Howard slid a single folded sheet of paper across the desk. Edward opened it.
He read the seven names slowly. He had hired six of them himself over the course of the past twenty years; the seventh he had inherited when he had acquired the building in 2014. He knew their wives. He knew their children's schools. He had attended two of their weddings. He had spoken at the funeral of one of their fathers.
He read the list three times. Then his eyes settled on the fourth name.
"Gregory Alden," he said quietly.
Howard nodded. "I thought so, too."
Gregory Alden was the chief financial officer of Whitmore Holdings. He had held the position for nine years. He had access to every system in the building. He had been with Edward in Singapore on Monday night and had flown back on the same plane at 6:00 that morning. He had been the one to suggest, in a quiet conversation in January, that perhaps the partner who had been moving funds in unexplained ways should not be forced into retirement, but should instead be allowed to retire with dignity. Edward had not listened; he had pushed the man out anyway. Gregory had not raised the issue again.
But it had been Gregory, four months ago, who had brought Vincent Marsh's catering contract to Edward's attention with a small approving note attached: Reliable provider, background clean, recommend. Edward had not even read the file. He had signed the cover sheet and moved on to the next item in the stack.
"Howard," he said quietly, "I want to be careful here. The fact that Gregory recommended the contract is not proof. He recommends a dozen contracts a quarter. I do not want to destroy a man's life because of a coincidence."
"Agreed. But I want to know where he is right now."
"Find out."
Howard picked up his phone and stepped to the far corner of the office. He spoke quietly for two minutes, listened, spoke again, and then ended the call and walked back.
"He is in his office on the 40th floor," Howard said. "He has been there since 7:00 this morning. He took one phone call at 8:13, one minute before your coffee was delivered. The call lasted forty-one seconds. It came from a number that is not in our internal directory. I am pulling the routing now."
Edward looked down at the list again. Then he folded it carefully and put it in his inside jacket pocket.
"Howard, I want you to do two things. First, I want a full reconstruction of Gregory's movements for the past six months: every meeting, every flight, every dinner that the company paid for, every dinner he expensed personally. Second, I want the partner I forced out in January. I want to know where he has been living, who he has been talking to, and whether his name has ever appeared in any document that also contains Vincent Marsh's name. The man's name was Carter Reeves. You remember him."
"I remember him."
"Go quietly. Use Hannah's people if you need them."
"I will."
Howard left. The door closed behind him. The office was quiet again.
Edward turned toward the sofa. Marcus had not moved during the entire conversation. He had sat with his hands folded and his eyes lowered, the way a child who had been raised in church sits during a long sermon—present, but careful not to interrupt.
Now he looked up. "Sir," he said quietly, "are you going to call my mom soon? I told her I would be back by lunchtime."
Edward looked at him for a long moment. Then, for the first time since the morning had begun, he smiled. It was a small smile, tired around the edges, but it was real.
"Yes, Marcus," he said. "We are going to call your mother right now."
Edward picked up the desk phone and pressed the line for the 38th-floor reception. He asked, in the calm and ordinary voice he used for ordinary requests, whether they could send Doreen Hill up to the chairman's office. He said it was nothing to be concerned about. He said her son was helping him with a small project, and he wanted to thank her in person. He said it the way a man says small things when he wants the staff on the line to repeat the message to their colleagues exactly as he had said it, without coloring or alarm.
Doreen Hill arrived seven minutes later. She came up alone in the elevator. Edward opened the door for her himself.
She was a small woman in her late thirties with her hair pulled back in a practical knot, and the kind of upright posture that came from carrying things for a living. She was wearing the gray uniform of the building's cleaning crew. Her nametag was slightly crooked.