Money to Burn

by James Grippando

  “Say what?”

  “It’s so clear: You have never stopped loving her. I can’t compete with that. You still love Ivy, and you are incapable of ever loving me.”

  “That’s not true,” I said.

  “I’m pretty, I’m nice, I try to make you happy. And I think you really like being with me-just the way you liked being with me in high school. But if it was a career woman you wanted, then you should have found yourself another Ivy. You don’t love me.”

  “How can you say such a thing?”

  “Because it’s true.”

  She rose quickly and went for the box of tissues on the bureau.

  “Mallory, I-”

  “Stop,” she said, cutting me off before I could say it. Then she took a breath to compose herself. “Let’s just forget it, okay? I shouldn’t have said anything. Go see your lawyer.”

  It was an awkward moment. I hated to leave like this, but I really did have to meet with the general counsel.

  “We’ll talk more when I get back,” I said.

  “No,” she said. “I don’t want to. Don’t worry. It’s off my chest.”

  She seemed to be trying to convince herself, not me.

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  “You just go and take care of what you need to take care of.”

  I rose and started toward her, but my phone rang. It was the general counsel wanting to know where the hell I was.

  “I’m on my way,” I said before quickly hanging up.

  I tried to find parting words that might reassure Mallory. Before I could speak, my laptop sounded from across the bed. I had a new e-mail in my in-box. Mallory and I exchanged glances, as if we both sensed that I needed to check it before leaving. I crossed the room to do just that.

  The sender’s address was unrecognizable, a random mix of numbers and letters. But the subject line told me that it wasn’t spam.

  It read, Zero balance.

  I glanced across the room at Mallory, telling her without words that it was indeed important. I opened the e-mail and read the message aloud.

  “Just as planned. xo xo.”

  It wasn’t enough for the thief to take my money. Now he had to taunt me with “hugs and kisses”-as if it were personal. Things were getting creepier by the minute.

  “What does that mean?” Mallory asked.

  “It means I’ve got one hell of a mess to sort out,” I said.

  9

  I WAS IN THE BACKSEAT OF A YELLOW TAXI, ABOUT TWO BLOCKS AWAY from Saxton Silvers’ offices on Seventh Avenue, when Sonya Jackson, my firm’s general counsel, phoned me with a change in plans.

  “Go directly to the FBI’s field office at 26 Federal Plaza and look for my car on Duane Street. I’ll have Stanley Brewer, our outside counsel, with me. He’s a former federal prosecutor who specializes in identity theft issues, and he’s excellent. You’re in good hands.”

  I was glad to see the firm treating the matter so seriously. On the other hand, a former prosecutor taking the matter straight to the FBI didn’t exactly send a message that there was nothing to worry about. I thanked Sonya and redirected the driver toward downtown.

  I found Sonya’s black Mercedes parked a block away from the security barriers that protected the FBI Field Office. Sonya was behind the steering wheel and Brewer was on the passenger side. I climbed into the rear seat behind Sonya, and the three of us spoke in the privacy of a virtually soundproof sedan before going inside the building.

  Before becoming one of the most respected corporate officers at Saxton Silvers, Sonya had worked with Stanley Brewer at Coolidge Harding & Cash, and she was the first African American woman to make partner at the prestigious firm with a presence on Wall Street that predated the transformation of the Customers’ Afternoon Letter into the Wall Street Journal. The unofficial motto of CH &C was “You get what you pay for,” which explained why it was simply known as “Cool Cash.” I assumed the meter was running as I told Brewer everything, from the separate account for Ivy, to the most recent e-mail I’d received before leaving the hotel suite.

  Sonya spoke first. “Sounds like a well-organized identity theft.”

  “The e-mail confirms as much,” I said. “Why else would they say ‘Just as planned’?”

  “Yes,” said Brewer. “But I find the way the thief signed off-‘xo xo’-far more interesting. That tag at the end was designed to add insult. It’s as if the thief takes more satisfaction in the way the scheme hurts you than in how it benefits him.”

  “That was my reaction,” I said. “It almost looks to be more about revenge than outright theft. Or at least equal parts theft and revenge.”

  “I’m theorizing at this point,” said Brewer. “But the very nature of your business puts you in a position to hurt people financially, even if it’s not your intention to harm anyone.”

  “Transactions have ripple effects,” said Sonya, “and when you’re talking about the kind of transactions that Saxton Silvers is involved in, these ripples can reach all the way across the globe.”

  “That makes it even more unsettling,” I said.

  “It does,” said Brewer. “Because when the motive is revenge, you never really know when-if ever-they are going to call it even.”

  Everyone on Wall Street had rivals, even enemies, but my stomach knotted at the thought of someone out to completely destroy me.

  The clock on the dash said 2:55 A.M. I knew how quickly money could move across the globe. With every tick of the clock, I could feel my fortune slipping through the cracks of bank secrecy, untraceable.

  “Shouldn’t we get the FBI moving on this?” I said.

  “They’re already going strong,” said Sonya. “I sent the account details to the Computer Crime Division right after I called Stanley.”

  “I’d still like to get face-to-face with them,” I said.

