Nickel City Storm Warning (Gideon Rimes Book 3) by Gary Ross (100 best novels of all time txt) 📗

“Pop?” Pete said again.

Dr. Kim shrugged. “I needed to tell you that.” Then he patted his belly. “Now what I really need is food. Let’s go down to Seven-One-Six. Dinner’s on me.”

I looked at Pete, who grinned.

“Be glad it wasn’t a double-header, or we’d be on our way to busting a gut at the nearest buffet.”

13

“So who are we here to see again?” Pete said, buttery flakes of his croissant falling to his plate as he took another bite.

It was the first Monday morning in June but in sports jackets, open-collar shirts, and khakis, Pete and I looked more like casual Friday. We were seated on stainless steel chairs at a ceramic-topped table in the Breakfast Brasserie, in a corner of the four-story glass-fronted lobby of the Torrance Towers Hotel and Event Center. Foot traffic was heavy, but ambient noise faded, like smoke, upward into the vast space. The upper two-thirds of the columns that supported the shopping concourse above us and five additional stories of convention space and luxury suites were covered with mirrored tiles. With marble floors gleaming, tall potted trees everywhere, an indoor waterfall splashing over faux rocks, and direct and reflected sunlight, the lobby was warm and scenic—one Hollywood sound loop of exotic bird calls away from being a tropical movie set.

“We’re here to talk to James and Randall Torrance, the owners,” I said, sipping my coffee. “And whichever Donatello is in charge of security today.”

Pen poised above his pocket notebook, Pete grinned. “Like the Ninja Turtle.”

“Funny you should put it that way.” Glad Bobby wasn’t here to bemoan the decline of culture indicated by naming a mutant reptile after a Renaissance sculptor, I took out my own notebook. “Donatello Protective Services, DPS, is owned and operated by four brothers, all in their forties. Two are ex-Special Forces, one an ex-cop, one a former intelligence officer.”

“Even better!” He laughed. “Four brothers, like the Turtles. They came out in comic books when I was in college. Before the cartoon companies and toymakers got to them, the Turtles were so gritty and the art so noir, it blew our minds. In my dorm some guys would fire up a joint before reading a new comic book out loud and passing both around.”

“You too?”

“I’ll take the fifth. But they were just what an Asian kid pushed into science needed.”

“You told me you were no good in science.”

“Good enough to get accepted, but not good enough to graduate and get a job. I told my dad that, but a scientist needs proof. So I gave it to him and switched to criminal justice.” He set down his pen and popped the last piece of croissant into his mouth, washing it down with the last of his coffee. “The Turtles. Haven’t thought about them in a long time. Silly idea, we said back then, even as we laughed at the stories. The rat, the sewers. Why would turtles need masks? But in serious moments we all wished the idea had been ours.”

“You could’ve been on a yacht in the Mediterranean but for the idea that got away.”

Pete patted his lips with his paper napkin. “Okay, tell me about these Ninja Turtles.”

“More like the Apostles,” I said. “Two sets of twins named Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, though Luke and John, called Jack, were born two years before Matt and Mark. Matt, by the way, is the one I met. Their father was an executive and their mother a secretary for Torrance Brockhurst, the multinational holding company founded in Manhattan fifty years ago by two sons of WASP privilege, James K. Torrance and A. Randall Brockhurst. Unmarried, Randy Brockhurst died suddenly twenty-five years in. His sole heir was his sister Charmaine, wife of James and best friend of Serafina Donatello, nee Lucci. The Brockhursts were Episcopalian but Charmaine went to a Catholic high school, where she met Serafina.”

“So it’s a husband-and-wife family business, with good friends on the payroll.”

“Yes but when Charmaine died a dozen years later, her husband became the principal stockholder. He set up a second headquarters in Buffalo when he tried to buy the Bills. His son Randall, an only child, became second-in-command.” I swallowed the last of my now cold coffee. “The good friends part is right though. It seems James underwrote the expansion of DPS with grants. It began as his private security unit after the senior Donatellos died and became its own company when Torrance settled here after his shot at the NFL failed. DPS operates only in Rochester, Buffalo, and Cleveland and has thrived. It’s safe to say none of that would have happened without James, who gets no return—except loyalty.”

“Generosity with intent,” Pete said.

“He’s a generous man. He established the Charmaine Torrance Foundation, which has an office suite in the hotel. CTF supports cancer research, scholarship funds, suicide prevention, various hospitals and clinics, business development initiatives.”

“Everything on the up and up?”

“You mean, is he using it to pay his bills?” I shook my head. “James is the principal donor but leaves everything to a major league board of directors. Over the last few years his private giving has taken a soft liberal turn—anti-poverty groups, early childhood education, minority student scholarships, women’s shelters, arts groups.”

Pete grinned. “He must have met a woman who thinks those things are important.”

“Maybe, but I didn’t dig that deep. This was a quick assessment before our meeting with him.” I looked at my notebook again. “Okay, Torrance Brockhurst corporate HQ is still in Manhattan. James has worked out of the Buffalo office the last ten years and now says he’s retired, except for overseeing Torrance Towers.”

“That’s a nice retirement hobby.”

“He still travels to New York once a month on a small company jet hangared near the airport. When the hotel opened seven years ago, he took the North Tower penthouse for himself, leaving all other day-to-day corporate duties to Randall.”

“Tell me about Randall.”

I shrugged. “NYU. Columbia Law. Joined Torrance Brockhurst as a corporate counsel. Mid-forties,