The Banker's Dilemma: She promised him Paris in the spring

by Roman Klee

  Lapis Lazuli and Viridian. Pyrite. Black sable and hog hair. Gaussian blur.

  The tubes of oil paints had arrived, together with the brushes. Nathan had a selection of palette knives, a small wooden artist’s model and bottles of mineral spirit.

  The truth was, he knew nothing about how to paint. He realized it was not a skill anyone could acquire, much less just pick up in the space of twelve months. Still, his reservations did not stop him from buying copies of Artists’ World and then ordering from the back pages, things artists used in their studios.

  He stared at the huge blank canvas resting on the beech-framed easel. There was not a mark, not a speck of paint, not a smudge, a drip or oil stain, nothing yet that indicated he had started work.

  Of course, his picture could be anything he wanted it to be. But he was not sure what, if anything he could actually paint.

  Nathan found waiting for his muse to make herself known, the most difficult part of the creative process. Maybe she would never turn up. He hoped to have done enough to bring about a change, sitting on the dock, watching the whales blow foaming seawater into the air. Walking on the beach late at night, by the light of the moon. Swimming naked in the pool.

  Maybe the wait would be much longer than he bargained for. Did he need to call his therapist? Let your anger express itself in pictures, she said. But when given the chance, he never turned up for the Saturday morning art therapy class. He felt too tired, too conflicted, too weighed down with work commitments.

  But of course he didn’t want to face up to the task, he didn’t want to show any weaknesses. Even if it was one that was not vital to his survival.

  He squeezed two-inch lengths of paint from every tube in his collection onto his palette board. It would be a rainbow. Or maybe not. A black cloud possibly.

  On Saturday, Carla invited him to have dinner with Budd and Jade up at the big house. He was excited, because he would finally get to meet the great man. Nathan had no idea what they would talk about, but he hoped Jade would put them all at ease. He very much doubted Budd was used to talking to little guys like him; people who had nothing to show for years of hard work.

  The calendar on the kitchen wall, had one day circled in red ink. The twenty-ninth. It was literally a red-letter day. Nathan was scheduled to make a deposition via a videoconference link, in the S.E.C.’s civil case against Pete Cunningham. How the tables had turned!

  But Nathan was not looking forward to it, because it reminded him all too easily of the last time he turned up to a New York City court to tell his side of the story.

  The bad memories had never truly been erased. Not only did Nathan lose the case, but he associated it with everything that had gone wrong in his life.

  Certainly, he was partly responsible, because he was one of the guys who’d helped sell monstrous financial products that should have been outlawed. Though he was only doing his job. He had to earn a living like anyone else. He followed orders, his position in the firm meant he had no power to question what his bosses directed him to do.

  But he paid the price and as far as he was concerned, it was a very heavy one. Certainly much higher than anything paid by the guys he used to work with. Actually, not one of them was out of pocket. Most of his former colleagues on the DPG desk had moved on to other firms. Some joined or set up their own hedge funds.

  Although none of them traded the old structured credit products anymore, because those instruments were too toxic. It was like trying to deal in radioactive waste—everyone was a seller there were no natural buyers. Nathan’s old colleagues left the firm after cashing in their stock options, banking nice fat cash bonuses, fine references and the chance to monetize the Solomon cachet.

  Nathan on the other hand, lost everything he had worked for, until Antonio Orofino stepped in and offered the kind of special help that came with very long strings attached.

  Nathan’s family had splintered. His wife had left him to live with a guy more than twenty years her junior and his children only spoke to him via Skype and FaceTime.

  But he was starting to turn things around. He was now allied to the great and the good. He had a chance to make up for past mistakes. He was no longer on the losing team.

  Solomon Brothers had been brought to book. Budd Wright would see the right thing was done. And now he had enough evidence to put Orofino behind bars. That would finally get the guy off his back.

  Even though he never started with a hard and fast objective in mind, he was surprised it had all worked out well in the end.

  Now he could start to rebuild. Change really was good. Growth was good. He could remake his life, do the things he wanted—once he decided what they were.

  Nathan suddenly stopped arranging the paintbrushes in the empty food cans, and listened … there were footsteps upstairs.

  Prussian Blue, Violet Dioxine. Mineral spirit.

  He turned around to see Bob on his way down to the kitchen.

  “Sleep okay?” Nathan called out.

  Bob came into the studio.

  “Not bad Nat, not bad at all. I see you made progress,” he said looking around the studio. “Miller will be here in under an hour. I’m gonna check on Dave.”

  Bob went out to the rear porch, to see if his partner had fallen asleep on the job.

  The District Attorney’s office confirmed that Nathan had been admitted into the witness protection program the day after they announced Antonio Orofino’s arrest.

  It was probably one of the easiest gigs the guys from the FBI had ever been on. It wasn’t every day they got to spend time on an island in the Atlantic, where dolphin and whale watching came free. As the sun rose, they could jog on the beach. And later, help themselves to a beer or two and take a swim in the pool.

  When Miller arrived, he continued where he had left off the previous day. He was interested in the events that led up to the drowning of Todd Brinkley, the banker who fell overboard from the Figa d’Oro, as well as Jay Frostman’s cardiac arrest at Henry Winston’s.

