Iron Orchid Read online

  Back at the Barn, she picked up a New York Times at the front desk and took it upstairs with her. After feeding Daisy, she took a shower and stretched out on her bed with the paper. She came to the classifieds and, on a whim, turned to the real estate section. Almost immediately, an ad caught her eye:

  Park Ave. 60’s est. sale, lg 1 BR w/wbf, sep. dr. fur. avbl. 650K.

  She called the number, got a woman immediately and made an appointment for the following morning.

  Holly arrived at the building, which turned out to be a large, limestone-fronted edifice with a uniformed doorman who found a cookie for Daisy. He called the apartment and told Holly to take the elevator to the twelfth floor, apartment A. She was met by a well-dressed woman in her forties, whom she assumed was the real estate agent.

  “I’m Clarissa Bonner,” she said, offering a hand. “Oh, what a handsome dog!” She stroked Daisy’s head. “I grew up with a Doberman, and they’re just lovely. Come and see the apartment.”

  Holly followed her around the rooms, which were surprisingly large, with high ceilings. The place was furnished in a rudimentary way, but didn’t look lived-in. When they had seen the whole place and talked about the building, Mrs. Bonner offered her coffee, and they sat down in the living room in front of the wbf, which was blazing cheerfully away.

  “Let me tell you what’s happened,” Mrs. Bonner said. “My mother had an eighteen-room apartment covering this whole floor, and when she died last year, we divided it, selling the larger one and keeping this one as a pied-a-terre, just a place to sleep when we drive in from Connecticut for the theater. We kept some of her furniture, too. Then my husband was transferred to San Francisco, so we put it on the market and found a buyer almost immediately. Unfortunately, when she went through the application process, the co-op board turned her down. Her mother, a wealthy woman, was going to cosign the lease with her, but she declined to show the board her tax returns, so that was it. This happened forty-eight hours ago, and we have to be in San Francisco next week. We contacted the two other people who had made offers, but they had both bought other properties, so it’s back on the market, and you’re the first to see it.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about how a co-op works,” Holly said.

  “It’s like this: the building is incorporated, the corporation owns the building and leases the apartments. Each lessee owns a number of shares in the corporation, corresponding to the square footage of his apartment. Co-op boards can be very picky, but ours is generally all right. You would have to demonstrate a net worth and income that would show that you could pay the monthly maintenance, and you’d have to meet with the board.”

  “How do they feel about pets?”

  “No problem with that, as long as your dog is well-behaved, and Daisy certainly appears to be.”

  Holly’s mind was racing. She loved the apartment, and she had a feeling Mrs. Bonner was desperate to sell, given her circumstances.

  “Mrs. Bonner,” she said. “I believe I could demonstrate to the board that I’m qualified, and I’d like to make an offer right now, if we can agree. What is the lowest price you would accept for the apartment, furnished, as is?”

  Mrs. Bonner didn’t bat an eye. “Six hundred thousand dollars,” she said, “if you can pay cash; I can’t wait for a mortgage to be approved. I have to tell you that if the place had a second bedroom we’d get a million dollars more for it; that was our mistake when we divided.”

  Holly offered her hand. “Done,” she said. “What do I do now?”

  Mrs. Bonner went to a desk, opened a drawer and pulled out a manila file. “Here is the application. I urge you to answer every question fully and to supply copies of your bank and brokerage statements and your tax returns. The board is meeting again the day after tomorrow, for the last time before Christmas, and I think it would be a good idea if you brought Daisy along to your interview.”

  “Is there a broker involved?” Holly asked.

  “No, you can give me a check for ten percent as earnest money, and there is a standard purchase contract in the folder.”

  Holly wrote the check. Mrs. Bonner filled in the blanks in the contract, and Holly signed. “I’ll have the application and the other documentation to you by the end of the day.” She stood up and offered her hand again.

  “It’s a pleasure doing business with you,” Mrs. Bonner said. “Oh, I forgot to tell you: the monthly maintenance is twelve hundred and fifty dollars, and fifty percent is tax deductible. Oh, and another benefit is that the building owns a garage around the corner, and your monthly rate will only be two hundred dollars, if you have a car. That’s less than half what you would pay if you had to use a commercial garage.”

  Holly hit the street, practically at a run. As she left the building she collided with a man in a sheepskin coat, a tweed hat and big sunglasses. “Oh, excuse me,” she said.

  “Quite all right,” the man replied. He gave Daisy a pat. “Beautiful dog.”

  “Thank you.” She got a cab back to her building and went looking for Lance. She had the money, all right, but she couldn’t list all the cash in the Caymans account on her financial Statement.

  HOLLY EXPLAINED EVERYTHING to Lance. “So, do I use my own name? Do I tell them who I work for? Is my two-million-dollar net worth going to be enough to satisfy the co-op board?”

  “Yes, use your own name, but not the name of your employer,” Lance said. “We have a front outfit that is, ostensibly, in a private investment firm at this address. We’ll make you a senior vice president. How much are you paying for the apartment?”

  “Six hundred thousand.”

