Chapter 7 - The Master of the House
The great hall of the Mallory estate was forty feet of vaulted oak timber, limestone fireplaces large enough to park a compact car, and taxidermy trophies from four continents staring down with dead, glass eyes from the paneled walls.
Arthur Mallory sat in a high-backed wing chair beside the hearth, a heavy wool blanket draped across his knees.
At eighty-four, he looked like an ancient bird of prey that had survived the winter by eating carrion: his skin was yellow as old parchment, stretched tight over a massive, angular skull, his nose hooked like an iron cleat, his hands liver-spotted and long-fingered, resting on the silver head of an ivory cane. A portable oxygen concentrator hummed at his feet, delivering two liters of gas through a clear plastic cannula looped around his ears.
Standing behind his chair, his face bruised from where Tariq’s men had shoved him into the taxi, was Trent.
Trent was holding an open bottle of bourbon, his hands shaking so violently that the amber liquor sloshed against the neck of the bottle, his eyes darting frantically toward the four armed men who had positioned themselves by the library doors.
"Arthur," Kareem Rahal said, his voice rolling across the Persian rugs like an artillery shell.
Arthur Mallory did not jump.
He slowly turned his head, his cloudy blue eyes taking in the midnight-blue overcoat, the silver ibex-horn cane, and finally settling on my face with the cold, analytical appraisal of an auctioneer assessing a lot of damaged furniture.
"Kareem," the old man wheezed, his voice carrying the dry, rattling whistle of advanced emphysema. "I wondered... when you would find the time... to come north. The papers in Zurich said... you were retiring to Geneva."
"I was," Kareem said, stepping to the center of the room, stopping ten feet from the fire. "Until I discovered that the foundation stone of my new hotel in Manhattan was stolen from the cemetery in Zahlé."
Arthur let out a sound that was half-cough, half-laugh—a wet, rattling croak that made the plastic cannula tremble beneath his nostrils.
"Business, Kareem," Arthur whispered, his hand tightening on his ivory cane. "It was... nineteen-eighty-four. The city was bankrupt. The banks... were demanding twelve percent on the bridge loans. The girl... was dead. What difference did it make... whose name was on the ledger?"
"She wasn't dead, Arthur," I said.
The old man’s head shifted by two inches. His watery eyes tracked the sound of my voice, moving over my charcoal trousers, my silk scarf, and stopping on the small, square jawline that had belonged to Maryam al-Haddad.
"And who... are you?" Arthur wheezed. "The new... executive assistant?"
"Her name is Nia Brooks," Kareem said, his voice dropping an octave into pure, unadulterated ice. "Her baptismal name is Nia al-Haddad. She is the granddaughter of the woman who pulled me out of the cellar in fifty-eight. The woman you declared dead with a forged stamp from Lyon so you could build your dining room on Fifth Avenue."
Arthur’s mouth clicked open.
A tiny, spastic twitch pulled at his left eyelid. He looked from my face to the cardboard box Tariq had set on the walnut side table, then up at his son, Trent, who was cowering behind the wing chair like a dog waiting for the whip.
"You... you found the books," Arthur whispered.
"We found the books," I said, walking toward him until I was standing three feet from his slippers. "We found the wire receipts. We found the tape from the Union League Club. And we found the thirty-two checks you wrote to the probate clerk in White Plains to ensure that my mother’s name never appeared on the state beneficiary registry."
Arthur looked up at me.
There was no remorse in those ancient, yellowed irises. There was no terror. There was only the cold, calcified arrogance of a man who had spent eighty years believing that the law was an instrument designed by men of his class to protect their property from people with vowels at the end of their names.
"You have... paper, girl," Arthur croaked, a thin line of white spit appearing at the corner of his mouth. "Paper... takes ten years in the Second Circuit. I will be in the family crypt... at Woodlawn... before your first motion... is heard by a magistrate."
"You won't be in Woodlawn, Arthur," Kareem said softly.
He stepped forward, his walking stick clicking once against the bluestone hearth.
"Tariq," Kareem commanded.
Tariq stepped forward, holding an unsealed manila folder bearing the gold seal of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York.
"The federal grand jury in Manhattan," Tariq recited, his voice flat as a carpenter's rule, "returned an unsealed indictment fifty minutes ago under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act. Forty-eight counts of municipal bank fraud, wire fraud, and international money laundering. The United States Marshals Service has already seized the corporate assets of the Mallory Trust."
Tariq turned a page.
"And under Section Nineteen-Sixty-Three of the United States Code, the federal receiver has assigned the primary restitution claim directly to the surviving heir of the original escrow depositor."
Tariq looked at me.
"Director Nia Brooks," Tariq said, "is now the sole, court-appointed receiver for this property, the commercial portfolio in Stamford, and the three hundred acres of timber land in Litchfield County."
Trent Mallory dropped the bottle of bourbon.
The heavy glass shattered against the hearthstone, sending a wave of dark, seventy-dollar alcohol splashing across his father’s slippers and soaking into the hem of the antique Persian rug.
"Dad!" Trent shrieked, falling to his knees among the broken glass, his hands clawing at his father’s wool blanket. "Tell them! Tell them we have the offshore reserves in Curacao! Tell them about the account in Nassau!"
"The accounts in Nassau were frozen at dawn, Trent," I said, looking down at the two men. "By the central bank of the Bahamas. Following an administrative request from the Rahal Maritime Group."
Arthur Mallory’s fingers slipped from the ivory handle of his cane.
The heavy stick clattered against the stone floorboards, rolling twice before stopping against the toe of my black leather boot.
The old man looked at his son, then at his shattered glass, then up at the high timber ceiling of the room he had built with sixty years of stolen lives.
His chest gave a long, ragged shudder—a wet, rattling sigh that sounded like a bellows running out of air.
"A waitress," Arthur whispered, his voice barely louder than the hum of his oxygen concentrator. "A... waitress from the Bronx."
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I reached down, picked up the ivory-handled cane from the floor, and set it on the mantlepiece beside the taxidermy eagle.
"My grandmother cleaned the floors at Mount Sinai for twenty-five years, Mr. Mallory," I said, turning my back on him and walking toward the double doors where the winter sun was finally breaking through the clouds over the Sound. "And she left a cleaner house than this."
