I keep my head up as I walk to the hotel lobby, refusing to crumple, even though I’ve got real crumply thoughts, my impending covering-the-rent problem being the most immediate. I’ll need to add planner clients, and soon. I’ll need to think about hours at the shop, maybe. It would help if Lark would want to move on the wall commissions, though God knows I’m not going to press it. I duck into a bathroom to change into flats before braving the trip home, and notice my hands shaking with adrenaline. It seems fair enough to break my promise to myself now, since the pitch is over. I root inside my bag for my phone.

As soon as I tap the home button, all I see is stacked notifications. Three voice mails, over a dozen texts.

All from Reid.

Reid, who knows where I’ve been this afternoon. Reid, who would never want to interrupt.

Immediately, I feel sick with worry.

And as soon as I start reading, I see I have every reason to.

This city loves a scandal.

And as scandals go, the Coster Capital investment securities fraud is a big one.

It all started to unravel this morning, apparently. 9:36 a.m., if you wanted to be precise about it, and the newspapers, at least about this, certainly seem to want to be. That’s when the FBI, along with members of the New York City Business Integrity Commission, entered the building where Reid has been employed for the last six years. Within two hours, they had seized every single computer from the company’s three-floor office space. They had also boxed up every single piece of paper in Alistair Coster’s office, as well as every single piece of paper in the office of his long-serving assistant. They had taken photographs; they had posted notices to the office’s sleek double-entry glass doors. For all of that time, Mr. Coster—one of the city’s most successful businessmen and one of its most generous philanthropists—had been allowed to wait in a conference room with two FBI agents, so long as he did not attempt interactions with any of his employees.

And then he was marched, in handcuffs, out the front doors, only a few steps away from where I’d stood two nights prior.

Where I’d stood talking to his daughter.

It isn’t the first time, of course, that some high-flier finance guy in Manhattan has gone down for fraud. In fact, I’m pretty sure it isn’t even the first time this year. But the Coster story has a lot to recommend it, even for people who don’t know anything about the numbers, even for people who find it difficult to understand the complicated financial scheme that’s apparently been defrauding investors for over a decade, lining the Coster family pockets in the meantime.