Trump Tower

  Finishing her second croissant, she waved back. “Worms.”

  He stopped short. “Did you say . . . worms?”

  “As in, what the early bird gets.”

  “Oh . . . yeah, of course. Any good worms this morning?”

  She raised her paper cup and toasted him with the rest of her coffee. “A couple.”

  21

  Carson was up at his usual hour, but when he came out of the bathroom and started looking for his gym clothes, he noticed that Alicia was also awake.

  “Go back to sleep.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why not?”

  “I’m thinking.”

  “You can think later,” he said pulling on his shorts. “You have all day to think. Right now, you should sleep.”

  “Do I really want a coffee table book to be my first book?”

  “What?”

  She said it again. “Do I really want a coffee table book to be my first book?”

  “That’s what you’re losing sleep about?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s a coffee table book.”

  “Think of it as something to do while you’re working on War and Peace.”

  She swung her feet onto the floor and sat up. “Somewhere in my mind I saw myself one day writing a book about . . . I don’t know . . . women in broadcasting. Or glass ceilings in the media. Something more substantial than a coffee table book.”

  He stared at her sitting there, wearing nothing, with the sheet half covering her, and the other half falling onto the floor. “I’m thinking of writing a book, too.”

  “What about?”

  “The substantial adventures of Cuban-American-girl-journalist-turned-TV-anchor and black-boy-tennis-player-turned-whiz-kid, on a balcony at the Hermitage Hotel in Monte Carlo during the Grand Prix?”

  She raised her eyebrows, “Whiz kid?”

  He made a sound like racecars speeding by. “We should return to that balcony every year. Make it our annual pilgrimage. Like Lourdes.”

  “Lourdes?”

  “Sure healed what ailed me.”

  “Don’t push your luck, whiz kid.”

  “Luck? What luck? That was skill. That’s why it was . . . so very amusing.”

  “I beg your pardon? So very amusing?”

  “If I remember correctly, you were so very amused . . . several times.”

  “Well . . .” She smiled as if she was remembering it. “Maybe you did . . . amuse me.”

  “Only maybe?”

  “If life was like television news, you know, where you can go back to the tape, I’d be willing to run it again to check the facts.”

  “Just the facts, ma’am,” he said moving close to her, pulling the sheet away. “We don’t have a balcony, and there are no racecars down there, and even if there’s no whipped cream and chocolate sauce in the fridge . . .”

  “I thought you were going to the gym.”

  “There you go, thinking again.”

  “This time, it’s not about my book.” She pulled down his shorts.

  He knelt down in front of her, moving his mouth from her face to her neck and down to her chest. “How about if Cuban girl and whiz kid write a chapter for my new book?”

  “What’s your new book called?”

  “Multiple Amused.”

  GETTING TO the office later than usual, Carson winked at Rod Laver, then winked at Alicia, and then breakfast arrived. He paid the delivery kid for the papaya juice and buttered bialy, took it with his latte back to his desk and started making plans for Japan.

  His first thought was that he should leave Tuesday night, because that would give him a day to recover from the fourteen-hour flight.

  But then he checked his calendar and realized he’d forgotten the Clinton Foundation’s “New York Loves—written with a heart—Haiti” party at the Metropolitan Museum.

  So he booked himself a first-class ticket on the flight that left JFK at 11:35 Wednesday morning, which would bring him into Tokyo at 3:35 Thursday afternoon, local time.

  Next, he sorted through his phone’s address book until he found the number for the Peninsula Hotel. The name he’d put there was Hattori. So he dialed the number and asked for Mr. Hattori. It was only when a woman came on saying that she was Miss Hattori that he decided he’d confused her with the reservations manager at the Peninsula in Bangkok, whose name was . . .

  He couldn’t remember.

  Adding “Miss” to the Tokyo listing, he booked the suite he liked, overlooking Hibiya Park and the Imperial Palace Gardens.

  “We look forward to seeing you again,” Miss Hattori said. “Have a good flight.”

