Trump Tower

  Tina sent the message to Brazil, then grabbed David’s shoulder again. Someone in France was coming in at $3.95.

  “I got no room,” David said to Asil, then pointed to the big screen where a new player, this one in Venezuela, was now bidding $3.97.

  Asil sighed, “No problem, my friend, I will find someone else. . . .”

  David poked Tina to get all the bidders up fast, and as she messaged them, he said to Asil, “I’m taking on your risk. If I can’t unload this stuff . . .”

  “You can unload anything,” Asil assured him. “Four-seven.”

  Tina signaled that the Frenchman was up to $3.98, that the Venezuelan had gone away, but that there was somebody in Denmark offering $3.99.

  “Best I can do . . .” he said, . . . “y’all call it three-ninety-three. Honestly, there’s nothing out there. Nobody wants this stuff. I’m telling you straight. Nobody.” And with that he motioned to Tina, higher.

  “And I’m telling you straight, at four-six I’m a dead man.”

  All of a sudden Tina grabbed a phone, dialed a number—David saw a phone number in Seoul, South Korea, come up on the screen—and started talking in a whisper. She motioned to David to stall Asil.

  “How long have y’all been shopping this stuff?”

  Asil assured him, “You got it first.”

  “Because absolutely no one’s interested . . .” David motioned to Tina to do something.

  She mouthed the words, “Keep talking.”

  “. . . not even at three-ninety-four . . .”

  Now Tina tugged at his hand and signaled with her fingers, four-two.

  “I mean . . . there’s zero . . . nobody . . . but because it’s you . . . the very best . . . I mean, this is all I’ve got and believe me . . .”

  “Of course I believe you,” Asil cut in.

  “Believe me . . .” David looked at Tina and then up at the screen where the Frenchman now offered four-four. “Believe me . . . three-ninety-six . . .”

  Then the Brazilian came back with four-five and Tina motioned that South Korea was in with four-six.

  “. . . and even that’s kinda high ‘cause I’m thinking that . . .” David lied again to Asil . . . “maybe I would just buy ten cases for myself and if y’all want four-two . . .”

  “Since when do I do split loads?”

  “Since the last time, when y’all were flogging microchips.”

  “That was technology,” Asil insisted, “these are perishables.”

  David reminded him, “Good Chianti is supposed to get better with age.”

  “Like I said, these are perishables.”

  Tina indicated that South Korea was up to four-seven but was stopping there and that both Brazil and France had dropped out and that Denmark was no longer anywhere to be seen.

  “Final offer,” David said, “three-ninety-eight. Honestly, there isn’t another penny in it.”

  “Honestly, final offer,” Asil mimicked him. “Four-four.”

  David looked at Tina, as if to ask, is there anyone else out there—anywhere. She shook her head no.

  “Y’all killing me pal. Three-ninety-nine. Final, final.”

  “Four-three,” Asil said.

  Tina nodded.

  David said, “Sold.”

  Tina typed a message to Seoul and the deal was done.

  There was still paperwork to arrange, but after David hung up with Asil, and after Tina hung up with Seoul, he reached for her bra and unhooked it. “Dr. Rosenberg, eat your heart out.”

  In the course of twenty minutes, they’d bought and sold 576,000 bottles of Chilean plunk disguised as Italian Chianti, squeezing out four cents per bottle in the middle for themselves, to make around $23,000.

  “How much for the panties?”

  “Twenty-five grand.” She crossed her arms, hiding her breasts, “Sorry GI, maybe next time.”

  Now he moved in front of her. “My shirt and underpants are only twenty-two-five. I’ll throw the socks in too.”

  “Sold.” She reached for him. “Mind if I eat at my desk?”

  SATURDAY

  11

  Pierre Belasco jumped out of the cab and hurried through the double set of glass doors into the residents’ lobby.

  Jorge, the night doorman, rushed up to him. “Sir?”

  “At this hour?” Carlo, the night concierge, was genuinely surprised to see him. “I’d say good morning but it’s still the middle of the night.”