  “I don’t know whether or not two million will do it with the board, so we’ll set up a paper account in your name with the firm and show a list of stocks and a balance of, say, six million? We’ll produce a monthly statement for you, and you can include that with your application, and we can supply you with three years’ tax returns, too, federal and state. When you’re questioned by the board about your job, say that the firm manages the money of one extended family, whose name you may not divulge. I’ll get you some letters of recommendation from real people, too. Our security people will have to vet the building, of course, but I don’t anticipate a problem with that; it’s the kind of building they like.”

  “Thank you so much, Lance; I really appreciate this.”

  “Take some time off and get all the paperwork together and make your financial arrangements. I’ll set up everything else and get your letters of recommendation before the day is out.”

  TWO DAYS LATER, Holly, dressed in a black Armani suit, rang a doorbell on the top floor of the apartment building, and was escorted into the living room by a maid. There were a dozen men in the room, all in business suits. Holly shook their hands and allowed Daisy to say hello.

  “Ms. Barker,” the president of the board said, “we’ve reviewed your application, and we thank you for completing it so quickly. Your financial qualifications are excellent and your recommendations are impressive.”

  “Thank you.”

  Many of our shareholders have dogs, but I’m sure you can understand that we insist on their being well-behaved.“ He glanced at Daisy, lying quietly at Holly’s feet. ”Your dog doesn’t seem to be a problem.“

  “Daisy is very well trained.”

  “Does she bark much?”

  “Never, unless asked to.”

  “Dobermans have a reputation as rather dangerous guard dogs. Is there any of that in Daisy?”

  “If I were attacked, Daisy would take serious exception, but she would never harm any person or animal, except in those circumstances.” That was not entirely true. Daisy would be happy to rip the man’s throat out if commanded.

  “Very good. What sort of work is it, exactly, that you do?”

  “I’m a senior vice president of Morgan and Bailey, a private investment firm.”

  “And what sort of clients do you work with?”

  “We handle the inve
stments for one extended family-a couple of dozen members-and we advise them both as a group and individually.”

  “The family name?”

  “I’m afraid that must remain confidential,” she said. “It’s a condition of my employment.”

  “I understand.”

  Twenty minutes later she was out of there, and an hour after that she received a phone call from Mrs. Bonner.

  “I’m delighted to tell you the board has approved your application,” she said. “I must say, you got everything together breathtakingly fast. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  Neither had Holly. “I’m ready to close whenever you like,” she said.

  “Tomorrow, ten a.m. at my lawyer’s office.” She gave Holly the address.

  “Can you give me the firm’s trust account number? I’ll wire the funds today.”

  “Yes, I have it right here.” Mrs. Bonner read out the number.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow morning then,” she said. She hung up and hugged Daisy. “We have a home, baby!” Daisy approved, wagging all over. Holly called her broker, told him to sell five hundred and forty thousand dollars of her investments and wire the money to New York.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  TEDDY WALKED INTO HIS APARTMENT, took off his coat and leaned against the wall. He was sweating. He went into the kitchen and got himself a glass of ice water and sat down. He was seeing way too much of this Holly woman, and the string of coincidences was driving him crazy.

  First, the opera, then the record shop, now coming out of an apartment building a block and a half away. He habitually maintained a high level of paranoia, as a means of survival, and alarm bells were ringing all over the place.

  He waited until evening and called Irene Foster.

  “Hello?”

  “Are you inside?”

  “I’m in New York, at the Waldorf again. We must meet.”

  “Central Park, in an hour?”

  “Where in the park?”.

  “Outside the boathouse restaurant, find a bench; I’ll find you.”

  “All right.” She hung up.

  ____________________

  TEDDY ENTERED THE PARK only after walking around the block twice, checking for tails. He was going to have to relocate to another city immediately, that was clear. He walked up to the boathouse, past it, then back by another route, before he sat down on the bench where Irene was reading the Post.

  “I don’t know how you read that trash,” he said, not looking at her.

  “I never miss Page Six,” she said. “Can I pass you something?”

  “Put it inside the paper and hand it to me,” he said. She did so, and he found two CDs.

  “They’ve changed the codes again,” she said. “They suspect someone inside the Agency is helping you. In fact, I suggested that myself, in order to avoid suspicion, and Hugh English has put me in charge of the internal investigation.”

  “How very convenient.”

  “Yes, but it’s a pain in the ass. What I suggest you do is create a file for a fictional employee, give him all the proper clearances, then use his name when you log on. Can you do that?”

  “Sounds like a good idea; I wish I’d thought of it earlier.”

  “How’s it going, in general?”

  “I’ve been living in New York, but I’m going to have to leave immediately,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “That agent I told you about, Holly something; I’ve run into her again. It can’t be an accident.”

  “Holly Barker,” Irene said. “She did a teleconference yesterday, with Lance Cabot. Why are you worried about her?”

  “I saw her at the opera, at a record store and coming out of an apartment building a block and a half from my apartment. That’s too many coincidences.”

