Legacy of Secrets (7 page)

“Gentlemen, Bob Keeffe was an adventurer. He was a showman. He enjoyed his role as a larger-than-life public figure. He liked the recognition and the respect and the glamour. It made up for all the rejection he got as an orphan kid who had to make it the hard way. He loved music and art and beautiful women, and all those things cost money. And he spent it like water on all three.

“If it had not been for his love of art, maybe this tangled web might never have been uncovered, or at least not for some years, and I truly believe that Bob himself believed that he could sort it all out. That one day he could stop robbing Peter to pay Paul, that this new skyscraper, and then the next, would be sold for the millions he owed and then he could sleep nights again. But Bob coveted a second van Gogh to hang on the wall of the new Keeffe Tower. It would be a tangible symbol, like the other he owned, of his dreams come true.”

They stared at him: they all knew the story of Bob Keeffe’s proposed bid of sixteen million dollars for van Gogh’s “Garden of the Asylum,” which had been painted in St. Remy. The Keeffe Tower was the jewel in the crown of his career. He had wanted the world to see what he had created from nothing. He had wanted to show them how rich and powerful he and his company were. And how splendid a Park Avenue building Keeffe Tower would be with a famous van Gogh hanging in its atrium.

“Every tourist—every
person
—in New York will pass through Keeffe Tower’s atrium just to look at that van Gogh,” he had told them. “And each one of them will stop for a cup of coffee in the cafe, or a drink in the bar, or to buy a book or scarf, or a jewel in the boutiques. It will bring in a hundred times more business than it cost. And it will make the Keeffe name famous throughout the world. You’ll see, before you know it, we shall be building Keeffe Towers in Sydney, in Tokyo, in Hong Kong. This is only the first of many.”

That van Gogh, symbol of Keeffe’s young dreams, had brought about his downfall. The banks were suddenly cautious, they were no longer rushing to lend him money. One by one they had turned him down. His credit had run out. Somehow the news filtered out that Keeffe was in trouble, confidence in his companies melted like frost in the sun, and Keeffe Holdings’s shares tumbled. With the dramatic drop in the share prices the panicked bankers had demanded more collateral to compensate for the loss, and for a couple of weeks Bob had kept them all quiet, promising them that it was “all a mistake” and of course he had the money and everything would be all right, if only they would give him time to sort it out. But no more collateral had been forthcoming. And then Bob Keeffe had killed himself.

“My colleagues are asking for more time,” J.K. said to the bankers, “but in all honesty I cannot.” He felt their astonished eyes riveted on him. “Bob Keeffe left us a billion-dollar mess. I don’t know what he did with all that money, but for a man like that, with a globe-trotting, flamboyant, gambling, plutocratic life-style, nothing was too big or too expensive. I know he overpaid by hundreds of millions on city building sites he insisted on buying and everything was bought with money he did not have, money he borrowed.”

He lifted his shoulders in a weary shrug. “I knew nothing of Bob’s private dealings. Whatever he was doing, he kept it to himself. I was as close to him on a day-to-day basis as
his wife. I thought I knew the man. But I was wrong. And Bob Keeffe was not the man I—or you—thought he was. He betrayed our trust, gentlemen. And that is the truth of the matter.”

The stunned eyes of the other two partners met his as he sat down again and the bankers shuffled their papers and conferred among themselves. There really wasn’t much left to say. J.K. had just confirmed their worst fears and there was only one thing to be done. Keeffe Holdings was finished.

No one ever understood how the news of J. K. Brennan’s hatchet job on his dead boss at a highly confidential meeting of the company’s bankers managed to filter into the media, but it hit the press simultaneously with the news that the banks had foreclosed and after that it was a financial free-for-all to see who came out with any money. The FBI were involved as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission and all the company’s books were being removed from the headquarters to be examined.

