Outfoxed: An Andy Carpenter Mystery (10 page)

“Then ask Ricky about Petrone,” he says.

This is not much of a dilemma for me. I can give Pete the tickets in return for getting Leonard to talk to me. Then I’ll just go on StubHub or one of the resale places and buy two more tickets for Ricky and me.

It’s not a tough call, but it’s very annoying. “You’re an asshole, Pete.”

“I am aware of that; it’s part of my charm.”

“Set up the meeting.”

“It’ll take a while. Last night’s multiple murders might be occupying a lot of his time.”

“It better be before Sunday, or you and Leonard can watch the game at your house, while you drink your own beer and moan about your poor police salaries.”

“God forbid,” Pete says. “Call him in an hour.”

Sam Willis is one happy camper. He’s coming with me as I interview the next potential witness, and can’t seem to stop grinning. “This is really cool,” he says, as the elevator door closes.

“What is?”

“You know … working the street.”

“We’re just going to talk to someone,” I point out. “This is his apartment; we won’t be on the street.”

He nods. “Got it. We going to play ‘good cop, bad cop’?”

“We’re not going to play any cop,” I say. “We’re going to play lawyer, computer nerd. I’ll be the lawyer.”

Another nod. “Got it.”

“And Sam,” I say, “no shooting.”

Sam is with me because I’ll be talking to Jason Mathers, who until a few days ago was head of the technology division of Starlight. The CFO, Ted Yates, indicated that Mathers had quit because the board of directors had bypassed him and made Yates acting CEO. Brian had predicted that would happen.

I’m not planning to get into that much technical stuff; for my purposes, it shouldn’t be necessary. But since my understanding of it is so limited, I felt I should have Sam with me just in case. As I watch Sam salivating over the prospect of “working the street,” I’m starting to regret the decision.

The particular street we’re working is River Road in Edgewater. The river the address references is the Hudson River, and across the Hudson from Mathers’s apartment is Manhattan.

His apartment is on the twenty-eighth floor of a twenty-eight-story building, and as he lets us in, the first thing I see is the wall facing the river. It’s a wall of glass, and the view, even in daylight, is breathtaking.

Mathers looks to be in his midthirties, dressed casually in worn jeans, sneakers, and an Arizona State sweatshirt. He looks completely relaxed; this is not a guy feeling the typical stress of unemployment. “Hey, guys, come on in,” he says, when he opens the door, sounding as if we’re a couple of fraternity buddies coming over to watch football.

We sit down in the den, brightly lit from the morning sun coming from the New York side. “That is one great view,” I say.

He nods and smiles. “You should see it at night. And the dopes on the other side are paying twice as much, and all they look at is New Jersey.”

I don’t think that Sam has even noticed the view; his eyes are on a computer setup that Mathers has on the other side of the room. There are four monitors and a bunch of consoles, keyboards, and speakers that mean nothing to me, but certainly have captured Sam’s attention.

“Thanks for meeting with us on such short notice,” I say.

“No problem. Anything to help Brian.”

“You testified on his behalf at trial.”

He nods. “Yeah, for all the good it did. I didn’t have any of the facts, so all I could be was a character witness. The jury wasn’t impressed.”

Time to get down to business. “Mr. Mathers—”

“Call me Jason.”

“Jason, can you think of anyone who might have had a motive to kill Gerry Wright?”

“He was a pain in the ass, but kill him? I don’t know people like that.”

“Have you heard the name Dominic Petrone?”

“I saw that stuff about him on the news this morning,” he said. “But I heard of him before that, sure.”

“What about in relation to your company?”

He laughs a short laugh. “No. If I did, I would have been out of there a hell of a lot quicker.”

“You can’t think of any way in which criminals could take advantage of the products you provided?”

“Not unless they trade stocks. The key thing that we offered was speed, and the difference is in nanoseconds. In stock trading, nanoseconds are important.”

“Can you think of any other transactions that would depend on speed?”

He thinks for a few moments. “Not really. Maybe if some huge concert was about to happen and online tickets were going on sale at a certain time, you’d want to get in before other people.” Then he shakes his head. “Nah, forget that. Not the kind of speed we’re talking about.”