  “Technically,” Belasco said, “somewhere it is always morning.” He walked through the lobby to his office.

  “Good morning,” Paolo, the night elevator operator, half-saluted. “A little early, no?”

  “A lot early, yes.” Belasco stepped into his office and turned on the light.

  Carlo followed him in. “Is everything all right?”

  “No. Our friend Mikey Glass has been involved in an incident.”

  “Mr. Glass . . . who lives here?”

  He nodded. “He had a hotel room he decided to trash.”

  “Why would he have a room there when he lives here?”

  “Wife here, nonstop party there,” Belasco explained. “It’s called separation of church and state.”

  Carlo smiled.

  Jorge asked, “You want coffee? We have coffee.”

  “Yes, thank you,” Belasco said.

  Carlo and Jorge both went to fetch a cup for him.

  Belasco now reached for his phone and dialed an extension.

  A man answered, “Timmins.”

  “I received a call at home half an hour ago that Mikey Glass destroyed a room around the corner at the new Commodore Hotel on Central Park South. He’d been out at a restaurant and bumped into some circus performers.”

  “Bumped into . . . who?”

  “Circus performers. Acrobats. Jugglers. People in clown costumes. I don’t know. He told them he loved the circus, took them back to the hotel and they all started doing circus acts.”

  “Circus acts?”

  “Juggling the furniture. Trampolining on the bed. Tumbling . . . lion taming . . . jumping through hoops of fire naked . . . they totally destroyed the room.”

  “Circus acts,” he mumbled. “I wish I could say I’m surprised.”

  “The police are there now.”

  “Okay.” Timmins didn’t have to ask what Belasco wanted him to do because he knew. “I’ll call for the cavalry.”

  “Thank you.” Hanging up, Belasco looked around his office, took off his suit jacket and tossed it onto the couch. He thought about loosening his tie but he was in the office and couldn’t bring himself to do that. Instead, he went to his desk, fell into his chair and waited for his coffee to arrive.

  Belasco often came into the office on Saturday and had planned on being there that morning anyway. The Advanis were returning from India, and he wanted to welcome them home. But he never had to be in the office on Saturday at 3:15 a.m.

  It was Carlo who appeared with the coffee. “Half and half, no sugar.”

  “Thank you.” Belasco took the cup and then a sip. “What time did Mr. Glass leave last night?”

  “He hasn’t been here for a week. I checked because I knew you’d ask. His wife and the children are in the apartment. But we haven’t seen him.”

  He nodded and stared but said nothing.

  Carlo took the hint and went back to the concierge desk.

  Alone, Belasco reached for his Rolodex, found a card for his old friend Antoine Cau, who was the general manager of the Commodore, and dialed the number.

  A very sleepy man responded. “Hullo?”

  “I know what time it is,” Belasco said in French. “It’s Pierre . . . and I apologize for waking you. Please forgive me.”

  Cau responded in French. “Pierre? What’s wrong?”

  “One of our residents . . . Mikey Glass . . .”

  “The actor?”

  “. . . he just destroyed one of your rooms. Apparently there are eight or ten circus performers i
nvolved as well. The police are there . . .”

  “Circus performers?”

  “It’s a long story.”

  “Circus performers? You mean, people dressed like clowns . . .”

  “And jugglers and lion tamers and tightrope walkers and ladies riding bare-backed and, apparently, some of them not dressed at all. The police are there now. I’ve made arrangements to get him out of there. The cavalry is on the way.”

  “Who?”

  “Someone we use. I wanted to give you a heads-up.”

  “Thanks. But how come the people who live at your place don’t sleep at your place?”

  “I’m afraid this had nothing to do with sleeping. Wrong verb.”

  There was a long pause before Cau said, “I’ll find out what’s happening. You at home?”

  “I’m in the office.”

  “I hope Trump pays you by the hour.” Cau hung up.

  Now there was nothing to do but wait.

  Belasco sipped more coffee, turned on the flat-screen television he had sitting in the middle of a bookshelf, clicked several channels, but gave up quickly when there wasn’t anything he wanted to see. So he opened the laptop on his desk, logged on and started checking his e-mails.

