on my shoulder. She leaned close and said through gritted teeth, “Please get that girl back, Mr. Heller.”
“I’ll do my best,” I said.
* * *
BUT INSTEAD of waiting, I decided to wander down to Marcus’s office.
His assistant, Smoki, sat guard at her desk outside his office, I remembered. I also remembered that Marcus had a private dining room next to his office. When I’d had lunch with him there once, the waitstaff came and went through a back hallway.
It didn’t take long to find the service hallway. One entrance was next to the men’s room. It connected a small prep kitchen to the boardroom and Marcus’s dining room.
His dining room was dark and tidy and bare. It looked like it hadn’t seen much use in quite a while.
The door to his office was closed. But when I stood next to it I could hear voices raised in argument.
At first I could make out only fragments. Two men speaking, I was sure. One, of course, was Marcus. His voice was the louder, more emotional one. Easier to make out.
The other was soft-spoken and calm and barely audible.
VISITOR: “… to go all soft now.”
MARCUS: “Wasn’t that the point?”
VISITOR: “… pretty much to be expected…”
MARCUS: “If she dies, it’ll be your doing, you understand me? It’ll be on your conscience! You used to have one of those, didn’t you?”
VISITOR: “… damnedest to keep you alive.”
MARCUS: “I don’t care what you people do to me now. My life is over. My daughter is the only—”
VISITOR: (a lot of mumbling) “… years you’ve been the guy with all the solutions … they decide now you’re the problem?… what their solution will be.”
MARCUS: “… on my side!”
VISITOR: “… want to be on your side. But I can’t be unless you’re on mine…”
MARCUS: (voice growing steadily louder) “… you wanted, I did. Everything!”
VISITOR: “… have to spell this out for you, Marshall? ‘Grieving financier kills self at Manchester residence’?”
I pushed the door open and entered the office. Marcus was sitting behind a long glass desk heaped with papers.
Leaning back in the visitor chair was David Schechter.
58.
“Nickeleh!” Marcus exclaimed. “What are you—didn’t Smoki take you to a conference room to—”
“He was eavesdropping,” Schechter said. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Heller?”
“Absolutely. I heard everything you said.”
Schechter blinked at me. “As of this moment, your services are no longer required.”
“You didn’t hire me,” I said.
“Schecky, let me talk to him,” Marcus said. “He’s a mensch, he really is.”
Schechter rose, straightened his tweed blazer, and said to Marcus, “I’ll expect your call.”
I watched him leave, then sat in the chair he had just vacated. It was still warm.
Behind Marcus was a glittering picture-postcard view of the Atlantic, red ochre in the dying light.
“What kind of hold does he have over you?” I said.
“Hold…?”
I nodded. “You hired me to find Alexa, and I can’t do that unless you level with me. If you don’t, you know what’s going to happen to her.”
His eyes were bloodshot and glassy, with heavy pouches beneath them.
“Nicky, you need to stay out of this. It’s … personal business.”
“I know how much you love Alexa—”
“That girl means everything in the world to me.” Tears came to his eyes.
“It took me a while to understand why in the world you’d withhold the one thing that could get her back. Schechter is blackmailing you. He’s keeping you from cooperating with the kidnappers. And I think I know why you hired me.”
He turned around in his chair and stared out the window, as if he were looking to the sea for answers. Or at least avoiding my eyes.
“I hired you because I thought you were the only one who could find her.”
“No,” I said quietly. “You hired me because that was the only way you could get her back without giving in to their demands. Right?”
He wheeled slowly back around. “Does that offend you?”
“I’ve been offended worse. But that’s not the point. From the beginning you’ve been sandbagging me. You lied about calling the police. You didn’t tell me how you were forced to take money from criminals, and you didn’t tell me you’d lost it all. Now they want the Mercury files—they are files, aren’t they?—and you pretend you don’t know what they are. So let me ask you this: Do you think David Schechter really cares if Alexa dies?”
He looked stricken, but he didn’t reply.
“Whatever he has on you, is it worth your daughter’s life?”
His face crumpled, and he covered his eyes like a child as he wept silently.