Sidney Sheldon's After the Darkness (8 page)

Grace felt sick.

Suicide? Lenny? No. Never. Even if he had stolen some money, he would never leave me. He would never take his own life.

She struggled to keep her voice steady.

“Whatever happened on that boat, John, it was an accident. Lenny
was happy when he left me that morning. Why hasn't the FBI spoken to me? I would have told them that!”

“I'm sure they will want to talk to you eventually. Once a d-death certificate is issued, there'll likely be an inquest. Right now the p-primary focus is on locating the m-missing money. Until that happens, all Quorum's assets have been frozen, as well as your p-personal accounts.”

Grace looked so small and lost, perched on the edge of the couch. Had John Merrivale been a more tactile man, he'd have gone over and hugged her. As it was, he said, “Try not to worry. I know it's hard. But you and I b-both know Lenny wasn't a thief. The truth will come out eventually. Everything will be okay.”

No it won't. Not without Lenny. Nothing will ever be okay again.

 

I
T WAS THE NEXT MORNING THAT
the storm erupted. Angry investors marched on Quorum's offices, demanding their money back. CNN showed images of a near riot, with mounted police forcing back the mob. Within hours, the likely scale of what was now being called the Quorum Fraud was making headline news around the world.

Grace watched the television in shock.
“Leonard Brookstein, once one of New York's best-loved philanthropists and an American icon, was today being exposed as perhaps the greatest thief in U.S. history. Furious investors in Brookstein's Quorum Hedge Fund burned effigies of the fifty-eight-year-old, presumed dead after a freak sailing accident last month, outside his former offices.”

The phone rang. It was John. Grace broke down.

“Oh, John! Have you seen what they're saying about Lenny? The news…I can't watch.”

“Grace, l-listen to me. You're not safe. I'm c-coming to pick you up.”

“But that's crazy. Why would anyone want to hurt me?”

“People are angry, Grace. Lenny's n-not here. You're the next best thing.”

“But, John…”

“No b-buts. You must stay with us. Pack a bag. I'll be there in t-ten minutes.”

Ten minutes later, Grace was in the back of an armored Town Car.
As she left her building, a small group of hecklers was already gathered outside. They jeered at her.

“Where's the money, Grace?”

“Where'd Lenny hide it?”

“Is that seventy billion in your suitcase, baby, or are you just glad to see us?”

By the time John bundled her into the car, she was hyperventilating.

She never set foot in her apartment again.

 

“N
O
. I
WON'T SELL IT
. I
CAN'T
.”

Grace was in the boardroom of the law firm Carter Hochstein. Around the table were six forbidding-looking men in dark suits. John Merrivale introduced them as Lenny's trustees, the men responsible for overseeing his estate.

“I'm afraid you have no choice. Put simply, Mrs. Brookstein, you do not have the money to continue paying the mortgage on the apartment. We're going to have to put
all
your assets on the market. Historically, your husband funded his lifestyle by borrowing large sums of money against the value of his stake in Quorum. Those loans have now been called in, and you have no immediate means of paying them.”

Grace turned to John Merrivale in bewilderment.

“But how can that be? Can't I, I don't know, sell some shares or something?”

John looked pained. “The thing is, Grace, until this mess is sorted out at Quorum, you d-don't have any shares to sell.”

“Mrs. Brookstein.” Kenneth Greville, the most senior partner, spelled it out in black and white. “You must understand.
Vast
sums of money remain unaccounted for at Quorum. Hundreds of thousands of your husband's investors have been financially ruined. They've lost everything.”

Grace thought,
And I haven't?

“Until your husband is determined to be legally dead and the criminal investigation is completed, we can't draw any firm conclusions. But it does look increasingly likely that Mr. Brookstein was involved, to some degree at least, in fraudulent activity of a most serious nature. The amounts that were stolen—”

“No.” Grace stood up. “I'm sorry, but I won't sit here and listen to this. My husband never stole anything. Lenny is not a thief! He's a good man and he built Quorum up from nothing. Tell them, John.”

Kenneth Greville thought,
She still refers to him in the present tense. The poor child's delusional.

“Your loyalty is admirable, Mrs. Brookstein. But it is my unpleasant duty to inform you of the facts with regard to your current, and probably future, financial circumstances. You will not be able to continue living at the Park Avenue apartment. I'm sorry.”

Tears rolled down Grace's cheeks. She felt as if she were manacled to a runaway train. Her life was collapsing around her, and she had absolutely no power to stop it.

 

T
HAT EVENING AT DINNER
, C
AROLINE
M
ERRIVALE
watched Grace staring listlessly at the dining-room wall. She'd barely touched her soup and looked thin and drawn.

“Eat up, Grace. In this house we make it a rule never to let good food go to waste. Don't we, John?”

