Due Diligence: A Thriller by Jonathan Rush Page A

that extra debt? Remember?”
    Greg glanced at Emmy and rolled his eyes. “How could we forget? The great drama of the century.”
    “Well, I think I made the right choice.”
    “On the basis of…?”
    “Yeah, I know.” Rob laughed. “One week of working on a deal.”
    Rob took another mouthful of spaghetti. There was silence for a moment as everyone ate.
    “Well,” said Greg. “That’s the thing, right? To choose the right options. There’s an opportunity at work which I’ve been thinking about and—”
    “Oh, for God’s sake!” Louise said suddenly. “Can’t we talk about something else? Can’t we talk about anything but work?”
    “Sure, honey,” said Greg quickly. “What would you like to talk about?”
    “Your car,” said Louise sarcastically. “We could talk about that for a change. Or parking. Parking’s a killer.”
    Greg didn’t say anything. He twirled his fork in his marinara, frowning.
    Rob looked at her. “What would you like to talk about, Louise? Why don’t we discuss something you’re interested in?”
    Louise gazed at him silently.
    “Nothing? What about what you’re doing? Why don’t you tell us about that? Last time we spoke about it, I think it was rubber puppets, wasn’t it?”
    “Marionettes,” said Louise. She almost hissed it.
    “And what are you doing now?”
    Louise didn’t reply.
    Rob watched her for a moment longer, then turned back to Greg. “I’m interested, Greg. Where do you park the car?”
    They finished their first courses. The next course arrived. Greg came back to what he had been going to say. He wanted to hear what Rob thought about it. The DA’s office was expanding the team dealing with corporate fraud. The volume of work had rocketed since the credit crunch and more cases were coming onto the roster all the time.
    “They’re not exactly Bernie Madoff, but there are some pretty big cases. They’ve asked me if I want to join the team. I guess it’ll be good for my career, but I’m not sure if I’m really interested. What do I know about corporate crime?”
    “You’d learn.”
    “These cases drag on for years.”
    “Well, you’ve got to be interested in that kind of thing,” said Rob. “That’s the most important thing. If you’re not interested, forget it.”
    “Would you be?”
    “That’s not relevant.”
    “But would you?”
    “What?” Rob grinned. “Instead of prosecuting the pimps and the drug pushers? That’d be a hell of a thing to give up.”
    “Come on, Rob. What do you think? Really?”
    “I’d do it. Sure, I’d do it.”
    “Someone needs to,” said Emmy, putting her fork into the mushroom risotto she had ordered. “Look what those crooks did to the economy.”
    “Most of the people who messed up the economy weren’t actually crooks,” said Rob.
    “What were they?”
    “Idiots.”
    “Then they were criminally idiot,” said Emmy. “And criminally greedy. You can’t let people have that much power to affect other people’s lives and let them be guided only by their own personal greed. That’s just wrong. They can hurt the lives of millions of people.”
    “I agree,” said Rob. “We had a system of regulation and enforcement that allowed the idiots and the crooks to flourish. And why did it do that? Because it was the same idiots and crooks who created it. They ran it. Madoff was chairman of the NASDAQ, for God’s sake. The biggest corporate crook in our history!” Rob laughed. “You couldn’t script it.”
    “And it wasn’t like no one knew,” said Emmy. “There was that guy—what was his name? That guy who tried to blow the whistle on him.”
    “Harry Markopolos,” said Rob. “That’s true. And why did no one listen to him? Because the system didn’t back him up. The system wasn’t there to do it.”
    “Do you think you would have believed Markopolos?” said Greg.
    Rob looked at him. “What do you mean?” he asked, taking a mouthful of his scaloppine.
    “Would you have