All Cry Chaos (17 page)

    "When will you have results?"

    "Several weeks."

    Poincaré returned to the cigar box, this time for Fenster's baby teeth. "I'm assuming you can extract DNA from these?"

    "Pearly whites? There's likely some soft tissue dried up in there. And even if there isn't . . . We'll likely find something."

    Poincaré only half heard him, concentrating as he was on words floating in the ether:
different, name, things, same
. What language was this? Jules Henri had seen what Fenster saw, but they were both too dead to tell.

    Poincaré left Johnson to wait for Hurley and close the apartment, for he had seen too much. The room was too small. At the front of the building, on his knees with a spade and claw hammer, Jorge Silva sat working a slab of cracked concrete. "The builders poured this when it was cold," he said. "Concrete won't set well if you pour below thirty-two degrees. Sure, it'll look pretty for ten years. Then, after the contractor's long gone, you've got this mess." The caretaker pointed. "Who takes the long view anymore?"

    Poincaré saw the cracks and walked away.

From his perch high above the financial district, Charles Bell ran the most successful mutual fund to have emerged in a dozen years. In just under eighteen months, the fund's holdings had ballooned to $24 billion, money following money until Bell became the young lion of the investment world. His portfolio consistently beat major stock indexes in up markets and, in down, offered the stability of municipal bonds. Unlike the blackguards who ran investment frauds, Bell opened his books to major accounting firms that confirmed his successes were legitimate, although no one outside the company could explain that success. The combination of high yields and low risk proved irresistible, and Bell was soon straddling a mountain of gold that impressed individual investors as well as the portfolio managers of universities, pension funds, and insurance companies.

    The man himself was famously philanthropic, with a Texas-sized personality transplanted in staid Boston. He sat on the boards of schools and hospitals, museums, and assorted defense funds for the indigent, all of which enjoyed his largesse. Charles Bell was also James Fenster's benefactor. According to a grants officer at Harvard, Bell's funding paid for Fenster's supercomputers, graduate student stipends, reduced teaching loads, and leaves of absence for research. Bell was to Fenster what Lorenzo Medici was to Michelangelo.
Why
was the question. More typically, foundations and corporations funded university research, not individuals.

    Poincaré's stomach churned as the express elevator shot him skyward, into precincts reserved for the rich and politically connected. The elevator glided to a stop, and he stepped uncertainly into a reception area set on an open ledge above Boston Harbor. The walls opposite the elevator were glass, floor to ceiling. One lived in the clouds at this altitude, among peregrine falcons.

    As he paused to acclimate himself, a voice boomed down a corridor. "Inspector Poincaré, I presume! It takes some getting used to, but it's a grand view!" It was Bell himself, recognizable from the fund's promotional materials, with a greeting that hit Poincaré like a blast wave. As he strode down the corridor, Bell rattled off instructions to an assistant who took notes and peeled off down a side corridor. He continued without breaking stride into the reception area, smiling broadly. "I am
so
pleased!"

    "Magnificent," said Poincaré, gesturing to the conference room and the harbor beyond. "Who can work with such a view? I'd get nothing accomplished. Congratulations on all your success, Mr. Bell."

    The man laughed like a horse whinnied. Clearly, he cared nothing for what anyone thought of him. "I'll tell you my secret," Bell confided, loud enough for anyone standing within twenty paces to hear. "If you work for me and don't produce, you lose the view. You're downgraded to a basement cubicle in our satellite office in Watertown. And if you still don't produce, you're out! Same rule for everyone—me included."

    "Effective," said Poincaré. "But given what I've read of your funds, I doubt anyone's in danger of losing the view. The performance is . . . historic."

    "Yes, well. We've been fortunate." Bell showed Poincaré into a glass-walled conference room, to the very edge of a cliff. "Sandwich, coffee? Pastries? Mineral water? Without waiting for an answer, Bell called: "Eleanor, mineral water."

    They sat at one end of a thirty-seat rosewood table, at each place a leather captain's chair. At the far end of the room hung a screen for video conferencing. Bell, all Armani, settled into his chair. His fingernails, Poincaré noticed, were manicured.

    "We're scheduled for fifteen minutes, Mr. Bell."

    "Please call me Charles."

    "Charles. Since I have only a few moments of your time, let's begin."

    "Play on, Inspector. You already know that James Fenster was a dear, dear friend, and I want to help any way I can."

    "How did you know him?"

"Through his work."

"You sponsored him, I understand."

    "I did. James and I agreed on a number that would be useful to him, and I wrote a large check—only to discover that Harvard adds sixty percent for something they call overhead—which is another word for thievery. So I wrote a larger check. It's outrageous. But yes, I believed in his work."

    "Because it related to your own?

    "Peripherally."

    "How so?"

    Bell laughed. "I appreciate the question, but this is like asking Coca-Cola for its secret formula." The quarter-smile might have been mocking Poincaré.

    "In general terms, Charles. Could you say?"

    "Alright. Algorithms. Fenster modeled nonlinear dynamic systems. Water boiling. Air flow. Processes of nature."

    "And the stock market . . . is that a process of nature?"

    Over Bell's left shoulder, a plane touched down at Logan. Over his right, tugs guided container ships to unloading docks and triangles of sail leaned into an onshore breeze. Bell commanded it all. "I don't see how it could be, Inspector. What would the behavior of a thunderstorm have to do with the stock market? Of course, James had some interesting ideas for modeling the markets. We use proprietary algorithms at the Bell Funds. It's called a quantified approach to investing. Some analysts read sheep entrails to guide their stock picks. We model the markets." He tugged at the corners of a French cuff until they aligned.

