by Chris Knopf
The next person I ran into was Natsumi, glittering in her silver, disco-ball outfit. It was sexy to look at, not so much to touch.
“How’re we doing?” I asked.
“Only one guest has caught fire, so I guess we’re ahead on points.”
“Did we call an ambulance?”
“No, but I think we’ll be buying a new gold sport jacket. I’m suggesting something noncombustible.”
“What’s the chatter out there?” I asked, looking out over the crowd.
“You can hear it from here. ‘Who are these people? What’s their deal? They’re not even on Google. Though she’s stunningly gorgeous.’ Not really. I made that up.”
“No you didn’t. You are gorgeous,” I said.
“The perfect thing to say. For a guy with a hole in his head, you can sure think on your feet.”
“Anyone plying you for information?”
“Actually, that guy over there in the green jacket and plaid pants, who obviously didn’t read the invitation, offered me a kickback if I got him an exclusive. Ten percent, which I think was overly generous. I’d have done it for five.”
In the pulsing light of the flame-filled room, I got a better look at the man in the green jacket, who was also on my list. He was a little old based on the criteria, but his face was the right shape, with a hairline well in retreat. I walked over and reintroduced myself.
“Nathan Charles,” he said, shaking my hand. “I was born Chomsky, like the brainy radical, but you can’t have a name like that on Wall Street.” I wondered if anyone at the party still had their original names. “You got me scratching my head, like everybody else here. And I’m actually a commodity trader. I know by memory the opening and closing price of anything anybody can trade. Oil, wheat, coffee, iron ore, pork bellies. Precious metals? What’s the play?”
I gave him a more technical and less colloquial version of what I’d told Antonelli.
“Okay, I can almost buy the concept,” he said, “but how’re you different from the open market?”
“A nearly limitless supply at prices you haven’t seen since they used iridium to make fountain pens,” I told him, before executing another departure stage right.
I repeated the story with slight modifications a few more times before the first phase of the event flowed into the second, a banquet in the main dining hall. At my request, Nitzy acted as hostess, delivering a brief speech only slightly slurred by champagne, including mention of my six-figure donation to the museum, a gesture of good faith and encouragement for others to follow.
Most people at the tables followed Nitzy’s gaze to where Natsumi and I were standing by the door to the kitchen. I gave a modest little wave when they applauded. As the dinner progressed, Natsumi and I worked the tables, helping the servers pour wine and deliver plates. Nitzy was so charmed by the idea of helping the help that she joined in, failing however, in provoking Aidan to follow suit.
The fire performers had retired, but the walk-in fireplace at the far end of the room compensated nicely. The night’s theme was also upheld by the rented, gold-plated flatware and serving dishes. The Costellos had made a careful count when we opened up the boxes from the rental company, a fact they shared pointedly with the servers.
Carvers at strategic locations sliced rare roast beef, dropping the slabs on plates already adorned with golden sautéed potatoes, beets, and in a concession to proper nutrition and visual relief, raw spinach. Once everyone was settled down and eating, I was able to take a break and pay closer attention to individuals. I had spoken to each of the men on my list, and nothing at that point moved me to expand the club. At the same time, nothing told me to make it smaller.
Once the dinner plates were cleared, Nitzy announced the final phase of the event, dessert and aperitifs on the glass porch. Each partygoer had the option of slipping on a fake fur coat and tender kid gloves, since we’d opened all the doors and ceiling vents to hold the temperature below freezing, in part to keep the commissioned ice sculptures looking crisp.
Once everyone had climbed into their furs and helped themselves to silver gelato and icy cordials, the servers lit magnesium sparklers and shot silver ribbons across the room with air guns. With each pop a muted cheer went up from the crowd. A brave keyboard player inflicted upon us jazzed-up versions of “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” and the theme from “Ice Age.”
Larry Antonelli walked up to me and tried to give me his card. I politely demurred, as I had a dozen times before.
“If you’d like to discuss trading opportunities, just use the email address on your invitation to the party to set up an appointment,” I said. “I won’t be reaching out to anyone.”
He squinted at me again.
“Some people might consider that a little arrogant.”
I hoped I looked duly apologetic.
“That would be regrettable. I just don’t want to give the impression that I’m wanting for potential investors. A deal will happen. The only question is the size of the offer. And the terms.”
“Pretty confident.”
“Yes, but never arrogant. I know it’s a privilege to engage with people of this caliber,” I said, turning and spreading my arms, as if to embrace the room. Then turned back to him. “People like yourself.”
He twitched at me.
“Man, I just love the feeling of smoke traveling up my ass.”
I patted him on the shoulder, noting that it felt like molded concrete, and moved back into the hubbub on the porch.
Though entirely incidental to my purposes, I was glad everyone seemed to be having a good time. I’d never held a party before in my life, so I allowed myself to see the irony in a former math geek and social misfit beginning and ending his party-throwing career at the top.
Nitzy intercepted me again and reinforced my self-congratulation.
“This party is just the best,” she said, gripping and hanging unsteadily on my right bicep. “You and Charlene are brilliant.”
