Money to Burn

by James Grippando

  “That’s correct,” said Agent Spear.

  It wasn’t intentional, but a nervous chuckle escaped as my gaze shifted in Eric’s direction. “Should I have a lawyer?”

  “That’s certainly your right,” said Agent Spear.

  “Am I being accused of something?”

  “No,” said the agent.

  Sonya started to speak but hesitated. Then, without words, Eric seemed to give her the green light.

  “I would suggest that you merely listen,” she said. “Eric and I wanted you to know what the FBI investigation has uncovered, but we thought it would be best for you to hear it straight from Agent Spear.”

  My throat tightened, which was probably a good thing. I was getting the distinct impression that I shouldn’t even try to talk.

  “Okay, I’m all ears.”

  Spear spoke in a patented FBI monotone that made things sound even more serious. “There has been a major development in our tracking of the funds from your Saxton Silvers personal investment accounts to the Cayman Islands and beyond.”

  “Congratulations. I guess it’s true that the post-nine-eleven world of bank secrecy is not as secret as it once was.”

  Eric caught my eye. I was talking too much.

  Spear continued. “This is what the FBI knows. Your investments were liquidated and the cash in your accounts was then immediately transferred into a custodial account in the name of your late wife, Ivy Layton. Your funds were commingled with hers, and the entire amount-about thirteen million-was wire-transferred from the custodial account to a numbered account in the Cayman Islands.”

  He paused, and I sure hoped there was more. “No offense,” I said, “but my tech guy told me everything you just said about ten minutes after I discovered my account balances were at zero.”

  “Understood,” said Spear. “Here’s where it gets interesting. The minute your thirteen million hit the Cayman account, it was used as collateral for twenty-six million in short positions on Saxton Silvers stock obtained through various sources.”

  It was as if someone had kicked the chair out from under me. “Excuse me?”

  “With the dramatic decline in Saxton Silvers stock this morning, you can in essence pay back your twenty-six-million dollar loan with thirteen million dollars’ worth of stock. If the rumors continue and force Saxton Silvers into bankruptcy-reducing its stock value to zero-you borrowed twenty-six million and can pay it off for nothing. That’s a pretty hefty profit in a couple of days.”

  I couldn’t even speak.

  “So,” he said, “the question is this: Who controls the Cayman account?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “There are several layers of transactions involved, a number of different special-purpose vehicles,” he said. That was Wall Street-speak for offshore shell corporations.

  “Then you need to find out who’s behind the shell game,” I said.

  Glances were exchanged around the room, but no one was making eye contact with me.

  “Eric?” I said. “You don’t think I control it, do you?”

  Eric was again massaging that sore spot between his eyes, migraine central.

  “Well, it sure as hell isn’t me,” I said.

  Spear cleared his throat, and I braced myself. “Your general counsel tells us that you went on FNN today.”

  “At Eric’s request.”

  “How do you think that went?” asked Spear.

  Part of me wanted to tell him to call the treasurer at Papa’s condo association and ask him. “Not so well,” I said.

  “That depends on your perspective, doesn’t it?” he said.

  “Meaning what?” I asked.

  “I would imagine that the short sellers in control of your money in that secret Cayman Islands account were quite pleased with the way your interview went with Mr. Bell. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  I had to take a breath, control my anger. “I didn’t bet against my own firm and then go on television to fan the flames, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”

  Spear copped a laserlike stare. “Would you be willing to take a polygraph exam on that?”

  I should have taken a moment to consider the question. Instead, I looked right at Eric and said, “If that’s what it takes to get the people in this room to believe me, then yes, I would.”

  Spear was about to say something, but Eric interrupted.

  “Michael, you should talk to a lawyer.”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong.”

  Eric leaned forward, his hands atop his desk. “It’s like Sonya said. She doesn’t represent you. Her only client is this institution. Go talk to a lawyer.”

  I didn’t know what to say, but soon enough I realized that I had best not say anything.

  “All right,” I said, rising. “I will talk to my lawyer.”