  Nathan had received an anonymous email containing a shaky cell phone video of the Brinkley incident. It clearly showed Cacciatore lifting and throwing the banker over the side of the yacht.

  Miller also wanted more detail about the sighting of Wright in Switzerland and additional background on activities at the Clinique Alpha-Omega.

  Nathan didn’t object when Miller went up to the villa to speak with Budd and his protection squad left to go for a swim. But it was a breach of security protocol, leaving Nathan alone and vulnerable.

  He walked out onto the porch to get some fresh air. And that was when he thought he heard something move in the bushes.

  Δ = T +5.8.3

  “Hi, it’s good to see you again.” Nathan turned around. He recognized the voice after the first syllable.

  It was Thom.

  “You look surprised.”

  “I thought you were in Montauk.”

  “No, you’re wrong about that. Let me explain.”

  Thom insisted he had been waiting outside Nathan’s apartment at Saint James Place all along.

  Then he explained why the Finda-Friend app was not infallible. Nathan’s app only indicated that a phone belonging to Thom was in Montauk. Whenever Thom gave people a cell number, he made sure the phone forwarded incoming calls to a second phone he carried with him.

  It was a very basic security workaround.

  Then Thom got down to the reason for turning up unannounced on the Isla de Ballenas.

  “I have someone you need to meet. He’s kind of an old friend.”

  “I really don’t want to see anyone.”

  “I think you’ll change your mind. Does the name Antonio Orofino mean anything?”

  Nathan was at a complete loss to understand what was going on. Had Thom been working for Orofino all along? Was he really one of those guys who op
erated in the shadows, was he a member of the dark forces? The idea was madness.

  Nathan knew he could not object. Thom guided him down to the beach, where a small submersible was waiting. It was just the right size for making a quick getaway undetected.

  The dope haze was so intense, Nathan felt like he needed a gas mask. If his eyes didn’t deceive him, he could see a scantily clad young lady, stroking a baby tiger on her lap. As the smoke partially cleared, he saw naked bodies draped all over white leather couches.

  They looked like a bunch of stoners to Nathan, who thought he was being led either to a den for snorting cocaine or a shooting gallery. Now he understood why bald, fat guys loved to buy super-yachts; they were the best babe magnets ever invented.

  His last visit on the Figa d’Oro had not been like this. Then he remembered, it did feature a lifeless body at the end of the evening. Nathan looked away, as two girls with model like figures, helped each other into nuns’ habits. In one section of the main deck salon, Nathan spotted two ceiling to floor poles and already guessed what they were used for.

  He entered Antonio Orofino’s private office for the first and possibly, the last time. His former benefactor greeted him enthusiastically and indicated for Nathan to sit down in a black leather and chrome chair.

  Nathan was not really listening to his one time friend, because he was distracted by the contents of a glass fronted display cabinet, directly behind Orofino’s desk.

  He had to do a double take. If he wasn’t mistaken, it contained a collection of gold-plated dildos of every shape and size imaginable. They were bizarre and looked totally out of place. But considering what else was going on all around him, maybe not.

  Then he noticed a large engraved plaque above the cabinet, which read: Remember the Rule of 3Fs (if it Floats, Flies or Fornicates hire don’t buy) followed by the line, Don’t forget, rules were made to be broken.

  “Those guys can’t do a minute’s work without a joint or two,” said Orofino, clearly amused by the look on his guest’s face.

  Then he added, “I know what you’re thinking Nathan. Why oh why did I buy, when the rule says to hire? Well, I’ll let you figure that one out.”

  Embarrassed, Nathan quickly changed the subject.

  “I thought they locked you up.”

  “Yeah, for just a couple hours. I have good lawyers.”

  “Did you jump bail?”

  “Look, did you think I was gonna spend the next twenty years, sitting in some goddamn prison cell twenty-three hours a day, eating pig chow, pissing and crapping in the corner?”

  From Antonio’s point of view, it didn’t seem like an attractive proposition.

  “Not a single goddamned CEO from those crooked banks went to jail. I don’t plan on being the boss of the first hedge fund to be made an example of. No one’s gonna put my head on a stick, wave it about and then call it quits.”

  That was certainly true. It was as if the CEOs of banks operated according to their own set of rules.

  “So you want to testify against me?”

  Nathan nodded, but not in a convincing way.

  “That ain’t gonna happen now. They have no evidence, nothing that stands up in court. You know it’s a zero-sum game.”

  Nathan felt at times, it was more like a dim-sum game.

  “I mean, I did great, I made billions from L.A.Y.D.E.E.s. The other guys lost their friggin’ shirts. It’s sad you turned against me.”

  So that answered one question Nathan had at the back of his mind after watching Orofino play poker on Anastasia.

  “We’re safe out here, these are international waters.” And Orofino explained that one of the side benefits of owning a floating palace, was total freedom to host private poker parties. “The Feds can’t touch us. They want to, but they can’t.”

  The game aboard Anastasia, now made sense. Nathan realized that the one-percenters were not like everyone else. And he began to question himself again.

