For hours, she had been staring at the spreadsheet showing Nate Burdette's "deals gone wrong" and the disappearance of the cash they represented. Granted, it had been only two hours – she had gotten into the office later than she usually did, laboring rather than zipping through her morning workout – but it felt much longer. She had long since scanned the spreadsheet so she could have an electronic copy to pull up at any time, but today she had needed the solidity of paper. It was getting a little mangled, and there were a few dried splotches of coffee on it, but it was still readable. Myka wished now that she had thought to ask for the copy of the organizational chart of Burdette's companies that Sam had also shown her. She had been able to find almost the same information in a list the Bureau had compiled, but a list wasn't as visual as a chart, and it didn't include all of the changes she had seen in Sam's chart. Her so-called photographic memory was in one of its hazy phases, exacerbated, if not caused, by her exhaustion, but she was doing her best to recreate the chart in her mind. It was a lot like a meditation exercise, the concentration on small details, but the information wasn't likely to make her feel more relaxed.
She needed the spreadsheet and the list – and the half-recreated chart in her mind – to tell her more, about how deeply Joshua Donovan was embedded in the workings of Burdette's organization and about his plans for extricating himself when it was time. It would also be helpful if the information could tell her when Donovan was going to flee so she could seek cover herself, under her desk, in the ladies room, because when Dovovan decided he was done playing with Burdette and the FBI, the fallout would be, well, nuclear. Probably a lot like Helena's reaction when she saw her birthday gift. Belated, very belated, by more than a couple of weeks, but still too soon for Helena, who had declared that she didn't want to celebrate her birthday until there was a real cause for celebration – the Winslows dropping their suit, Burdette miraculously turning himself in, and the FBI and Justice, with a goodwill more Christmas-like than 40th birthday-like, agreeing to commute her sentence. Jemma had rolled her eyes at the declaration, and Christina had pouted at the missed opportunity for birthday cake, but that was how Helena wanted it.
Myka hadn't bought anything, but in a late night commando raid on the dust and creeping clutter in her apartment, she found a postcard-size print of an Edgar Merrick painting stuck in the middle of a science fiction novel as a bookmark. The print was still in good shape, as if she had just brought it home from whatever museum Leena, maybe Tori, but probably Leena, had dragged her to one weekend for a special exhibit. The painting was a still life composed of a basket with bunches of carrots, radishes, and spring onions fresh from the garden, the vibrant colors emphasized rather than obscured by the streaks of soil that covered them. Scattered around the basket were half-eaten strawberries, suggesting that the harvester had found a means of rewarding herself for her work. Myka couldn't remember why she had bought it; the fact that it was a Merrick should have sent her flying from the gift shop, her fingers singed from having touched it. Yet seeing it again, she was struck by Merrick's assemblage of fruits and vegetables that were among the first to ripen in spring. There was an ebullience to the composition, a call to enjoy life as it bloomed and blossomed, that made it like no other Merrick painting Myka had seen. She felt more hopeful just looking at it. So she bought a frame for it, and it rested in a gift bag on her desk. Outside there were only the lowering clouds of a mid-October day and their situation – the Winslows, Burdette, Burdette and Donovan – seemed to promise disaster rather than deliverance, but that was all the more reason to give Helena the print.
The flare of pleasure Myka felt at imagining Helena's smile died once she refocused on the data. It was foolhardy, not to mention dangerous, to approach Claudia again. She had made it clear that any debt she might owe Helena was paid when she enlisted Fargo's help to disclose Mark Winslow's unsavory and potentially illegal business activities. Claudia, however, was the only weapon in Myka's limited arsenal powerful enough to battle Joshua, but even if she were magically able to persuade Claudia to delve into her brother's cyber domain, she had nothing to give her. There was nothing in the information, in the spreadsheet or in the chart – as best as Myka could put it together from memory – that indicated who had provided Sam with the information, how the source had obtained it, or where the missing guns, drugs, and other traffickable commodities might have gone. All she had was her own speculation.
Myka pushed her chair back in frustration, not quite rolling into the panel behind her. The guns, the drugs . . . the people . . . had been converted into cash and then laundered through Burdette's overseas accounts and shell companies not subject to U.S. banking regulations or U.S. law in general. But whether Burdette or Donovan would be at the end of the legal trail of the shell company within a shell company within a shell company would be difficult to determine and, more to the point, would take too much time if she went through regular channels – thus also the reason for Claudia.
"Haven't caught up with you in awhile," Pete said, pulling out the visitor's chair and straddling it like he was ready to commiserate about the Giants' lackluster start. (The Jets were beneath his consideration.) "DeWitt's attorney called me and wants to know if his client's 'helpfulness' is going to be suitably rewarded."
"If his client ever becomes helpful, I'll let him know," Myka said sardonically.
Pete cocked his head, appraising her. "Typhoid Mary is examining an antique urn. One of these little museums called us, afraid their big purchase is a bust. She seems happy as a clam working on a forgery here, counterfeit designer outfits there, acting as if this were her job." His voice had grown louder, and he scooted his chair closer to Myka. "It's not," he said more quietly. "The fact that she isn't back in her cell waiting for the breakfast bell is a gift. She needs to give us Burdette, or we send her back. The longer she stays out, the more trouble she'll get up to. You know that."
Myka stifled the fleeting impulse to tell him that Burdette had called Helena in the middle of the counterfeit jewelry investigation. She was unsure about the call herself, what had been Burdette's motivation for it, whether it had taken place as Helena claimed. Reflexively she glanced at the gift bag. Maybe it should wait until they all had cause for celebration, Burdette and Winslow vanquished and Helena's transformation into a law-abiding citizen confirmed. Hope was less foreign to her when it had some evidence to back it up. "She's tried. She told you at the outset she wasn't sure she had any influence with him anymore."