  “Thank you,” he said, then remembered, “One other thing. When I arrive on Thursday, I need to meet with a feng shui expert. Can you set up an appointment at the hotel for me, please?”

  “Feng shui?”

  “Yes.”

  “Feng shui,” she said, “is Chinese.”

  “Oh. Ah . . . okay . . . but surely there must be someone in Tokyo . . .”

  “In Japan we have kaso.”

  “Kaso? That’s the same as feng shui?”

  “Very similar. Ka is house and So is . . . something like phase or season. Then there is also fuusui.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It means wind and water.”

  “How about one of each?”

  “I will check with the concierge and make an appointment for you. Not to worry.”

  He thanked her and hung up.

  Kaso, fuusui, house, season, wind, and some water on the side. And with the Clinton party Tuesday night still on his mind, he wondered if he should also throw in some good old-fashioned Haitian voodoo.

  OKAY, IT’S JUST a coffee table book, Alicia kept telling herself as she flicked through the links she’d bookmarked on L. Arthur Farmer and that religious sect. But if the man who controls twenty percent of the world’s rice, regardless of whether or not he ever lived in Trump Tower, is still alive . . . and if he really is surrounded by this religious sect . . . that’s not just a coffee-table-book kind of story.

  The NBC database had some fascinating stuff on these Finfolkmen, and she also found several references to the senator in Michigan. There was even a phone number for him.

  Then she saw that he’d died in 1984.

  Undaunted, she located the number for Farmer’s business in Saginaw.

  A switchboard operator answered, “Corporate.”

  Alicia tried, “Mr. Farmer’s office, please.”

  The operator said, “No one here by that name,” and hung up.

  CARSON WENT OVER the numbers he’d already discussed with Warring, then drew up a small chart.

  Shigetada’s got fifty-one percent. He confirmed that. We’re second with twenty-two. He confirmed that.

  As the traders came into the office, they called out to him, “Hey” and “What’s happening” and “You ever go home?”

  We know eighteen are with the institutions. That leaves nine somewhere.

  He spotted Mesumi disappearing into the kitchen, then caught her on the way out with a coffee. “You got a minute?”

  “Who are you fooling? With you, the word minute is never singular.”

  She was a super-smart, slightly plump Princeton grad who’d worked in the Tokyo markets for a couple of years before coming to Wall Street. Carson met her at Goldman, and she’d been his first hire.

  “What’s happening?” She sat down on his couch.

  “Here’s what we know . . .” He handed her the chart. “We need to figure out which institutions are holding the eighteen and where the nine are.”

  She studied it, handed it back, sipped her coffee, and shook her head. “This is what I get for being born in Kyoto.”

  “No, this is what you get for going to Princeton.” He pointed to the conference room, “Let’s work there.”

  They set up their laptops back-to-back across the table and went in
search of the Shigetada shares.

  When Tony Arcarro got to the office, he volunteered, “Mitsubishi is holding around two. Saw it on some Intel tip sheet last week. Shigetada makes something that goes into something else that Mitsubishi needs. A phrannaporsennon.”

  “A what?” Mesumi asked.

  “Phrannaporsennon,” Carson confirmed.

  “What’s a phrannaporsennon?”

  Arcarro asked, “You know what a widget is? Well, a widget and a phrannaporsennon . . . they’re actually two entirely different things.”

  “Oh . . .” Mesumi got it. “Is it true they only come in yellow or blue?”

  Arcarro pointed at Mesumi and reminded Carson, “Princeton.”

  “Even at Princeton,” Carson said, “eighteen minus two leaves sixteen.”

  “Got to be the usual suspects,” Arcarro suggested. “Mizuho Bank. Daiwa Group. Dai-Ichi Kangyo.”

  “Japanese Industrial Bank.” Mesumi added to the list.

  “Nomura?” Carson looked at Mesumi. “Don’t you have a friend there?”

  “Ren? We went to school together.”