John saw the triumphant flash of cruelty in his wife's eyes.
She's loving every second of this. Turning the tables on Grace at last. She's like a cat with a mouse, playing with it before the kill.

“Caroline's right, Grace. You must try to k-keep your strength up.”

Grace brought a spoonful of soup to her lips. It was cold. She fought down the urge to gag. “I'm sorry. I really don't feel very well. If you don't mind, I think I'd like to go to bed.”

The sooner today was over, the better. After the meeting with the lawyers, she'd felt lower than she had since the day the coast guard told her the awful news. The whole world was talking about this stupid money.
As if I care about the money! All I want is for Lenny to walk back through the door.

A maid appeared in the doorway. “I'm sorry to interrupt, Mrs. Merrivale. But there's a policeman at the door. He says he has urgent business with Mrs. Brookstein.”

Instinctively Grace panicked. “No! Tell him to go away. It's late. Tell him to come back in the morning.”

Caroline laughed. “Don't be silly, Grace. It's the police, not a social call. You must go out and meet him.”

“No, please, Caroline. I can't.”

Caroline was unmoved. “Melissa, show the officer in. Tell him Mrs. Brookstein will be with him momentarily.”

A few minutes later, Grace walked nervously into the entryway. She expected to find an aggressive FBI agent there to interrogate her. Instead, she was greeted by a shy young man in uniform. As soon as he saw Grace, he took off his cap politely. Grace felt the tension in her shoulders begin to ease.

“Good evening, Officer. You wanted to see me?”

“Yes, Mrs. Brookstein. I, er…I have some news for you. It's about your husband. Perhaps you'd like to sit down?”

Irrationally, Grace's heart soared.

He's alive! Lenny's alive! They've found him! Oh, thank God. Lenny will come back and everything will go back to the way it used to be. We'll have our homes again and our money, no one will hate us anymore…

“Mrs. Brookstein?”

“Oh, I'm fine, thank you. I've been sitting all day. You say you have some news for me?”

“Yes, ma'am.” The young man looked at his shoes. “I'm sorry to have to tell you this. But this afternoon the Massachusetts coast guard recovered a body. We believe the remains to be those of your husband, Leonard Brookstein.”

D
ONNA
S
ANCHEZ ENJOYED HER WORK AT
the city morgue. Her friends and family couldn't understand it. “All those dead people. Aren't you creeped out?” Their reactions made Donna smile. A heavyset Puerto Rican woman with fat, sausagelike fingers and a round, doughy face, Donna had grown up in a big noisy family before starting a big noisy family of her own. Outside of work, the sound track to Donna Sanchez's life was screaming children, smashing crockery, beeping car horns, blaring television sets. Donna liked the dead because they were silent. The city morgue on Clarkson Avenue in Brooklyn was white, clean and orderly. It made Donna feel peaceful.

Of course, she still had bad days. Even after eight years, the sight of small children's bodies could make Donna choke up. Some of the accident victims were pretty gruesome, too. And the suicides. The first time Donna saw a “jumper,” she had nightmares about the mangled corpse for weeks afterward: bones erupting through the skin, skull collapsed like a rotten melon. Normally, drowning victims were among the easiest to deal with. Immersion in cold, deep water tended to delay decomposition. Donna also noticed that many of the water-dead had a happy, almost beatific look on their faces.

Not today's body, though. The revolting, waxy hulk lying on the slab had no face. The fish had seen to that. All that was left beneath the
ravaged stump of a neck was a great, bloated midsection. The left arm and hand were miraculously intact, but the rest of the limbs had gone, snapped off like crab claws. It was, as Donna's friends would have said, creepy.

“Are they really dragging his poor wife in here?” Like everyone else at the morgue, Donna Sanchez knew that the cops believed the body was Lenny Brookstein's. That's why it had been brought back to New York, almost two hundred miles from where it washed up on the Massachusetts coast. “No one should have to see their loved one like this.”

Duane Tyler, the technician, sneered. A handsome black kid, fresh out of high school, Duane was a born cynic. “Save your sympathy, Donna. One thing Grace Brookstein ain't is poor. You know what they saying? This son of a bitch ripped off thousands of people. Ordinary people.”

“I know that's what they're
saying,
Duane. It doesn't mean it's true. Besides, so what if he did? It's not his wife's fault.”

Duane Tyler shook his head pityingly. “Don't you believe it, girl. You think the wives don't know? Those rich white bitches? They
know
. They all know.”

 

H
ARRY
B
AIN AND
G
AVIN
W
ILLIAMS WERE
in the district attorney's office.

