “Cowards die many times before their death; the valiant never taste of death but once.”

“Hang in there,” was the more common refrain, though many looked at Volke with dagger eyes, as if to say, I’d like to hang you.

Volke’s last stop was the foreign-exchange traders on the third floor. The open work area was half-empty. Apparently his hollow message had already trickled down from the equity floor above, and many had decided that it wasn’t worth waiting for. Scores of desks had been cleaned out, personal items boxed up and hauled away, row after row of darkened trading screens left behind. Empty coffee cups rested on tables. Suit jackets hung on the ends of cubicles. A platter of bagels and doughnuts was virtually untouched; few employees had the stomach to eat. An open bottle of tequila sat atop a file cabinet, some having found gallowslike solace there. Pairs of traders exchanged sad smiles of resignation and shook their heads in disbelief. One cluster perused a copy of the bankruptcy court papers, astounded by the sheer heft.

“Good morning,” said Volke.

“What’s so good about it?” someone fired back.

An uneasy silence came over the loose gathering, and it stretched all the way across the floor. Some moved closer to listen in. Others stayed where they were, refusing to give up their desk chair, defying the cold reality that it was no longer theirs.

Volke took a step back, glancing out the third-story window at the crowded street below, where double-parked news trucks and cameramen jockeyed for position outside the building’s front entrance. Saxton Silvers employees, trying to escape with their belongings and at least some of their dignity, had to push through a media gauntlet where everyone from CNN to Internet bloggers begged for “just thirty seconds” of interview time. A young guy wearing a green Saxton Silvers T-shirt carried a sign that read WHARTON MBA, TWINS ON THE WAY: WILL WORK FOR ANYONE.