    "Do you know last week I invested 200 euros in your fund and today that 200 is worth 223? Over ten percent in a week. And in this economy! I'm considering a larger investment."

    "Good for us and good for you, Inspector. Though the Security and Exchange Commission forbids me to say so, in our case past performance
is
a guarantee of future success. But I'll deny it if you quote me!" He whinnied again, and the receptionist seated beyond the conference room door looked up. Bell's face settled into a smiling mask once more. "The way we work is as follows," he said, looking suddenly earnest. A woman opened the door, carrying a tray of bottled water and two glasses. "Not now!" he snapped.

    The door closed.

    "I subscribe to former President Reagan's view. You hire good people, set them loose to do good work, then take a nap. No, seriously, Ronald Reagan had a vision, he hired smart people to carry it out, and then was clever enough to get out of the way. I call that leadership. This corridor is lined with the very best minds, and I give them enormous incentives to succeed. I get out of their way, and they create a product that I can sell. That sells itself."

    "Was Dr. Fenster one of your very best?"

    "Yes and no. When I was thinking of starting this company, I searched for promising mathematicians who might lend a hand. I had this idea that a certain sort of mathematics could help analysts anticipate trends in the markets. I offered ridiculous salaries to lure them away from whatever they were doing—and most came. They couldn't run fast enough from their academic appointments. And we're talking Ivy brains, Inspector. But not James Fenster. The man was the purist expression of a mathematical mind I have ever seen. He had his job. He did not want another job at roughly seven times the salary and the promise of even larger bonuses. 'But I admire your work,' I told him. 'Well, then,' he says, 'fund it.' 'Why should I?' I asked. 'Because it's important,' he answered. It was, so I did!" Bell clapped his hands. "I'm a rich man, Inspector Poincaré, which has certain advantages. I believe it was Thornton Wilder who said that money is like manure; it's not worth a thing unless you spread it around. So I spread some in James's direction."

    "And in return?"

    "Roses grew."

    "More particularly?"

    "Ah—I see. I financed James's work for the pure admiration of it. You can believe that or not. In any event, even if I were inclined to answer, which I'm not, this is a Coca-Cola question.
Go fish
, as we say in America."

    Poincaré did not understand the expression.

    "Never mind," said Bell. "What I will say is that on occasion James offered some scribbles, more or less, on the backs of napkins. And he gave me the satisfaction of encouraging one of the finest minds of his generation. Nothing I could say or do would pull him away from the massively parallel processors I donated to his efforts. He threw me bones, I'm afraid."

    "Nothing to build a company on?"

    Bell's quarter-smile broadened. "Not hardly! Nothing nearly so comprehensive as that. James was no more interested in the mutual fund business than I am in—" he searched the sky above downtown Boston for comparisons, his eyes finally settling on the bowl of fruit on his own rosewood table. "In becoming a vegetarian. I like my steak. James did not care about this business or about making a personal fortune. He cared about his equations, God love the man."

    "No quid pro quo, your money for his—"

    "What I received in return were too few conversations over expensive coffee in that hulk of a building they call the Science Center. Sometimes, as I said, he would share his musings on napkins or the backs of register receipts. He tolerated our chats as a necessary tradeoff for my funding his research. I built him his play- ground . . . and now he's gone. I can hardly believe it." Bell's face darkened. "Bastards. Total, complete bastards. James was such a gentle man. To kill someone like this?"

    Poincaré searched Bell's mask for surface cracks and found none. The outrage sounded real enough. But so, too, did the relief that Fenster would never share his napkin musings with another fund manager.

    "Do you in any way credit Dr. Fenster with your success?" Poincaré asked.

    "How many ways can you ask the same question, Inspector? He was more conceptual than a mathematician in this industry can afford to be. He flew at 35,000 feet all day long. A mutual fund company must operate at ground level."

    Another plane touched down at Logan. "And also at twenty-nine floors up, sometimes."

    "All this," said Bell, "is for show. I grew up in the real estate business, and my father once told me never to drive clients to a property in a junker. A Cadillac or Mercedes is the better choice because if you present yourself as successful, people will see you as successful and will want to do business." Bell pointed down the corridor. "My employees are responsible for our success, not James. Funding James was like paying a monk in the Middle Ages to pray for me and store up points in heaven. You'd have to have met him to understand. How else can I say it? He
deserved
those computers and graduate students. He was pure in a way I could never be."

    Bell spun his chair to the glass wall, showing Poincaré his back. He said: "I want to help you find whoever committed this atrocity. It hurts, Inspector. James's murder
hurts
me. Is there anything I can do? Do you lack for funding in this investigation?" Bell spun back to face the room.

    With that, Poincaré finally found his bearings with Charles Bell. Bribes were usually handled more coarsely, but then one had to account for the fine view and the gold cufflinks. "I appreciate your offer," he said. "But Interpol is well funded."

    "Perhaps you need money
personally
for your investigation?"

    "That's very generous, Charles. Here's what you can do."

    Bell was listening.

    "Write your congressman to pressure your government into paying its dues on time to Interpol. One hundred eighty-eight countries, and America—the richest—won't meet its obligations."

    Bell checked his watch some thirteen minutes into the conversation, which was fine with Poincaré. He had got what he came for. They shook hands and exchanged wary smiles. By the time Poincaré arrived at street level after a more or less controlled free fall in the elevator, he wondered what, exactly, Fenster had scribbled on the backs of those napkins.