It was common knowledge that Angelo Michele's parents were two of the many New Yorkers facing ruin because of Lenny Brookstein. Angelo was the best legal brain in New York City, but Harry Bain wondered whether, in this case, his judgment might be clouded. The D.A.'s opening words did not reassure him.

“Well, I wanted Brookstein's head on a plate. Looks like I got the next best thing. His torso on a slab.”

“It might not be him,” said Harry Bain. “His wife's on her way to identify the body. What's left of it. Then we can autopsy.”

“Good.”

It was the job of the FBI task force to find the missing Quorum money. But it was Angelo Michele's job to prosecute those responsible for the theft. Part of him was pleased they'd found a body. The possibility, however remote, that Lenny Brookstein might have somehow escaped and be living the high life on a private atoll in the South Pacific
had been keeping Angelo awake at night for weeks. But another part of him felt robbed. If Lenny Brookstein was dead, he couldn't be punished. Somebody had to be punished.

“Have you got any further with Merrivale or Preston?”

“No.” Harry Bain frowned. “Not yet.” He had personally interviewed the two senior Quorum execs a total of six times, but was no closer to untangling the mystery of how Lenny Brookstein had managed to spirit away such insane amounts of money. Instinct told him that both men knew more than they were telling. But so far, he couldn't prove it. “Agent Williams has uncovered something interesting, though.”

Angelo Michele looked at Gavin Williams. The man gave him the creeps. He was more like a robot than a human being. When he spoke, it was in a monotone, studiously avoiding eye contact.

“It appears that in the week before his death, Leonard Brookstein changed the company structure at Quorum. Effectively, he arbitrarily stripped John Merrivale of his partnership status.”

“Damn it.” Angelo Michele shook is head.

Harry Bain cocked his head to one side. “That's bad?”

“Sure. If Lenny Brookstein was the only legal partner, it'll be almost impossible to indict, much less prosecute, the other players. Short of seventy billion showing up sewn into Merrivale's suit pants, we're fucked.”

“He wasn't the only partner.”

“But I thought you said…”

Gavin Williams sighed, like a grade-school teacher explaining something painfully simple to a seven-year-old. “I
said,
Lenny stripped John of his shares. I didn't say he was the only partner. He didn't keep that equity. He transferred it.”

Angelo Michele's heart was racing. “To who, for God's sake?”

Gavin Williams smiled.

“To his wife.”

 

D
ONNA
S
ANCHEZ SAID GENTLY
, “A
RE YOU
sure you're ready, Mrs. Brookstein?”

Grace nodded.
It doesn't matter. This is all a dream, a nightmare. When she pulls back the sheet, I'll wake up.

“We'll do this very quickly. Try to focus on the hand. If you recognize the wedding ring, that's all we need.”

Donna pulled back the sheet.

Grace threw back her head and screamed.

 

J
OHN
M
ERRIVALE STARED AT THE DOCUMENTS
in front of him, rubbing his eyes with exhaustion.

“There must be some m-m-mistake.”

Harry Bain lit another cigarette. The smoke made John Merrivale feel nauseous. “No mistake, John. This is Lenny's signature. And this is Grace's. You don't think we had them checked?”

The documents were legal instructions, changing Quorum's ownership structure. They transferred John's entire equity stake in the fund to Grace. They were dated June 8, the day before the Quorum Ball. Both Lenny and Grace had signed them.

“Face it, John. The Brooksteins ripped you off. They were planning to grab what was left of the money and run.”

“No. Lenny wouldn't d-do that. N-n-not to me.”

“
Read it,
John! It's right there in black and white. He did it.
They
did it, together. Don't you think it's time you stopped protecting them?”

John squeezed his eyes shut tight. It was so hard to think.
How long have I been in this room? Three hours? Four?
He thought about Grace, alone at the morgue. The police had refused to let him go with her. The poor girl would be terrified.

“Lenny had a l-legal right to restructure the company any way he chose. Quorum was his business.”

Harry Bain looked at him in disbelief. “You're saying you
don't mind
that Lenny Brookstein robbed you blind?”

“I'm saying he didn't rob me.”

“But he did. It's right here in black and white.”

“He m-must have had his reasons then. Lenny's dead. He's not here to explain, to d-defend his good name.”

“His
good name
?” Harry Bain laughed out loud. “Lenny Brookstein? The man was a crook, John. So was his wife. That much we know. The question is, what
don't
we know? What are you hiding from us?”

“I'm not h-hiding anything.”

“Why are you protecting him?”

“He was my friend.”
My only friend.

“He wasn't your friend. He
used
you, John. He used you from the beginning. Why do you think a brilliant guy like Lenny needed a schmuck like you on the team, huh? D'you ever ask yourself that question?”

All the time.

“Because you gave him legitimacy, that's why. Because you were dumb and adoring and blindly loyal. Like a dog.”