  He’d worked his way through a dozen or so e-mails when he heard someone in the lobby say much too loudly, “Fuck you, mate! I live here too.”

  Getting up, he left his office to find Ricky Lips’ eighteen-year-old son, Joey, hands on his hips, defiantly glaring at Carlo.

  Sporting a goatee that had finally grown in, so that he no longer looked like a teenager needing a shave, Joey was dressed in black, with an open-neck black shirt and a black fedora hat. The young woman with him was extremely thin and very tall—at least six inches taller than Joey—and, Belasco guessed, couldn’t weigh more than 105 pounds.

  She was dressed in white, with her blouse open to her navel, which did nothing to hide her small breasts.

  Both Joey and the young woman had a glazed-over look in their eyes.

  “We are going upstairs,” Joey insisted.

  “Good morning, sir,” Belasco said.

  “Oh, yeah,” Joey pointed at him, said to the young woman. “He’s the bloke in charge,” then said to Belasco, “We’re going upstairs.”

  “Yes, of course.” He nodded to Carlo that it was all right. “Have you got a key, sir?”

  “Who needs a key? My old man’s there. I mean, where the bloody hell else do you think he is? Poor bastard can’t leave, can he?” He looked at the young woman, “They won’t let him leave.”

  Belasco said to Carlo, “Would you please take Mr. Lips and his companion upstairs . . .”

  “I don’t need no babysitter,” Joey waved him off.

  “It’s our pleasure, sir,” Belasco motioned for Carlo to escort them.

  Joey grabbed the young woman’s arm and went with Carlo. Paolo stepped aside to let them into the elevator. But now Joey came back into the hallway to whisper to Belasco, “Don’t say nothing about this bird, will you mate? You-know-who would never understand.”

  Belasco asked, “Who in particular is that, sir, who would never understand?”

  Joey mouthed the name, “Pocahontas.”

  Belasco stared at Joey. “Pocahontas?”

  He answered, as if it was obvious. “Like in the cartoon. The Indian bird. Didn’t you ever see that movie?”

  “I’m afraid I might have missed that one.”

  “Pocahontas. It’s really good. So that’s what I call her.”

  “Call whom?”

  “Amvi,” he said. “I call her Pocahontas. She likes that. But she wouldn’t understand.”

  “And what exactly is it that Miss Advani would not understand?”

  “About this bird and me. She’s too young to understand . . . you know . . . this sort of thing.”

  “Yes, sir,” he nodded, “Miss Advani is certainly too young to understand.” He motioned toward Paolo, who was waiting for him at the elevator, and Joey walked away.

  Belasco went back to his office and shuddered at the thought of “this sort of thing.”

  At four o’clock Timmins phoned. “Cavalry’s there . . . negotiating a settlement as we speak. He wants to know if there are any photographers out front. Central Park South is crawling with them.”

  “Hold on.” Belasco got up, went to his door, and looked through the lobby to the street.

  An attractive, young, dark-haired woman wearing semirectangular glasses was leaning against a parked car with two cameras over her shoulder.

  Belasco came back to the phone. “One,” he said, “and I know her.”

  “Should I make arrangements for the IBM?”

  “Yes, please do that.” He hung up, took his jacket from the couch, put it on, and walked through the lobby to the street.

  Jorge started to follow him, but Belasco motioned for him to stay inside.

  The young woman standing there with the two cameras smiled broadly—in fact, her whole pretty face lit up—when he appeared. “Mr. Belasco. How nice to see you. I presume we’re both here at this hour for the same reason.”

  “Good morning, Dani . . . we have coffee, if you’d like.”

  “It would only keep me awake,” she joked. “What time do you expect our friend to arrive? Or has he been arrested?”

  “I honestly don’t know. But I would have thought it’s all happening at the Commodore. Isn’t everyone else there?”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  Just then, two men lugging big camera bags came down the street from Fifth Avenue. “Guess we’ve got the right idea,” one of them said loudly.

