Montaro Caine: A Novel Page 6

  With a glance, Colette referred the question to Freich.

  “It’s in America someplace,” he said.

  Caine was taken aback by the tone of crisp finality in this answer. “Come now, you can do better than that,” he pressed.

  “Afraid not. All we know is that it is somewhere here in America. Exactly where and in whose possession, we actually do not know.”

  Was that all they were after, Caine wondered, a confirmation that the second coin was no less authentic than the first? Or was that simply the impression they wanted to give him? Who the hell were these two and what was their game? He tried to keep himself from feeling both devastated and enraged. He felt as though he had been used—by Colette, Freich, even by Larry Buchanan.

  “Are there more than two coins that you are aware of?” Caine inquired, attempting to plant doubt in their minds and to keep the conversation going. He theorized that Beekman and Freich might be collectors of some sort.

  “Not to our knowledge,” Colette answered with a slight frown.

  “It would seem likely,” Caine said, softly nudging the doubt along.

  “But then again, they could be the only two of their kind in the entire world,” said Freich.

  “In that event, they would have to be considered among the rarest objects on Earth,” said Caine. “Making this,” he added, picking up the jewel box from the desk, “a true objet d’art.”

  Freich nodded noncommittally. “Would it be asking too much for you to jot your conclusions down in a letter, Montaro? We could have it picked up at your office some time next week, if you would be so kind.”

  Caine’s mind reeled. Apparently, he had been had. He had given far more than he had intended and had received far less than he had expected. The compensation Freich and Beekman were going to give him was irrelevant, and so was their vague interest in Fitzer, which now struck him as little more than a con; he still knew nothing that he needed to know. Beekman and Freich had awakened a curiosity in him that had lain dormant all these years; it would distract and nag at him, and yet he still had no way to resolve it.

  Colette raised her palm to Caine, who transferred the jewel box to her outstretched hand. Touching her soft, warm hand distracted him momentarily. The physical exchange, to both their surprise, somehow turned into a prolonged, tender handshake. “Thank you again, Montaro. It was good of you to take the time away from your busy schedule to help us,” she said. “You can send the invoice to our attention at the Waldorf. They’ll forward it to us.”

  Caine made no reply.

  Turning, Colette moved toward the door where Freich waited.

  “Good-bye, Montaro,” Freich said, with a wave of his hand.

  Caine nodded. He kept his eyes on Beekman’s legs as she moved through the outer office.

  When Freich closed Borceau’s office door behind him, Montaro buzzed Gina Lao, and over the intercom ordered her to find her boss as soon as possible. Within minutes, Borceau arrived out of breath. Without skipping a beat, Caine ushered him into the laboratory, where he showed him a few minuscule fragments of the coin he had purposely set aside, slivers containing the unknown elements.

  “I want to know everything you can tell me about these,” said Caine. He made no mention to Borceau of the coin or the other elements, of what he was looking for, or of what he thought Borceau might find.

  Caine then returned to Borceau’s office, where he immediately got on the intercom with Gina again. “Get me Dr. Michael Chasman’s office at M.I.T.,” he told her. A few moments later, Caine was put through to Dr. Chasman’s secretary, Madeline Pitcar.

  “Hello, Madeline. How are you?” Caine said into the phone. As he spoke, he tried to envision the flirtatious, bleached-blond secretary of his former mentor; she had to be pushing sixty by now.

  “Hello, I’m fine. How are you?” Madeline responded uncertainly.

  “I’m O.K., but I’d feel a lot better if I was sure you hadn’t forgotten me. It’s Monty Caine—Montaro Caine.”

  “Oh my, Monty, forgive me,” she said. “What a pleasant surprise, but Dr. Chasman is not here.”

  “I’ve got to talk to him. It’s urgent,” Caine said.

  “I’m sorry, I don’t know where he is. He’s away.”

  “It’s absolutely critical, Madeline.”

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Monty. He’s out of town; I just don’t know where. He said something about Europe.”

  “I’ve got to track him down. Does anyone else know where he is? His wife?”

