“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.

  He was also Russian, but had changed his name to something very American. He had shown Devine his passport. His real name was long and unpronounceable, at least for Devine. Lots of consonants strung together had never been his thing.

  “I get many more girls with American name,” Valentine had explained. “But I tell clients truth, that I am Russian. They know we are best at hacking. You wait and see; I will get rich. I fuckin’ lo-o-ove capitalism. And I love your women.”

  Devine never could tell if the guy knew he was playing a Hollywood version of a Russian now free in America, or if he really was like that.

  Valentine was now snoring softly on the sofa, mumbling in his native language. To Devine, spoken Russian always sounded menacing. As though the spoken words were uniformly And now, you will die horribly, comrade.

  Valentine’s laptop was perched on his substantial gut and was being lifted into the air with each inhale and dipping with every exhale. The TV was on but muted. It looked to be one of those limited series that moved at the speed of light, just begging to be binged. An open and empty Domino’s pizza box was on the carpet next to the couch. Twin empty bottles of Michelob rested next to it. The Russian was definitely an American in diet now.

  Devine went over and touched the open laptop. Its screen came to life, but didn’t reveal its treasure box of data. A large dragon came on instead and breathed a wall of fire at the attempted digital trespassing.

  Cute, thought Devine. He peered into the dining room, which held not a stick of furniture but only a human being. Another roommate, a Black woman named Helen Speers, was on a mat in the middle of the green carpet doing yoga. She was barefoot and performing a downward dog pose in a tight-fitting Lycra one-piece. Speers had just graduated from law school at NYU and was almost never home before Devine was. She was petite and lithe and lovely. And one day she would be in court righteously carving people up with the law.

  “Early night?” he said.

  Speers had AirPods in. She nodded and said between deep yoga breaths, “Got stood up on a drink in SoHo, if you can believe that. I’m releasing endorphins in retaliation.”

  “No, I can’t believe that,” he replied, but she had moved on to child’s pose and wasn’t listening.

  He walked up the stairs to the second floor. His third and final roommate, Jill Tapshaw, was a truly brilliant person who had started her own online dating company, known as Hummingbird. He marveled at her guts and drive and brain operating on a different plane from the rest of the world. While Valentine and Speers had come to live here about the same time Devine had, Tapshaw had been here only a little over four months, but she was friendly and outgoing, and he had gotten to know her.

  Her company was a true start-up because she ran it from her bedroom and also from a two-room office in a strip mall in downtown Mount Kisco, about a half mile from here. She had five full-time employees other than herself and about three dozen independent contractors working remotely, she’d told him. They specialized in bringing together people fearful of reaching out on their own, or of enduring the usual online dating experience. It was a need and she had filled it. Tapshaw had told Devine the site already had millions of users and over a hundred thousand paid subscribers from all over the world.

  “And we’re now adding tens of thousands of new users a day. We raised half a million in our Round A and five million in our B a year later. I’m projecting a home run for a Round C, at five times that, at a great valuation. Next, we tack on some tasteful piggyback ads and banner bucks for peripheral revenue streams. With enough capital I can dominate my space. And then we execute different but compatible product silos under separate corporate entities, all under Hummingbird’s umbrella brand, to provide a sort of dating-to-grave experience. You want to invest? It’s still relatively cheap. Last chance. Friends and family and roommate discount.”

  Cowl and Comely paid shit to the Burners. They just did their eighty- to ninety-hour grunt workweeks in the hopes of the payoff at the end. Most of Devine’s money went for rent and the ride in and out. And then there was that other thing called food.

  But nevertheless, though he legally wasn’t a qualified investor under the securities laws, he’d bought a thousand bucks’ worth of stock in the little bird that flitted around flowers sucking up nectar and paying it forward. Which was where she had gotten the name, Tapshaw had told him. “You can spend a hundred grand on a branding firm to come up with horseshit and then focus-group the hell out of it for another hundred grand, or you can do it on your own for free.”

  He tapped on her bedroom door and called out her name.

  “Getting ready to Zoom with a Taiwanese venture capital group,” Tapshaw’s voice barked. “Their birth rate is plummeting. Is it urgent? Is the place on fire? Are you bleeding to death, Travis?”

  “No,” he called through the door. “All good. Just don’t forget to eat.” She kept a jar of peanut butter and a stack of celery sticks in a glass with water in her room. She was thinner than a rake and seemed to prefer it that way. She’d told Devine she hadn’t been on a single date in over a year, not even digitally.

  “Do as I say, not as I don’t do,” Tapshaw had quipped.

  Restless and edgy and not wanting to sleep despite being tired, Devine went to his room, changed into athletic shorts and a T-shirt and Saucony running shoes.

  He left the house and had just started his run when a black sedan pulled up beside him.

  There were two men inside. Serious-looking men. Suits and shades, even in the gathering darkness.

  “Mr. Devine? Travis Devine?” a strange man said for the second time tonight.

  He stopped running and said, “Yeah?”

  The man flashed a badge, a federal one with an agency Devine instantly recognized. “Your presence is requested, please get in.”

  “Requested by who?”

  The man moved just enough so Devine could see the pistol in the shoulder holster.

  “Get in.”

  Devine looked around, and, like the soldier he had once been, he followed orders and got in.

  CHAPTER

  7

  THE RIDE TOOK THIRTY MINUTES. They were heading south, toward the city. Neither man spoke, and Devine knew better than to ask questions. First the NYPD and now the feds; he didn’t like all this personal attention.

  They pulled off into a small town much like Mount Kisco, extremely affluent in some parts, just as extremely working-class in others. They drove to the very back of a nondescript office park where there was a single brick building. There were no cars parked out front and no signs on the building. The windows were blacked out and it looked abandoned.