  Dani looked at them. “What are you guys doing here?”

  “Same as you,” the first one said.

  The second photographer asked Belasco, “You the night manager or the concierge at this joint?”

  “Something like that,” Belasco said.

  “He back here yet?” The first man asked Dani.

  She told him no.

  “‘Cause he’s not being arrested,” the second man said. “Cops said they’re going to hand him over to someone who’s taking him somewhere to sleep it off.”

  “Perhaps another hotel,” Belasco suggested to the second man. “Or perhaps they’re simply going to let him stay there, in another room, without his circus performer friends. I can’t imagine he’d come back here.”

  “Everybody lies,” the second man said. “They tell us he’s going one place and he shows up someplace else. Who are you, anyway?”

  Dani cut in. “Night manager and concierge. He does both jobs.”

  Belasco smiled.

  “We’ll wait,” the first man said.

  “Anyone besides me care for a snort?” The second man produced a hip flask from his camera bag. “Keeps me away from caffeine,” he bragged. “Anyone?”

  The first photographer took a swig, but Dani and Belasco both said no.

  That’s when someone’s cell phone rang. All four reached for theirs, but the call was for the second photographer. He listened to the person on the other end, then hung up. “He’s left the hotel.”

  A Cadillac Escalade now turned onto Fifty-Sixth Street from Fifth Avenue and headed slowly down the block.

  The three photographers grabbed their cameras and positioned themselves in the street so they could get pictures through the car’s tinted windows as soon as it pulled to the curb.

  The driver of the car flashed his high beams to warn the photographers to get out of his way.

  The two men made ready with their cameras.

  Dani quickly moved to the corner of the garage entrance, which would force the driver to stop if he went there.

  Except the driver didn’t pull up to the curb or turn into the Trump Tower garage. He continued slowly down the street, past the Tower, and into the garage at the IBM building.

  When the car was gone, Belasco suggested, “I still think your best bet is the hospital.”

  Dani stared
at Belasco.

  “Maybe he’s right,” the first photographer said. “After all, it’s only around the corner. If he was coming here, he’d be here by now.”

  The two men put their cameras back in their bags and left.

  Belasco looked at Dani. “Not going to the hospital?”

  She smiled, “He was right,” referring to the second photographer, “everybody lies.”

  “Bends the truth, sometimes, perhaps.” He motioned to Jorge who hurried out. “Whatever the lady needs. Coffee. Bathroom. Caffeine-free beverages?”

  Jorge said, “Yes, of course, sir.”

  Dani said, “Thank you, anyway,” and leaned back on the car again.

  “You can sit in the lobby if you’d prefer.”

  “This feels more like a stakeout.”

  Belasco smiled, “You’ve seen too many episodes of The Wire,” and went inside.

  Walking past his office and the elevators, he went through the small door on the left and along the dark hallway to the service elevator. He rode it down to the sub-basement.

  The Cadillac Esplanade was already there.

  During the design phase of the Tower, Donald Trump himself personally decided there might be times when certain people—those kinds of people who needed to avoid the gazing eyes of other people—would welcome an ultradiscreet way into the building. So he built a secret tunnel entrance that connects underground with the sub-basement garage of the IBM building, halfway down the block toward Madison Avenue. It wasn’t used often, but Belasco made a mental note to tell the boss that it had come in handy tonight.

  There’s a loading dock in the sub-basement where vans can deliver and pick up furniture and belongings for tenants moving in and out. Back in the corner is where Trump’s private fleet of nine cars is always parked.

  Belasco went up to the stocky, balding Jimmy Timmins, who was standing next to the Escalade, and shook his hand.

  As he did, a tall, thin man with a mustache, wearing a dark-green bomber jacket and a University of West Virginia baseball cap stepped out of the Cadillac. He looked at Timmins, “Hey Timmy,” then looked at Belasco. “How you doing, pal?”

  He knew the man simply as Forbes—always assumed that was his last name—but didn’t know anything more about him. He didn’t know his first name or where he was from or even how to get in touch with him directly. He always had to go through Timmins.