  And then I walked out-and realized I didn’t have one.

  The security guards escorted me back to the elevator, rode down with me, and walked me out to the street. This was getting annoying. I spotted a taxi and speared my hand into the night air. My iPhone chirped, and of course I immediately stopped in my tracks to check it. They should have called this thing “iPavlov.” Was there anything more powerful?

  It was a text message. I didn’t recognize the sender, but the words cut to my core: It’s a crime to burn money.

  I collected myself and texted back in rapid fire: Who are you?

  He’d sent the next text before getting my reply: That makes you Wall Street fucks serial offenders.

  I knew it was the guy from Sal’s Place last fall, but I needed more. Who are you, and what do you want?

  The cab I’d hailed pulled away. The driver was ticked, but I wasn’t about to risk losing this connection in a moving vehicle.

  His reply read, You promised not to turn me in.

  I had to think for a moment, then I recalled the strange conversation with this guy at Sal’s Place. I had indeed made that promise after watching him burn the hundred-dollar bill. I kept my reply short: So?

  His reply came so quickly I could almost feel the anger: Stay away from the FBI. STAY AWAY!!!

  I would have bet serious money that the conversation was over, but to my surprise, one last message popped up.

  That’s the thing about revenge, the text read, you never know when they’re going to call it even.

  An ambulance flew by me on Seventh Avenue, siren blaring. I was oblivious to it, numbed by the words I was reading.

  I pulled myself together and speed-dialed Eric Volke.

  21

  I SPOKE TO ERIC FROM THE BACKSEAT OF A TAXI. GOING BACK INSIDE Saxton Silvers headquarters seemed like a bad idea. If the warning not to talk to the FBI meant anything, it was clear that someone was watching me pretty closely.

  “Eric,” I said, “I think Sonya’s car must be bugged.”

  That was the only conclusion I could reach; it was the one way that guy could have known what the lawyer from Cool Cash had told me about revenge. I laid it all out for Eric, telling him about that morning’s conversation in the seeming privacy of Sonya’s car, about the strange guy who’d burned money in front of me at Sal’s Place last fall, about the latest text. And then I put it all together.

  “That firebomb in the elevator came after I met Sonya and Stanley Brewer outside the FBI field office. I think it was intended to convey the same message that was made explicit in the text: Don’t go to the FBI. I want to set up another meeting with Agent Spear, but obviously it has to be secret.”

  “No,” said Eric.

  “What?”

  “The guy warned you not to go to the FBI. We don’t know what kind of nut job we’re dealing with. Send me the text message. I’ll take care of it. You stick with your plan. Get a lawyer. I’ll deal with the FBI.”

  “Thanks,” I said. Nothing more I could say.

  The cab let me off on Eighth Avenue. Two minutes later I was in Papa’s room at the Days Inn. He and Nana had an “Internet special” that was b
arely big enough for the king-size bed I was sitting on.

  “Hey, check this out,” he said, grinning as he emerged from the bathroom. “Little bottles of shampoo and conditioner. And they’re free. I love this place.”

  It was a tongue-in-cheek remark, Papa’s way of saying, Don’t even think of pulling out your wallet and trying to move us over to the Ritz.

  Nana took her turn in the bathroom. When we were alone, Papa sat beside me on the edge of the mattress. He put his arm around my shoulder and said, “You look really stressed. Tell me what’s on your mind.”

  I was suddenly twelve years old again, back in my little bedroom in rural Illinois with the best listener on earth. He couldn’t possibly relate to the whole story, but merely sharing the gist of it made me feel better. Some things never changed.

  Papa considered my words, then asked, “What is the one thing that would help you the most right now?”

  “A lawyer, I guess. Sort of a legal jack-of-all-trades. I definitely need someone who can deal with the FBI, and if Mallory is serious, it looks like I’ll need a divorce lawyer, too.”

  “How much does someone like that cost?”

  I drew a breath. “A decent criminal defense lawyer in a white-collar criminal investigation like this is probably going to ask for a hundred grand up front.”