  “She passed. Long time ago.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Does he have a travel agent?”

  “No, his agency went out of business years ago. I usually set up his plans, but this time, he didn’t ask me, so I have no idea where he is other than what I told you. When I hear from him, I will tell him that you called and ask him to get in touch with you right away.”

  “Madeline, listen,” Montaro said. “You don’t have to respond, just listen. Throw your mind back twenty-six years. I’m sure you’ll recall that winter when Professor Walmeyer and I made such nuisances of ourselves regarding a rare coin. Do you remember how we pestered Dr. Chasman to get the owner of that coin to let us have a second look at it? No matter how hard we tried, Dr. Chasman would not let us know who the owner was.

  “Now, I know you know who that person is,” Montaro continued. “I’m sure you know, too, that I analyzed that object for Professor Walmeyer. Assuming the owner is still alive and has retained possession of the coin, I want you to call him and tell him this—I have just seen and done a workup on a second object that is almost identical to his, but not quite. It is certainly as authentic and, in my professional opinion, I would say their origin is probably the same. In other words, I found almost all the unusual characteristics of that first coin in the one I examined today. If he still owns the first coin, or even if he doesn’t, please give him my number. Do you understand?”

  Madeline swallowed audibly before speaking softly into the phone. “As soon as I hear from Dr. Chasman, Monty, I will let him know that you have tried to reach him. Thank you.”

  Gina Lao made sure that both lines had disengaged before she quietly replaced the receiver she had been listening in on, while in her boss’s office, Montaro Caine placed a call to Lawrence Aikens, Fitzer’s head of security.

  6

  “MORNING, CHIEF,” LAWRENCE AIKENS SAID AS HE PICKED UP his phone. He had been listening to a report from his security officer Curly Bennett when he saw Montaro Caine’s name appear on his caller ID. At that very moment, he told Curly that his report would have to wait. When Montaro called him directly, Aikens knew that there was an important matter he had to attend to immediately. Not only was Montaro his boss, but Aikens was a Nebraska Cornhusker, and Montaro came from Kansas City, and Aikens felt that, in New York, men from the Great Plains needed to stick together.

  “Hi, Lawrence,” Caine said. “How’s the family?”

  “Oh, everybody’s fine, chief,” Aikens said. Then, alluding to Fitzer’s internal situation, he asked, “How goes it with you?”

  “We do what we have to do,” Caine said. “Speaking of which …”

  “What can I do for you, chief?”

  “I need some information.”

  “You got it.”

  Caine had first met Aikens sixteen years earlier, when Caine was manager of operations at Mosko Chemicals, a pint-size chemical company where Aikens was head of security. Over the years, Aikens had become both a good friend and a strong ally. And Caine, who valued Aikens’s loyalty, his honesty, and his plainspoken Nebraska ways, had brought him to Fitzer. Caine appreciated the straightforward nature of his security officer, a profession that seemed to attract a fair number of men more interested in throwing their weight around than actually solving problems. Even now, despite all the turmoil and turf wars going on at Fitzer, Aikens was one man who Montaro trusted completely.

  “I need to find out everything I can about a man nam
ed Herman Freich,” Caine said. Aikens listened, jotting down pertinent information. “He’s about fifty, fifty-five years old—and a woman, maybe twenty-six, answers to Colette Beekman.

  “I want to know who they are,” said Caine. “I want to know where they’re from, where they go when they leave Suite 2943 at the Waldorf Towers, what they do for a living, and who they work for. Get me a business and a financial sheet and anything else you can come up with.”

  “How fast do you need it?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “I’ll do my best. Just hold on for a second.”

  Aikens finished scribbling on his memo pad, then looked up at Curly Bennett, who was waiting to resume his report. Aikens had chosen Curly as his personal assistant over several other candidates, all with more experience, because he recognized Bennett’s instincts as those of a born investigator. In less than two years at his post, the young man had exceeded all of Aikens’s expectations.