"That may be what she said, but . . . ." He rolled his shoulders dismissively, and Myka noticed that his suit jacket was a little tight. She wondered just how much candy, not to mention nuts and chips, he was stress eating in his office. "It's just like it was before. She gives us these nibbles but not the meal. She never gave us her father, and she won't give us Burdette either." He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a whisper. "It's not going to end like it did before. She's not going to bring the Bureau down. She's not going to bring you down. The powers that be are about to pull the plug on this operation. Whether she can't or won't give us Burdette, it doesn't matter. We've wasted too much time, and we've got other options." He shook his head at her questioning look. "I'm too far down on the food chain to be told what those options are, but I've been assured that we have them. Bottomline is that we don't need her anymore, Mykes."
"Am I supposed to tell her this, or is it just for my benefit?" Myka searched for something telltale in Pete's eyes. Usually they were as transparent as a retriever's, but this morning she found nothing in them bur relief at having a burden removed. If the Bureau and Justice were throwing their weight behind Joshua Donovan, she wouldn't learn it from trying to stare him down. She believed that he didn't know; it was consistent with Sam's warning when he showed her the spreadsheet not to share the information with Pete. She didn't know why Pete was being kept out of the loop unless the higher echelons at the FBI worried that he was too close to her – and worried that she was too close to Helena.
"I'd kinda like to deliver the news myself, but if you feel you need to set the stage, go ahead. I won't mind seeing her squirm." He gave her a wolfish grin as he got up from the chair. "Let me know what I should tell DeWitt's attorney by the end of the day, okay?"
She had been supposed to get in the night before, but the storm lashing North Carolina, Virginia, and parts north had kept her in D.C. until morning. The flight had been crowded and late in taking off, and the fringes of the storm front had kept the plane jouncing until just before descent. The only things that were preventing her mood from descending into travel-weary surliness were the coffee in her hand and the anticipation of seeing Helena after more than 72 hours of not seeing her. Seeing her and talking to her and smiling at her, but not touching her. Not in the office, and even the talking and smiling had to be circumspect, professional, a tease she would have ordinarily enjoyed, but it was too intense, this . . . thing . . . they had. They had been lovers for less than a month, but Myka already knew that she had never experienced anything like it. It wasn't only the constant sex and the constant thinking about the sex that they were going to have once they were alone; she had had that before, granted, not quite as constant as it was with Helena or as good, but that alone wasn't the difference. Nor was the surge of joy she felt every time she saw her, the desire to burst into song like she was in a musical 24/7, what set this apart. She had had that with others, too, although she couldn't remember breaking into an off-key rendition of "She Drives Me Crazy" in the shower because of anyone else. Maybe the difference was that she knew when Helena peered at herself in the bathroom mirror, she wasn't trying to identify her imperfections but silently lecturing herself that today, like yesterday and the day before and the day before that one, she would be commuting to her job, which was doing what she could to make up for her father's misdeeds, and not slouching into her studio at noon to spend hours, even days at a time, painting. Just like the affectionate eyeroll as she studied herself in the mirror told Myka that Helena knew she was, in fact, cataloguing all her imperfections. Less than a month of sharing a bed and a bathroom and yet they, mystically it seemed, got one another when longer relationships hadn't told Myka nearly as much about her partner. She had watched other lovers shave or put on make-up as they eyed themselves in the bathroom mirror, and she hadn't had a clue as to what was going through their minds, but she would watch Helena tomorrow morning and –
"Hey, you're back." Pete managed to sound aggrieved, relieved, and welcoming at all at once. He was blocking her path into her cube but didn't appear to care, cramming the last third of a glazed donut into his mouth. "I've had three days of hell as in Hel-l-l-lena," he complained around a gummy wad of donut. "Another promise of hers to bring down one of her old man's confederates gone bust."
The three of them had been assigned to track down the agent for a private sale of Monet water lily paintings that had recently been confirmed as forgeries. Learning of the assignment, Helena had wisecracked that "if you laid all these so-called Monets end to end they'd circumnavigate the globe." Their work had uncovered a name Helena recognized, that of a shadowy art dealer who had done business with Gentleman Jim in "contributing to the world's supply of Monets available for sale," she had said in sardonic summary. When Myka had left for training in D.C., Pete and Helena had been planning to follow up on evidence linking the dealer to the private sale.
"The guy had agreed to sit down with us. Helena had been, like, all 'favorite uncle' with him on the phone, and he must've been gushing about how good she was and how she ought to be off painting. I thought, 'She's finally coming through for us. We're going to get someone who'll turn on her old man. He said that he would be happy to 'clear the air' with us about the sale.'" Pete snorted in disgust, blowing out a fragment of donut. "Go to his home to interview him, and he's gone on a sudden, extended business trip to Europe, his housekeeper tells us. Business trip, my ass. He's probably gone completely underground by now."
"You're the optimist. Where's the positive thinking?" Myka asked mildly, squeezing around him to set her coffee on her desk. She and Helena had talked the nights she was out of town, but most of their conversation, when it wasn't filled with what her father would call 'lovey-dovey goo' had been about distinctly earthier needs. Helena had fleetingly referred to a disappointing turn in the investigation, but Myka had been busy performing a strip tease in front of the hotel room mirror at Helena's command, too aroused to take in a disappointment on any front, especially when she was certain that being disappointed and frustrated was not going to be the outcome of her evening.
