Blue Belle - Andrew Vachss [3]
I pushed the switch and the window whispered down, letting in the traffic noise from the West Side Highway. We were parked in the pocket between Vestry Street and where the highway forks near 14th. Cars went by, but not people. The limo had picked me up on Wall Street; I told the lawyer where I wanted to go, and he told the driver.
I lit the cigarette, inhaled deeply, watching the lawyer.
"Those things will kill you," he said. A concerned citizen.
"No, they won't," I promised.
He shrugged, using the gesture to say that some people are beyond educating. He was right, but not about me. He tried one more time. "Mr. C. is a client of our firm. In the course of discussing…uh…other matters, he indicated that you might be better suited to our immediate purposes than a more…traditional private investigator." He glanced at my face, waiting for a reaction. When he realized he'd have a long time to wait, he shifted gears and rolled ahead. "Mr. C. gave us certain…uh…assurances concerning your sense of discretion, Mr. Burke." His tone of voice made it into a question.
I drew on my cigarette. The breeze from the open window at my back pushed the smoke toward his allergic face.
The lawyer slid a leather portfolio onto his lap, deftly opened it into a mini–desk, tapped a yellow legal pad with the tip of a gold ballpoint to get my attention. "Why don't I write a figure down, Mr. Burke. You take a quick look, tell me if you're interested." Without waiting for an answer, he slowly wrote "10,000" in large numbers. Reverently, like he was engraving a stone tablet. He raised his eyebrows in another question.
"For what?" I asked him.
"Our firm has a.…uh…confidentiality problem, Mr. Burke. We occupy a rather unique position, interfacing, as we say, between the business, financial, and legal arenas. Necessarily, information crosses our desk, so to speak. Information that has a short but exceedingly valuable life. Are you following me?"
I nodded, but the lawyer wasn't going to take my word for it. "You're certain?"
"Yeah," I replied, bored with this. Yuppies didn't invent insider trading—information is always worth something to somebody. I was scamming along the tightrope between prison and the emergency ward while this guy was still kissing ass to get into law school.
The lawyer stroked his chin. Another gesture. Telling me he was making a decision. The decision never had been his to make, and we both knew it.
"Somebody in our firm has been…profiting from information. Information that has come to us in our fiduciary capacity. Are you following me?"
I just nodded, waiting.
"We know who this person is. And we've retained the very best professionals to look into the matter for us. Specialists in industrial espionage. People who are capable of checking things we wouldn't want to use a subpoena for. Still with me?"
"Sure."
"We know who it is, like I said. But we have been unable to establish a case against him. We don't know how he moves the information. And we don't know to whom he passes it."
"You checked his bank accounts, opened his mail, tapped his phones…all that, right?"
Now it was the lawyer's turn to nod, moving his head a reluctant two inches.
"Telegrams, visitors to the office, carrier pigeons…?"
He nodded again, unsmiling.
"How much time would he have between getting the information and making use of it?"
"Ah, you do understand, Mr. Burke. That's exactly the problem. We deal with extremely sensitive issues. Nothing on paper. In a normal insider–trading situation, a profiteer would have a minimum of several days to make his move. But in our situation, he would have to act within a few hours—no longer than close of business on the same day the information comes in."
"And you've had him under surveillance every day for a while?"
He nodded.
"Drawing a blank?"
He nodded again.
"You call in the federales?"
"That wouldn't be our chosen scenario for this situation. The firm itself has its own interests, as well as the obligation to protect our clients.