In for a Ruble

by David Duffy

  The phone flew straight at my head until the cord jerked it back and it clattered onto the tabletop. That didn’t stop me from ducking.

  “Leitz! Chill!” Foos said.

  Leitz looked at the phone, then at his empty hand. He shook his big head.

  “Sorry.”

  So far the direct approach was working like a charm. I looked around to see what else he could throw. Foos read my mind.

  “Sebastian, sit down. We’re on your side. There’s more.”

  Leitz took his seat. He appeared deflated, almost like a punctured balloon. He’d been broken into, and as anyone would, he felt violated.

  “What more?” he said.

  Nosferatu’s blows ached. I thought about whether I needed this. I looked across at Foos. His face was impassive. But he was out of the line of fire.

  “Someone else planted a bug just like mine—eight weeks ago.”

  The red face turned purple. The outsized cheeks blew out like Dizzy Gillespie’s chops, except there was no joy in this visage. The fists disappeared beneath the tabletop. I planted my feet on the carpet.

  Leitz started to stand. Muscles stressed beneath the sweater as the tabletop rose. Coffee cups, coffee, pads and pencils, staplers and paper clips slid in my direction. I pushed the wheels of my chair back to the glass wall before three hundred pounds of granite slab flipped in slow motion, teetered at the top of the arc, and landed at my feet with a thump. It missed my knees by inches.

  Foos vacated the doorway as Leitz stomped out.

  “I warned you about the temper,” he said.

  “You also told me to go for maximum impact.”

  I stood, mainly to make sure I still could. No one on the trading floor below paid the least attention to any of us.

  * * *

  We waited about ten minutes, giving Leitz time to cool off, before going down to his office on the floor below. Foos seemed to know his way around. I asked him if he still advocated the direct approach. He grunted in response.

  The office was all glass. Two large windows looked south and east over Manhattan and on to Queens. Interior panes faced the trading floor. Leitz was at his desk, another stone table, on the phone. He hit a switch as we walked in and the inside glass turned frosty opaque. I stopped by the door, keeping my distance. He noted where I was standing and shook his head. His voice was tight and tense. He was fighting the temper and winning, for the moment.

  “All right, yes, dammit, I’ll call him,” he said into the receiver. “As soon as I finish this meeting.… No, I have no idea.… Yes, I know, but … Not like this, not now.”

  He put down the phone. “Sorry. Some issues with my son at his school. I owe you an apology,” he said to me. “I’ve always had a bad temper. Sometimes it gets the better of me.”

  “Damned near got the better of me,” I said.

  “You’re right. I have no excuse. I’m a very competitive person. I hate to lose. I hate the idea of being compromised. Especially by someone who cheats.”

  “I didn’t cheat. You asked me to find a way into your system.”

  “I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I was referring to the other guy. Our agreement stands, of course. I’ll have the Repin delivered.”

  “Fine. I’ve got a question about something on your trading floor.”

  “What…?”

  “Out here.”

  Leitz and Foos followed me out the door. There was a healthy buzz of activity. After 9:30, the market was open, and the underdressed legions were going about their daily battle.

  “Wait here,” I said and went back into the office.

  Nosferatu, if it was Nosferatu, had used the cleaners on the computers. That said he was opportunistic, he’d employed available talent. Unlikely, then, that he’d have an expert crew work the office. That didn’t mean his bug was the only one. I went over the furniture with my hands, feeling for anything out of place. Foos and Leitz watched from the door, Foos wearing a quizzical grin, Leitz an angry frown. I was on my hands and knees under his desk, which was pissing off my bruised muscles, when I found it. An electronic doodad, the size of a raisin, tucked in the crease where the frame met the tabletop. I peeled it off the stone, stood, and placed it on top of the desk. Leitz looked ready to blow. I put a finger to my lips and pointed outside. The two big men backed away.

  “Let’s go to a conference room,” I said.

  I thought Leitz was going to take a swing at me, but he turned and led the way to a small room on the side of the trading floor. I held up a hand as we entered and went through the search routine again. I didn’t expect to find anything and didn’t.

  “I think we’re okay here,” I said.

  “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!” Leitz exploded. “WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?”

  “I could ask you that,” I said. “You’ve got somebody’s attention.”

  He deflated again as he fell into a chair.

  “Serves me right. Arrogance … Well, let’s just say arrogance is dangerous.”

  Foos and I stayed by the door.

  “Let me ask you this,” Leitz said. “Foos told me about the men who beat you up, including the tall man, what do you call him?”

  “Nosferatu. Silent movie character, first vampire on film.”

  “I’ll have to rent it. You think he planted both bugs?”

  “The tap on the computers, certainly. The one on your desk, I’m not so sure. The cleaners didn’t say anything about that. Could have been someone else, like the guy who gave them the layout of your trading floor.”

  “You asked them?”

  “Yes.”

  “SHIT. How many goddamned problems do I have?”

  “You should have your entire office swept, to state the obvious.”

  “GODDAMMIT!” Leitz swung back and forth between the two of us, face red, fists balled. He was halfway out of his chair. “I knew something … I should have … SHIT!” I waited for another explosion, but it didn’t come. Instead, he froze in midrise, eyes closed tight, for thirty seconds or more.

  “Options,” he said, as he lowered himself slowly back into his chair. “What are my options?”

  Foos said, “I can tag a piece of data and we can follow it. But if these are sophisticated crooks, they’ll run us up and down a bunch of blind alleys.”