  How in the world did he think he could ever get back at a guy like Orofino? The rich didn’t just have money they had power and influence. The deck was stacked against little guys like Nathan.

  “You’re gonna be surprised by what I tell you. I invested in you, and you didn’t come through for me. But I’m a fair man. You can tell me how you plan to level up, at the end.”

  Antonio Orofino began by explaining a few home truths about Budd Wright. What really motivated the guy and why Nathan’s faith in him was misplaced.

  “Do you know the definition of a hypocrite?”

  Nathan shook his head. He assumed Orofino didn’t expect an answer. “A hypocrite is a bozo who acts like he’s a bad ass, when all the time, he’s really a saint,” said Orofino with a chuckle. “See, the wizard of Villa Esmeralda, is a financial alchemist, possibly the best in history.”

  Orofino expanded his thoughts, using gold as an example.

  “In public this guy says he hates the yellow metal. And for some time he was on the money. Then the gold price skyrocketed. In public, he kept to the same line. But what do you think he did in private?”

  Nathan shrugged. He had no idea and no longer cared. He had only one concern; how to get off Orofino’s yacht.

  “They tell me Wright built the world’s largest private vault on his island. And he’s storing hundreds of tons of gold down there. No one knows how much. But he’s the biggest buyer on dips.”

  The only building work Nathan knew about, was the remodeling ordered by Jade. There was no underground bunker.

  “They say he organizes treasure hunts. He walks around in pants rolled up to his knees, carrying a shovel and bucket, and buries real gold bars and doubloons. Trouble is, he forgets where he hid the stuff.”

  Nathan knew this was not true.

  “Hey, I gotta tell you. Budd Wright’s a few fries short of a Happy Meal.”

  Once again, Nathan could not understand why Orofino was making up stories.

  “You wanna know his reason for hoarding gold. The answer’s simple—he’s gonna create a new world currency using the yellow metal. He and his buddies will control the largest stack of gold in private hands, more than the central banks. Heck, those bozos got advice from some chief bozo in England—and they sold their yellow stuff at the bottom of the market. I mean what a bunch of friggin’ dumb-ass losers!”

  Nathan looked skeptical.

  “Okay, I see you don’t believe me. What if I told you that your financial guru and hero, was lending stock in his own company, so the hedgies could go short. Would you change your mind?”

  Nathan needed to think about that one. The way Wright behaved, gave the impression that he had knowingly taken part in a massive market manipulation scam. But Nathan could accept what he did, because he was driven by a much bigger objective—to close down the wild and out of control trading activities at Solomon.

  The Brothers had engineered the best trading system on the Street. They piled the bets so high, that when the inevitable collapse was near, they threatened to bring down the entire financial system, unless they received a massive government bailout. It was a bet they thought no politician had the balls to call. And of course they were right. But only up to a point.

  “You know the saying, what goes around, comes around?”

  Nathan nodded. He sensed that Orofino was really enjoying himself, because things had come full circle; the firm he had left all those years ago on bad terms, was finally no more.

  Antonio then revealed the nature of the partners’ pay back—their secret Special Opportunities Trust Fund in Liechtenstein, totally blew up, billions of dollars vanished in less than the blink of an eye.

  “I mean, you expect their own trustees to look out for them!”

  Nathan didn’t want to burst Orofino’s bubble, but he was sure the Brothers had been well compensated, thanks to the U.S. government’s
generous bailout program.

  “So you think Budd Wright’s gonna clean up that sewer he calls Wall Street, huh?”

  Nathan tried not to look too disappointed.

  “You’re wrong. They can have all the Senate Committee investigations they like, but in the end it comes down to one thing—who’s got the biggest stack of chips.”

  That was certainly true, because more was never enough.

  “Shuttering Solomon was just a way of getting back at those L.A.Y.D.E.E. creations—I mean they were massive piles of steaming crap. And for Wright, very personal too.”

  Nathan listened with an increasing sense of dread.

  “Talk about playing both sides of the Street. Gotta hand it to the guy, he’s a smooth operator.”

  And since Antonio was in the mood for handing out advice, he added, “See, Nathan, it’s no use following the money, you gotta stick your greased up finger on the money printing button and press down real hard.”

  He uttered another little chuckle, while Nathan sat stony faced, refusing to see the joke. Then Orofino pressed a real button within a concealed control panel on his desk. And a screen appeared on the wall opposite.

  “Here’s something for you to watch before you go to sleep.”

  Nathan wanted to look anywhere but at the picture of his precious Maserati. He knew what was coming. Two men dressed in protective gear, doused his car with gasoline. A couple of lit matches and then boom, a massive fireball. And with it, every last piece of hope went up in flames.

  Orofino remained unmoved.

  He simply said, “Tomorrow we’re gonna discuss how you pay me back. Yep, you could say it’s settlement day. And guess what? I’m the judge, jury and executioner!”

  Nathan turned around, looking for Thom. But he was not there. He could scarcely believe the guy had betrayed him.

  “You know Nathan, to get ahead in life, even if you like the other person, you have to dump on them. And you never did. That’s why you’ll never be a success. Let’s take a walk.”