Trump Tower

by Jeffrey Robinson

  More people applauded, the National Anthem was sung, and the announcer came back to say, “Please welcome, our New York Yankees as they take the field.”

  And the game began.

  Alicia arrived at the top of the second inning, was brought to the front row by an usher, and slipped into the seat next to Cyndi. “I used to think that watching baseball was better at home, in bed, with a good book. I take it back.”

  “I don’t know,” Cyndi said, “watching baseball in bed with a shortstop probably isn’t so bad . . .”

  Carson reminded her, “The Holy Ghost plays center field.”

  “So,” Cyndi shrugged, “a shortstop and a center fielder.”

  Zeke whispered to Carson, “She’s joking, right?”

  “Yeah,” Carson said. “What she really means is a third baseman and a center fielder.”

  The Indians went ahead 2–0 in the third, and the Yankees caught up to make it 2–2 in the fifth.

  Sitting right behind home plate like that, they could see where every pitch crossed the plate. In the bottom of the sixth, with Roberto at bat, when the umpire called a very high pitch a strike, Cyndi shouted out, “Come on ump, we can get fifty bucks for his balls.”

  The umpire actually turned around to look at her.

  Roberto stepped off the plate, turned away, and Alicia thought she saw him blush.

  “I was with your guy Warring recently,” Zeke said to Carson. “He mentioned briefly that you were doing a big deal in Japan together.”

  “Which may or may not work. Ken’s worse than these guys,” he nodded toward the Yankees. “They hate losing. He really hates losing.”

  Cleveland came to bat in the top of the seventh and the lead-off guy got a single to right field.

  “I don’t blame him,” Zeke said. “We brought him in on this studio project we’re trying to put together. It’s a great project if we can pull it off. And I think we can. I found one guy who might even be willing to foot the whole bill for us. Ever hear of L. Arthur Farmer?”

  “Whoa,” Carson said. “You’ve been dealing with Farmer?”

  “Not with him directly. His people.”

  “Hold on.” He reached across behind Zeke and tapped Alicia on the shoulder. “Ask Zeke about his new best friend.”

  The guy on first stole second and then Cleveland got another single to shallow center. The guy on second headed for third as Roberto raced in to take the ball on one hop. The base runner rounded third and headed for home. Roberto wound up and threw to the plate.

  The crowd stood up.

  The ball came right into the catcher’s glove, and the base runner hurried back to third.

  Standing and applauding Roberto’s perfect throw, Alicia looked at Carson and then at Zeke. “New best friend?”

  Zeke didn’t understand what her interest was. “Ever hear of L. Arthur Farmer?”

  Her eyes opened wide. “You know him?”

  “Not him, his people.”

  They all sat down.

  “I think he was the first buyer into Trump Tower.” She said, “I’m writing a book for the thirtieth anniversary.”

  “I know. Remember? You wrote to ask if you could photograph my apartment . . .”

  “Right. So I started looking at other people who have lived in the Tower, and his name came up. But I can’t find anything about him. No one even knows if he’s alive or dead.”

  The next batter knocked the ball out of Yankee Stadium and the Indians went ahead 5–2.

  “I’m dealing with a strange guy named Isbister. I don’t have his number but I’ll try to get it for you. You can phone him and ask.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “By strange . . . do you know if he’s particularly religious?”

  “In fact, he told me he is.”

  She smiled and nodded. “He’s a Finfolkmen. Farmer is surrounded by them . . .”

  “A what?”

  “Finfolkmen. It’s a small religion. Farmer is surrounded by these guys, like Howard Hughes was surrounded by Mormons.”

  “Finfolkmen? Never heard of them.”

  “I know a lot about them. Someday when you’ve got a week, I’ll fill you in. But I’d really love to talk to this guy . . .”

  “James Malcolm Isbister.”

  “I’m trying to figure out if Farmer was the first person to buy into Trump Tower and if he, or his people, maybe still live there. Nobody knows anything . . .”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Zeke said. “Isbister had something delivered to my apartment. The guy who delivered it wasn’t announced from the desk downstairs. No one called up. He just knocked on the door.”