John looked up. It was Harry Bain's face sneering at him, but the voice was Caroline's.
You're a lapdog, John. You're pathetic! Stand up and be counted!

“No. I wasn't Lenny's d-d-dog. It wasn't like that.”

“No? What were you, then? Because the way I see it you're either a fucking moron who couldn't see what was going on right under your nose. Or you knew.”

“No. I d-didn't know anything.”

“I don't believe you. Where's the money, John?”

“I don't know.”

“Where'd you stash it, huh? You and your
good friend
Lenny Brookstein. The guy who trusted you so much. Who relied on your advice. Where'd you put the cash?”

“I've told you. I don't—”

“Maybe it's Andrew Preston we should be talking to. Was Preston the one Lenny
really
trusted?”

“Of course not. Lenny was always much c-closer to me than to Andrew.”

“So close that he gave your shares to Grace?”

A high-pitched whistle in John's head was getting louder, like a boiling kettle.

“Where is it, John? Where's the money? If you weren't Lenny's little dog, prove it.”

The whistle was so loud, he thought his eardrums would shatter.

“WHERE'S THE
FUCKING
MONEY, JOHN?”

“I DON'T KNOW!” Slumped over the table, John Merrivale broke down in sobs. “For G-God's sake, what's the matter with you? I don't know.”

On the other side of the two-way glass, Angelo Michele turned to the psychologist.

“What do you think?”

“I think he's telling the truth. He doesn't know anything. When he saw that partnership document, it blew him away.”

Angelo Michele nodded.
I agree.

I wonder if that automaton Williams is having any more success with Grace?

 

“W
HERE WERE YOU WHEN YOU SIGNED
these documents?”

Grace tried to focus. Still reeling from the shock of seeing Lenny's body, she found it hard to remember where she was. The gruff, gray-haired man sitting opposite her was from the FBI. He'd arrested her as she left the morgue and driven her somewhere, but she couldn't remember where, or how long it had taken. Now she was in a white, windowless room. Images of Lenny's mutilated corpse flashed through her mind like a horror movie. The man kept talking.

“They're dated June eighth.”

Lenny's skin, waxy and white, like the stuff that covers the skin of a newborn baby.

“Mrs. Brookstein, these documents prove that you knowingly made yourself a partner in Quorum International LLC, with a view to profiting illicitly from illegal trades, made between 2004 and 2009.”

Lenny's swollen finger, the skin bursting around his wedding ring.

“What do you know about the whereabouts of the profits from the following transactions: 2005, Innovation Management's six-year fund of funds, executed in Grand Cayman?”

“I don't know anything.” Grace's voice was barely a whisper.

Gavin Williams leaned across the table till his face was millimeters from hers. Grace smelled his sour breath. “Don't lie to me, Mrs. Brookstein. You will regret it.”

Grace looked up and saw the compassionless void in his eyes. A cold stab of fear ran through her. “I'm not lying.”

“You were a partner in your husband's fund.”

“A partner? No. You're mistaken. I was never a partner. I don't know anything about business. It was Lenny and John.”

“Do you deny this is your signature?”

Angrily, Gavin Williams shoved a piece of paper across the table. Grace recognized her own writing. But she couldn't for the life of her remember what the document was, when she'd signed it or why. Lenny handled all of that.

“I don't deny anything. I…I'm confused.”

Gavin Williams was shouting. “Two thousand and five, Innovation, Grand Cayman!”

“I want my attorney present.” Grace was shocked to hear the words come out of her own mouth.
I sound like a bad episode of
Law & Order.

“What?”

“I…I said I need a lawyer.”

Gavin Williams seethed with frustration. He'd hoped that by catching Grace at such a vulnerable moment, he'd be able to bully her into a confession, get her to break down. But if she wanted a lawyer, he could not deny her one.
Bitch.

“Interview terminated. Turn off the tape.”

With a look of disgust, Gavin Williams left the room.

 

T
HE FOLLOWING MORNING, NEWS OF
G
RACE
Brookstein's arrest and the recovery of Lenny Brookstein's body was splashed all over the papers.

Honor Warner shook as she read the report. “They've found Lenny's body.”

“Yes, I know,” said Jack, deadpan. “I can read.”

“How can you be so calm about it? The FBI has arrested Grace. Have you seen the list of charges? The things they're accusing her of: securities fraud, money laundering…Grace can barely add two plus two! What are we going to do?”

Jack smiled. “
Do?
We're not going to
do
anything.”

“But, Jack…”

“But Jack, what? We're going to wash our hands of your little sister and walk away.”

Honor looked horrified. Jack laughed at her.

“Oh, please. Don't try to pretend to me that you
care
about Grace.
It's a little late for that, darling. Did you think I couldn't see through you all these years?”