The Shadow Box Read Online Free PDF Page A

money, all of it cash, lying around that apartment.
So what?
Like father, like son?
Is that what Doyle was getting at?
Or does he think that going into a marginally related field was rooted, somehow, in some deep inner urge to make amends for whatever his father had done? Or maybe to succeed where his father had failed?
That was total horseshit. All of it. Doyle, in any case, did not return to that subject.
The upshot of the dinner was that Doyle would file suit but he would then lie back and wait for heads to cool. No one wants this to go to court. No one wants the SEC in this. Be patient and they'll settle.
Doyle did have one theory as to what was going on here. It had to do with corporate image. Lehman-Stone was a very conservative firm and so were its clients. But suddenly they're getting a lot of unwelcome press. Their name was mentioned, repeatedly, in the newspaper ac counts of Big Jake Fallon's murder, if only in connection with Jake's adopted son and heir. Several of the stories mentioned that Big Jake's younger brother, Michael's fa ther, had taken his own life.
Then, after Bronwyn was killed, one tabloid did a story on what amounted to the Fallon curse . . . how Big Jake's nephew seems dogged by tragedy and death. Even the burglary made the papers. To make matters worse, that same story reported that the Giordano brothers of Brook lyn had placed a bounty on whomever killed Jake. The younger Giordano, called Johnny G., was said to have been a boyhood friend of Michael's.
The long and the short of it, said Doyle, is that Lehman- Stone now sees that one of its traders is related to the notorious Big Jake Fallon and the infamous Giordano brothers. They decide to disassociate themselves, and fast.
“But they don't want to look like pricks, either,” said Doyle, “dumping a guy who's taken some really hard shots. They won't if they can make him look like a crook. He's Jake Fallon's nephew, right? He's Johnny G.'s pal. How straight can he be?”
“You think that's what happened?” Fallon asked.
“It's a theory.”
    “Mr. Doyle . . . Bart Hobbs has lied about me. I want his ass in court.”
    Outside the Algonquin, an unexpected snow had begun to coat the sidewalk. It gave Doyle another excuse to argue for that boat.
    “I'm tempted to go in on one with you,” he said. “We'll find a nice island, swim in to the beach. Who knows? We might even trip over some sleeping native and he'll turn out to be Moon.”
“You still haven't heard from him either?”
“Not a word.”
“I'm worried about him.”
    “You worry about yourself.” Doyle squeezed his arm and grunted. “Get back to the gym, Michael. You're let ting yourself go soft.”
    He squeezed him once more, this time with affection, then turned and walked off toward the cab stand at Grand Central Station.
    Fallon looked for a cab of his own. He did not have high hopes. The off-duty lights of New York taxis are known to wink on at the first flake of snow. But the Sixth Avenue subway was only a block and a half away. He reached it, missed one train, and stood waiting, deep in thought, for the next.
    Witnesses told of a thirty-ish male, Hispanic, smelling of alcohol, who had been dozing against a platform pillar. The train came in. The roar jarred him awake. He suddenly lurched into Michael, shoving him into the path of the oncoming train. A large black woman, God bless her, slammed a forearm across Fallon's chest and then clawed at his hair. She slowed him, almost stopped him, but one arm had flailed out and the lead car struck it. The impact snapped his arm at the wrist.
Fallon was knocked to the platform. The drunk, they said, tried to slip away. The black woman grabbed him, told him to wait for the police. He threw a punch at her. She smothered it and proceeded to slap him silly until two transit policemen arrived and, seeing a large black woman swinging a smaller white male by the hair, ordered her to let him go.
    She and other witnesses tried to explain. But