"Helena Wells does not put a happy smile on my face." He rubbed his hands, scattering sugar across the carpet. "Oh, and Bates said he wanted to see you as soon as you got in."
"Thanks for leading with that," Myka said dryly. She looked down at her suit. She had managed not to spill anything on it during the flight. It was wrinkled but clean. What she wanted to do was to crawl out of it and into Helena's bed, preferably with Helena, but that wouldn't happen for another – she checked her watch – 10 or 12 hours. She punched Pete lightly in the shoulder. "Quit blocking my path. I've got to go see Bates."
Myka was amazed at how large the file on DeWitt had grown in the short time she had been away from the investigation. A member of the paperless generation, she nonetheless appreciated paper, loved the feel of it, thick, thin, smooth, rough. She was the daughter of a bookseller, how could she not? In addition to every scrap the agents had collected from DeWitt's home, car, and Barrington office, there was the paper they had printed, copies of electronic bank statements, income tax returns, incorporation forms (including those that established the LLCs and LPs into which he, Chris Jeffries, and Alex McCrossan had siphoned the funds they had raised for scholarships and those that he alone had filled out to set up the companies that would siphon the money from Chris and Alex.) Myka couldn't sort through it all in her cube, there wasn't enough room. Having commandeered a conference room, she sat at the middle of the table, boxes and stacks of expandable file folders on either side of her. She was trying to put account statements with the dizzying number of companies that DeWitt had formed, with and without accomplices. It was akin to figuring out the legal structure of a multi-national corporation, only it was the years'-long effort of one man to hide the money stolen from the people who had earned it or, in the case of the Barrington scholarships, those who had deserved it. She wasn't exactly sure what she was searching for, but she acknowledged, with a silent, cynical laugh, like pornography, only far less titillating, she would know it when she saw it.
She heard a knock at the door, too discreet to be from Helena, who would usually enter without waiting for an invitation, anyway. At her mumbled "Come in," half cut off by the coffee cup she had raised to her lips (her fourth already this morning), Leena smiled a greeting, but her eyes were busy taking in the piles of paper. She pulled a chair next to Myka's away from the table and settled into it as if she were looking for nothing more than an opportunity to catch up. But if they were catching up, they would be going down to the coffee shop or out to sit in the courtyard, trying not to shiver as a breeze with an autumn bite passed through their summer-weight knits. This was Leena in agent-whisperer mode, to keep the malcontents, the loners, and the wanderers with the rest of the herd.
"If you're here to counsel me through the threats to end the arrangement we have with Helena, I don't need any hand-holding," Myka said, standing up to tug a box closer to her.
Leena's expression didn't change. "Her situation's a little dicey right now," she admitted, "but she's not in imminent danger of being sent back to prison."
"Define 'imminent,'" Myka said, with an unhappy twist of her lips.
"Not today and not tomorrow. They're concerned that she's been holding out, promising more than she could deliver, but it's all rumblings at this point."
"Burdette was never part of the original deal, and she never promised that she could deliver him." Myka fixed her gaze on Leena.
Leena met it without hesitation or blinking, seemingly. "People often hear only what they want to hear, and they revise things in their mind so what was contingent and conditional becomes guaranteed. Whether Burdette was originally the deliverable doesn't matter, he is now, and she's failed to produce."
Classic Leena, concede that the Bureau might be arbitrary and wrong-headed but brush aside the possibility that the concession might dictate another course of action. Myka knew better than to push her however, not when she was talking to the directors' emissary instead of her friend. She held up a piece of paper to the light and stared hard at it. It couldn't be less informative than Leena. Yet the words that had formed were dissolving back into symbols that could have been hieroglyphs or Bureau-speak from a training manual for all the sense they made to her at the moment. It was a statement from one of DeWitt's offshore accounts, at a bank among several known to the FBI for their extensive accommodation of their clients' desire for privacy. She put the statement down. If Leena wasn't here to ensure that she behaved like a responsible, obedient agent, that is, put her loyalty to the Bureau above all other considerations, then she was here for something else. For a moment, Leena's serene professionalism seemed to crumple, dimming her smile's calm confidence. "I wanted to tell you before the rumors started making their rounds that I'm leaving for a permanent assignment in D.C."
"Should I be congratulating you or commiserating with you?" Myka asked, unsure whether the crack in Leena's composure hadn't been something she imagined.
"It's a promotion." Leena's smile widened, but her tone remained as cool as if she were offering a psychological profile. "They're combining some of our assessment programs and putting me over them. I'll have a real office and an assistant and a title with 'Director' somewhere in it. Mom'll be proud, so maybe she'll ease up on the 'go into private practice and find a husband' harangues." This time the faltering in her composure was unmistakable, and the friend showed through. "But I'll miss you, and not just because you're my favorite knot of anxiety to unravel."
Leena inhabited so many roles, friend, therapist, co-worker . . . consigliere, the Bureau resembling at times the crime organizations it investigated, and Leena being as adept at responding to their bosses' unexpressed thoughts and wishes as she was reading agents for signs of burn-out. Friend for now, but Myka knew that Leena could slip immediately, and effortlessly, into another of her roles. "Finally, they're acknowledging what the rest of us have known for years, that you actually run the place." She grinned, adding as playfully as she could manage, "No impromptu lunches or coffee breaks anymore. Does the promotion mean I'll have to make an appointment to see you the next time I'm in Washington?" It was the kind of trite joke made during farewell parties that Myka, hearing it, would roll her eyes at, but she had grabbed at it like a lifebuoy as she tried to process the news.