  “Nosferatu had a Belarusian accent,” I said. “A lot of tech thieves are based in the former Soviet countries. They’re smart, tough, and well protected. Even if we tracked them down, probably not much you could do. Legally, I mean.”

  “Illegally?” Leitz asked.

  “I didn’t mean it that way. Not much you could do, period.”

  “So I’m a powerless victim of some shady guys in Belarus? I refuse to accept that.”

  Americans like to believe they are masters of their fate and the rest of the world is irrelevant. No percentage in pointing out that brand of arrogance. I was thinking about whether to broach the other anomaly in his computer network when a middle-aged woman leaned in the door. “Your sister’s on line two. Third time she’s called. Says it’s—”

  “I know, urgent,” Leitz said. He punched a button on the phone. “Hello, Julia. I’m warning you, this is already a bad day. And watch your language. I have company.”

  A nasal twang blew out of the speaker. “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to get through for an hour. Haven’t you heard? New bidder. Sixty-seven-point-five billion. Stock of both companies are up. Street’s looking for a bidding war. We need to get out a statement—right away. I sent you a draft. Check your e-mail.”

  Leitz pushed another button on the phone and looked at me. “I suppose my e-mail is compromised along with everything else.”

  “Afraid so.”

  I thought he was going to punch the phone, but he held back. The voice from the speaker became increasingly agitated.

  “Sebastian!? Are you there? What’s going on? We need to do something, dammit! The stocks are trading … Sebastian? SEBASTIAN?!”<
br />
  Leitz pushed a button gently. “I’m here, Julia. I’ve got some other issues at the moment.”

  “What other issues? What are you talking about? We’ve got to respond. We can’t give them the whole day. The press will—”

  “I’ve called a meeting for eleven thirty, here. Bankers, lawyers, you too. We’ll review where we stand.”

  “Eleven thirty? Where we stand? That’s two hours from now. We can’t wait. We can’t—”

  “Eleven thirty.” Leitz’s tone cut off further argument. “I assume you can make it?”

  “I … Shit. I’ve got … Dammit. There’s … Hold on.”

  The phone went quiet. Leitz said to us, “My sister, who is also my PR adviser on this deal, lives life in a permanent state of high anxiety and overcommitment.” He pulled a paper from the shirt pocket under his sweater and held it out to me. “This happened just before you arrived.”

  I took the paper and retreated back to a safe distance. It was a Dow Jones story, timed at 7:48 A.M.

  $67.5 Billion Bid for TV Networks

  A new consortium has offered $67.5 billion for two TV networks, topping a $62 billion offer from a group led by hedge fund manager Sebastian Leitz.

  A spokeswoman for the Leitz group declined to comment and Leitz himself did not return calls to his office.

  Wall Street sources, who have been following the situation, say they expect a full-scale bidding war to develop.

  “They’re not making any more TV networks,” one institutional shareholder said. “We haven’t seen the end of this. I expect the price to go sky high.”

  The market appears to agree. Shares of both networks’ parent companies were sharply higher in premarket trading.

  Julia Leitz came back on the line, shattering the brief silence.

  “I can do eleven thirty. I may be a few minutes late. But I still think—”

  “Good. See you then,” Leitz said and disconnected. He looked at the two of us.

  “I can’t operate this way.”

  “They already know about your eleven-thirty meeting,” I said. “They’ll be looking to see what you do after that.”

  “I’ll tag something coming out of the meeting,” Foos said. “Give them the afternoon to pick it up, we’ll see where it goes.”

  “You could try spreading some misinformation,” I said. “Although my altercation last night says they’ll be on the lookout for that.”

  Leitz shook his head. “Too many people involved in this thing. Let’s just get back to normal so I can function.”

  I handed back the Dow Jones story. “I take it this wasn’t a knockout punch.”

  He shook his head. “The margins got thinner, but no, not a knockout. Which begs the question of what they’re up to.” He looked at me. “This is the deal of a lifetime for me. I never dreamed I’d be in this position. I’m not going to go down easily, in fact, I don’t plan to go down at all.”

  “I hesitate to say this, but you’ve made an assumption there’s no evidence to support.”

  “What? What are you talking about?”

  “You assume that whoever placed the bug is working for a rival bidder.”

  “That seems obvious, doesn’t it?”

  “Possible, maybe even probable. But, as I said, no evidence.”

  “What else, then?”

  “You’re looking at this from your perspective. That’s not where the bad guy’s coming from. He—or she—is doing what he’s doing for his own reasons. His perspective, hers maybe, not yours, is the one that’s relevant.”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  “Only what I said. Be careful about assumptions.”

  “IT’S AN OPPOSING BIDDER!”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t going to win the argument, and I didn’t really care much whether I did.

  “I need your help,” Leitz said.

  “I’ve done what we agreed.”

  “I know. But you can find the bastards. I’ll take it from there.”

  “Not that easy.”

  Foos felt my ambivalence. “That wasn’t the agreement, Sebastian.”

  “Find the bastards,” he said. “Just tell me who they are. Give me a name.”

  “Arrogance talking,” I said.

  I expected fire but I got a hard, level stare from the kidney pools.

  “A good trader always knows what he can get from a deal,” Leitz said.

  “A good card player knows when the price of seeing the next card is too high.”

  “I’m prepared to pay for the help I’m asking. State your price.”

  I don’t know why I did it. Maybe because I was already in. Maybe because I knew I wasn’t going to allow Nosferatu to get away with beating me up. Maybe because a guy like Leitz gets the competitive juices flowing. I was in the game, and I wasn’t about to fold, especially when I held a couple of aces, including one up the sleeve. