CHAPTER
48
ON THE TRAIN BACK TO the city Devine called Dr. Wyman’s office with a request to speak to him about Ewes.
However, he was told that Wyman was not available. Devine then left his name and number and asked if the doctor could contact him when he had the chance and that it was important. The receptionist said she would pass along the information and then she hung up.
Okay, so much for that.
He got off the subway at Broadway and walked until he reached the Lombard Theater. Godot was still playing for the next week or so. He walked around the front of the building and took in the marquee, the ticket office, the stanchions, and the people scurrying around.
Ewes had been interested in this play for some reason. She had walked into Jennifer Stamos’s office and told her to go see it. Now that Stamos had told him that she and Ewes were in love, her confiding in Stamos made sense. But the more he thought about it, the more Devine was convinced that Ewes had told Stamos more. He didn’t believe Stamos’s explanation that Ewes was trying to protect her by keeping her in the dark. If Ewes had told Stamos to check out the Lombard Theater, he was sure she would have told her lover why.
Then something occurred to Devine, and he groaned, chastising himself for not thinking of it earlier. He took out his phone, did a Google search, and found his answer.
The Lombard Theater was owned by . . . the Locust Group. Ewes’s interest had nothing to do with the play. It had everything to do with the property. The nicely rehabbed property.
Christian Chilton’s property on the Upper East Side—the Locust Group. Montgomery’s walk-up—the Locust Group. The Lombard Theater—the Locust Group.
He looked up and down the street. What else did the Locust Group own? And what was the connection to Cowl and Comely? He had told Campbell that he had thought of a way to get inside Area 51. Maybe the answers to his questions would be found there.
During their meeting at the restaurant, Devine had made a request to Campbell for some equipment he would need. Then he looked on his phone and found the nearest Apple Store for the other item he required.
Later, back at his cubicle, Devine took out his phone and texted a message to the same number from which he had received the summons to meet with Brad Cowl.
A problem has come up. We need to discuss tonight.
His thumb hovered over the Send key, then he pressed it and put his phone away. He spent the rest of the day laboring over work that he couldn’t have cared less about. All around him the other Burners were going full bore, analyzing data from all four corners of the earth. Every dollar to be made, every dollar to be paid, every dollar to be lost. That was, ultimately, what it was all about. As he had heard Brad Cowl say in an interview with CNBC once:
“The first billion is the hardest to make. After that, it gets a lot easier.”
I’m sure it does, asshole.
At seven that evening, when he was looking at his phone clock and thinking about leaving, the text came in:
Same place, same process. Nine o’clock.
Smart guy, thought Devine. He wants me to work overtime just for the honor of meeting him. But then again, no Burner got paid overtime. The only one who made money off that extra work was the firm of Cowl and Comely. But he was glad it was later, because he hadn’t gotten the item he needed from Campbell yet. It was supposed to have arrived by now. Without that, his plan was dead. A bead of sweat appeared on his forehead. Now he had to confirm something else. Again, without it, his plan was useless. Normally he would have all his ducks in a row before executing a strategy. But here it wasn’t possible. It was a classic chicken-and-egg problem.
He texted Michelle Montgomery and asked her to let him know if she would be once more escorting him to his meeting with Cowl.
Come on, come on. Please.
Ten minutes later he got an affirmative on that from her.
He felt tremendous relief. Without her his plan had no chance of working. It still might not have a chance, depending on how good or bad his powers of persuasion were.
Next, he googled the name Anne Comely. He had done this before and found nothing. The result this time was the same. Even Emerson Campbell and his people could find nothing on the woman.
He then googled Bradley Cowl and found about ten billion results. Maybe one for each dollar the man had.
He sat back and thought about this. Morgan and Stanley. Plenty of stuff on both people, now long dead. Same for Merrill and Lynch. The defunct Lehman Brothers, the same. J. P. Morgan was a real guy. E. F. Hutton as well. Hell, even Harley and Davidson, if you ventured outside the financial world.
But Cowl and Comely, apparently not so much. And he doubted he was the first person to wonder about that. He did another search focused more on that inquiry and found a video from six years ago that Cowl had done with the Wall Street Journal. The reporter had asked Cowl about his “partner.”
Cowl’s response had been interesting. Without directly addressing the question, he had said, “Partnerships can be of many different varieties. It can simply be an idea or a perspective.”
When the journalist had asked him point-blank if Anne Comely existed and, if so, where and who she was, Cowl had terminated the interview.