The 6:20 Man(7)

“Impressive memory. I can’t remember what I had for lunch yesterday.” His words were flippant, his stare was not. “And the only time I’ll ever be inside Per Se is if someone croaks there.”

“In my line of work, you tend to remember things pretty exactly.”

“You work hard at that place, I take it?”

“Let’s put it this way—I have but one set of balls to give for Cowl and Comely, and that might not be enough.”

“You’re funny for an investment type.”

“I just crunch numbers and give them to the real investment bankers, and they make all the money and get all the girls.”

“How much money are we talking about?”

Devine knew the man didn’t really need to know this for his investigation. It was very American to be nosy about the wealth of the very rich. Whole industries were built around disseminating that information to the fascinated masses.

“The firm has various divisions, and the comp and profit sharing are split differently depending on which camp you fall into. Partners on the very low end get mid–seven figures. People like Bradley Cowl? Maybe a quarter of a billion or more per year in official comp and stock options. He also gets percentages of all the profit streams, so that goes on top of his base.”

Hancock was shaking his head this whole time. “I make a hundred and ten grand a year. And I thought I was doing great till you laid that shit on me.”

“How do you think I feel? I don’t even make what you make, and I see all those dollars on the screen every day and they just pass right by me.”

The man’s eyes glittered once more, like a dog picking up a scent. “And so you resent that? Them getting all the girls and the dough?”

“I resent no one about anything. You work hard, you earn it, it’s yours. I hope to do the same.”

“And the girls? Like Sara Ewes?”

“Give me a break, okay? I can get girls if I want to. And Cowl has a strict rule against employees dating.”

If he finds out we were seeing each other, I’m screwed.

“Okay. Anything else about Ewes?”

“Like what?”

“The usual. Depressed? Ever spoke to you about suicide?”

“Probably everyone who works on Wall Street at one time or another has contemplated suicide, either in pitiful jest or for real.”

“That include you?” asked Hancock.

“Look, I saw guys shot up, blown up, and cut up right in front of me. I’m not taking my own life because a Wall Street firm busts my chops.”

“So, nothing else you can tell me?”

Devine glanced out the car window and seemed truly amazed to see the stars in the sky.

His next words were said in a calm, even tone, because that was how he was suddenly feeling. “Sara was a nice person. She never talked to me about killing herself. She never seemed depressed, quite the opposite. She used to pep us up when we were getting ground down. But like I said, it’s been a while. And even a day at Cowl and Comely is like a lifetime, Detective Hancock.”

“So why stay?”

Devine assumed a stoic look and hit the Play button in his head. “It’s the American dream. I’m trying to create my own.”

“You don’t strike me as the type to give a shit about making truckloads of money.”

“You must have me confused with someone else. I do want the money and everything that comes with it. But there are a lot of things you can do with that money. You can use it to help other people.”

“So you’re busting your ass to help others?” Hancock said with a shit-eating grin.

“I did it in the Army. Any reason I can’t do it on Wall Street?”

“Come on. Just tell me the truth. It can’t be that bad.”

But Devine didn’t open his mouth, because he had nothing more to say.

And it was that bad.





CHAPTER





6


HANCOCK HAD OFFERED TO DRIVE Devine home, probably just to see where he lived. Devine accepted and a few minutes later he climbed out of the car in front of the white two-story brick town house with a one-car detached garage that was part of a small community of like structures. It was not poor, it was not rich. And neither was it just right.

“Nice place,” said Hancock.

“It’s the only thing I could really afford this close in that had trees and some grass.”

“You think this is close in?”

“Where do you commute in from?”

Hancock smiled and said, “Trenton.”

“I rest my case, and I’m not even a lawyer.”

“If I need to follow up on stuff?”

“You know where I live and work. I’m easy to find. I’m not going anywhere unless Cowl and Comely decides to pull my plug. If so, you can catch me at the unemployment office.”

Hancock drove off in his ratty motor pool coffee-and-nicotine ride. Black smoke poured out of the tailpipe and coated the white brick, and Devine, with a nice, cozy blanket of carcinogens.

Coughing, he unlocked the door and walked in. The front room held one of his three roommates, the big-bellied Will Valentine. He worked from home and was employed as a white-hatter, a person hired by tech firms and banks and other industries to try to hack through their security systems. They had become friends, and Valentine had even taught Devine some ingenious ways to electronically sneak into various databases.