Read The Fixer Online

Authors: Joseph Finder

Tags: #Thriller, #Mystery, #Suspense

The Fixer (30 page)

BOOK: The Fixer
2.11Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
One Year Later

A
ndrea wasn’t having any wine but wasn’t ready to tell people why.

Rick poured himself a plastic tumbler of wine from the box.

“I know it’s not up to your lofty standards, Rick,” she said.

He grinned. “Isn’t there a statute of limitations on wine jokes?”

“As far as I’m concerned, you’re still fair game.”

The party was crowded with Geometry Partners staff and donors and potential donors. The occasion was the opening of Geometry Partners’ new Somerville location, which was called the Leonard Hoffman House, underwritten by an anonymous gift of one million dollars. There were Geometry Partners posters on the wall (
DO THE MA
TH; KNOW THE ANGLES; I
T ALL ADDS UP
).

Evan was buzzed on grape juice and cookies, and when he wasn’t playing
Minecraft
he was careening through the party, knocking into guests, and spilling drinks.

Thomas Sculley was in federal prison and would be for another ten years. Eight with good behavior. Alex Pappas was in prison as well but would be out much sooner. He’d struck a plea bargain with government prosecutors: an eighteen-month sentence in exchange for full cooperation. For spilling all. Rick wasn’t surprised that Pappas had made a good deal for himself.

But he didn’t particularly care. After the Thomas Sculley exposé was published and was picked up by forty news outlets, Rick found himself weighing several job offers, including one from a nonprofit public interest website that funded investigative journalism projects and another from
The
Wall Street Journal
. Eventually he went with the investigative journalism website, which gave him the flexibility to do his pieces in Boston. His current project was an investigation into corruption in the process by which the FDA approved pharmaceuticals.

It felt peculiar becoming a father—a stepfather, actually—stepping into the role instead of being promoted to dadhood through the usual system. But at the same time it felt right.

The house on Clayton Street was too badly damaged to be salvageable. Rick split the insurance proceeds with Wendy. Between the cash left over, after the Geometry Partners grant, and his salary from the nonprofit, money wasn’t a problem.

The reporter from
Back Bay
magazine approached them, a young woman named Lindsay who looked twelve, wearing a bulky cable-knit sweater and heavy tortoiseshell glasses. “Is now a good time to do this interview?” she said.

“Sure,” said Andrea, “but maybe we should sit down a little later. There’s a lot to get into in terms of our success rate, measured along a bunch of different axes, and—”

“You know what?” Lindsay said. “I only have nine hundred words so I’m not really going to be drilling down so much. It’s kinda more of a lifestyle piece about one of Boston’s Power Couples.”

“Okay,” Andrea said.

“Awesome. So you guys just got married, right?”

Andrea showed her the wedding ring. They’d done the deed only a month earlier, at city hall.

“So how do you guys do it all? That’s what I want to know.” She turned to Rick. “Your article on Thomas Sculley just won the George Polk Award for investigative journalism, right? And then there was your piece about kickbacks in the defense industry.” Looking at Andrea, she said, “And you guys have a little kid and Geometry Partners has got to be more than a full-time job. Plus it’s expanding so fast, right, with locations in Washington, DC, and New York City? How do you do it? What’s the trick?”

Rick and Andrea exchanged glances.

“The trick is,” Rick said, “there’s no trick.”

Acknowledgments

I’m grateful to a number of people for their generous help in researching this book. For help with various medical details: my brother Dr. Jonathan Finder; Dr. Amy Goldstein of Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh; Dr. Carl Kramer; Margaret Naeser, professor of neurology, Boston University School of Medicine; Eileen Hunsaker of the Aphasia Center at Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions; Dr. Joan Camprodon; and especially Dr. Mark Morocco. For legal matters: Allen Smith and Nick Poser. On public relations: Doug Bailey and George Regan. On renovating the old family house: Bruce Irving; and Doug Hanna and Eileen Lester of S&H Construction.

On the Big Dig, Sean Murphy of
The Boston Globe
was a huge help; thanks as well to John Durrant of the American Society of Civil Engineers, Timothy Finley of Semke Forensic, and especially Gary Klein of Wiss, Janney, Elstner Associates. (Some particulars of this mammoth project were changed for fictional convenience.)

Eight-year-old Henry Buckley-Jones was a precocious and patient interviewee. Thanks as well to Harry “Skip” Brandon of Smith Brandon, Jay Groob of American Investigative Services, Lucia Rotelli, Bill Rehder, Bruce Holloway, and Declan Burke. For help with technological details: Jeff Fischbach, Mark Spencer of Arsenal Experts and Kevin Murray. On forensic accounting, Eric Hines of the StoneTurn Group. Zachary Mider of Bloomberg News provided intriguing information on secretive nonprofits. My gratitude once again to Clair Lamb, Karen Louie-Joyce, and the irreplaceable Claire Baldwin. At Dutton, my thanks to Amanda Walker, Christine Ball, Carrie Swetonic, Stephanie Kelly, and especially Ben Sevier. I’m grateful for the loving support of my wife, Michele Souda, and our daughter, Emma J. S. Finder. Thanks most of all to my agent, Dan Conaway of Writers House, and my brother Henry Finder.

About the Author

Joseph Finder
is the
New York Times
bestselling author of eleven previous novels, including
Suspicion,
Vanished,
and
Buried Secrets
. Finder’s international bestseller
Killer Instinct
won ITW’s Thriller Award for Best Novel of 2006. Other bestselling titles include
Paranoia
and
High Crimes,
both of which became major motion pictures. He lives in Boston.

Looking for more?
Visit Penguin.com for more about this author and a complete list of their books.
Discover your next great read!

BOOK: The Fixer
2.11Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Justice Incarnate by Regan Black
Girls Acting Catty by Leslie Margolis
Chestnut Street by Maeve Binchy
Conquering Horse by Frederick Manfred
Social Lives by Wendy Walker
Smart Girls Think Twice by Linz, Cathie
Centaur Legacy by Nancy Straight
A Crazy Day with Cobras by Mary Pope Osborne
Where There's Smoke by Karen Kelley
Size Matters by Stephanie Julian