  “Which . . .” she concluded, “he could only do if he was already in the building.”

  Three more batters came up, and the Yankees put them down, then did nothing in the bottom of the seventh. They did nothing in the eighth and now, in the bottom of the ninth, Roberto came to bat with no one on. He knocked the ball into the second tier in left field.

  The stadium went wild, hoping for a late rally, and when Roberto stepped on home plate, he fist-pumped toward Cyndi.

  But it wasn’t enough and the Yankees lost 5–3.

  On the way out, Zeke handed $500 to one of the Gloves for Kids donation volunteers. Carson gave them $500 as well. Alicia only had a few hundred on her and handed it all over. But Cyndi didn’t put anything in the donation cup.

  “That’s for both of us,” Alicia said, trying to cover up for Cyndi.

  “It’s okay,” Cyndi said, “I have another idea,” and left it like that.

  BACK AT the concierge desk at Trump Tower, Cyndi, Zeke and Carson each wrote notes for Roberto to say thank you for a great night out. Then Cyndi, Zeke and Carson headed for the elevators, while Alicia stayed where she was. “I’ll be right up.”

  When they were gone, Alicia asked Carlo, the night concierge, “Is Mr. Timmins on security tonight?”

  “He is,” Carlo answered.

  “Would you give him a call please. I’d like to have a word with him.”

  Carlo dialed his extension and a few minutes later Timmins came downstairs to find Alicia.

  “I never got a chance to thank you in person for what you did for Suzy,” he said.

  She took his elbow and led him outside to Fifty-Sixth Street, where they started walking toward Madison Avenue. “She’s a great girl. She’ll do fine at NBC. And you did thank me because she brought those chocolates.”

  “She thinks you’re the best,” Timmins said. “She’s a terrific girl . . . and you gave her a chance . . . my wife and I are really very grateful.”

  Now Alicia changed the subject. “Tell me something . . . strictly off the record . . . between us . . . never to go any further . . .” She asked, “Does L. Arthur Farmer live in the building?”

  “Who?”

  “L. Arthur Farmer. He’s a zillionaire recluse who owns or controls like a lot of the world’s rice.”

  “Never heard of him,” Timmins said.

  “Honestly? Off the record . . .”

  “Honestly, never heard of him.”

  “How about a man named Isbister?”

  He shook his head. “Nope. Not that I know.”

  She thought for a moment, “When someone delivers something, they have to stop at the concierge and the concierge calls up to say there’s a delivery.”

  “Right.”

  “So how could someone deliver something without calling up from downstairs?”

  “They can’t.”

  “Unless they’re already in the building.”

  “Ah . . . yeah, sure, if someone was already in the building . . . but even then, if the elevator guy didn’t know that person, he’s supposed to ask, who the hell are you? Well, maybe not in those exact words . . .”

  She smiled. “If I knew the time and date that someone delivered a package, what are the chances of having a quick look at the CCTV footage?”

  “None,” he said right away. “Please don’t even
ask. I mean, Miss Melendez, I’d do anything in the world for you . . . anything . . . except that. It’s my ass if anybody ever found out.”

  “That’s all right,” she said. “Forget that I even thought of it.”

  “No problem.” He turned around and headed for the entrance to Trump Tower. “I’ve got to get back to work.”

  She patted his arm. “Suzy is a great girl. You can be proud.”

  He said goodnight to her in the lobby.

  Upstairs, Carson asked, “What was that all about?”

  Alicia told him, “If L. Arthur Farmer ever lived here, no one is going to help me find out.”

  “How about,” he asked, “if L. Arthur Farmer never lived here? Or doesn’t live here? How about if you’re barking up the wrong tree altogether?”

  She reminded him, “When Zeke gets that Finfolkmen guy’s phone number, I’ll ask him.”

  “In the meantime?”

  She stared at Carson for a second, smiled, then started slipping out of her clothes. “What did Cyndi say, fifty bucks for his balls? I’ll give you a hundred.”

