Two days later, the gravelly-voiced man called. There was no greeting.
"He's been found."
A silent messenger arrived an hour later. He was a nondescript man in a gray suit who handed Jason a single, sealed envelope and then vanished. Inside was a slip of paper with a typewritten address. A boarding house in the Bowery. A place of filth, desperation, and final chances.
The phone rang again. It was Gates, the man behind the gravelly voice. His report was concise, stripped of all emotion.
"Heinze is at the address you were given. He's been selling his wife's jewelry for cash. A piece at a time. He's trying to arrange passage on a cargo ship to Cuba. He's a rat in a trap."
The image was stark. Augustus Heinze, the titan of industry, the man who moved markets with a whisper, was now hiding in a flophouse, selling off trinkets to escape the city like a common thief.
"What are your orders for the subject, sir?" Gates asked. His voice was calm, professional. It was the voice of a man asking if he should file a document or murder a human being. The question hung in the air, a testament to the terrifying, absolute power Jason now wielded.
He could make Heinze disappear. A word from him, and the man would be a splash in the East River, a forgotten memory.
But that was too easy. Too messy. It was a thug's solution. Jason needed something more elegant. More cruel. He wanted to destroy Heinze, not just kill him.
"I want him arrested," Jason said, his voice pure ice.
"For the assault, sir?"
"No," Jason replied, a cold smile touching his lips. "The assault would lead back to me. I want him arrested for his original crimes. For the fraud. For the market manipulation. For everything."
Gates was silent for a moment. "That will require a different... approach, sir. The police have shown little interest in those charges."
"Then I trust you will find a way to make them interested," Jason said. He hung up the phone.
He would not use Heinze's weapon—a lead pipe in a dark alley. He would use the system itself, the cold, grinding machinery of the law, to humiliate and crush his enemy in the bright light of day.
His ribs were tightly bound, a constant, dull ache that served as a fuel for his anger. He walked to the desk, his movements still stiff. He picked up his personal address book, the one provided by the Rockefeller family.
He flipped through the pages, his finger tracing past the names of bankers and industrialists. He stopped on one.
John D. Rockefeller Jr.
The elegant script was a stark contrast to the ugly, brilliant plan forming in his mind. He picked up the telephone and made the last call anyone in the world would have expected.
Junior's voice on the other end of the line was cold and hostile. "What do you want, Ezra?"
Jason pitched his own voice to a tone of grave, civic-minded concern. "Junior. I apologize for disturbing you, but I find myself in possession of a moral dilemma."
"I doubt that very much," Junior snapped.
"Hear me out," Jason pressed, his tone smooth and reasonable. "I have come into possession of irrefutable evidence. Bank statements, shipping manifests, private ledgers. Absolute proof of Augustus Heinze's financial crimes—the very ones that precipitated this crisis."
A suspicious silence on the other end. "How did you get this?"
Jason lied with the ease of a sociopath. "A guilty man's conscience. One of Heinze's former clerks came to me. He fears for the state of the city, for the ruin of so many innocent families."
He let that sink in, painting a picture that would appeal directly to Junior's bleeding heart.
"The point is, I have it," Jason continued. "And as a man of the law, and more importantly, as a man who values the good name of this city, I felt you… you were the most appropriate person to deliver this evidence to the District Attorney."
Checkmate.
He could hear Junior's sharp, choked intake of breath. He was caught. Trapped by his own rigid principles. He despised Jason. He saw him as a cancer on his family. But he could not, would not, refuse to see the law upheld. To do so would make him a hypocrite, violating the very core of his being.
"You… you are using me," Junior sputtered, his voice a strangled whisper.
"I am using the most honorable man I know to see justice done," Jason replied, his voice dripping with a false sincerity that was so perfect it was almost beautiful. "Is that not what you've always wanted, Junior? Justice for the wicked?"
A long, choked silence stretched over the line. Jason could picture his brother-in-law, his face pale, his fists clenched, trapped in a perfect prison of his own morality.
Finally, Junior spoke, his voice full of self-loathing and defeated rage. "Where is the evidence?"
"A messenger will deliver it to your home within the hour," Jason said.
"I… I will do my duty," Junior whispered, and the line went dead.
Jason placed the receiver back on its cradle. He smiled, a cold, painful stretching of his lips that pulled at his bruised face. He had turned his greatest internal enemy, the self-proclaimed soul of the Rockefeller family, into the unwitting instrument of his personal, brutal revenge.
The news of Heinze's arrest was on the front page, right next to the continuing chaos of the Panic on Wall Street. Two storms, both of his making.
The article quoted the District Attorney, who praised the "brave, anonymous citizen" who brought the evidence forward, and lauded the "unimpeachable civil responsibility" of Mr. John D. Rockefeller Jr. for delivering it.
Jason was summoned to 26 Broadway. His ribs still ached, and a faint, pale scar was now visible on his temple.
This time, he was not kept waiting. He was shown directly into Rockefeller Sr.'s office. The old man was at his desk, a lit cigar held between his skeletal fingers, its glowing red tip like a single, malevolent eye in the gloom. The mood was different. It was not a test. It was an evaluation.
"The police report called your incident a robbery," Rockefeller said, his voice flat. He didn't look up from the papers on his desk.
It was a statement, but it was also a final test of Jason's nerve.
"The police were mistaken," Jason replied, his voice steady. He offered no complaint, no request for help, no hint of weakness. He had handled it himself.
Rockefeller Sr. finally looked up. He nodded slowly, a flicker of something—respect, approval—in his cold eyes.
"I read of Mr. Heinze's arrest," the old man continued, his gaze unwavering. "An anonymous tip, the papers say. Delivered to the authorities by my son."
He let the statement hang in the air. "You used my son."
Jason met his gaze without flinching. "I used the most appropriate tool for the job."
A long silence filled the vast office. Rockefeller Sr. took a slow draw from his cigar, letting the smoke drift from his lips like a departing ghost. He seemed to come to a decision.
"The Panic is deepening," Rockefeller said, his voice a low rumble of authority. "J.P. Morgan has summoned the city's bankers to his library tonight. He believes he can command the market back to health. He believes he is in control."
He fixed Jason with a cold, piercing stare.
"He is wrong. You will go to that meeting. You will represent my interests." He paused, letting the weight of his next words settle. "Show him who truly holds the power in this city."