  “Curly,” he said, “Sorry about this. But everything else will have to wait. There’s an emergency situation and I need you to get on it right away.” Aikens ripped the top sheet from his pad and handed over the information. “The CEO needs this info in a hurry. Put as much manpower on it as you think necessary and get back to me—yesterday.”

  Curly stood quietly studying what his boss had written.

  “Get to it, kid,” Aikens said.

  “Yes, sir,” the young man replied with a smile as he dashed out of Aikens’s office.

  “I need it in hand by this afternoon,” Aikens called after him. When Curly was gone, Aikens returned to Caine, who was still waiting on the other end of the phone. “I’ll have something for you in a couple of hours, chief,” he said.

  7

  ALAN ROTHMAN, FITZER CORPORATION’S FINANCE MANAGER, drove across town in his black, S-class hybrid Mercedes sedan until he reached the garage of The Brougham Arms Apartments, an impressive upscale rental complex in the mid-Seventies overlooking the East River. The Brougham Arms represented an ideal location, providing both the privacy and convenience Rothman required whenever he made his ever-more-frequent visits to a certain penthouse apartment on the building’s twenty-ninth floor. Rothman left his car with the garage attendant, handed the man a crisp twenty, then walked to the self-service elevator. He moved through the garage almost as smoothly and as silently as his Mercedes.

  All in all, Rothman thought as he stood alone in semidarkness waiting for the elevator doors to open, he had had an eventful and productive day. First, his CEO, Montaro Caine, had abruptly postponed two critical meetings regarding the continuing fallout from the Utah mining disaster and the persistent bad press and takeover rumors in order to have a confidential meeting with Michen Borceau at the Fitzer Lab. Then, there had been a rushed, rescheduled board meeting in which Caine had defended his increasingly rash decision-making process but refused to reveal what he had been doing at the lab or why it had necessitated postponing the meeting. Both Rothman and operations manager Carlos Wallace had argued heatedly with Caine, demanding to know what he was up to. Afterward, the two men had circulated a memo expressing outrage at Caine’s behavior. “His shooting from the hip at such a delicate time for the company is disruptive and can’t help but be damaging to all concerned,” they had written. But Wallace’s and Rothman’s anger was mostly for show; they felt that Caine was proving their point that he was no longer up to his job. Now, Rothman had to meet with his associates to reassure them that his instincts were correct.

  The elevator doors opened, and Rothman stepped in. He fingered the button for his destination and rode the elevator upward. Eyes alert, he stepped out onto the twenty-seventh floor, and, making sure that he had not been observed, he opened the door to an exit stairwell. He jogged up two additional flights to the twenty-ninth floor. Perhaps this was an unnecessary precaution, a bit more James Bond than the situation warranted, but he took it nonetheless, finding his way to apartment 2901 where Verna Fontaine, a stylish, well-built blond woman in her late forties, greeted him warmly. Verna was a senior vice president at Nevan, an international cosmetics firm that had recently been acquired by Colcour, a conglomerate owned by Richard Davis, the billionaire businessman who had started in oil and wound up in everything else.

  “Are they here?” Rothman asked, stepping past Verna.

  “They are.” She closed the door behind him, then led him to the dining room where Richard Davis, a wiry man of sixty-two, was seated between his lieutenants, Bob Wildenmiller and Thomas Bolton. Davis was intent on a takeover of Fitzer, and he had selected and cultivated Rothman to be his man on the inside. Over the past eighteen months they had spent in their secret association, Davis had found Rothman to be bright, tough, ambitious, and hungry for power—a combination that perfectly fit Davis’s plan for the restructuring of Fitzer Corporation after it was drawn into his orbit.

  “Heya, Alan,” Davis called out as Rothman entered the living room. “How are ya?”

  “Fine,” Rothman returned. “And how are you?”

  “Good, good.” While Verna set out a silver tray arranged with soft drinks, coffee, and cookies in the middle of the dining room table, Davis rose from his seat to shake hands with Rothman. Wildenmiller and Bolton also stood to shake Rothman’s hand, then Davis got straight to the point. “So, what the hell’s going on with our situation?” he asked.

