“The first time, maybe half an hour. It took me a while to get the idea, you can imagine. After that, hardly more than a minute, just long enough to show me the tip.”
“He sounds efficient, this shade.”
“The last few times it’s been longer, like five or ten minutes. I don’t know why.”
“And every tip is good?”
“Every single one. He’s never missed, even once.”
I chewed some donut. “Is your fund still taking investors?”
“What?”
“Never mind.” I probably couldn’t make the minimum. “You know, most of my clients in situations like this, they want help getting rid of a shade. The golden-goose thing, I’m not sure what the problem is.”
“I saw a lawyer.” Ernest frowned. “He says the situation might be construed as insider trading, depending on who the… who he is. Was.”
“Really?” I couldn’t see how, exactly-had the SEC started going after psychics and palm readers? But paranormal litigation was a brand-new specialty, and case law was scant. “I think I see why you’re talking to me, though.”
“That’s right-everyone says you’re the best.” Ernest looked at me, well… earnestly. “I need to know who this ghost is.”
IT’S always scams or revenge.
Maybe not words to live by, but true for most of my cases.
Except now. I just couldn’t see the angle. Any angle. Some dead guy-murdered, from the description-takes an indefinite stopover from the Paradise Express, simply to help make Ernest very, very rich.
At least I didn’t feel guilty tripling my usual rates.
It was Monday, and Ernest expected the ghost that evening, so I went over to his office after dinner. Twentieth floor, Midtown, a block off Fifth Avenue. The ground-floor security desk had three guards, all of whom seemed to be moonlighting from their day jobs as counter-terrorist paramilitaries-boots, machine guns, armored vests. Good thing Ernest had told them I was coming.
Out of the elevator it was all teak and marble and handwoven Kashmiri rugs. Ernest had the corner office, a single desk lamp lit, so we could see the skyline glitter and twinkle all the way downtown.
Oh, and a surprise.
“This is Jake Tims,” said Ernest, as a man stepped from the shadows.
Mid-thirties, a little younger than Ernest, dressed in hedge fund casuaclass="underline" gray pants, open-collar shirt, John Lobb loafers, and a Breguet wristwatch.
“Nice to meet you.”
“Jake is making an investment,” said Ernest. “A major investment in the fund.”
“Six hundred million,” said Jake.
I nodded like this was the sort of pocket change I could lose at the dry cleaners, too. “Let me guess-you’re here for the due diligence?”
“Damn right.” Jake smiled tightly at Ernest. “If I’m shifting 90 percent of current assets, I need to see the genie at work.”
“Of course.” Ernest turned to me. “You don’t mind?”
“Not at all.”
We settled into some incredibly soft leather armchairs near the windows. I tried to figure Ernest’s game-was he using me for protection? To evaluate Jake? To bolster the ghost’s legitimacy somehow?
No obvious answers, so I just sat quiet, listening to them talk about real estate. You’d think, a couple of guys this wealthy, they’d be living on a whole different plane, but no, it was just the usual complaints about parking and brokers and the other co-op owners.
More square feet, of course.
After a half hour Ernest looked at his watch-a Patek Philippe maybe, I couldn’t be sure in the dim light, but definitely more gauche than Jake’s-and said, “Should be just a few minutes now.”
And sure enough.
The ghost materialized over by the bookcase, three or four seconds to become mostly opaque. Bloody wounds over shirt and tie, as Ernest had said. It looked like he’d taken a bullet in his chest and another right in the nose. His face was unrecognizable carnage, one good eye peering out above a mess of bone and bloody tissue.
He looked around, saw us, and startled. For a moment he shimmered and began to fade.
“It’s okay!” said Ernest, jumping up. “They’re investors. More money for the fund. That’s good, right?”
The shade hesitated, then resolidified. It seemed to stare at me, then Jake, and then kind of shrugged.
“No problem.” Ernest gestured behind his back, at us-stay quiet. “Okay?”
Pause, then another slight shrug.
“Good. So, ah, what do you have to recommend today?”
After one more hard look at us, the ghost pulled up his shirt. One side had been shredded by the gunshot, but the other was more or less whole. With a pen or pencil in one hand, he scribbled on the fabric, then held it out.
Ernest walked up and bent down to squint at the shirttail.
“Forints?” he said. “Appreciating?”
The ghost nodded.
“Excellent.”
And that was that.
THE next morning, I couldn’t help myself-I turned on the computer as soon as I woke up and checked the foreign exchange ticker. The European markets had been open for two hours.
So there. Hungarian forints were up more than 5 percent. Good call, ghost.
And I have to admit I felt a chill. Even after everything Ernest had told me, I still hadn’t quite believed.
After a shower I had a choice to make. I could chase down the shade’s identity-basically a database search, checking morgue records and police reports and so forth. The problem was, a lot of people die every day, and even the gruesomely violent means of death wouldn’t narrow it down that much. We live in a murderous age.
Or I could follow up on Jake Tims.
He’d been remarkably cool last night. I don’t care how many thousands of zombies you’ve killed in shoot-’em-up video games, real corpses freak most people out. Plus, Ernest said Jake had approached him out of the blue. Sure, the hedge fund’s remarkable returns were generating all kinds of industry buzz, but it seemed remarkably keen timing on Jake’s part.
No contest.
And next to no effort, either. A single phone call reminded me of why Jake’s name was familiar.
“You don’t remember?” Detective Gatling yawned at the other end of the line. I heard bullpen noises behind him-a cell phone ringing, muffled complaints, the clatter of chairs. “Jake Tims used to have a partner, Randall. They ran a boutique investment firm, but last year Randall disappeared, along with the entire sweep account.”
“Oh, yeah.” Active traders keep their operating cash in a separate account, carrying a slightly better interest rate. “How much did he abscond with?”
“Three million, plus or minus.”
“Now I remember.” Once Randall’s pilfering would have been big news, but after Madoff and Stanford and Lewis, a mere seven figures was chump change, hardly worth a B-section headline. “You never found him?”
“Naw.” Gatling didn’t have to say, And we didn’t look that hard, either. In the nihilist landscape of post-collapse Wall Street, there were plenty of bigger fish to fry.
“Jake’s about to move most of his assets over to Ernest Eppleworth,” I said.
“Really.” His tone was flat, but I could hear Gatling’s interest perk up.
“What do you know about Eppleworth?”
“Nothing,” Gatling said, but he was a lousy liar, especially for a cop.
“Uh-oh.” I closed my eyes. “There’s an investigation open, isn’t there?”
“Not for me to say. What’s your interest?”
I hesitated, then explained the ghost. Concealing evidence is not my style.
“Huh.” Gatling was silent for a moment. “The returns are too good to be true. We were thinking Eppleworth had a mole in one of the black pools.” Where large transactions could be conducted directly, between large entities, free of the oversight from regulated exchanges-in other words, an ideal spot to front-run the big dogs. Totally illegal, but that never stops the sharpies. “A ghost-I’m not sure that’s even against the law.”
“Exactly.”
By the time I hung up, I knew the clock was ticking. Gatling was annoyed about losing the mole idea, and I was certain he’d be talking to the DA in about five seconds, to see what they might do with Ernest’s unorthodox tipster.