Authors: Fairstein Linda
When we got off, an attractive young receptionist
greeted us with a polished plastic smile. “How may I help you?”
Over her head was a sign with the company name and
logo:
MONTAUK WHELK MANAGEMENT
.
“We’re here to see Mr. Krauss.”
She looked at a schedule on her desk and frowned.
“Is he expecting you?”
“It’s a condolence call,” Mike said. “One of those
sudden-death things.”
“Oh, my,” she said, startled by the news. “Jonah
is in the gym. He should be finished there in a few minutes. Is it somebody
close to him? May I tell him about it?”
“Thanks, but we’ve got to do it ourselves,” Mike
said. “What block is the gym on? We can pick him up.”
She pointed at a frosted-glass door twenty feet
away. “It’s right there. But he’s wheels-up from the Thirty-fourth Street
heliport in an hour and I’ve got to get him there. Are you guys the police or
something?”
“Something. And I’m wheels-up from the morgue at
four o’clock, so we should be fine.”
The girl swallowed hard and told us to take a
seat.
“What’s a hedge fund, anyway?” Mike asked me.
I sunk into a leather sofa and took my lip gloss
out of my pocket. “They’re private investment funds, usually only open to a
limited range of investors. Hedge funds are exempt from direct regulation by
the SEC, the way brokerage firms or mutual funds are managed. So they’re considered
riskier than a lot of traditional investments.”
“Riskier how?”
“They often invest in distressed securities—like
companies going into bankruptcy. Many of them aren’t very transparent, since
they don’t have to disclose their activities to regulators. Sort of secretive.”
“Like you, Coop,” Mike said. “Krauss runs one?”
“The thumbnail sketch on the library contact sheet
said Krauss manages hedge funds. Forty-six years old, graduate of Dartmouth,
with homes in Manhattan, Montauk, and Lyford Cay. Still on his first
wife—Anita.”
“That’s refreshing,” Mercer said.
“And still wanting to use his new money to elbow
out the good ole boys on the board to be the chair, according to Alger
Herrick.”
“Don’t you think it’s supposed to be
wealth
management?” Mike asked me, looking at the firm’s name on the wall sign.
“I get that all the time,” the girl said, looking
up at Mike. I hadn’t realized she could hear us talking. “Don’t you know what a
channeled whelk is?”
Mike reached for one of the candies in a silver
bowl on her desk. “I’m drawing a blank.”
“They’re these clams that are in the ocean all
over the eastern tip of Long Island, and the white part of the whelk is the
most valuable. That’s what wampum comes from—you know, Native American money.
And Jonah is from Montauk, so it’s his play on words.”
“Must have a great sense of humor, your boss.”
“Excuse me. Jonah, these guys—and her,” she said,
waving in my direction. “They’re here to see you.”
Teeth whiteners must have come with the firm’s
annual bonus. Jonah Krauss picked up his head and flashed a broad smile at us
as he crossed between the reception desk and our seating area. “Whatever you’re
selling, come back next week,” he said. “I told you time was tight today,
Britney. I’m out of here.”
The girl couldn’t have been anything but a
Britney.
“They’re cops, Jonah,” she said, standing up to
grab his arm before he disappeared between the sliding glass doors that opened
automatically as he neared them.
Krauss turned to look at the three of us. Still
smiling—more cheesily than did most people on whom we dropped in—he introduced
himself and offered a handshake to each of us. His curly brown hair was still
wet from the shower I assumed he had taken after his workout. He was dressed in
a warm-up suit and sneakers, ready for his weekend getaway.
“What’s this about, folks?”
“A homicide investigation,” Mercer said.
“Really? Murder?” Krauss said, some of the sparkle
gone. “Who died?”
“Tina Barr.”
“Tina? From the library? She does conservation
work. Let’s take this inside my office, shall we? Brit—hold all my calls and
tell the pilots to expect a delay.”
The doors parted again and we followed Krauss a
few steps to another set of doors that slid apart on our approach.
I stood at the threshold, surprised by the sight.
Most corporate executives who pay forty-third-floor midtown rents want
forty-third-floor Manhattan views, river to river.
Instead, Krauss had created a thoroughly modern,
high-tech, translucent glass-and-steel library—carefully lighted and
hermetically sealed—within the core of this new business tower. The only clue
that we were anywhere near a corporate office was the four television
screens—one in a bookcase on each wall, so that they could be viewed from every
angle in the room—on which the Bloomberg channels ran continuously.
“No windows?” Mike asked as Jonah glanced at the
numbers as they glided by.
“Can’t do. The books have to be protected from the
sun, from any dampness or dust that seeps in,” Krauss said. “But it suits me
fine. I’d rather be surrounded by them all day than staring out at the city.
The kids who work for me have their offices on the perimeter. Big views, so
they can dream bigger. Keeps them hungry. Want to tell me about Tina?”
“Somebody killed her,” Mike said.
“How did it happen? Why?”
In the fifteen-second intervals when Krauss wasn’t
distracted by the ticker, he seemed genuinely surprised by the news.
“We’re still trying to figure that out. Nobody
from the library called you?”
“What does her murder have to do with the
library?”
“Everything, apparently. How well did you know
Tina Barr?”
“Not much better than I know you, Detective. I met
her when she worked at the library. I guess you got to me because I’m on the
board. She was handling some important restoration projects, the kind of thing
it interests me to learn about. I looked over her shoulder a few times, but
that’s as close as it got.”
Mercer was making his way around the room, tilting
his head to study the titles of the books. “Did she do any work for you
directly?”
“No. No, she didn’t. I have someone in England who
handles all my books. I just hadn’t any need for Tina’s services, although I
admired her talent. Look, guys, what happened to her?”
“Somebody killed her,” Mike said.