“My only brilliance was asking Charlene to make it all happen.”
Nitzy threw both hands around my neck and whispered in my ear.
“She’s so precious, you lucky, lucky man.”
“Aidan did pretty good himself,” I whispered back.
She pulled her head back, trying to get me in focus.
“Are you trying to win amazing man of the year?”
As I sought to form an adequate response I was saved by the appearance of Natsumi, who told me the foyer was ready for the closing ceremony. Nitzy unselfconsciously let go of my neck and asked Natsumi what that meant.
“You’ll see,” said Natsumi, taking my arm and leading me away.
“Have we secured all the appropriate glassware?” I asked.
“We have.”
We went out to the foyer, which had been cleared of all the food stands, decorations and performers. The red and gold garlands along the ceiling were down, and in their place were silver and gold helium balloons trailing lightweight silver and gold chains. Each chain was anchored to a small gift-wrapped box that sat on a shelf above the wainscoting.
I stood with my back to the front door and waited while Natsumi herded our guests off the glass porch and out of the rented furs, and then into the foyer, which was just big enough to comfortably accommodate all fifty of us. There was much animated speculation over the balloons, which some had already tentatively begun to claim.
I rang a little silver bell to capture the group’s attention.
“First off, let me thank Nitzy Bellefonte and Aidan Pico for allowing us to support their wonderful museum. We know many of you will follow suit with a generous gift of your own.”
Everyone applauded.
“And on behalf of Charlene and myself, our sincerest thank you for giving us such a warm welcome into your lovely community.”
More applause. Self-regard filled the air.
“Some of you may have noticed a balloon or two.”
Laughter.
�
�Well, there is one for each of you to take home. You’ll want to be sure to bring home the little package attached to your balloon. Inside you will discover a frog, a creature all of you had the good manners not to remind me is my namesake.”
More laughter.
“Now, while each frog is identically shaped, they are all composed of different materials. Where Mr. Antonelli’s frog may be chrome-plated brass, his wife Jennifer’s may be solid gold. Each is unique, some exotically so. Yours may include alloys such as palladium, or osmium. Or it may be pure platinum.”
Some of the people who’d already grasped a chain dropped their first choice and took another. Soon every box and balloon had been claimed, with little breach in decorum. Several servers worked their way around the room collecting coat claims and returning with arms full of fur, cashmere and lamb’s wool. As I’d greeted by the door, so I bid adieu, shaking hands and kissing cheeks.
The most fervent farewells were the last, as Nitzy and Aidan brought up the rear. While Aidan stood patiently by, Nitzy repeated her effusive declarations of gratitude, and compliments on Natsumi’s exquisite taste and compelling appearance. I thanked her so Natsumi could limit herself to a demure and diffident smile.
As soon as the door closed, Natsumi spun on her heel and went back to the big rooms to supervise the breakdown of the party and restoration of the house. Before joining her, I stopped off at my technology array in the room over the garage. Though the room was secured under strong lock and key, I ran several utilities on the computer that would detect, and either destroy or take over, the kind of spyware and keystroke registration software I’d installed at Florencia’s agency and CMT&M.
Though no protection was perfect, everything checked out clean and undefiled.
So I went back downstairs to help put the house back together again.
CHAPTER 22
“Alex,” said Natsumi, intercepting me in the upstairs hall, “you need to come with me.”
I followed her down the long hall to the door that led to the master bedroom suite. We went through a small sitting room, past the walk-in closets and into the bedroom. On the bedspread that covered the king-sized bed was a small bundle of bark-covered sticks, like the kind you pick up from the yard.
“How many?” I asked.
“Three.”
“Did you touch it?”
“No.”
I stood over the bed and saw how the sticks had been tied together with a piece of silver ribbon, about a mile of which had recently decorated the party rooms. Also tied to the ribbon was a piece of paper. Blank—but there was evidence that something was written on the other side, the side facing down on the bed.
“I’m getting rubber gloves,” I said. “Lock the door behind me and wait here.”
I also brought back a kitchen garbage bag. I put the gloves on and picked up the bundle by the tip of the largest stick, flipping it over to expose the note.
The note said, in a handwritten, block-lettered scrawl, “Face-to-face with me a non-starter. But if you want volume, we’ll give you all the volume you can handle. Conditions: No one gets better terms. Our orders fill first. No shorting. Think about it. We will contact you.”
I made sure that Natsumi had a chance to read the whole thing, then I picked up the bundle again, put it in the plastic bag and tied off the open end.
“I guess it worked,” she said.
“I guess it did.”
“It would have pissed me off if it hadn’t. Given all that work.”
“Me, too.”
“Now what?”
“We go back downstairs and finish up, then go to bed,” I said.
“We do?”
My leg hurt, my eyes were losing focus, the wig and makeup felt like it was disintegrating and falling off my face. All I could think of was the king-sized bed and the down comforter.
“I’m exhausted,” I said. “That was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
“Acting like a people person?” she asked.
“Exactly.”