Leena shook her head. The nicks and stains on the conference table, the worn upholstery of the chairs, the room and, by extension, the office itself, seemed meaner, stingier, in both décor and atmosphere in light of Leena's impending absence. Despite the mystery of what Leena actually did and the nature of the influence she could wield, which, when Myka hadn't been itching to identify it had sometimes worried the hell out of her, or perhaps because it had been incapable of being reduced to casework and meetings and performance reviews, Myka would miss the hint of intrigue, the air of significance that Leena would introduce whenever she dropped in on a meeting or Myka would see her huddled with Pete in his office, door closed, on a conference call with headquarters when she had thought Leena was in Los Angeles or Phoenix or wherever else the directors sent her. Leena made going to the office closer to what people imagined it must be like working for the FBI. "I'll miss you, too," she said softly.
Leena gestured at the files. "I probably won't be here to see how this all turns out. The new job starts next week, and I'll be shuttling back and forth until I get dedicated office space, and a new place to live. I'll hear about it, but" a rare, fretful expression crossed her face, "it won't be the same."
A vaguely proprietary note had entered her voice, and Myka looked closer at her. That Leena was as much a director-whisperer as she was an agent whisperer, even, some would say, a puppet-master . . . . Myka stopped running through her store of spy novel clichés for describing her hazy understanding of Leena's work and considered what Leena might have actually done. As much as she respected Leena's influence, even Leena didn't have the power to decide what or whom the Bureau would investigate. The decision to use Helena to jumpstart the stalled investigation of Burdette wouldn't have been hers, but –
"I lobbied to have you assigned to Helena." Leena's admission – if that was what it was, because it didn't sound in the least contrite – sheared through Myka's muddled thoughts. It made sense . . . how could it make sense? She put her fingers to her temples as Leena addressed the "Why?" that she didn't have to say or, rather, shout. "You're thinking I should've known better, and a part of me, a large part, agreed with you. It was a huge risk, and, going solely off the files, it spelled disaster. But after talking to Pete and reaching out to Dwight, I felt that there was something undeniable between the two of you." As Myka flicked her a disbelieving glance, Leena said ruefully, "Yes, something undeniably bad, if we freeze time and concentrate exclusively on Marston." Earnestness filled her voice. "But something undeniably powerful, and if it could bring about something really bad, it also could bring about something really good, if the conditions were different. I thought they were. You weren't the naïve junior agent anymore, and Helena . . . well, her father was dead, for one thing. She was out from under his influence, and from what I was able to learn about what happened to her, I thought there was a good chance she had developed a conscience."
Myka was trying to absorb what Leena was telling her, but the only part she could focus on without fearing she might fly apart was the name Dwight. She had called Bates "Bates" in her head for so long, she had almost forgotten that he had a first name. Having been assigned to a field office a universe away from New York, he must have had plenty of time to talk to Leena about her and Helena. "Something" would have been the most positive euphemism to summarize his personal take on their relationship. "If it helps, Pete was dead set against pairing the two of you. Had it been solely his decision to make, someone else on the team would have been assigned to her." She shrugged. "But it wasn't. The way Dwight characterized it, how the two of you interacted, I couldn't put it aside. He said that each of you saw the other as she wanted to see herself. That's powerful stuff to work with. I hoped that it would mean this time around you both would fight like hell not to let the other one down."
"She was running a con, Leena, and I saw only what she wanted me to see."
"I don't think you believe that any longer. You saw Helena as someone worthy of being cared for, of being loved, just for herself. She responded to it." A wry laugh undercut her earnestness. "Obviously not as much as she could have or should have, but there's no doubt in my mind when I've seen the two of you together that she loves you. At first, I thought if we only had her remorse working for us, it would be enough, but the more I saw the more I started to believe that it was still there, her love for you. Partnering her with someone else – I won't say it wouldn't have worked, but with you, she had something extra to hope for."
"Pete said that I was chosen because no one else would be better proof against her tricks. After all, who could be that dumb twice?" Except me, Myka silently told herself, realizing that lately it was easier to count the number of nights that she and Helena hadn't made love.
Leena dismissed Myka's assessment with a wave. "If all we had needed was someone to keep tabs on Helena, any agent would've done. There's no one in this office who doesn't know Helena's history. But to get Helena to bring in Burdette, we couldn't have just any agent."
"Justice's siccing the Winslows on her was incentive enough. She was afraid she was going to permanently lose custody of her child if she didn't cooperate. You didn't need me as leverage." Myka's sarcasm was thick. "And even if you did, look at what we've accomplished."
"Now you're sounding like our bosses. I'm not willing to quit on the two of you yet."
"What if it's worse than we think? What if she has plenty of influence with Burdette, so much that she's conspiring with him in some con we haven't figured out yet?"
"I'd be more worried if you sounded more convinced that's the case."
Myka's sarcasm surrendered to uncertainty – and not a little exhaustion. "I can't make myself believe it," she paused, "not completely. But then I never saw the Marston Gallery heist coming either." Her fingers were at her temples again, pressing into her skin harder. "You keep talking about the directors. Are you the one keeping her here?"
Leena rose. "Don't overthink things," she said, which, Myka reflected, landed exactly in the middle between no and yes. "I don't have to trust Helena because I trust you." Another smiled blossomed, oddly cheerful given the course of their conversation. "Let's get together for a farewell brunch this weekend. Maybe there'll have been developments."
"You'll probably know them before I will."
