Torres dropped her coat over a chair.“Sit tight.I’ll find what I want to show you.”She disappeared down the corridor, muttering something crossly to herself.
Kate and Marcus exchanged a look.“So,” Marcus said.“First impressions?”
“About Torres?”
“About all of it.”
Kate leaned back, arms folded.“It’s too neat.Too deliberate.Cox is sending a message to me — through the verse, through the way Brennan died.And if Torres is right about that bloodstain, then he wanted it found.It’s a breadcrumb trail.”
“Breadcrumbs covered in haemoglobin,” Marcus said.“Charming.”
The door banged open.A man in a crumpled tweed jacket, fingerless gloves, and what might once have been a tie shuffled in carrying a tower of folders.His hair stood on end, and a faint smell of tobacco and old books accompanied him.
“Who are you?”he demanded.“And why are you in my chair?”
Marcus blinked.“Good morning to you too.”
The man dropped the folders with a crash.“Morning’s relative.Depends what you’ve been drinking.Who are you?”
Kate rose.“Agents Valentine and Reid, FBI.Detective Torres said—”
“Oh, the Feds,” he interrupted.“Christ on a spreadsheet.You lot breed like mould.”
Kate smiled thinly.“You must be Mankovitz.”
He peered at her, as if trying to decide whether she was real.“Guilty.Financial crimes, white-collar, all the sins of Mammon.What did Torres tell you about me?”
“That you’re ‘different’,” Marcus said.
Mankovitz grinned.“She’s learning diplomacy.”He rummaged through the chaos on his desk, emerging with a crumpled newspaper clipping and a pen that had clearly been chewed half to death.“Alright, kids, let’s talk about your dearly departed.”
“Brennan,” Kate said.
“One of the new-old guard — born poor, rose fast, got rich faster.People like that scare the establishment because they remind them how fragile the system is.Brennan and his lot — they came up the quick and dirty way.No Ivy League trust funds, no internships through Daddy’s golf buddies.Just hustle, leverage and a total lack of conscience.”
Marcus frowned.“So he wasn’t a choirboy.”
Mankovitz gave a short laugh.“Choirboy?He ran scams that’d make Satan blush.Ever heard of ‘pump and dump’?”
“Stock fraud,” Marcus said.“Inflate a stock’s value with hype, dump it once the price peaks.”
“Bravo.Brennan was one of the best.Eighties, early nineties — the Wild West years.He’d pick some total garbage company, convince half of Wall Street it was the next IBM, watch the price soar, then sell his shares before anyone realised the company made, I don’t know, left-handed staplers.By the time the Feds caught on, he’d already turned it into seed money for legitimate investments.Smart bastard.”
Kate studied him.“You sound almost admiring.”
“I admire the architecture of greed,” Mankovitz said.“It’s elegant.Until it collapses.Then you get rubble — suicides, foreclosures, divorces.The great American compost heap.”
Kate exchanged a look with Marcus.“Could any of those old victims still hold a grudge?”
“Most of them are dust,” Mankovitz said.“Or bankrupt and drunk somewhere in Florida.But…” He leaned back, eyes gleaming.“They had kids.The sons and daughters of the fleeced.Revenge runs in the bloodline.You’d be amazed what people inherit besides money.”
“So you think this could be personal,” Marcus said.
“Personal, professional — with people like Brennan, the line’s invisible.But if you’re asking me where the real danger lies, I would say not in the victims.It’s his peers.”
“Peers?”
Mankovitz grinned, producing the newspaper clipping he’d been searching for.“Ever heard of the Magnificent Seven?”