“For me, the opposite,” she said. “To act shy. I’m anything but.”
“I’m sorry to put you through that.”
“But at least it worked.”
“It’s a start. Let’s figure out the rest tomorrow.”
We didn’t actually get to dive into bed until about three-thirty in the morning, and for me this didn’t translate into uninterrupted sleep until about an hour later. A busy mind is always the enemy of a good night’s sleep, a fact I’d known for most of my life. The only treatment for this that ever worked for me was to force myself to focus on one thing, no matter how obsessive, and put the rest into a holding pen for another day. Or night.
That night I thought about Florencia. I tried to reconcile the Florencia I knew, in such a profoundly intimate way, with a person who would skim money from her own highly successful business and send it off to a numbered account in the Cayman Islands.
It was impossible. I couldn’t.
THE FIRST thing I did the next morning was email Shelly Gross.
“What are the chances of getting some things examined for DNA?” I wrote. “Also, can you check the criminal records of some of the wealthiest and most socially connected people in Greenwich, Connecticut?”
I had to wait until midday to get a response.
“Doable. But I’ll have to know why.”
“We need to meet.”
“You’re not going to follow me around again? Pop out of an alley?”
“The Bulldog Lounge at the Green Club in New Haven. Four-thirty this afternoon?”
“Pretty trusting,” he said.
“It makes no sense to take me down now. This is what I trust.”
“Fair enough,” said Shelly. “I’ll see you at four-thirty. Will I know what you look like?”
“You won’t have to. I’ll know you.”
I sat with Natsumi in the cavernous living room and we talked through all the implications. Our exposure had never been greater, on both sides of the legal divide. Our only defense was the self-interest of those who could do us harm. This might have been a reassuring bit of logic, but it did nothing to actually reassure.
“I fear for your safety,” I said.
“I fear for yours.”
“You could come with me to New Haven. I’ll drop you off somewhere, then pick you up when I’m done with Shelly.”
“Why is this safer than me staying here?” she asked.
“It isn’t. It just makes me feel like it is.”
“I have a better idea.”
THE BOSNIAKS showed up in a dark purple minivan that looked like an eggplant on wheels. There were four of them, including Little Boy. They were clearly taken aback by the house, but tried to not let it show. Natsumi, the Costellos and I came out to greet them, offering food, drink and earnest expressions of gratitude.
“I hope you got cable,” said Little Boy. “The Celtics are acting like they just remembered how to play basketball.”
After getting his crew ensconced in the aircraft hangar-sized family room in front of a TV the size of an average billboard—with the Costellos nervously on call to serve refreshments—I took Little Boy aside and elaborated on the situation.
“In about ten minutes, I’m jumping in a car and going to an important meeting. Three Sticks knows we’re living here. I can imagine him snatching my wife for leverage. Or for that matter, snatching both of us and simply coercing us out of our product. It would be stupidly shortsighted, but possible. Like I said, I don’t know him well enough to know.”
“From what I’ve seen, he’s practical,” said Little Boy. “But seriously cruel if he thinks you’re fucking with him.”
“Does that worry you?”
A look of disdain showed on his face.
“You know what we been through? Back there? The frightened ones are the first to die. The crazy ones go next. The lucky ones last as long as their luck. If you’re smart and have balls, you live on. After a
while, the only ones left are those with no fear.”
I shook his hand, instinctively, which was exactly the right thing to do. The gesture seemed to straighten his posture and add another inch to his towering height.
“Post a watch,” I said. “You don’t want to get massacred in the middle of a free throw.”
BEFORE I left for the Green Club, I called Evelyn.
“I need you to do something,” I said, when she answered the phone. “Though you’re going to hate it.”
“Don’t sugarcoat it.”
“I want you to contact Bruce Finger and tell him you’ve learned about an irregularity in the accounting at Florencia’s agency that wasn’t uncovered during due diligence by the Brandts. It could have a material impact on the deal, post-close, maybe even involving a claw back that will devastate the selling price. You need him to arrange a face-to-face meeting with the buyers to explain the situation.”
There was a long pause.
“Okay,” she said, stretching out the word. “What irregularities?”
“This is the hard part. You can’t tell him. You just say he needs to call the meeting. And to trust you. It will all become clear.”
“That’s all?” she asked.
“Will he do it?”
“No. Not without more explanation. He likes me, but not that much.”
I knew this was true. I was just hoping it wasn’t.
“Tell him someone will be in touch to fill in the details. I’ll figure something out. The main thing is to impress upon him the importance of this. That you really need him to make that call.”
“You sound a little tense. I’m not used to that,” she said.
“Sorry. Things are getting complicated. Too many spinning plates, too few hands.”
“Okay, Arthur, I’ll do my best.”
THE GREEN Club was no longer a club in the traditional sense. Anyone could go there and hang around the bar or have a meal looking out at the New Haven Green. Though as with any well-established venue, it featured a distinct clientele—people devoted to Harris tweed, brown leather wing tips and a largely fanciful notion of the dead Ivy League past.