She patted Myka's shoulder. "I have a feeling you're going to surprise us." At Myka's sour face, she added, "In a good way. Really."
Even when he wasn't on a call or in a meeting, Bates's door was always closed. Pete would knock and enter at the same time, but Myka waited for the "Come in," which was often said only after a sweat-inducing wait. After that Wizard of Oz moment of near-trembling before the voice, half-muffled, summoned her in, Myka was always thrown off-kilter by the discrepancy between what the closed door and clipped "Come in" seemed to herald and what greeted her, Bates hunched over the papers on his desk or peering, mouth ajar, at his computer monitor. He had been in the FBI for more than 20 years, but he still looked like an accountant trying to finalize a tax return. This morning was no different, except that he was eating a granola bar as he stared at the screen. "Oh," he said, with the characteristic mixture of disappointment and annoyance that he showed at an interruption, even if it was one he had asked for. "Take a seat. I'll be with you in a minute." He carefully swept the crumbs from the granola bar into a napkin he held just beneath the edge of his desk, then crumpled the napkin and tossed it into a wastebasket under the desk. If it wasn't crumbs from his breakfast or lunch (which he invariably took at his desk), it was paper clips or pens in need of straightening. His desktop had to meet some threshold of cleanliness or order in his mind before he could begin.
"I'm providing a status report to Washington on our consultant. They're interested in what Helena's contributed to our investigations over the past six months." His mouth twitched. It might have been a smirk or a grimace. "Ideally she would have brought us her father or the art stolen from the Bowdoin but absent that . . . ." His voice dropped, and he held up his hands to mimic scales, weighing Helena's benefits versus her costs. Another twitch, half-smirk, half-grimace. "You and Pete are the agents who've worked with her the most closely. I'd like your input."
Myka tried not to squirm. It wasn't hard to imagine what Pete would say, given his tirade this morning. "She's able to get to the heart of a fraud faster than the rest of us, and her technical knowledge about art forgeries surpasses ours. She's helped us bust the couple selling fake Warhols, and she was key in our preventing the workmen at Schuyler Place from walking off with the 'historic Schuyler jewels.'"
She and Bates both grinned at the sarcastic twist she had given to the words. The jewels, a small collection of brooches, necklaces, and rings ornamented with precious stones had been on permanent exhibit in an old hotel that had been renovated into a multi-use building with expensive condos on the top floors and equally expensive retail stores on the lower. A crew hired to do duct work in the building had tried to steal the jewels from the tiny room off the foyer in which they were displayed by hiding them in the ducts and replacing them with paste jewelry. The room's security had been poor and oversight of the crew lax, although they had been working near the room and on the floors above. Law enforcement and the FBI had been called in only when a security guard on his rounds noticed that one of the ruby brooches had unaccountably turned pink. Although the work crew were among the obvious suspects, the building's security had conducted periodic searches of their equipment and identified nothing suspicious. Searches of the crew's homes and business place found nothing either. Only after Helena asked if the crew had scheduled a check-up visit was a search of the ducts completed. Secreted in one of them were the jewels. Helena had eyed them, holding a few up to the light, and said, "I don't know why they went to the bother. These aren't worth much more than the fakes they were replaced with." The Schuyler jewels, despite their so-called storied history, which included belonging to a family of French aristocrats guillotined during the revolution, were largely a collection of higher-end costume pieces.
"My agents' time on the case was worth more than the collection," Bates sighed reflexively.
"She also prevented Dorchester College from selling an early Merrick that it thought was a forgery."
"I understand that you were the one who foiled the scam," Bates said.
"Helena and I were a team." Had she sounded a little too fan-girlish, a little too enthusiastic? Myka's skin began to prickle. If this conversation about Helena went on for much longer, she could do double duty as a water slide, her chest slick with sweat.
"Your partner thinks she's holding back."
"I think she doesn't trust easily. It's been only six months. Who knows what she'll give us in another."
"Maybe her father." An unhappy look settled over him. "Maybe disaster." Then he lifted his shoulders as if to shrug the concern away. "I'm counting on you to see any icebergs ahead of the rest of us. I thought about assigning her to Pete or Linda, but I decided you were the better fit though you've less experience than either of them." His eyes, a light, unremarkable brown, fixed on hers. "It's not just your eagerness to prove yourself that I hoped might rub off on her. It's that you've figured out justice isn't a sword or a superhero cape. It's not clean or quick or especially merciful. It's won, when it's won, by inches."
"You picked me because I'm a grind?"
He gave her the courtesy of a chuckle. "I meant it as a compliment, Bering. Your other winning characteristic is that you can work with Lattimer. If you can tolerate his antics day in and day out, you can work with anybody."
"Helena and I have developed a solid working relationship." Myka knew she wasn't a good liar, but it sounded like perfect office-speak to her. If he ever found out how solid their relationship was . . . .
"Keep an eye on her all the same. We can't afford to forget that her last name is Wells."
Myka paused over one document, the registration of a company with the innocuous name of Bryson Ventures, Ltd. She skipped to the list of officers, Gordon D. Bryson, President. It was one of the many cannibalizations DeWitt had made of his name. Bryson was a play on his first name, Gordon was his middle name, and though she doubted the "D" stood for DeWitt, it would serve as a reminder, like Gordon, like the "Brys" of Bryson, of who he was, of who he had first pretended to be before he had pretended to be so many others. For all of his chameleon-like changes – names, places, jobs, birthdates, Social Security numbers – DeWitt was still the Barrington scholarship student with a chip on his shoulder, determined to take his place among the golden ones.