A week later J.K. was thinking of Shannon Keeffe’s distraught, pale, wistful face at the inquest as he took a cab over to the Keeffe Center on United Nations Plaza to meet with his partners. With a verdict of suicide, Keeffe’s insurers were refusing to pay out on the twenty-five-million-dollar life insurance policy that his daughter had been beneficiary of. She would get nothing. It was a pity, he thought with a sigh, that the innocent had to suffer in affairs like this, but there was nothing he could do about it now. It was too late.

Wexler and Jeffries were already there, standing by the window, their heads together in conference. They glanced guiltily up as J.K. strode through the door on the dot of eight, moving apart quickly like men caught in a conspiracy. J.K. smiled. Tossing his jacket onto the back of the sofa, he rolled up his sleeves and went and sat in Bob’s chair.

“Well, gentlemen,” he said, linking his hands together
and leaning comfortably across Bob’s desk as though he owned it. “Why don’t you tell me what you have decided.”

Wexler glanced at Jeffries and then he said angrily, “You can’t wait to step into his shoes, can you?”

J.K. smiled a cold little smile. “Unlike you two, at least I waited until he was decently buried.”

Brad said in a trembling voice, “Tell us the truth, J.K. Did you kill Bob?”

J.K. sat back, gazing impassively at them. He locked his hands behind his head and stretched, then he said with a weary sigh, “Why me? What motive have I got for killing the man who helped me up the ladder?”

“Dead men’s shoes,” Wexler repeated grimly.

“I was better off with Keeffe alive, and you know it.” He glared at them. “Maybe I should ask if you, Jack, or you, Brad, murdered our beloved boss. After all, you have far stronger motives than I do.” He smiled grimly. “How much was it, Brad, that you’ve stolen over the years? Ten, twenty million? Maybe more? You knew Bob was a dreamer. He employed you to look after things in the office while he went out and got the jobs and the financing. And you nickeled and dimed him, right from day one, until after seventeen years your hand was in the till more often than it was out. And as the business grew so did your thieving.

“It was a good thing Bob never got to know about that secret expensive horse farm in Kentucky, eh, Brad? In beautiful bluegrass country, and with a string of beautiful expensive Thoroughbreds,
and
a beautiful expensive young lady trainer to look after them for you. Not even
Mrs.
Jeffries knew about her, did she, Brad?”

Brad retreated, pale-faced, to the sofa. He poured himself a glass of whiskey and sipped it silently.

“And you, Jack,” J.K. said, smiling icily. “Don’t you have an equally good motive for killing Big Bob? When I first started to work for Bob I asked myself right away, how come a man like you—an architect working for Keeffe Holdings, earning good money to be sure, but not
that
good—how come a man like you managed to live in the
style you lived in? Sure, later you became a partner, but you already had the town house on Sutton Place and the Aston-Martin and the Bentley. You already had the art collection; it was in a different style from Bob’s because you were men with vastly different tastes. But Warhols and Rothkos go for a pretty penny at auction, just like van Goghs, and you could almost have matched his, dollar for dollar.

“You took kickbacks on everything, from the shipments of marble from Italy to the contracts for the steel girders. You made money on every aspect of the construction of Keeffe buildings, and you gave contracts not to the lowest bidder, or even the best man for the job, but to whoever paid you off the most. Even so, it was still a bit hazardous, with your flashy, expensive life-style. Still a bit hand-to-mouth. And maybe you wanted more?”

He sat back and smiled his genial smile at them again. “I am the one who knows where all the bodies are buried. I am the one who could turn either of you, or even both of you, over to the cops, the FBI, the SEC, even the IRS. You name it, I could do it.”

Wexler’s face was gray under his year-round tan. “You wouldn’t do that,” he snarled, standing menacingly closer to the desk.

“Maybe not. It all depends.”

“Depends on what?” Brad Jeffries said wearily. “I’m getting too old for this, J.K. Tell me the worst. Am I a dead man, or what?”

“Brad, Brad! How can you say such a thing? There’s only one dead man around here and we buried him last week. All I am here for is to remind you of your loyalty to Keeffe Holdings.”

