“I can’t tell you everything he told me, Victor, or what he told the grand jury, that would be improper, not to mention illegal, but he broke it open, did our Mr. Babbage. His testimony was like the wedge that split everything apart. The indictments are public record, and the results were well publicized in the press. There were two indicted as so-called kingpins, eligible for stiff sentences without parole. One was a fellow called Prod, Cooper Prod. He is still in jail, don’t know when he gets out. The other was Tommy Greeley.”
“The one that got away,” I said, almost pleased that this trophy had eluded Telushkin even though I knew what had really happened to him.
“Yes. I had wanted him especially, with his high living and his haughtiness. You know, once when I went to talk to him, to see what I could see, he laughed at me. He laughed, as if it was inconceivable that someone like me could corner someone like him. And then he leaned over and quietly, in my ear, said ‘You’re not smart enough.’ I wasn’t sure I had caught what he had said, I asked him to repeat it, it was too much to believe that someone could be so arrogant. But he just laughed at me and walked away.”
“What happened to him, do you know?”
“Of course I know.”
I peered at him closely. “What?”
“He ran,” he said. “He took what he could and he ran. But he didn’t get far.”
“How do you know?”
“He was a troubled man dealing with dangerous people. There was a tremendous amount of money involved and he owed as much as he was owed. Not a healthy situation. When someone runs away he always slips up somehow. After a few months, or a few years, his arrogance gets the best of him, he thinks he has won, he has escaped, that his pursuers have lost interest. He will make contact with old friends, with family, he will make a mistake. But Tommy Greeley never did. I spent the rest of my career searching for him, checking the mail to his parents, his girlfriend, keeping tabs on those of his friends released from jail. It became something of an obsession. Call me Ishmael, I suppose.”
“It was Ahab obsessed with the whale,” I said.
He clapped. “So it was. So it was. But there was nothing, nothing. Tommy Greeley wasn’t clever enough or modest enough to pull it off. All that time searching for him was not wasted, it gave me the certainty that I sought, the certainty to conclude that something happened early on, that somehow his run to freedom failed at the start. He got his, along with the rest, only he got it worse. Well now, Victor. Anything else? More tea?”
“No thank you,” I said, standing. “I appreciate your time. One more question. This Babbage, the informer. What kind of sentence did he get?”
“Seven years probation.”
“Sweet.”
“It was a necessary evil, I assure you. He was offered witness protection but he refused it, said he didn’t need it. And he did quite well after everything passed. Apparently there was some money unaccounted for, which he discovered after the case was over. But pursuant to the terms of his cooperation agreement, there was nothing we could do about that. I still don’t know how we could have missed those moneys,” he said, even as his wink let me know that he certainly did, that the man who had studied Babbage’s books with the care of a Rockefeller knew where every penny had been buried, so the money left to be discovered was all part of Telushkin’s deal for his prize witness’s testimony. “He had a nice plastics business later on, did Babbage, recycling, with a big house and a pool in Gladwyne. Was still political, but had been turned by his experience, I suppose. Became a great supporter of Clinton, if you can believe that?”
“I’d like to speak to him.”
“That would be quite difficult, Victor.”
“Excuse me?”
“He drowned.”
“My God.”
“Just a few weeks ago. In his pool. He took a swim every morning, a few dives, a few laps. But I suppose he took one dive too many. They found him floating facedown.”
“Did the police investigate?”
“Ruled it an accident. Apparently he had a heart attack, right in the pool. So it goes. You know, Victor, cracking that case was the highlight of my career, the highlight, actually, of my professional life. I worked on many white-collar cases, tax cases, fraud, but that was the biggest win. And all from a careful examination of the books. I guess I’m not so different from Rockefeller after all.”
“Give or take a billion dollars.”
“Yes, I suppose,” he said, at a loss for a moment before his unctuous smile returned and he gestured me toward the door. “If there is anything else I can help you with, please let me know.”
“Oh I will,” I said, still thinking of Babbage, floating facedown in the water.
“By the way, Victor, one thing you might want to know.” His eyebrows rose and his face took on the expression of self-delight that seemed to be his trademark. “Our Tommy Greeley. Believe it or not, his best friend in college and in law school was not his business partner, that Cooper Prod. It was someone else. We couldn’t link him with any of the wrongdoing, and he was never indicted, but still it is quite an interesting association.”
I looked at him. He wanted me to help him out, to pressure it out of him for some reason, as if that would put us further in league together, but I knew if I waited long enough he would spill, he couldn’t help himself. He smile was expectant for a moment before it turned exasperated and then he couldn’t hold it in any longer.
“Straczynski. Jackson Straczynski. They were the best of friends. Isn’t that something?”
“Yes,” I said, and it was. I swallowed with surprise at the name, but I tried not to show it.
His hand moved solicitously to my back, like he was pushing me out now that he had told me exactly what he had wanted to tell me, led me exactly where he had wanted me to go. I didn’t mind leaving, but I didn’t like being pushed the way he was pushing me.
At the doorway I stopped, turned around. “Thank you so much for your help.”
“It was nothing. Nothing at all. I was glad to be of service.”
“I suppose he was, wasn’t he?”
“Who?”
“Tommy. You said he got away, never paid the piper. So I suppose maybe he was too smart for you after all.”
His puckish expression dropped for just a moment and what was left was all the arrogance and intolerance that I had heard beneath his jovial voice, and then the smile returned. “Good day, Mr. Carl,” he said, closing the door before I had the chance to turn away.
It was all a swirl for me as I walked back down the hall toward the elevator. The squirrelly FBI special agent who brought down an empire, the money launderer who did a spectacularly bad job of laundering Tommy Greeley’s cash, the grand jury investigation, the sixty-million-dollar-a-year cocaine enterprise, the indictments, the dead informant, the dead informant who died in a strange swimming accident not two weeks before Joey Parma got his throat slashed. All of it swirled around me as I tried to make sense of it, but then a name popped out of the swirl, a name that Telushkin had made sure to tell me for reasons I could guess, oh yes.
Jackson Straczynski.
I knew the name, every lawyer in the city, in the country, knew the name. Jackson Straczynski, State Supreme Court Justice Jackson Straczynski, one of the most respected conservative legal scholars in the country and the first name on a very short list to fill the next open seat on the United States Supreme Court.
Whatever I had thought I had been getting myself into before, I had just fallen into the big leagues.