  74

  On Wednesday morning, when Pierre Belasco walked into his office on the ground floor of Trump Tower, off the residents’ lobby, he found a large, white envelope with his name on it.

  Inside was a letter from Antonia Lawrence addressed to Donald J. Trump, Anthony Gallicano and him.

  She wrote, “Circumstances beyond my control have intervened in my ability to carry out my duties with the Trump Organization. I regret any mistakes I might have made. Accordingly, I feel it is best for everyone involved that I herewith resign my duties. I thank you for the opportunities I have been given and wish everyone well.”

  IN THE master bedroom on the fifty-ninth floor, Cyndi Benson lay in bed alone, staring up at her own reflection in the mirrored ceiling. “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jacks . . .”

  She smiled, then reached for her phone and called her lawyer, Sydney Feinberg.

  “You’re up early,” he said. “I took care of that little matter . . . Arizona. I understand that your friend’s friend is having treatment.”

  “And they don’t know?”

  “I made sure that it was covered six ways to breakfast. There’s no way they’ll ever know it came from you.”

  “Good. Thank you. Now I need to do it again. I’m sending you an envelope this morning. I’ll write a note outlining everything. Please take care of it for me. And make sure no one ever finds out.”

  “Your secrets are always good with me,” he said.

  “I know. I love you.” She pushed herself out of bed, went to the smaller of the two safes she had in the apartment—this one was in the floor in the second bathroom—opened it and pulled out the diamond watch that His Excellency had sent her. She put it in a padded envelope, which she addressed to Sydney.

  Then she wrote him a note. “Please sell this for me, getting as close to the retail price as you can. Take the proceeds and donate it anonymously, absolutely and totally anonymously, to the Roberto Santos Gloves for Kids program/ xxx Cyndi.”

  IN THE dining room on their fifty-second-floor apartment, Alicia sat with her laptop trying to find anything she could about James Malcolm Isbister.

  Nothing came up when she searched the terms, Isbister and Trump Tower. Nor did anything come up when she searched Isbister and L. Arthur Farmer. But hundreds of links came up when she searched Isbister and Finfolkmen, most of them noting that the name Isbister was an old Scots name, and examples of it could be found in the United States in some small communities bordering on Lake Superior in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

  So now she wrote a note to Donald Trump and Pierre Belasco, asking them if they’ve ever heard of L. Arthur Farmer, and whether or not Farmer ever had anything to do with Trump Tower.

  DOWNSTAIRS, in the twenty-third-floor offices of First Ace Capital, things were moving even faster than Carson had imagined they could.

  He was on the phone with Milt McKeever at EXIT-Strategies. “Time to set the trap?”

  “Yeah. We confuse him with buying and selling. The increased traffic will peak his interest and then we wait to see how he reacts.”

  “If he buys, we sell and if he sells . . .”

  “Not necessarily,” McKeever said. “We just need to create confusion in the market. It’s shallow enough so it shouldn’t be a problem. But if he’s seeing action from several different places, he won’t know who or what, and that’s going to scare the crap out of him.”

  “Which accounts do we use to go after him?”

  “We should spread them as wide as we can.”

  Carson thought about that for a moment. “Caymans? Luxembourg? Hong Kong?”

  “All of the above. And New York is okay, too, as long as it doesn’t look like it’s you. How about London? Can you work something with Tokyo?”

  “I’m on it right now,” he said. “You tell me what to do and when.”

  “Get everything set up as soon as possible. Like, right now. We’ll aim for just after midnight, our time, tonight. That way, there won’t be anyone he can find at work here. Europe will be closed, too. This will drive him crazy.”

  “How do I know when to push the button? Will you e-mail me?”

  “No, I’ll text your cell,” McKeever said. “Harder to trace, just in case the SEC ever comes looking.”

  “Okay. Yeah . . . sure.” Except Carson wasn’t sure. “The SEC?”

  “As long as none of the accounts can be traced back to you . . .”

  “I’m not worried about that.”