  “That school?”

  “Yes . . . that school.”

  “You okay with giving her a call?”

  “Sure. She’s in their office at Thirty-Seventh and Park.”

  Carson reached for the phone on the conference table and pushed it across to her.

  Mesumi found Ren’s number on her cell, dialed it on the office line, and spoke to her in Japanese.

  Carson picked up the words, ohayo gozaimasu, at the beginning of the call—it’s the traditional way of saying good morning—and the word sayonara at the end of the call, which, of course, is the traditional way of saying goodbye.

  When Mesumi hung up, he stared at her. “And?”

  “And,” she stood up, “I’m on my way to admire her new engagement ring.”

  “What’s the traditional Japanese way of saying, congratulations?”

  Mesumi assured him, “Mazel tov.”

  ALICIA SAT through the morning story meeting, then started working on what, at least at this hour, looked like it would lead the show—the murder last night of a nurse who worked at an abortion clinic in Queens. They’d already sent a crew with a reporter to the crime scene and another to the police press conference downtown at three.

  Once that was set, she put in a pitch for a sidebar story on violence at other abortion clinics around the city. Her editor, Greg Mandel, was all for it, but he was the only one.

  That’s when she got a call from Sandy Bridgeman at Nightly. “Alishe . . . I need to see you. Come on down.”

  She left her newsroom on the seventh floor and went down to the Nightly offices at Studio 3C.

  Bridgeman, who was six-foot-six and heavyset, and looked more like a line-backer than a television news executive, was waiting for her in the hallway when she stepped out of the elevator. They chatted briefly, she hugged him, then came running back to her desk upstairs to call Carson.

  He answered on the first ring. “Hi there.”

  “Guess what?”

  “What?”

  “You’ll never guess.”

  “You’ve signed as a free agent with the Heat to play point guard?”

  “Better than that.”

  “The Lakers?”

  “How about a call from Sandy Bridgeman?”

  “Who’s that?”

  “The man who decides.”

  “Decides what?”

  “That it’s official. I’m on the short list.”

  “That’s great,” he said. “I’m really glad someone finally made it official, especially since everybody unofficially knew it was official. So . . . good night from me and everybody here at NBC Nightly News.”

  “Not so fast. There are two other candidates.”

  “Who?”

  She told him, “Clinton Fields. He’s been bureau chief in Moscow for the past two years, and in Afghanistan for a couple of years before that. He wants to come home.”

  “And?”

  “And JPO,” she said referring to J. P. O’Malley. “He was in London and is now at the White House. His kids live in New York and he’s looking for a move here.”

  “But . . . you win because you already live in New York.”

  “Except . . . Fields is the real deal, and JPO isn’t to be sneezed at. They’re already hooked into Nightly. They’re on all the time, and both of these guys have been around a long time.”

  “Come on, you’re a shoe-in.” He reminded her, “Two white guys and a great-looking minority girl with perfect boobs? No contest.”

  “Maybe that gets me into Harvard, but if tomorrow Brian Williams moved to CBS . . .”

  “Scott Pelley would be furious.”

  “Yes. And both these guys would make the short list for the big job. I wouldn’t.”

  “Hey, the big job is the next step. Anyway, both these guys already have network day jobs. Just because they want to live in New York . . .”

  “Right now, their cards look better to me than my cards. I need to compete on their level. They’ve worked overseas, I haven’t. They’ve got national street cred, I don’t. They’ve been around forever, I’m the new kid on the block.”

  “You’ve got two Emmys.”

  “Local. They’ve got seven between them. And two are nationals. I need the same kind of big-deal story that puts them on Nightly. I need to prove that I’m worthy.”

  “Build it and they will come.”

  “Call me if you find a vacant cornfield in Iowa.”

  “Maybe this is the encouragement you need to do the book.”

  “The book? Yes, I’m going to do it. I mean, I’ve been thinking about it all morning, and I decided, why wouldn’t I? But it’s still a coffee table book.”