Sam seems about to ask something but hesitates, so I nod that it’s okay for him to speak up. “When these trades go through your servers,” he asks, “are you just a conduit? Or do you maintain a record of them?”

“‘Maintain a record’ isn’t quite the way I would put it,” Mathers says. “Technically the trades can be retrieved, but the company never does. There would be no reason to; once the trades are executed, they become a matter of public record anyway.” He pauses. “So yes, they could be retrieved, but there are billions of them, and there’s nothing done in secret.”

My turn. “Is there any literature that you could provide that would help us understand the capabilities of the machines?”

“Nothing that isn’t proprietary,” he says. “I wouldn’t be able to give it to you, even if I still had access to it, which I don’t. As you can imagine, the company keeps a tight lid on it.”

I nod. “Makes sense.” Then I make a mental note to ask Brian if he can get any of it for us. “Who is going to replace you?”

He shrugs. “I don’t really give a shit, but my guess would be Stacy Mullins. He was my number two. He knows the systems, and he’s very smart. They could bring someone in from the outside, but there would be a big learning curve.”

“What are you going to do now?”

He shrugs and smiles. “Beats the hell out of me. But I’m not much in the mood to work for someone else again. I’d like to try something on my own, but I don’t know what.”

“You don’t seem worried about it.”

“I have no reason to be,” he says. “I did very well working for Starlight. Worst comes to worst, I can just sit here and stare.”

He points to the river and Manhattan.

Enough said.

I’ve been skirting the edges of this thing. By that I mean I’ve been in learning mode, trying to understand the players and the issues, without developing a strategy or a point of view. That’s not self-criticism, nor am I second-guessing myself; without getting up to speed, there was no way I could do anything else. But it’s time to move into phase two, because phase three will be here all too soon.

Phase three takes place in front of a judge and jury.

Demonstrating reasonable doubt as to Brian’s guilt is going to be a very difficult task. He’s an escaped convict with a motive who was found at the murder scene. We could impanel a jury made up of members of Brian’s family, and even they would lap up that kind of evidential scenario with a spoon.

But one foolproof way to show reasonable doubt is to present a credible alternative killer. By definition, if the jury considers someone else a possible second candidate for having done the crime, they can’t also be certain that the accused is guilty.

I don’t yet know enough about Gerry Wright to know who wanted him dead. Sam has been digging into his life, and will soon be telling me what he’s learned. Maybe something will pop up then; maybe we’ll find some long-term, implacable enemy of Wright’s who recently threatened him.

But I’ve gone an entire career without getting that lucky, and I don’t see my streak ending anytime soon. So right now, I have to stick with what I have, and that all boils down to one name.

Dominic Petrone.

Miraculously, New Jersey State Police lieutenant Barry Leonard has agreed to meet with me. The meeting is taking place today at nine o’clock on Friday morning, just fifty-five hours before he and Pete will be sitting in my seats at the Giants-Eagles game.

We’re meeting at an out-of-the-way diner in Englewood. My guess is that he was not anxious for his fellow cops to see him playing host to a defense attorney, which is probably why we aren’t at his office.

I get here first, and five minutes later I see him walk in and look around for me. He knows who I am; about three years ago I cross-examined him at trial. It did not go well for him, but I’ve seen him a couple of times since, and he didn’t seem to bear a grudge.

We exchange a few semipleasantries, and the waitress comes over to take our orders. He looks at the menu and then turns to me. “You are buying, I assume?”

“I am.”

He nods and proceeds to order enough food for three people. I order French toast and coffee, and the waitress leaves us.

“So I wanted to talk about—” is how I begin, before he interrupts me.

“Wait a minute; before you start, I just have to tell you about this incredible coincidence. Right after I agreed to meet with you, I got a call from my friend Pete Stanton. He invited me to the Giants game on Sunday.”

“Isn’t that nice,” I say.

“That’s not the amazing part. We’re actually going to be sitting in your seats. What are the odds against that?”

“Astonishing … gives me the chills.”