  “Then don’t worry about the SEC. Just follow my texts. I’ll tell you what to do, to buy or sell, and I’ll give you the pricing. You put the orders in. But be sure to use a different money source every time. You’ll be selling into yourself, buying at the same time, so he can’t ever get hold of any of your shares. The minute he understands he’s on the outside looking in, he’ll panic. That will unnerve other players.”

  “And then?”

  “And then he’ll make a mistake.”

  “Which will be?”

  “No idea. But we’ll know it when we see it.”

  IN HIS big living room office on the thirty-ninth floor, Zeke Gimbel was getting ready to meet with James Malcolm Isbister to firm up Farmer’s participation in the studio project, when Isbister phoned.

  “I’m terribly sorry about this. I’m running late.”

  “No problem,” Zeke said. “By the way, as long as I’ve got you on the phone, I was out last night with Alicia Melendez . . . the anchorwoman at News Four New York . . . you know the local channel four. She told me she’s writing a history of Trump Tower and thought that Mr. Farmer either once lived here or does live here, and I said I’d put you two together . . . if I gave you her number, would you be kind enough to phone her?”

  “No,” he said flatly. “Absolutely not.”

  “Oh.” He was surprised at the man’s tone. “I’ll vouch for her . . .”

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Gimbel, but this is not something I appreciate.”

  “I didn’t mean to insult you . . .”

  “Mr. Gimbel, I’m afraid we can no longer discuss any business arrangements with you. Indiscretion is not something we tolerate, and when Mr. Farmer’s name is brought up . . .”

  “Hold on, all I did was say to a friend . . .”

  “Please accept my sincerest apologies for canceling our meeting today and terminating our negotiations. I wish you luck in your endeavors and must now end this call. Goodbye, sir.”

  Isbister hung up.

  For the longest time, Zeke stared at the phone in his hand. “What the fuck was that all about?”

  THE FIRST text message from McKeever showed up on Carson’s phone at 12:02, Thursday morning. Sell at 40, buy it back. Two minutes later another showed up. Sell at 41, buy it back. Then there were several in the space of the next minute. Sell at 39. Sell at 38. Sell at 38. Sell at 39. Sell at 38. Keep buying.

&nbs
p; Carson did what he was told to.

  At 12:11, his phone rang. It was McKeever to say, “There’s action . . . a lot of it.”

  Carson clicked on his screen and saw the Shigetada share price dropping. “Looks like he’s a worried man.”

  “He’s certainly a confused man. He started shorting at forty. He came in with some real ambition at thirty-eight. He spooked the banks and they came in at thirty-seven. He dumped a big bundle at thirty-six. Hedge funds have forced it down to thirty-two. One bank is in heavy . . . Chiba. They’re playing alongside Shigetada, and the two of them are going nuts. They’re both sniffing around . . . hold on . . . wow, they’ve dropped as low as thirty. See that? You watching the screen? Everybody must be thinking the hedge funds are driving it even lower.”

  “I see it. At what point does Shigetada run out of cover?”

  “This market?” McKeever suggested, “I say the minute he dips under thirty. Chiba might have deep pockets, but your guy’s in quicksand. I mean, he’s out of control. He’s spinning the wheel nonstop.”

  “What does the liquidity look like?”

  “Right now, besides you, there’s next to nil.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing yet. Just stay on the line with me. Then, suddenly, McKeever screamed, “Holy shit.”

  “What?”

  “He’s dumped the biggest bundle of all at twenty-nine. This guy is nuts. Hold on,” McKeever said . . . “let me get this up . . .”

  Carson could hear him typing on his keyboard.

  “Here we go,” McKeever said. “Ready? Now. Buy it all. Everything.”

  “Doing it,” Carson said, and furiously put in orders using those accounts scattered around the world.

  “Keep going,” McKeever kept yelling. “Keep going . . . watch . . . look at your screen . . . keep going . . .”

  Carson couldn’t type instructions fast enough.

  Two minutes later McKeever yelled, “Shot through the roof. I’m telling you, this is beyond awesome. I’ve never seen a market move like this. Japanese authorities are going to investigate this for the next fifty years.”