She was about to put the registration on top of the stack of documents she had already reviewed and mentally labeled as unhelpful when she let it flutter to the side. She reached for a much shorter stack of documents, many of them bank or investment account statements. There had been a statement, a bank statement, from a bank located in a tiny country that saw a very large amount of money move in and out of its financial institutions. A lot of money for such a tiny island with no significant industry other than tourism. She riffled through the pages until she found it, a bank statement for BV Ltd. It didn't have much cash in its account, perhaps BV Ltd. hadn't been a successful front for DeWitt's scams. It didn't matter. The company wasn't as important as the bank. She had seen the name of that bank before . . . in the spreadsheet Sam had given her. One of the entries that noted assets "lost" to Burdette, a gun shipment that had mysteriously disappeared off the coast of Florida, also noted the name of a bank that had recently received a large influx of money in a new account, identified only by the initials CPI. She retrieved BV Ltd.'s registration. The company had been incorporated in that tiny country and, in a space on the document for contact information (should a government official have reason to question the accuracy of the information or, by extension, the honesty and integrity of the company's organizers) and desire clarification (which, of course, she or he never would) was the filing attorney's name and phone number. It meant nothing to her, but she could search against it in the existing files they had on Burdette. It could turn out to be an additional connection.
She hadn't been entirely flying by the seat of her pants when she started cross-referencing the information Sam had given her on Burdette with the information in their file on DeWitt. While the former was a shark when it came to criminal activities and the latter a pilot fish, they swam in the same ocean. Assets of questionable origin needed to be hidden and money tainted by trafficking needed to be laundered. Although Burdette had powerful attorneys and investment managers as contacts on his phone, DeWitt had been charming the elite for years. He had even conspired with his fellow Barrington alums on scams. If the middlemen who could negotiate the maze of international banking and tax laws weren't contacts on his phone, they were contacts on his friends' phones.
She glanced at the time on her laptop. It would be a very late day. She didn't have much time to ransack the Bureau's files on the bank, and she would have only one shot. Actually, they would have only one shot . . . .
Myka realized she had fallen asleep only when she heard a muffled thump on the floor, and she shot up in her chair. She spun around, half-expecting to find Pete or a member of the cleaning staff behind her but found instead a scattering of paper on the floor. Both Pete and the cleaning staff had left hours ago; she had simply leaned into one of the stacks of documents on her desk. She rubbed her face, debating whether to get another soda and bag of chips from the vending machine or lock up the paper and head home for a few hours of sleep. She woke her computer to check the time, a quarter to midnight. She wasn't convinced that the hours she had spent studying and restudying the information available on Burdette, DeWitt, and the bank that they might have in common, might being the operative word, made her footing any more secure for the leap she was about to take. She had put both her recall and speed-reading talent to the test. There wasn't a money laundering case in the past 20 years that she hadn't skimmed, sometimes finding a helpful reference, sometimes finding nothing. She hadn't expected to find any connection between Burdette and DeWitt or Donovan and DeWitt, but she had hoped to find enough information about the bank, the services it offered its clients, and its employees that the fragile link she had found between it, BV Ltd, and CPI wouldn't look like a coincidence whose significance she was trying to inflate. She hadn't found much, but she would be foolish to believe that she could find substantially more. It would simply have to be enough.
Not every minute had been spent poring over files, or even in her cube. She had spent five minutes in Pete's office telling him to advise DeWitt's attorney that they were still "evaluating" his information, which Pete had accepted with a dark look and an unusually sharp reminder that the freedom she had from having to answer to him had its limits. Pete's sudden tug on the reins and his earlier warning about Helena had been on her mind when Helena came looking for her after six, the time when most others had already left or were on the verge of leaving for the day. Time for dinner or a workout, time to catch up with the kids, time to go home, to where, if you weren't Myka Bering, you truly lived, mind, body, soul. Not here, not at this desk. "Take a break," Helena said, the concern that wasn't in her voice apparent in the worry creases that were developing between her eyebrows. "Walk me to the subway station, and we can stop in that sandwich shop along the way."
Myka had shrugged into her suit jacket, but it offered little protection against the blustery wind. Halloween was around the corner, and she pictured Christina trick or treating with Jemma, a parka zipped over her sparkly princess costume. "What's made you smile?" Helena asked, sensibly dressed in a lined coat, a warm, albeit borderline unfashionable, scarf filling the vee formed by its lapels.
"I was picturing Christina trick or treating in weather like this. She'll be so mad if she has to wear a jacket over her costume."
Helena was unembarrassed in her delight, and her smile was undeniably smug. "Ten years ago you would have been grumbling about how Halloween was 'invented' by the candy companies and worrying that children would be developing Type 2 diabetes 40 years later."
"I still think that, and I still worry about the health consequences of excessive sugar consumption, but . . .," Myka dramatically paused, "I can concede that kids in their costumes are pretty cute." She added, with a glance at Helena, "Ten years ago there was no Christina."
"There should have been," Helena said. "A classic case of 'If I had known then what I know now.'" She jammed her hands into her coat pockets and tried to pull the coat tighter around her. "You reminded me of you ten years ago, so absorbed in your work that you didn't know, or care, how much time had passed." Too casually, she asked, "Care to tell me about it?"
"You're probably better off not knowing."
Helena nodded, looking away.