  “Take it easy,” Irene said. “I’ve read her report: the first time, at the opera, she was looking for you, but she didn’t figure out that she met you until you ran for a cab with your ‘new knee.” The second time, she went to the record shop looking for you, because they were covering everything they could think of to do with the opera. That’s it. If you saw her coming out of a building, then that was a coincidence. She doesn’t know where you are or what you look like.“

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely. I read everything that comes through from Lance’s group.”

  “I met Lance once, a long time ago, in Tech Services.”

  “He doesn’t remember it, so you’re okay. You’ve got to change your log-in codes today, though. I’ve already gone into Hugh’s computer to make it possible, ostensibly as a test.”

  “That’s good; thank you.”

  “Listen, Teddy, this is going to have to become a two-way street, if I’m going to continue to help you. I have to know how to get in touch with you. If you’re using a phone like mine, it can’t be dangerous.”

  “It makes me nervous, though.”

  “Well, you’ve got to make a choice,” she said. “If I were going to give you up, you’d be surrounded right now.”

  Teddy sighed and gave her the phone number. “I want you to know that it was not because I don’t trust you implicitly; I was just being as careful as I could.”

  “I understand, but you’re going to have to trust somebody if you’re going to continue to do this successfully.”

  “What do they know about me?”

  “They think you’re in New York, and that’s it. And they know you’ve made Holly. That was very funny, the thing with the opera seats; it drove them crazy, but you’ve got to drop everything to do with the opera, except watching it on TV. That’s their big, new piece of information, that you love the opera.”

  “Oh, all right,” Teddy said, “though it was my chief pleasure in New York.”

  “Find another pleasure,” she said, “and make it something you’ve never done before.”

  “My new pleasure is going to be Holly Barker,” Teddy said. “I’m going to read her file, but what can you tell me about her?”

  “She’s an ex-Army MP commander, and for four years she was chief of police in a little town in Florida called Orchid Beach, where she broke a couple of big federal cases, much to the embarrassment of the FBI. Lance met her in New York earlier this year and recruited her as part of his new group. She was in training at the Farm when they suddenly moved most of her class to New York to start looking for you.”

  “So she’s green?”

  “Yes, but she’s smart, or Lance wouldn’t have recruited her. He’s the best judge of talent I’ve ever seen, and she’s his fair-haired girl. Oh, and I’ve got to tell you, she broke Whitey Thompson’s nose in her self-defense class; it was the talk of the training command, and Whitey got fired as a result of it.”

  “That’s the funniest thing I ever heard,” Teddy said, laughing. “I always hated that guy.”

  “Everybody did. Well, he’s gone, now.”

  “How are you coming with your internal investigation?”

  “Oh, I’ll wring out the whole place, everybody but myself.”

  “They’ll polygraph you before it’s over. Can you handle it?”

  She nodded. “I have some pills that will do the trick.”

  “Good. Let me give you a code: if you ever learn that I’m about to be busted and I should run, call the number I gave you and say, ”Is this Bloomingdale’s?“ then hang up. If I hear that, I’ll drop everything and go.”

  “Got it.”

  “Shall I find a hotel room?”

  “Can’t this trip; we’re too busy. Hugh thinks I’m running an errand for him, so I’ve got to get back.”

  “Thanks for the new codes, Babe. I’ll talk to you soon.”

  “Bye-bye.” She got up and left.

  Teddy sat on the bench, feeling greatly relieved. He was glad he wasn’t going to have to leave New York, after all the trouble he’d gone to to set himself up here. He was sorry about the opera, though.

  THIRTY-SIX

  HOLLY CLE
ANED OUT her room and, with the help of the two security men in the lobby, loaded everything into her Cayenne Turbo and drove over to 868 Park Avenue. With the help of the doormen there, she got everything unloaded and upstairs into her new apartment, then she went back downstairs. The Cayenne was gone.

  The super approached and introduced himself. “I’m Danny,” he said. “I put your car in our garage. Just call the doorman when you want it, and someone will bring it around for you. They need about fifteen minutes’ notice.”

  Holly thanked him and went back upstairs to her apartment. She unpacked and put everything away, then she sat down on the living room sofa and called her father on her cell phone.

  “Ham?”

  “Hey, Baby, how are you? I haven’t heard from you for a couple of weeks, and I thought maybe they killed you during training.”

  “I’m just fine,” she said. “I’m in New York.”

  “You finished at the Farm already?”

  “They cut the training short so that my class could join the New York team for a special project.”

  “And what is the project?”

  “If I told you I’d have to dispatch somebody down there to dispatch you. How’s Ginny?”

  “She’s just great; she’s hired two more instructors for her flight school, and business is humming.”

  “Ham, I bought an apartment in New York.”

  “Yeah, where?”

  “On Park Avenue. Can you believe it?”

  “Well, you’re a woman of some means,” Ham said. “It’s probably a good investment.”

  “I think it is. And you and Ginny can come visit. There’s only one bedroom, but I’ll get a pullout sofa.”

  “Thanks, but I can afford a hotel. We’re not bunking in with you; we screw too much, and Ginny is noisy.”