“Where? I wasn’t sure Tina was still in town.”
“I expect it happened in the basement of the
public library.”
“What?”
Krauss
seemed truly shocked. He sat at his desk, gesturing to us to take seats as
well, giving Mike his complete attention. “That’s impossible. Right under our
roof? That’s got to be the safest place in town.”
“Once upon a time, maybe.”
“And who do you think is responsible? A workman? A
trespasser? I know our security isn’t foolproof, Detectives, but the idea of a
murder inside the building is preposterous.”
“More likely it’s going to be someone who knew
Tina,” Mercer said. He was standing behind me, his large body framed by shelves
of books with gilt and silver-tooled decorations and lettering on their spines.
“Such a quiet girl. I can’t imagine she made many
enemies. How can I help?”
“When’s the last time you spoke with her?” Mercer
asked.
“A month ago, maybe two. I hosted a cocktail party
for the opening of our Dickens exhibit. We’ve got an extensive collection that
hadn’t been seen all together in a dog’s age. I know Tina was there. Everyone
in the conservation lab had done some work on that over the last couple of
years, and I thanked her for that. I don’t think—wait a minute,” Krauss said.
“I did see her again.”
“When?” Mike asked.
“Within the last couple of weeks. I had stopped in
at the lab because one of the girls had been working on an illuminated
manuscript of Petrarch’s poems. Stunning little book—brilliant pigments and
elaborate detail. I was surprised to see Tina there. I didn’t think she worked
at the library any longer.”
“And so you went over to talk to her?” Mike said.
“Actually, no. She said hello to me, and then—then
she asked me a question, something to do with an investment idea I’d had
earlier. Something I’d abandoned a while back. She was at her desk, and I guess
we chatted for three or four minutes.”
“Had Tina ever talked with you about investments?”
I asked.
His expression suggested my question was
ridiculous. “Never.”
“Then why?”
Krauss put his hands in the pockets of his warm-up
jacket and swiveled his chair back and forth. “I had a crazy idea a few years
ago. Tried to put together a consortium of investors to acquire something for
the library. Some bull—excuse me, Ms. Cooper—some cockamamie plan that started
with board gossip. I was surprised Tina even knew anything about it.”
“But she did,” Mike said.
“Well, Detective, she wanted to.” Krauss took his
left hand out of his pocket and looked at his watch. “I had nothing to tell
her.”
“What was your plan?”
“I was approached by a guy who goosed me to do a
joint venture. Wanted me to put up most of the money to try to buy a valuable
property that would fetch a fortune, if the damn thing even existed. I figured
I could find some buddies in the business to ride it with me, but the whole
thing turned out to be a hoax.”
“Who told you about it?” Mike asked.
Krauss threw back his head. “You don’t want to
know.”
“Try me.”
“His name’s Eddy Forbes.”
“The map thief?”
Krauss gave Mike a thumbs-up. “What’s this? Know
your library felons? At the time Forbes sniffed me out, he was a scholar and a
private dealer, helping some of my fellow trustees elevate their tastes and
shape their collections. He fooled a lot of people in the library world.”
“What is it that Forbes wanted you to buy?”
“An old map, Mr. Chapman.”
It was the answer I expected from the lead-in
Krauss gave us. What he didn’t expect was Mike’s comeback.
“The 1507 Waldseemüller world map?”
Krauss turned on the dental brights again.
“Anytime you get tired of working for the department, I might have a job for
you, Detective. Now, how’d you know about that?”
“Some guys are good at missing persons. I got a
sixth sense about missing things,” Mike said. “Seems like everybody on your
board wants a piece of it.”
“Yeah, but they’re just spinning their wheels.
’Cause if Eddy Forbes couldn’t find it or steal it, then that map is just one
more piece of the legend of Jasper Hunt Jr., made up to get the rest of the
rich boys buzzing.”
“You gave up on the project?” Mike asked.
“I shouldn’t have gotten involved in the first
place. I’m not into maps,” Krauss said. “There was a well-known bibliophile
named Holbrook Jackson, famous for saying, ‘Your library is your portrait.’
Look around this room. There’s not a single map on display.”
“So why did you entertain Forbes’s folly to begin
with?”
“The deal, Detective. The deal always grabs me.
Could have been searching for a rare map or Captain Kidd’s sunken treasure or
King Solomon’s mines. It would have been spectacular if the damn thing even
existed,” Krauss said, picking up a model helicopter from his desk and twirling
the rotors as he talked. “People would have been throwing money at me left and
right if I’d come up a winner. Instead I got hosed. Probably all went to
Forbes’s defense attorney anyway.”
“And you haven’t heard from Forbes since?”
“That’s one of the conditions of his probation,”
Krauss said. “He can’t be anywhere near a library and he can’t communicate with
any staff or trustees.”
“Why’d he pick you in the first place if he knew
you didn’t care about maps?” I asked.
“Money.”
“Everybody on your board has money.”
“Hard to get those tough old guys to part with
their dough. Most of their money is older than they are.” Krauss smiled again.
“I figure there’s always more to be made where the last pot of gold came from.”
I was certain that Alger Herrick had told us that
Minerva Hunt was involved in a deal with Eddy Forbes.
“Didn’t you try to discuss this consortium idea
with Jasper Hunt the Third? Doesn’t he still sit on the board with you?” I
asked.
“What was that saying about Boston Brahmins? The
Lowells talk only to Cabots, and the Cabots talk only to God?” Krauss asked of
no one in particular, reciting the singsong doggerel. “The Hunts talk only to
Astors…and maybe to God, as long as he isn’t a Jew or a black man. Or even
worse, a woman. Jasper hasn’t been on the scene much the last four or five
years. And he’s not exactly a fan of mine.”