Chapter 10 - The Sins of Danbury
Z
The Federal Correctional Institution in Danbury, Connecticut, sat like a cold concrete scar against the rolling autumn hills.
Unlike Ethan, who was serving his decades in maximum security at Sing Sing, Diane Hayes had been assigned to Danbury’s low-security camp for white-collar offenders. But prison was still prison. The woman who used to spend twenty thousand dollars on seasonal wardrobe updates was now wearing drab khaki scrub-pants and an oversized canvas jacket, her perfectly coiffed platinum hair streaked with uncolored gray roots.
Diane sat across the metal partition in the non-contact visitation room, staring at me through the reinforced glass with an expression of venomous hatred. She picked up the plastic receiver with trembling, liver-spotted hands.
I lifted mine.
“Did you come here to gloat, you ungrateful little parasite?” Diane spat, her voice tinny through the intercom. “Look at me! Look at what you did to this family! You put my son in a cage with murderers!”
“Your son put himself in a cage when he severed my brake lines, Diane,” I said, keeping my tone perfectly measured. “And he did it to cover up a debt that didn't even belong to him.”
Diane froze. Her eyes flickered with a sudden, involuntary spasm of fear before she quickly masked it behind a sneer. “I don't know what you’re talking about.”
“Alexander,” I said simply.
The color instantly vanished from Diane’s cheeks. Her hand gripped the telephone receiver so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
“You shouldn't speak that name,” she whispered, her voice losing all its haughty arrogance. “You have no idea what you’re meddling in, Claire. Leave it alone. Take your money and run while you still have your life.”
“Alexander’s trust just wired forty-two million dollars to purchase the Sovereign’s underlying debt,” I continued, leaning closer to the glass. “He sent a hit team to my office window with a surveillance photograph and a death threat. Tell me what Ethan was really doing for him.”
Diane laughed—a brittle, hysterical sound that drew the attention of a nearby corrections officer.
“Ethan thought he was a genius,” she said, her voice dropping to a harsh murmur. “My brother Alexander didn't die in that crash, Claire. He staged it because the SEC and the Department of Justice were forty-eight hours away from seizing his entire four-hundred-million-dollar offshore network. He went underground, operating through nominee corporations in Zurich and Panama.”
“And Ethan?”
“Ethan was desperate to impress him,” Diane admitted, tears of bitter humiliation welling in her eyes. “Alexander promised Ethan that if he could acquire the air rights surrounding the Lexington Avenue parcel—the rights your father owned—Alexander would finance Ethan’s entire real estate empire and make him a billionaire. But Ethan was greedy and clumsy. He borrowed sixty million from Victor Vance without Alexander’s approval, stole from the operating accounts to cover his losses, and then panicked when you audited the books.”
“So Alexander ordered Ethan to kill me?”
“No!” Diane hissed, leaning against the partition. “Alexander didn't know Ethan had tried to kill you until the news broke on television! Alexander was furious. Ethan was supposed to charm you, manipulate you, or use legal pressure to get the signature. By trying to murder you in a crude car wreck, Ethan exposed the entire offshore network to federal scrutiny!”
“Where is he, Diane?”
“I don't know!” she pleaded, her voice breaking. “Alexander doesn't keep in contact with losers. The moment the FBI raided Hayes Crest, Alexander severed every communication channel. But if he is moving money now, it means he’s coming to New York to clean the board. He will eliminate Victor Vance, he will eliminate Ethan, and he will eliminate you. Alexander doesn't leave loose ends.”
I studied her face for five seconds. She wasn't lying. The terrifying matriarch who had tried to buy my silence with fifty thousand dollars in a hospital room was now completely broken, living in terror of her own brother.
“Thank you, Diane,” I said, preparing to hang up.
“Claire, wait!” Diane yelled into the receiver, pressing her face against the scratched glass. “Tell Ethan... tell my son I’m sorry. Tell him I tried to save him!”
“Tell him yourself,” I replied quietly. “You’ll both have plenty of time to write letters.”
I replaced the receiver on the cradle, turned my back on Diane Hayes, and walked through the heavy steel doors into the autumn afternoon.
May you like
As I climbed into the rear seat of the armored SUV where Rachel and Marcus Reed were waiting, Reed handed me a fresh police intelligence briefing.
“We tracked the Zurich wire,” Reed said grimly. “Alexander Montgomery didn't just wire forty-two million to the Sovereign trust. He chartered a private Gulfstream G650 from Geneva under a diplomatic passport from a Caribbean nation. The flight landed at JFK forty-five minutes ago.”