  Papa’s jaw dropped, but he seemed to put the figure aside.

  “Have you thought about calling your brother?”

  He meant my half brother. At the time of my birth, Papa’s only daughter had been an unmarried junior at DePaul University. Two years later she married a man who was not my biological father. My half brother and half sister came along in rapid succession. I was six when our mother lost control of her car on the Kennedy Expressway in an ice storm. She was killed instantly. My stepfather-funny, but he was just “Daddy” to me before Mom died-got engaged to a woman who promptly announced that three kids in their instant family was one too many. It was then that I moved to a small town north of Chicago to live with Nana and Papa.

  “I haven’t spoken to Kevin in years,” I said.

  It had been four years, to be exact-since Ivy’s disappearance, when Kevin turned into an asshole.

  “Maybe that should change,” said Papa. “He is family. And he practices right here in the city.”

  “Please don’t push this. I don’t need another complication-especially family.”

  “You’re right. Let’s you and I talk this out for a minute. It sounds to me like someone is setting you up to look like the bad guy.”

  “The financial assassin of my own firm,” I said.

  “So let’s think logically. Any successful man naturally has enemies. Who are yours?”

  I shook my head slowly, thinking. “I am head of the firm’s Green Division. That doesn’t make Big Oil too happy.”

  “Yeah, right. And come June I’m going to muscle out a bunch of twenty-year-old stars and become a starting pitcher for the Chicago Cubs. Come on, think. There has to be someone you stepped on or maybe even squashed-not on purpose, of course-on your way to the top.”

  The bathroom door opened. Nana stepped out, clad in the same bathrobe she’d owned when I was in college. A silk cap preserved last Saturday’s trip to the beauty parlor. She’d gone every week, worn the same hairstyle, for as long as I could remember.

  “Bedtime, boys,” she said.

  I rose and gave her a kiss. Papa walked me to the door. Nana had her hearing aid out, so we didn’t have to worry about her overhearing.

  “Where you sleeping tonight?” he asked.

  “I thought I would check at the desk and see if they had any vacancies.”

  He gave me a hug and whispered in my ear: “Call Mallory.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to do, but I told him I would, said good night, and rode the elevator down to the front desk. The hotel was completely booked-it must have been the little bottles of free shampoo-so it was on to plan B for sleeping arrangements. Some of Papa’s optimism must have rubbed off on me. I called Mallory, and when she didn’t pick up, I hesitated before leaving a message on the answering machine. Then I found myself sounding more like my grandfather than myself, saying the things I probably should have said more often in my marriage to Mallory.

  “I just wanted to let you know that I love you,” I said. “Please, let’s talk in the morning.”

  Five minutes later I was in the backseat of another taxi headed up Eighth Avenue. There were two hotels on the West Side that got so much business from Saxton Silvers that they almost had to accommodate me, even if I did show up without a reservation. The cab was one of thousands in the city that had gone high-tech. A touch-screen monitor embedded into the bulkhead bombarded me with ads for credit cards and refinancing opportunities. Strapped into my seat, I felt like Alex undergoing aversion therapy in A Clockwork Orange. The ads stopped, and Taxi TV switched to actual television programming. I was hoping for the Food Network or maybe Lucy and Ricky. Naturally, I got a five-minute snippet from Bell Ringer. I suddenly had a change of plans.

  “Make that Fifty-seventh and First,” I told the driver.

  Chuck Bell had been featured two months earlier in New York magazine, with several pictures of him in his penthouse apartment. It turned out that we were practically neighbors. The cab dropped me in front of the building, and I asked the front desk attendant to ring Bell’s apartment for me.

  “Tell him it’s Michael Cantella.”

  Three minutes later, Chuck Bell and I were alone in the cavernous lobby, seated facing each other on matching chrome and strap-leather chairs. He seemed energized-hopeful that another Saxton Silvers insider was about to spill his guts.

  “Can we talk off the record?”

  “No,” he said. “But I’ll make you the same promise I made to my other source: I won’t reveal your identity.”