He nods. “Yup, it’s true. If someone didn’t know better, it would almost look like you bribed me with the tickets to have this talk. But that couldn’t be, because I don’t take bribes, and if you tried it, I would have to arrest you.”

“So you’re saying I shouldn’t pay for your breakfast?”

“Breakfast is fine. Lunch would be a problem; you try and buy me lunch and you’ll find yourself in handcuffs.”

“A man with principles. Now can we get to this?” I ask, and he finally agrees.

Leonard is a smart guy; before meeting with me he would certainly have done his homework and learned who it is I am representing. So there is no reason for me to hold back on it; he would see through it anyway.

“As I’m sure you know, I am defending Brian Atkins on a double murder charge. Dominic Petrone’s name has come up in my investigation.”

“Come up how?” he asks.

“I can’t say; it’s privileged.”

He frowns and leans forward. “Look, I’ve been trying to get Petrone for a very long time. I’ll tell you some things, if it doesn’t hurt my position to do so. But if you know anything that will help me, I need to hear them. This is not going only one way, tickets or no tickets.”

“Fair enough,” I say. “But I can’t break a privilege; I know where the line is.”

“Just make sure you draw it in the right place,” he says.

I nod my agreement, and we move on. “Starlight is the company Gerry Wright and Brian Atkins founded. They struggled for a while and then hit it big by creating servers and routers that were faster than everyone else’s. Their primary use is in equity trading, and they give an advantage to companies using them. I don’t quite understand how it works; I’ll never understand how it works. But it’s real.”

“Keep talking,” he says, though I had planned to anyway.

“So Brian was gotten rid of by someone framing him and sending him to prison.” Leonard gives me a skeptical look, but I disregard it. “Now his partner has been killed, and, like I say, Petrone’s name has come up. What I want to know is if a guy like Petrone would want to move in on a company like that, or whether he would need what they’re selling.”

“I am not aware of Petrone having a particular interest in the stock market, although I would assume he invests,” he says. “As a rule, the mob steers away from highly regulated industries; they prefer to fill vacuums. But of course it is not an ironclad rule.”

“What about technology?”

“What about it?” he asks.

“Have they adapted to take advantage of it?”

He nods. “They have, but cybercrime is not their primary focus, and never will be. Their strength is in the person-to-person dealing, the intimidation and force tactics. I don’t see them as morphing into nerds who sit in their basement and try to rule the world.”

“Do you see Petrone moving into that world at all?”

He thinks about it, then shrugs. “He seems like the type; he fancies himself to be smart and capable of adapting, and he’s probably right about that. But he’s also old school in a lot of ways, so it’s hard to say.”

I’m just swinging blindly, hoping to get lucky and hit something.

I take another swing. “Why was Petrone shot at last night? And why did they miss?”

“Petrone knew they were coming; he wasn’t even in the room when they got there. Mazzi didn’t have such good intelligence, which is why he isn’t living anymore. Chalk up a big win for Petrone.”

“So they were after each other?” I ask.

“Either that, or it’s a bigger coincidence than my having your Giants tickets.”

“I need a road map here,” I say. “Petrone is somehow involved in my client’s case, and I don’t know what rock to look under. Help me out, and anything I get is yours.”

He hesitates before responding, then, “Look, what I’m about to tell you is off the record, and I’ll tell you going in that I see no connection to your case.”

It’s not exactly a positive preamble, but I’ll certainly hear him out.

He continues. “Petrone has been engaging in some unusual activity lately. At this point we don’t know what he’s doing, or why, but there is something going on.”

“Unusual how?”

“Well, for one thing, his people have been making a series of trips to other cities, to meet with Petrone’s peers, the heads of those local families. Petrone himself has not traveled; he’s become more of a homebody in his old age.”

“What cities?” I ask.

He shrugs. “No pattern. The ones we know of are San Antonio, Cleveland, Vegas, Chicago, and Baltimore.”

“Could he be trying to get a piece of their action?”

“We don’t know, but we have reason to believe he’s not making any friends. If he’s trying to expand, it’s very uncharacteristic. He’s always been completely local; he likes it that way. Invading other territories turns the system on its head.”