The Garden of Betrayal - Lee Vance [107]
“Then why are you here?” I repeated.
He moved toward me, eyes wild, and I realized how near he was to hysteria.
“Because you don’t understand what you’re doing. Haven’t you wondered what kind of people set up this sort of operation? And what they might do if some small-time nobody threatens to blow it for them?”
“I’ve wondered about who they are. Why don’t you tell me?”
He took a step backward, toward the door.
“And end up dead? I don’t think so.”
It was the reaction we’d expected.
“You’d be more persuasive if you brought some of these bad men with you,” I said, deliberately provocative. “All I’m seeing is a broken-down stock jockey.”
He flinched as if I’d slapped him and began digging a hand purposefully in his other pocket. My heart rate jumped. The unmanageable risk at the core of our plan was that Mohler proved to be violent himself. It was why Reggie and Claire had insisted on the gun. I rose, groping for my weapon, but Mohler beat me to the draw.
“Take it,” he said, thrusting a fat white envelope toward me. “That’s ten thousand dollars. It was all the cash I could get on short notice. I can get more, lots more, but you have to be patient. You have to work with me on this.”
I pushed the envelope away and settled back down onto the bed, trying not to betray how scared I’d been.
“Why?” I demanded. “So these guys you claim to work for won’t kill me? Stop bullshitting me. If you had that kind of muscle at your disposal, you wouldn’t be trying to pay me off.”
Sweat shone on his forehead. He held the envelope out again, his hand trembling.
“Work with me, because we’re in this together now. If they knew I’d been careless, they’d kill me, too.”
I took the cash from him and tossed it on the bed.
“Sit,” I ordered, pointing to the chair. “You have to answer a few questions before we strike any kind of deal.”
He collapsed onto the chair.
“First, tell me how you got involved in this whole thing.”
He edged forward and began working his fingers nervously along the brim of his hat again.
“Why do you care?”
“Because I want to know who I’m becoming partners with.”
He nodded rapidly, as if eager to persuade me of his cooperativeness.
“I was working as an account rep at Dean Witter back in the mid-nineties. I signed a couple of geriatrics as clients and did a few trades to try to make them some money.”
“But it didn’t work out,” I prompted, having heard similar stories innumerable times before. “So you did a few more trades and lost more money. Someone complained.”
“Right,” he said, sounding bitter. “The compliance guys at Dean Witter accused me of churning. They ratted me out to the SEC. The SEC investigated, and suddenly it was securities fraud because there was a problem with some statements. I got a call from the U.S. Attorney, offering me two to four years in jail if I took a deal and threatening me with five to seven if I didn’t.”
“What did you do?”
“I was still trying to figure it out when I got a call out of the blue from some lawyer I never heard of. He said he could get me off, and that I had friends in high places. I didn’t know much, but I knew I didn’t have any friends in high places.”
“Let me guess. Your problems went away.”
“Right. The SEC backed off, so the U.S. Attorney dropped the case. I even got severance from Dean Witter. It was sweet.”
He smiled at the recollection, still gleeful at having put one over on the powers that almost crushed him.
“But your new friend wanted a return favor.”
The smile vanished, replaced by a look of resignation.
“I was kind of into the whole thing at first. Nice office, good salary, no pressure. Once a month I have to figure out how to allocate trades between a bunch of different accounts, to move the right amounts of money back and forth. It was easy. But it’s been the same thing for ten years now, and I got to admit, it gets kind of old.”
“No special projects?” I asked, thinking of the Petronuevo