  “It’s still a book.”

  “But it’s not a serious book. I need a big-deal book. Or, at least, a big-deal story.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like my guy . . . L. Arthur Farmer.”

  22

  Tina barely opened her eyes wide enough to look at the clock.

  It said six.

  She wondered why the radio hadn’t clicked on.

  Then the numbers jumped to 6:01 and the radio came on. “. . . all news all the time . . . you give us twenty-two minutes and we’ll give you the world. Ten ten WINS time is six o’clock.”

  As she listened to the headlines, she fidgeted with the clock, moving the time back one minute. She also checked to see that the time was correct on the DVD player that sat on the big, Italian, carved wooden chest at the foot of their bed, in front of the wide-screen TV.

  Throwing on a pair of San Francisco 49er sweats, she padded barefoot downstairs, made coffee in her coffeemaker, then carried the mug into the corner office and turned on all the screens.

  She sat down, grabbed her iPhone, and began checking her e-mail.

  There was nothing from David, so she texted him. “A) Ran away with Gwyneth Paltrow? B) Kidnapped by pirates? C) Gone native and found work on a banana plantation? D) Miss me so much that you can’t get home fast enough?”

  A few seconds later her phone rang.

  “E,” he said. “Got drunk, ate too much, did a deal with some strange guys . . . I’m talking real strange guys . . . and I’m getting on the plane now.”

  “But not D.”

  “And also D.”

  “How real strange?”

  “That I can’t get home fast enough? That’s not strange . . .”

  “No, idiot, how strange is real strange? These people you got drunk with and did a deal with?”

  “Real strange,” he said, “as in . . . seriously very real strange. I’ll tell you all about them when I get home.”

  “You’d better,” she warned.

  When they hung up she looked at the screens and spotted $347,000 worth of Ralph Lauren men’s bathing suits stuck in the port at Trujillo, Peru. She shrugged, “Why not,” found the sellers in Singapore, bo
ught the bathing suits for $207,000 and easily moved them to somebody in Dubai for $223,000.

  Sixteen grand to the good, Tina picked up her mug and her coffee was still hot.

  AT ONE POINT that night, Zhadanov changed his mind, saying that he would come back to New York with David. But because David didn’t like that, he lied to Zhadanov that the pilots were expecting a lot of turbulence. Zhadanov decided to stay in Curaçao until he could get a commercial flight home.

  Pepe Forero then asked David, would he mind if one of his guys hitched a ride with him to New York.

  David didn’t like that either, so he lied again, this time saying that he was planning on stopping first in Houston.

  Forero decided that it would be better if his guy flew up to New York directly.

  Zhadanov said, “He can come with me.”

  So that settled that.

  Except it didn’t.

  As the sun was coming up, the bunch of them moved from the living room onto the deck to watch the sea change from dark blue to turquoise, at which time a very drunk David magnanimously invited all of the others to come back to New York with him.

  Zhadanov said, okay, fine, and Forero’s guy said okay, fine, and so did Juan Felipe the travel agent and Javier the jeweler.

  David regretted the invitation immediately.

  Juan Felipe started singing, “New York. New York,” off-key, and the others joined in, and a few more bottles were opened, until David noticed that Javier wasn’t singing, that he was snoring.

  So David made his move. He got up and left. He climbed the steps from the house up to the street where the taxi was still waiting. The others didn’t realize he was leaving or, if they did, they were too drunk to follow him. Either way, David told himself on the ride to the airport, I’ve escaped.

  He slept for the entire flight home and showed up, looking worse for the wear, just after one o’clock.

  “What happened to you?” Tina asked.

  “Fucking Colombians.”

  “They are? Or, you were?”

  He thought about that for a moment. “Huh?” Then he got it. “Oh, yeah . . . I mean, no. I wasn’t. It’s . . . they are.”

  “Colombians?”

  “Yeah.”

  “David, what are you doing with Colombians?”