  The two lawyers exchanged glances. Brewer then looked at me and said, “Sonya and I talked while you were cabbing it over here. We agreed that it would be best if you weren’t part of this initial meeting with the bureau.”

  “But it’s my money.”

  “I understand,” he said.

  “My entire personal portfolio has been cleaned out.”

  “I’m not minimizing that.”

  “I’m the victim.”

  “It would appear so,” he said.

  “So I have to be there when you talk to the FBI.”

  Brewer took a breath, letting it go as he spoke. “Michael, I can’t begin to tell you how many times I have seen law enforcement treat the victim as a suspect.”

  I suddenly thought of the way the Bahamian authorities had treated me after I reported Ivy’s disappearance. Not even a clean polygraph exam had convinced some of them of my innocence.

  “I understand where you’re coming from,” I said. “But I didn’t do anything here but check my account balance.”

  “I know how these agents think,” said Brewer. “If you set foot inside that building, they will shift into fact-gathering mode and will want to know everything about every transaction you have ever structured that involves an offshore bank. That’s sensitive information that you and your clients don’t want to hand over freely, and just as soon as you put up any resistance to their inquiry-bam. You go from victim to suspect in their mind.”

  The man was making sense, but I kept coming back to the bottom line. “This is my life savings.”

  Sonya chimed in. “Let Stanley and me deal with the FBI. I’ve called in our head of security. The best thing you can do right now is go to the office and use the firm’s internal resources to find out what happened.”

  Another good point. When money went missing, private security was often more effective than law enforcement, especially in international matters.

  “All right,” I said. “That sounds like a reasonable plan.”

  I handed Brewer my business card and told him to call me day or night. Then I stepped out of the car. The lights were burning brightly at the
old fire station on Duane Street. Even so, everything else was quiet in this city that never sleeps; there wasn’t a cab in sight. The night air wasn’t quite cool enough for me to see my breath, but I was feeling the chill. I buried my hands in my pants pockets and walked up Broadway, where, for fifty bucks-maybe my last fifty-I convinced a taxi driver with a Ukrainian accent to switch off his off-duty light.

  I started to give him the firm’s cross streets-“Seventh and…” but stopped myself. It was time to lose the tuxedo. We headed up Broadway to Fifty-seventh and then east to my apartment at Sutton Place. The driver waited with the meter running-he should have worked for Cool Cash-as I hurried into the building.

  “Mr. Cantella!” the doorman called.

  “Gotta hurry,” I said as I punched the call button for the elevator again and again.

  “Delivery here for you, sir. Courier brought it by an hour ago.”

  “I’ll get it later, Juan.”

  “‘Urgent’ marked all over it,” he said, walking over and handing it to me.

  I grabbed it as the bell chimed and the elevator doors parted. I swiped my security card and punched twenty-six. The doors closed, and I inspected what Juan had given me. It was the size of a FedEx envelope, but it was from a local courier service-probably delivered by one of those maniacs on bicycles who pedaled as if they got paid extra for bumping off pedestrians in crosswalks. I had one eye on the numbers over the elevator doors blinking with each passing floor-fourteen, fifteen, sixteen-as I found the zip tab on the package and pulled it.

  There was a sudden flash of red and yellow, and I wasn’t sure if the package flew from my hands or if I had thrown it to the floor. The elevator stopped immediately, and the alarm sounded. I was stunned for a moment, then smelled smoke. My sleeve was on fire, and flames were at my feet. I ripped off my jacket and stomped on it and the package in a frantic effort to extinguish the flames. I was winning, but barely. The package seemed to contain some kind of substance that burned with resilience. I smothered it with my jacket until the flames died, but the smoke continued to thicken even after the fire was finally out. It had a chemical odor, and my hands were stinging from the burn. Breathing was nearly impossible in the smoke-filled elevator.

  “Are you okay in there?” the voice on the intercom asked.

  The car wasn’t moving, and I felt on the verge of succumbing to the smoke. I grabbed the seam between the doors and pulled as hard as I could. At first the doors didn’t budge, but on the second try, they separated-not enough for me to climb out of the car to safety, but at least I could stick my nose and mouth out into the shaft and breathe.

  “I need help!” I yelled.

  “We’re on our way!” the response came.

  I stood there with my face in the crack between the metal doors. I was light-headed but refused to let myself pass out. My focus was purely on survival, but as I caught my breath, Stanley Brewer’s words came back to me.

  “When the motive is revenge, you never really know when-if ever-they are going to call it even.”

  I cast my eyes downward, peering into the dark elevator shaft below.

  “Not good,” I told myself. “This is definitely not good.”

  10

  I COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED.

  The thought was sinking in as I stood outside the closed door to Eric Volke’s office. The president had the largest corner office on a highly secured floor that was reserved for nine of Saxton Silvers’ most senior executives. Visitors knew they were in the right place as soon as the elevator doors opened: They could smell the flowers. Roses, calla lilies, crepe myrtle, and other assortments were abundant and fresh every day, a two-hundred-thousand-dollar line item in the firm’s annual operating budget. An extravagance, to be sure, particularly since no more than two or three executives were actually in the office on a typical day. Today obviously wasn’t typical. It wasn’t even nine o’clock and the place was buzzing.

