“We’re speaking of two hundred and fifty million dollars, Mrs. Friedman,” the accountant said. “Do you happen to keep that much in cash?”
Karen’s heart almost stopped. She sat back down, the words striking her like bullets. The accountant’s expression never changed.
“What the hell are you saying?”
Roos took over again, edging slightly forward. “What we’re saying is that there’s a hell of a lot of money unaccounted for in your husband’s firm, Mrs. Friedman. And our clients want us to find out where it is.”
Two hundred and fifty million. Karen was too stunned to even laugh. The proceeds had been finalized without a hitch. Charlie’s entire business was barely larger than that.
She looked back into their dull, unchanging eyes. She knew they were implying something about her husband. Charlie was dead. He couldn’t defend himself.
“I’m not sure we have anything further to discuss, Mr. Gillespie, Mr. Roos.” Karen stood again. She wanted these men to leave. She wanted them out of her house. Now. “I told you, I never got involved in my husband’s business. You’ll have to address your concerns to Mr. Lennick. I’d like you to go.”
The accountants looked at each other. Gillespie folded his file back into his briefcase and clasped it shut. They rose.
“We don’t mean any insult, Mrs. Friedman,” Roos said in a more conciliatory tone. “What I would tell you, though, is that there may well be some sort of investigation launched. I wouldn’t be spending any of those proceeds you received just yet.” He smiled transparently and glanced around.
“Like I said, you have a lovely home…. But it’s only fair to warn you.” He turned at the door. “Your personal accounts may have to be looked at, too.”
The hairs on Karen’s arms stood on edge.
It took just minutes, frantic ones, for Karen to get Saul Lennick on the phone.
It was hard for his office to find him. He was out of the country, on business. But his secretary heard the agitation in Karen’s voice. Finally they tracked him down.
“Karen …?”
“Saul, I’m sorry to bother you.” She was almost on the verge of tears. She told him about the upsetting visit she’d had with two men from Archer.
“Who?”
“They’re from something called Archer and Bey Associates. They’re auditors, forensic investigators. It says they’re out of South Africa. They said they spoke with you.”
He made her go through every detail again, injecting a few sharp questions about their names and specifically what they said.
“Karen, listen. First, I want to assure you this is nothing you have to be concerned about. Harbor’s partnership dissolution is moving along smoothly, and I promise you it’s one hundred percent by the book. For the record, yes, Charlie may have taken a few losses at the end. He bet pretty heavily on some Canadian oil leases that took a hit.”
“Who are these people, Saul?”
“I don’t know. Some overseas accounting group, I suspect, but I’ll find out. They could have been hired by some of Charles’s investors over there, hoping to hold up the process.”
“They’re talking about hundreds of millions of dollars, Saul! You know Charlie didn’t handle money like that. They were making these insinuations, warning me not to spend any of the proceeds. That’s Charlie’s money, Saul! It was creepy. They told me our personal accounts might be examined, too.”
“That’s not going to happen, Karen. Look, there are some details pending that someone could make some issues on if they wanted—”
“What kind of details, Saul?” She hadn’t heard any of that before.
“Maybe some plays one could question. A glitch or two in one of Charles’s lending agreements. But I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves. This isn’t the time.”
“Charlie’s dead, Saul! He can’t defend himself. I mean, how many times did I hear him fretting over goddamn nickels and dimes for his clients? Fractions of a fucking point. And these people, making innuendos like that … They had no right to come here, Saul.”
“Karen, I want to assure you there’s no basis at all to what they’re talking about. Whoever they are, they’re just trying to stir up trouble. And they just went about it the wrong way.”
“Yeah, Saul, they did.” The fury in her blood began to recede. “They damn well did go about it the wrong way. I don’t want them back in my house again. Thank God Samantha and Alex weren’t here.”
“Listen, I want you to fax me that card, Karen. I’ll look into it from here. I promise, I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again.”
“Charlie was a reputable guy, Saul. You know that better than anyone.”
“I know that, Karen. Charlie was like a second son to me. You realize I always have your interests at heart.”
She pushed the hair off her face to cool herself down. “I do….”
“Send me the card, Karen. And I want to be the first to know if they contact you again.”
“Thank you, Saul.”
Suddenly something strange came over Karen, an unexplainable rush of tears. Sometimes it just happened like that. Out of nowhere. The thought of having to defend her husband. She let a few seconds elapse on the line while she regained control.
“I mean it, Saul…. Really, thank you.”
Her husband’s mentor told her softly, “You don’t even have to say it, Karen.”
He didn’t have the heart to tell her now. Or the will.
Lennick replaced the house phone in its cradle in the Old World lobby of the Vier Jahreszeiten Hotel in Munich.
A week ago his contact from the Royal Bank of Scotland had called, one of the lenders he had arranged for Charlie, who advanced his firm funds. It sounded perfunctory. The banker had a tone of slight concern.
A random check of an oil tanker by a customs official in Jakarta had reached their attention.
Lennick’s heart had come to a stop. He wheeled around back to his desk. “Why?”
“Some kind of discrepancy,” the banker explained, “in the stated contents of the cargo.” Which was declared to have been 1.4 million barrels of oil.
The tanker was found to be empty, the bank official declared.
Lennick had turned ashen.
“I’m sure there’s simply been some kind of mistake,” the Scottish banker said to him. It seemed that 1.4 million barrels at sixty-six dollars per had been previously pledged by Charles Friedman as collateral against their loan.
The banker cleared his throat. “Is there any cause for alarm?”
Lennick felt a shiver of concern race down his spine. He’d look into it, he told the man, and that was enough to make the banker feel appeased. But as soon as he put down the phone, Lennick closed his eyes.
He thought of Charlie’s recent losses, the pressure he’d been under. The pressure they’d all been under. How heavily he’d leveraged up on his funds.
You stupid son of a bitch, Charlie. Lennick sighed. He reached for the phone and started to dial a number. How could you be so desperate, you fool, so careless? Don’t