  “Everything’s on schedule, Richard,” said Rothman. “Nothing to worry about.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Guaranteed.”

  “You seem confident of that.”

  “I am.”

  Davis took his seat. Bob Wildenmiller, Thomas Bolton, and Verna Fontaine did the same, while Rothman slid into a chair facing Davis.

  “Caine, on the other hand, seems to have a different scenario in mind. Canceling meetings? Running off to the lab? Any idea what that’s all about, Alan?”

  “Blowing smoke,” said Rothman.

  “I wish I could be so sure,” said Davis. “From the way he choreographed it, it looks to me as if he wants someone to think he’s baiting a trap.”

  “I agree. That’s what he wants us to think. But there’s nothing to it. Believe me, I’ve been studying this guy; he is not above dealing in appearances. I know his style.”

  “Maybe,” said Davis. “But he doesn’t seem to be the kind of man who would be doing what he’s doing without a damn good reason.”

  “I don’t think he’s got one, Richard.”

  “Then how do you explain his actions?”

  “Nervous,” said Rothman. “He’s not a born businessman; that’s what I’ve been saying all along. He’s got too much to deal with and he’s poking around in the dark. Everything’s weighing on him and he doesn’t know how to carry it all. Plus, there’s a situation with his family. Frankly, all this sounds like a death rattle to me.”

  “Come now, Alan,” said Davis. “The man is a tactician. You know that better than we do. Now, what the hell is he up to?”

  “I really don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” said Rothman. “But if there is, I guarantee you, I’ll find out what it is.”

  Davis seemed to be satisfied with that response. He propped his elbows on the dining table, then resumed speaking. “Well,” he said, “we’re not as sure of his motives, or lack thereof, as you seem to be, so we’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and let you find out what you can. And in the meanwhile, we have concluded that cutting him off at the knees would be the best counter.” He paused for a moment, then continued. “We’ve decided it’s time to move, Alan,” he said. “First, we begin with a gradual buy-up of as much of the stock as we can before we make our intentions public.” Davis then began to outline his plan to take over Fitzer.

  An hour later, when Rothman rode the elevator alone down to the garage, he was smiling. Richard Davis was in a class by himself, no doubt about that; soon, Alan Rothman thought, he would find himself in that class too, and he would stop at nothing to get there.


  8

  THE CROWD AT THE “21” CLUB WAS THINNING OUT AS THE LUNCH hour drew to a close. In front of Montaro Caine was a plank of salmon he hadn’t touched and a tumbler of scotch he had touched far too much of. His wife had been telling him that he needed to eat more and drink less. Every day at about this time, a text message from Cecilia would pop up on his phone—“Have you eaten yet?” “What’re you having for lunch, Monty?” Given the stress he was experiencing on all fronts, Montaro knew that Cecilia was right to worry. Yet, the facts remained before him in the forms of a full plate and an empty glass.

  Larry Buchanan’s appetite, however, seemed to be faring just fine. When Larry was nervous, he ate; he was finishing off the last of his French fries while Montaro continued to press him for information about Colette Beekman and Herman Freich.

  “I need you to tell me everything you can about those two,” Montaro said.

  “I don’t know any more than I’ve already told you, Monty,” said Larry, but Montaro knew that his old college buddy wasn’t telling him the whole story.

  “Tell me, where are they now?” Montaro asked.

  “At the Waldorf, I guess.”

  “No, they’re not,” said Montaro. “They checked out yesterday morning before they came to see me.”

  “How did that go, by the way?”

  Montaro glowered, irritated by Larry’s obvious diversionary tactic, the one he had been using ever since the two men were freshmen at the U of C and Larry relied on Montaro to get him out of trouble with girls. “Who are they, Larry?” he pressed.

  “They’re investors, Montaro. Honest to God, that’s all I know.”

  “How did they come to you? Do you know who pays their hotel bill?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Well, I do,” said Montaro. “Have you ever heard of a company called Socoloux Limited?”

  “Can’t say that I have.”

  “They don’t let you in on much over there at that office, do they, Larry?”