The sandwich shop, not a fast food outlet, but little more than that, was tucked between two larger, more imposing buildings. Despite the lines at the counter, there were tables available, although Helena grimaced at the necessity of having to stand while they ate, the tables on either side of them uncomfortably close. Helena had chosen a packaged salad, the greens lifeless under the cellophane, the mystery of her choice solved when she explained that Irene was on a dessert kick, this morning giving her a container of rice pudding so smooth and thick and dimpled with raisins that "I practically swoon thinking about it." Doggedly trying to spear a rubbery cherry tomato with her plastic fork, Helena said, "I plan to let it have its way with me tonight unless I should hold out for something better?" Her voice held its interrogative tilt unconvincingly, and Myka didn't so much shake her head as duck it vaguely in the direction of the Bureau office, acknowledging a more powerful mistress. At least for tonight.
"When I would see you like that, so focused and intent, I felt . . .," Helena studied the remains of her salad, "this was even before I knew I fancied you, I felt jealous. I could concentrate like that, care like that only when I painted. I didn't call it jealousy, of course. I was scornful, I thought you were a drudge, an emblem of the normal world that my father rejected, a middle-class bureaucrat with middle-class values and a middle-class mind."
Myka had finished her sandwich but wanted to linger over her coffee for just a few minutes more. All things Donovan, Burdette, and DeWitt could give her this respite. "If you were trying to hide your scorn, you weren't always successful. I thought you were impulsive and too ready to rely on your instincts." She grinned. "I also thought you were pretentious."
"I had it drummed into my head that we were natural aristocrats. Even when I knew better, knew that no 'natural aristocrat' would stoop to stealing from his hosts or run out on his wife and child, twice no less, I clung to the belief that I was superior." Helena flashed her a return smile not untinged by bitterness. "Remember, darling, that it's never instinct with me but superior judgment honed by time and experience."
They were quiet for a while, letting the noise of the other diners fill their silence. Myka's suit jacket, a sensible wool blend, which hadn't been warm enough against the chill outside, felt very warm inside the restaurant. Myka's eyelids lowered, and she jerked awake, her coffee sloshing against the inside of her cup. "Don't stay too late, Myka," Helena said, her expression tender. "You're exhausted. I know only half the things you've been doing lately," her lips twisted wryly, "because you won't tell me the other half, but the half I do know . . . ." She said quietly, "If you're not going to come by later, then don't let me see you tomorrow in your coffee-stained suit."
"What?" Myka peered down at her jacket. She sighed. A splotch of coffee stained her arm. Another suit to go into the dry-cleaning bag. "The craziness will end, Helena, and then it will all be good, I promise."
"You hope," Helena corrected.
"I've been trying to think more positively. You know it doesn't come easily to me." Myka stared into the cup, trying to keep her face and tone as neutral as possible. "You haven't gotten another call from Nate, have you?"
"I wouldn't hide that from you. Not now."
Myka wanted to believe her, but that was something else that didn't come easily.
…..
DeWitt was more frayed, less self-assured than he had been when he dangled the location of the Bowdoin artwork in front of her. He was twitchier, his fingers drumming the table top, his eyes skittering around the room, but he was still neatly groomed, or as neatly groomed as one could be in jail. Myka had seen people react to the loss of their freedom and privacy with a self-destructiveness that, years later, could still disturb her sleep, but DeWitt wouldn't be one to lose control like that, and she doubted she would lose much sleep no matter how stir-crazy he became. It had been a long time since he had been in a cell, and he didn't like it. "I expected to hear from you before this," he snapped.
Myka knew she didn't look her best, either. She had left the office shortly after midnight, but she had laid awake in bed past 4:00 a.m., worrying that she was about to make a huge mistake. When you didn't have a lot of options, it was hard to realistically assess the ones you did have. She hadn't had the time to give much thought to her appearance, no careful updo today, just a barely brushed look that felt as messy as it looked. Besides, whatever slight advantage the dissonance between the role she had played in her and Helena's undercover work that had brought down DeWitt – the unhappy, repressed wife – and the FBI agent she was had disappeared. At least the unhappiness and repression hadn't been hard to assume, not with the necessity of playing Helena's wife then. She had traded in being DeWitt's mark and future conquest for being his enemy. She preferred it this way.
"If you'd actually had something to trade, Bryce, we'd be having a different meeting," she said calmly. "You weren't anywhere near Gentleman Jim, and while you might have seen Ted Bonaventura in the exercise yard during your stint in one of the state's finest, that was as close as you got."
"I knew Ted very well." His gaze steadied as he searched her face. "He did tell me where the art had been hidden."
She leaned in closer. She was risking that he might make a violent move, but she didn't think he was there, not yet. "I'll take the guesswork out of it for you. One of the prison guards remembers you. He thinks that you were behind the beating Ted took. He may be right, you may have been the one to put Ted in the hospital ward before he was transferred out, but he was old school, and he didn't tell you a damn thing, except to go fuck yourself. Am I right?"
DeWitt leaned away. "If the only reason you had me dragged out of my cell was to shit on me like this, I'd rather go back. At least it smells better there."
Myka hadn't wanted it to come to this. She had gone back and forth over all of the evidence the team had assembled on him, hoping that there was something more she could threaten him with, selling intelligence or nuclear codes on the black market, something more than the hazy history of cons the team had put together. There was enough they could prove that would put him away for years, but she was pretty sure that DeWitt had already figured out how soon he would be up for parole, even in a worst case scenario. He hadn't murdered anybody, only stolen their savings, their self-respect, their hope. She had wanted to scare him into cooperating with her, but she would have to strike a deal with him, and that was a far more dangerous thing to do.
"I didn't come here to gloat. That's not to say I'm not a little pissed off at having to chase down something that was only a figment of your imagination, but my bosses keep thinking you might be useful. I beg to differ, but here I am." She turned her hands palms up in a what-can-I-do gesture.
