Daniel Cooper's involvement with the case had begun three weeks earlier

Daniel Cooper's involvement with the case had begun three weeks earlier when he had been summoned to the office of his superior, J. J. Reynolds, at IIPA headquarters in Manhattan.

"I've got an assignment for you, Dan," Reynolds said.

Daniel Cooper loathed being called Dan.

"I'll make this brief." Reynolds intended to make it brief because Cooper made him nervous. In truth, Cooper made everyone in the organization nervous. He was a strange man--- weird, was how many described him. Daniel Cooper kept entirely to himself. No one knew where he lived, whether he was married or had children. He socialized with no one, and never attended office parties or office meetings. He was a loner, and the only reason Reynolds tolerated him was because the man was a goddamned genius. He was a bulldog, with a computer for a brain. Daniel Cooper was single-handedly responsible for recovering more stolen merchandise, and exposing more insurance frauds, than all the other investigators in the organization put together. Reynolds just wished he knew what the hell Cooper was all about. Merely sitting across from the man with those fanatical brown eyes staring at him made him uneasy.

Reynolds said, "One of our client companies insured a painting for half a million dollars and---"

"The Renoir. New Orleans. Joe Romano. A woman named Tracy Whitney was convicted and sentenced to fifteen years. The painting hasn't been recovered."

The son of a bitch! Reynolds thought. If it were anyone else, I'd think he was showing off. "That's right," Reynolds acknowledged grudgingly. "The Whitney woman has stashed that painting away somewhere, and we want it back. Go to it."

Cooper turned and left the office without a word. Watching him leave, J. J. Reynolds thought, not for the first time, Someday I'm going to find out what makes that bastard tick.

Cooper walked through the office, where fifty employees were working side by side, programming computers, typing reports, answering telephones. It was bedlam.




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