"So you had two professional teams working against poor, whacky Andrew Tripping, who knew the whole story from his own Agency experience but just couldn't put together a plan that worked," Mercer said. "You think his effort to meet and date Paige Vallis was a setup?"
"From the get-go. Same with Lionel's 'Harry Strait' character." I was certain that was no chance meeting.
"And Paige?" Mike asked. "You think she knew the whole story?"
"I can't imagine she did. I'll give you some more homework, guys. You remember the burglar who died in the struggle, the one she confronted when she got home after her father's funeral?"
"Yeah."
"Get phone records and bank records and anything else that left a paper trail. Bet you almost anything that guy was hired by Graham Hoyt. Smart enough to pick an Arab to do the dirty work. That way, if the plan failed, it would look like the break-in was related to the consulting job on terrorism that Mr. Vallis was involved in when he died."
"You think he went in to steal the document that made the Double Eagle a legal coin?"
"Yes, I do."
"Then you also think…" Mike was mulling my theory over as he chewed.
"I'll bet that Paige found the paper on the burglar's body-maybe they even fought over it when she interrupted him."
"She realized what it was?"
"I'm not sure that she knew its value or meaning, but she was smart enough to figure out it was so important that someone might kill for it. Who knows, maybe her father had explained its significance, figuring the stolen coin that it referred to would eventually surface somewhere in the world. And that he-and then Paige-was the only person who held the key to turning twenty dollars' worth of gold into seven or eight million."
"Assuming we find the document in Dulles's jacket, why do you think Paige gave it to you, Alex?" Mercer asked.
I shrugged. "I don't think she had anyone else in her life she could trust at that point. The evening before she testified, she got a phone call from Harry Strait. So the morning she came to my office, she was scared enough to tell me something about him. But she didn't give me the baseball jacket then."
"Wasn't Strait in the courtroom, too?"
"Yeah. She gets on the stand and not only is she facing Andrew Tripping, who was way too interested in her father and his career for it to be coincidental, and there's Strait again."
"That ratchets up her fear factor," Mike said.
"So then we went back to my office, and before she left, she made her decision to pull out the Yankees jacket from her bag and give it to me."
"But didn't even give you a hint that she's hidden something in it."
"She was frightened, Mike, but I don't think most people cope with the fact that their lives might actually be in imminent peril. She had been flirting with this particular danger for months."
"Besides," Mercer added, "she was never too direct with Alex unless she was pressed to be. She let everything come out piece by piece, when she was ready to tell it. Right up to the minute she testified."
"Step one was giving me the jacket for safekeeping. Getting it out of her possession and into the hands of the law. Step two would be swearing that she no longer had it to anyone who tried to get it from her over the weekend."
"Not too successfully, obviously," Mike said.
"You know, when Hoyt lured her out of her apartment by telling her she could see Dulles, and then waylaid her in the laundry room," I thought aloud, "I'll bet she pleaded for her life by telling him she had given me-sent me is what he thought-the paper."
"Once she admitted that," Mike went on, "she was as good as dead. He didn't need her anymore."
"I think she figured if someone hassled her over the weekend, she had a chance to unload the whole story to me on Monday. She just didn't know how very dangerous Hoyt was."
Mercer's phone rang and he took the call. It was a short conversation but it confirmed what we had already guessed. Paige Vallis had sewn the mistakenly issued 1944 document that made the second Double Eagle legitimate legal tender into the lining of the pocket of Dulles Tripping's favorite Yankees jacket.
"That Polaroid photo of Queenie and Dulles that Mrs. Gatts gave me today, Alex," Mercer asked. "Did Hoyt talk about that?"
I smiled at him. "Me and my big mouth. Hoyt overheard me talking to you about Fabian and the picture. That's what almost bought me a piece of muddy real estate at the bottom of the Kills."
Mike hadn't heard Mercer's news yet.
"Get somebody good to sit down with Dulles, as soon as possible. I think whenever Hoyt had a visitation period with him, they were keeping a little secret between themselves. Hoyt was taking the boy to visit McQueen Ransome."
"But why?"
"She was a sucker for kids. We know that from the neighborhood. Here comes Hoyt, pretending to be a great admirer of her career, full of stories he knew about Farouk, ready to dignify her glory days by funding an exhibit at the Schomburg. And he brings along a fair-haired boy-the exact age of her son when he died-with a sad story to go with the kid. Who does Queenie have to leave her few belongings to? Why not this deserving child, who had no mother?"
"Something misfired, though."
"Yeah, I think Queenie was every bit as smart as Graham Hoyt, and even tougher. I don't think she liked the smell of his offer. She probably realized that what he wanted from her had more value than he was telling her."
I could barely hear Mike when he spoke. "So he killed the old lady."
"And was ready to let Kevin Bessemer take the weight. After all, who's going to believe a convicted felon-and a crackhead to boot-that Queenie was already dead when he got there?"
"He even controlled all the legal proceedings, all the players."
"That's it."
"Why does anybody with his kind of dough need another seven million?" Mercer asked.
"Because he really didn't have the money you think he did," I said.
"The art collection, the yacht, the country house-"
"Graham Hoyt had been stealing from his law firm for years. He has an addiction every bit as pathological as Bessemer's addiction to cocaine. He needed to own, to possess, to collect, like all the men he idolized. It was a sickness with him."
"None of it fit on a lawyer's salary. You said that when he first showed up in the case."
"He's been stealing money from his law partners for years, claiming he was writing checks to his favorite charities and getting the firm to reimburse him. Only, those checks went right into his own pocket, right into the gas for his yacht and the art on his walls."
"So get the Double Eagle, get the sheet of paper that makes it legal, and with one auction, he'd make a seven-million-dollar score that would get him out of hock and keep him afloat for a lot longer. Phony little prick."
"Think about what else he was telling me. Hoyt was really anxious for Tripping to take the guilty plea. That way, Andrew would be in jail and out of the chase for the golden bird."
Mercer also remembered what I was talking about. "It was Hoyt who stopped by your office late one evening and made a point of telling you that Robelon was dirty, that Robelon was a target of an investigation in the DA's office?"
"True, he delighted in diverting me by painting a tinge of guilt on each of the other players. And I fell for it."
"We all fell for it," Mike said.
Another knock on the door and the ranger came in. "We're losing the daylight, Mr. Wallace. You've gotta get that helicopter out before the sun sets. We aren't equipped for flying after dark."