The Big Bad Wolf

to Nielsen. He said it was his decision.”
    I nodded, but then I said, “Maybe you should have talked to me first.”
    Pollack’s eyes narrowed. But she said nothing more about Boston. She finally spoke again: “There’s something else. We’ve had some luck.
    “Most of us have been here all night. The money transfer we made to the Wolf’s Den?” she said. “We used a contact of ours in the financial world, a banker from Morgan Chase’s International Correspondent Unit. We were able to trace the money out of the Caymans. Then we monitored virtually every transaction to U.S. banks with correspondent relationships. Had them screen all inbound wire payment orders. That’s where our consultant, Robert Hatfield, said it got tricky. The transaction zipped from bank to bank—New York, then Boston, Detroit, Toronto, Chicago, a couple of others. But we know where the money finally wound up.”
    “Where?” I asked.
    “Dallas. The money went to Dallas. And we have a name—a recipient for the funds. We’re hoping that he’s the Wolf. At any rate, we know where he lives, Alex. You’re going to Dallas.”

Chapter 89
    THE EARLIEST ABDUCTION CASES we tracked had occurred in Texas, and dozens of agents and analysts went to work investigating them in depth. Everything about the case was larger in scale now. The surveillance details on the suspect’s house and place of business were the most impressive I had ever seen. I doubted that any police force in the country, with the possible exceptions of New York and Los Angeles, could afford this kind of effort.
    As usual, the Bureau had done a thorough job of finding out everything possible about the man who had received money from us through the Caymans bank. Lawrence Lipton lived in Old Highland Park, a moneyed neighborhood north of Dallas proper. The streets there meandered alongside creeks under a canopy of magnolias, oaks, and native pecans. The grounds of nearly every house were expensively landscaped, and most of the traffic during the day consisted of tradesmen, nannies, cleaning services, and gardeners.
    So far the evidence we’d gathered on Lipton was contradictory, though. He had attended St. Mark’s, a prestigious Dallas prep school, and then the University of Texas at Austin. His family and his wife’s were old Dallas oil money, but Lawrence had diversified and now owned a Texas winery, a venture capital group, and a successful computer software company. The computer connection caught Monnie Donnelley’s eye, and mine as well.
    Lipton seemed to be a straight arrow, however. He sat on the boards of the Dallas Museum of Art and the Friends of the Library. He was a trustee for the Baylor Hospital and a deacon at First United Methodist.
    Could he be the Wolf?
It didn’t seem possible to me.
    The second morning I was in Dallas, a meeting was held at the field office there. Senior Agent Nielsen remained in charge of the case, but it was clear to everyone that Ron Burns was calling the shots on this from Washington. I don’t think any of us would have been too surprised if Burns had shown up for the briefing himself.
    At eight in the morning, Roger Nielsen stood before a roomful of agents and read from a clipboard. “They’ve been real busy through the night back in Washington,” he said, and seemed neither impressed nor surprised by the effort. Apparently this had become SOP on cases that got big in the media.
    “I want to acquaint all of you with the latest on Lawrence Lipton. The most important development is that he doesn’t seem to have any known connections to the KGB or any Russian mobs. He isn’t Russian. Maybe something will turn up later or maybe he’s just that good at hiding his past. In the fifties, his father moved to Texas from Kentucky to seek his fortune on ‘the prairie.’ He apparently found it
under
the prairie, in West Texas oil fields.”
    Nielsen stopped and looked around the meeting room, going from face to face. “There is one interesting recent development,” he went on. “Among its holdings, Lipton’s Micro-Management owns a company called Safe Environs in Dallas. Safe Environs is a private security firm. Lawrence Lipton has recently put himself under armed guard. I wonder why?
    “Is he worried about us or is he scared of somebody else? Maybe like the big bad Wolf?”

Chapter 90
    IF IT WASN’T so incredibly terrifying, it would be mind-boggling. Lizzie Connolly was still among the living. She was keeping herself