  “That’s actually what I’ve come here to talk about: your source.”

  He was suddenly cautious. “What about my source?”

  “I’m asking you to go on the air and state in no uncertain terms that Michael Cantella is not your source.”

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Because you know who your source is, and you know it’s not me.”

  He chuckled and shook his head. “I’m a journalist. I’m never going to reveal a source, not even under a court order.”

  “I’m simply asking you to reveal that I am not the source. Even Woodward and Bernstein were willing to do that much when they confirmed that Al Haig and others were not Deep Throat.”

  “And they were lucky it didn’t blow up in their faces. I’m not interested in playing a public process of elimination that will inevitably lead to the disclosure of my source. Besides,” he said with a wry smile, “how do I know you’re not a source for my source?”

  I watched him closely, wondering if he was merely taunting me or trying to tell me something. Bell rose, and so did I. He took a business card from his pocket and wrote a number on the back of it.

  “This is my cell,” he said. “Call me if you decide we should talk.”

  I didn’t take it. He placed it on the glass-topped table between us and left it there.

  “Be sure to watch me again tonight at eleven-thirty,” he said. “This story is getting so much bigger than FNN. I’m hosting a round-table discussion about Wall Street on network television.”

  He turned and headed to the elevator.

  When he was gone, I took the card with his cell number and tucked it into my wallet. I didn’t want to take it, but he’d managed to make me feel as though I’d need it-a feeling that triggered a sinking realization as I left his building. Chuck Bell was poison. Rat poison.

  And I was the little mouse running blindly through the maze.

  22

  ANDREA WAS DRESSED IN HER PAJAMAS, STANDING BEFORE THE BATHROOM mirror and confirming her suspicions: too much of her dark roots were showing. Michael Cantella had seemed fixated on them at the restaurant
.

  All her life Andrea had been an “exotic beauty,” turning heads with the high cheekbones and raven-black hair of her Native American mother and the striking green eyes of her Anglo father. The idea of going blond for the first time in her life had been kind of fun. The maintenance, however, was a pain in the ass. And a cheap-looking blond dye job wasn’t in keeping with her assumed image.

  There was a knock at the door. She pulled on her robe and let in her “fiancé.”

  “How did it go today?” he asked.

  Phil Shores was a smooth-talking James Bond wannabe who had managed to convince someone in a position of power that he could pull off playing an internal compliance officer at Saxton Silvers. He certainly wasn’t unattractive, but he was nowhere near the eye candy he thought he was-not at all Andrea’s type.

  “Not great,” she said. “It seems the word is out that we don’t sleep together.”

  “According to whom?”

  “Mallory Cantella told me.”

  “The ditz is smarter than we thought.”

  “She’s no ditz, and she’s not the only one who knows. Our maid let it slip.”

  “The maid? She came only once before we were told a housekeeper wasn’t in the budget.”

  “Apparently once was enough.”

  He leaned against the bathroom door frame, arms folded across his broad chest. “Well, we could always put the rumors to rest-and have a good time doing it.”

  “In your dreams.”

  Andrea switched off the light, breezed past him, and went to her bedroom. She knew Phil had been kidding, but not completely kidding.

  The jerk would nail anything blond.

  Andrea climbed into bed and grabbed the remote. She was tired of listening to Chuck Bell, but her last assignment of this very long day was to watch his round-table discussion at eleven thirty P.M. The guy was to Saxton Silvers what the National Enquirer was to celebrity breakups.

  Andrea watched as the show opened from Times Square with a shot of the famous high-tech display that wrapped around the cylindrical NASDAQ building. Saxton Silvers was a NYSE-listed company, but as if to underscore the pervasive impact of the story, the firm’s name was all over the NASDAQ marquee that lit up Broadway with up-to-the-minute financial newsflashes. The image switched abruptly to an interior shot of the NASDAQ MarketSite. Electronic screens inside the digital broadcast studio carried live updates from markets that were open for trading on the other side of the world. Finally, the introductory credits and voice-over stopped, and Chuck Bell took over from his seat behind the news desk.