“I still don’t understand why you said what you did about Bob at that meeting with the bankers,” Wexler complained angrily. “We could have gotten them to give us time, we could have finished the Keeffe Tower and stayed in business. We could have arranged for it to be kept separate from the holding company mess, if only we had
danced enough, begged enough,
sweated
enough. All those bastards wanted was their money back, and I know I could have at least swung it on the building. It was our one solid asset.”

J.K. buttoned his jacket and walked to the door. “You’re wrong there, Jack,” he said pleasantly. “Keeffe Holdings no longer owned Keeffe Tower. Bob sold it just a week before his death to a company in Liechtenstein. At a considerable loss to us.” He shrugged. “You can thank your leader for that one, Wexler. Bob never did have a good head for business and when the walls were caving in he just grabbed what he could.”

“But how much?” Wexler gasped, stunned.

J.K. shrugged. “What does it matter? It all went to bail out whatever creditor was most pressing. And it’s gone. When they sell off the remaining assets the banks will probably get about half what they are owed. The other creditors will get nothing. The employees will not even get a pension, gentlemen, including you and me,
and
his daughter, because that money, invested nicely and safely by me, went the way of all Keeffe money. Dwindled away personally by Bob, bit by bit.”

He opened the door to leave and then he thought of something. He looked contemptuously back at them. “By the way, the SEC investigators and the fraud guys are down at the brokerage house now. I handed everything over to them. All you have to do is hope that I didn’t keep extrazealous records about your own little activities. Goodbye, gentlemen. Have a nice day.”

S
HANNON WALKED BLEAKLY
through the eighteen-room penthouse overlooking Central Park. The rooms were bare, stripped of their beautiful antique furniture and ornaments. Little brass lights dangled over the blank spaces where her father’s treasured paintings had hung; the lovely Sickerts and the Constables, the Picassos and the Monets. The parquet flooring was scuffed from the moving-men’s feet, and the expensive silk curtains, soon to be ripped out by the interior designer doing over the apartment for the new owner, still hung forlornly at the windows.

Opening the door to her old room, she looked around for the last time. She had lived in this apartment most of her life. She had grown up in this room, as it changed first from childish pink gingham to teenage black and silver, then to simple white with an antique American patchwork quilt.

The only things she could call her own were the inexpensive paintings she had bought herself, the big doll house, her old toys, her books, her clothes, and a few bits of jewelry.

She had never been a “jewelry person,” preferring fashionable costume glitter to real diamonds and pearls. But she had one wonderful necklace. Her father had given it to her when she was eight, on the day he married Buffy. She remembered staring, amazed at the pretty strand of diamonds tied in a love knot.

“Look how it sparkles, Daddy,” she had said, thrilled.

“Not half as much as your eyes, little darlin’,” he had retorted. “Now, you take care of that. It’s by way of bein’ a family heirloom.” And then he had swept her into his arms and carried her off to help cut the wedding cake.

And of course, she had Wil’s engagement ring. They had bought the fine, square-cut three-carat diamond from Cartier. She eyed it anxiously, knowing it had cost more than Wil could afford. He was still only a law student. His father was an attorney and she knew the family was comfortably off, but by her own father’s standards they were not rich.

“Your family’s money is the stuff dreams are made of,” Wil had said to her admiringly. “I’ll never be as rich as your father, Shannon.”

“No matter,” she had replied airily. “I’ll have enough for both of us.”

She quickly closed the outer door with a final click, shutting out a lifetime of memories. As the paneled elevator wooshed softly downward, she had to bite her lip to stop from crying.

She had known the doorman since she was a child, and he was waiting to say good-bye. “I’ll never forget him, Miss Shannon,” he said, folding her hands in his. His weathered red face crumpled suddenly and tears stood in his faded blue eyes. “He was a fine man. As good as they come, and nobody will ever say any different in my company. Best of luck to you, miss.”