  The man parked and got out along with his colleague. He held the car door open for Devine and they walked up to the front of the building. The man flashed an RF card in the face of a reader port and Devine heard the door click open.

  This was looking both way too official and far too clandestine. He figured neither boded well for him.

  I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy.

  The driver led the way inside, Devine in the middle, the other guy bringing up the rear. Devine would have expected nothing less. It was the way you transported either prisoners or soon-to-be prisoners.

  Automatic lights came on as they walked through an open space.

  Devine was led to an interior door. The man knocked and a voice said, “Come.”

  The door was opened and the man motioned Devine in. He closed the door and Devine looked around the small space and then at the man sitting behind the desk.

  “Sit down, Devine,” said the man. “We have a lot to go over, so pay attention. There is no time to waste.”

  Devine sat.

  The fellow looked like a well-worn slab of granite. His gray hair was bristly and cut short. His features were chiseled and fierce. The salt-and-pepper eyebrows swooped in all directions. The decades-old suit never had been expensive or of good quality when brand-new, but it was so unremarkable as to still be serviceable now. The red-and-blue-striped tie was too wide for the times, the collared button-down shirt a bit worn around the edges. He couldn’t see the man’s shoes from here, but if he had to guess, Devine would speculate they were black, and pedestrian, and shined to spit-polish perfection.

  There was something about him, his bearing, the way he gave commands, because they were commands, the breadth of the shoulders, the ominous thickness of the hands.

  He was now a suit who was once a soldier. Devine could just tell. And really still a soldier because it gets into your DNA and there is no way to separate it from you. It becomes you.

  The man silently studied him.

  Gauging the size of my balls.

  Devine stared back, waiting. He had done this so many times with military superiors that it was second nature.

  “Exemplary record at West Point. Then Infantry Officer Basic, Ranger School, Jump School, Stryker Battalion out of Fort Lewis. Line platoon company commander for a year and a half with a string of commendations. Made First Lieutenant right on schedule. Company XO for six months. Next up, line platoon commander, Ranger Battalion, so you’re Ranger tabbed and scrolled,” added the man, referring to the fact that Devine had graduated from Ranger School and been assigned to the Seventy-Fifth Ranger Regiment. “Promoted to Captain and got your silver bars right at the four-year mark. Bradley company commander out of Fort Stewart for eighteen months. Then Ranger Battalion out of Hunter Army Airfield. Ranger company commander, then staff officer. All along the way, tours of combat duty in Afghanistan and then Iraq, and special ops missions in ten other shitstorm countries, where if you messed up you get a flag on your coffin and a Dignified Transfer at Dover Air Force Base.”

  Devine was impressed that the man had recited his military CV from memory. Some parts of it even Devine had forgotten.

  The man leaned back in his chair and studied Devine. “You have shrapnel in your shoulder and leg, and they’ll stay with you until the day you die. You were picked up for 0-4 Major at the eight-year mark below the zone,” he added, referring to the Army’s esoteric promotion vernacular. “In due time you would have had the golden oak leaf on your uniform, Devine. And then you quit. I wonder why.”

  The man didn’t ask it as a question. He had thrown it out as a statement. But still, Devine decided to try to answer.

  “I did my time. I took my shots and pretty much all of them hit the target. They took their shots at me. Some hit, most missed. I moved on. It was time. I didn’t relish pressing my luck.”

  “Don’t bullshit me, son. I don’t have the patience.”

  “I’m not—”

  “My name is Emerson Campbell. Retired Army two-star. Never got the third or fourth ones because I don’t play the political games necessary to do that. And so let me be clear, former Captain Devine, I know exactly why you left the service, and it has nothing to do with your luck running out.”

  He opened a manila folder that was lying in front of him. He took out some photos and arrayed them in front of Devine.

  He pointed to one picture. “Lieutenant Roy Blankenship. You knew him. You served together.” He pointed to another photo. “Captain Kenneth Hawkins. You knew him, served with him as well.”

  “So what?”

  “Patience, Devine. We’ve been interested in you for a while now.”

  “Is that right?”

  “Who do you think got you the room at that town house in Mount Kisco?”

  Devine’s eyes widened at this. “A Realtor who was a friend—”

  “Right. A friend of a friend. We have lots of friends, Devine, who do what they’re told.”

  “Why did you care where I lived?”

  “Let’s just say it was a convenient spot for us, considering we have this office nearby. And you take the train in. And you pass a certain house there every day, right?”

  The man could only mean one thing. “Brad Cowl’s palace, you mean?”

  “Palace, eh? You’re right. And I’m glad you pick things up fast. Maybe our time won’t be wasted.”

  He took out another picture, clearly a morgue shot of the now deceased Roy Blankenship with ligature marks around his neck.

  “He was killed, murdered, you also know that. Even though Army CID ruled it a suicide. The guy was cremated, evidence lost, a total clusterfuck. But you know who killed him. Kenneth Hawkins, his superior officer, his comrade in arms, did the honors. And you know exactly why he did it.”

  “Says who?” muttered Devine. He was feeling sullen and trapped, because he was. And he also knew exactly where this was headed.

  “Says the evidence. Hawkins murdered Blankenship and made it look like a suicide. He got away with it. Until he didn’t. As you know. But, to refresh your memory.”

  He took out another photo of a very dead Kenneth Hawkins.

  “And you know who killed Hawkins.”

  “Do I?” Devine felt every muscle in his body tense. The nightmare had finally come home to roost. He could feel the walls of the small space close in around him.