DeWitt cocked his head, as if something were coming in on a frequency only he could hear. She wondered anxiously what else she was signaling that he might have picked up on. "Maybe I should talk to my attorney. He'd probably like to hear this."
"It's a time-limited offer. Once I get up from this table, the offer's expired."
"How do I benefit from being 'useful' to the FBI?"
"The Bowdoin heist remains an active case. Maybe your benefit is the fact that we're not going to add interference with an ongoing investigation to the stack of charges against you." She had to try it, try to rattle him a little, although the emerging smirk on his face told her she hadn't succeeded.
"You're going to have to do better than that."
She folded her hands together, more to suggest that she could wait him out than because she had any desire to stay in this room with him longer than she had to. "You can help yourself by telling me about Bryson Ventures, Ltd."
As Myka listened to him, she automatically discounted 98% of what he said. It was a legitimate business enterprise, established to shelter him and his partners from the taxes normally applied to "international commerce." When she rolled her eyes at the phrase, he said sulkily, "A few friends and I were importing luxury goods, watches, liquor, perfumes."
She stared at him and said, after a long silence, "You mean the 'luxury goods' that were manufactured here and that you fraudulently passed off as Swiss watches and French perfumes."
He pretended not to hear her and described the activities as a hobby, a passing interest, but, of course, lucrative. The attorney who had facilitated the registration of BV Ltd., sparing him and his partners the headaches of trying to comply with another country's laws, had recommended setting up accounts at the Banque de Commerce, known for its attentiveness to its customers. "He said they were lions in guarding their clients' interests and privacy. What's not to like about that?" DeWitt demanded.
"Exactly, and if they're willing to conspire with their clients . . . ."
"I don't know what the bank did for their other clients, all I know –"
"Is that they accepted large cash deposits from BV Ltd., no questions asked," Myka sardonically finished for him.
"It doesn't matter now. I'm sure the company's accounts are frozen." DeWitt pretended to chew a fingernail. "Next I'll work on an ankle. Are you going anywhere with this?"
"You had a personal banker assigned to you. I saw a name on some of the statements. Oliver Duplessis. Did you ever talk to him? Would he recognize your voice?"
He glared at her, a mixture of contempt and confusion in his eyes. "That's not how it works. You know you don't just call and say, 'Hey, transfer $25,000 to this account in the States.'"
She repeated, "Would he recognize your voice? Did you ever have a casual conversation with him?" Myka knew that DeWitt would never pass up an opportunity to chat, in other words, to research a potential future mark – or partner in crime.
"We didn't exchange Christmas cards, but we'd occasionally talk about the weather, island life, that sort of thing. He was in customer service, and I was a customer. If he doesn't talk to me, he can't sell the bank's services."
"You're a con, and you're always on the lookout for an opening. I bet you found out more about Oliver in a three-minute conversation about the best beaches than some of his friends know about him."
"Oh, so this is your game. You want me to talk to Oliver, to elicit information from him." In mock regret, DeWitt looked down at his jail-issued clothing. "Unfortunately, I'm not really dressed for the part." He lifted his head. "Sorry, Agent Bering."
Myka ignored his jeering. "We want you to confirm the accountholders of a company that's a client with the Banque de Commerce." There was no "we," only an "I" and Myka felt the sweat between her breasts and on her back. She would need to take a second shower before she went into the office. "We could do it ourselves, but sometimes we're a little hamfisted, and this requires a gentler approach."
"Meaning you don't want this company tipped off that it's being investigated." He smiled in self-satisfaction. "Bring me an offer, in writing, and I'll consider it."
"I told you, once I stand up, the offer's off the table, to use a figure of speech." She looked down at the table and then grinned cockily at him, her eyes fixed on his. She hoped it looked like a genuine grin and that her lips hadn't frozen into a rictus. She couldn't hear how she sounded for her pulse thundering in her ears. Could he read her anxiety? She steeled herself not to look away.
"You've gone rogue, haven't you?" DeWitt said softly. "You're running some side investigation that your bosses know nothing about. You don't want them to find out, do you, Myka?"
She noticed his use of her name. Fuck, he thought he had her. She noisily pushed her chair back. "Deal's off, DeWitt. If you think you have something one me, you can have your attorney report it to my bosses. In fact, I can have a guard bring in a phone and you can make the call right now. You'll want to ask for Peter Lattimer."
His gaze lingered on her in way that made her want to shiver. "You do have fire, don't you? What fun it would have been to ride you . . . and break you." His tone jarringly playful, he said, "Sure, fine, because I like you, I'll talk to Oliver for you and see what I can get out of him. Then you'll owe me, and that I like even better, Myka."
"You'll be hearing from me." She felt like the compromised cop from TV trying to bluster her way out of the realization that she had just made a very bad deal. There was no victorious swagger in her walk to the intercom, and she couldn't be sure that her finger didn't shake as she pressed the button and called for a guard. DeWitt's acquiescence to her terms made her feel more vulnerable, not less. He had found her weakness, and his seeming lack of interest in what he could get out of her for conning a bank employee suggested that he was betting he could extort her for something big. He as good as knew that this wasn't a sanctioned trade – a reduction of charges or a recommendation for leniency in exchange for his assistance – only a lone agent winging it because an investigation that had dangled freedom like a toy in front of Helena seemed designed instead to keep her in prison.
Myka didn't stop sweating until she had left the jail far behind her. Although DeWitt was the one trapped behind barriers, bars, and locked doors, she was the one who felt the walls closing in.