FOUR HOURS LATER, in the name of “coming clean” and telling us what he knew, and most of all, getting the best deal he possibly could, Nicholson offered up access to a safe-deposit box in DC. He said it contained evidence that could help us. I had doubts, but decided to take my progress with him incrementally.
It took some scrambling, but by the next morning Sampson and I were outside the Exeter Bank on Connecticut with fully executed paperwork, a key from Nicholson’s desk, and two empty briefcases in case there really was evidence to retrieve.
This place was no ordinary savings and loan, starting with the fact that we had to be buzzed in from the street. The lobby had a do-not-touch kind of feel to it—not a pamphlet or a deposit slip in sight.
From the reception desk, we were directed up to a row of glass-walled offices on the mezzanine. A woman inside one of them put down her phone and turned to look at us as we started up the stairs.
Sampson smiled and waved at her. “Feels like a damn James Bond movie,” he said through his teeth. “Come in, Dr. Cross. We’ve been expecting you.”
The branch manager, Christine Currie, was indeed expecting us. Her brief smile and handshake were about as warm as yesterday’s oatmeal.
“This is all a bit irregular for us,” she said. Her accent was stuffy and British, and more upper-crust than Nicholson’s. “I do hope it can be done quietly? Can it be, Detectives?”
“Of course,” I told her. I think we both wanted the same thing—for Sampson and me to be back on the street as soon as possible.
Once Ms. Currie had satisfied herself with our paperwork and compared Nicholson’s signature in half a dozen places, she led us out to an elevator at the back of the mezzanine. We got on and started down, a very rapid descent.
“You guys do free checking?” Sampson asked. I just stared straight ahead, didn’t say a word. Stuffy environments sometimes set John off. Stuffy people too. But most of all, bad people, criminals, and anybody who aids and abets.
We came out into a small anteroom. There was an armed guard by the only other door, and a suit-and-tie employee at an oversize desk. Ms. Currie logged us in herself, then took us straight through to the safe-deposit room.
Nicholson’s box, number 1665, was one of the larger ones at the back.
After we’d both keyed the flap door, Ms. Currie pulled out a long rectangular drawer, then carried it to one of the viewing rooms off an adjacent hallway.
“I’ll just be outside, whenever you’re ready,” she said in a way that sounded a lot like Don’t take too long with this.
We didn’t. Inside the box, we found three dozen disks, each one in its own plastic sleeve and dated by hand in black marker. There were also two leather binders filled with handwritten pages of notes, lists, addresses, and ledgers.
A few minutes later, we left with all of it in our briefcases.
“God bless Tony Nicholson,” I said to the unflappable Ms. Currie.
Chapter 66
FOR THE REST of the afternoon, Sampson and I holed up in my office with a pair of laptops. We stayed busy watching and cataloging the extracurricular sex lives of the rich and mostly famous. It was surprisingly repetitive stuff, especially given everything that Tony Nichol
son was set up to provide at the club.
The roster of power players, on the other hand, was one big holy shit after another. At least half the faces were recognizable, the kind of people you’d see at a presidential inauguration. In the front row.
The clients weren’t just men either. Women were outnumbered about twenty to one, but they were there, including a former US ambassador to the United Nations.
I had to keep reminding myself that every one of these people was—at least technically—a murder suspect.
We set up a log, using the date stamps embedded on each recording. For every clip, we wrote down the name of the clients we recognized and flagged the ones we didn’t. I also made a note of where each “scene” took place at the club.
My primary interest was the apartment over the carriage barn, which I’d come to think of as a kind of ground zero for this whole nasty murder puzzle.
And that’s where we started to pick up some legitimate momentum. Right around the time I thought my eyes were going to burn out of my head, I started to notice an interesting pattern in the tapes.
“John, let me see what you’ve got so far. I want to check something.”
All of our notes were handwritten at this point, so I laid the pages out side by side and started scanning.
“Here… here… here…”
Every time I saw someone had used the apartment, I circled the date in red pen, ticking off entries as I went. Then I went back over everything I’d circled.