  “He’s on the phone,” said Nancy, Eric’s assistant.

  Of course he was. Eric Volke off the phone was like Tiger Woods off the golf course. “I’ll wait,” I said.

  I took a seat on the leather sofa, and suddenly I had to catch my breath.

  Damn, I really could have been killed.

  Things were moving so fast. I hadn’t really processed how close I’d come to burning alive inside an elevator. My hand was still stinging and red. I had decided not to go to the emergency room, even though that flaming package had probably given me a second-degree burn. I had bigger problems.

  As I waited, I wondered how much more harm the anonymous sender had intended.

  My cell rang, reminding me that the wheels of commerce were still turning. I had to cancel today’s trip to Chicago, where I was supposed to consult with a group of real estate lawyers, bankers, and architects to make sure their multiuse building qualified as green. It was a nine-figure deal put together by our Investment Banking Division, and by missing a key meeting I ran the risk of some engineer making a decision that would throw the whole thing out of LEED compliance-no more green stamp of approval for the socially responsible class of investors I was trying to make richer. One successful green project had a way of blossoming into more, so it would hurt to lose this one, but not nearly as much as losing my entire personal portfolio.

  I checked the call, let it go to voice mail, and peered through the beveled glass door. Eric was pacing from one end of his silk Sarouk rug to the other, speaking into the headset of his hands-free phone. The signs of stress were all over his face.

  Eric was my mentor, the man who had hired me out of business school. Two years ago, when ditching Wall Street and changing careers had seemed like a good idea, it was Eric who’d convinced the firm to let me split my time between production and management. It sounded like two jobs, but it was more like twenty. In theory, putting Saxton Silvers’ Green Division on the map meant training investment advisors across the country to “think green,” but all the training in the world wasn’t going to convince them to make less money for the pension funds, retirees, and other investors who counted on the brilliant minds at Saxton Silvers to maximize their returns. Expanding “green” beyond charitable trusts and other special investor groups that were either required or predisposed to go green meant assembling and supervising an investment strategy team like no other, and then traveling across the globe to identify and nail down socially responsible opportunities that would actually make money-lots of money. “Show them-don’t tell them-that green belongs in their portfolio,” was Eric’s charge to me. His own career had soared since then, and for the past thirteen months he’d served as president of Saxton Silvers. Subprime fallout had made the last three hell.

  “Does he know I’m here?” I asked his assistant.

  “Yes. It’ll be just a few minutes more. Mr. Volke wants to see you as soon as he hangs up.”

  I returned to my seat, and my phone buzzed again. It was Mallory, who was still at the Pierre Hotel. This was the third time she’d speed-dialed me since I’d called to tell her about “a little mishap” in the elevator.

  “Why is there a security guard outside my door?” she asked.

  I could hear the strain in her voice, and I tried to reassure her. “Honey, it’s like I explained earlier: The lawyer thinks somebody might be trying to even an old score with me. It’s better to be safe than sorry, so I asked the firm to arrange for a bodyguard.”

  “Michael, you’re not telling me everything. Juan called over here from the front desk to see if I needed a ride home. According to him, everyone in our building is talking about the package that burst into flames and almost burned you alive in the elevator. The FBI was even there.”

  It had been a mistake not to tell Mallory the whole story, but my intentions had been good. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to freak you out. I’ve already talked with the FBI, and the security guard outside your door is just a precaution. This is going to be okay.”

  “How can you say that? Somebody tried
to kill you!”

  “Nobody was trying to kill me. Even the FBI said so.”

  “What?”

  “It was just a stunt. The only reason it was dangerous was because I happened to open the package inside the elevator, where the smoke got to me. There was no way the sender knew where I was going to open it.”

  “Well, I suppose that’s true. But it could have killed you. And whatever it was, it sure wasn’t a love note.”

  “You’re right. Someone is definitely trying to scare us.”

  “And doing a damn fine job of it. This is all too crazy. Why is this happening?”

  “We don’t know yet. But we have the best of the best working on it. I’m meeting with Eric as soon as-wait. He just got off the phone. I have to go, okay?”

  “Call me just as soon as you know anything more.”

  I promised I would and hung up.

  Nancy opened the glass doors and escorted me into the president’s office. Eric was a handsome man with a touch of gray hair at the temples, the strong handshake of a former Olympic rower (Munich ’72), and impeccable taste in custom-tailored suits from Hong Kong. Decorating the walls of his spacious office were a dozen large underwater photographs that he had taken while scuba diving the most spectacular reefs in the world. He was the one senior manager who consistently took the time to talk one-on-one with up-and-comers like me to make sure we weren’t getting too wound up and heading toward burnout-which was amazing, given the constant pressure he worked under. He was president of an institution that derived 40 percent of its annual revenue and 70 percent of its profit from its most risky and volatile line of business: trading and investing. Even in bull markets, the firm’s trading desk spent forty days a year operating in the red. In other words, Saxton Silvers’ Investment Banking Division could arrange the biggest deals in town, its Asset Management Division could manage client portfolios with precision, and one boneheaded call by a single group of traders could still land the entire firm in the toilet.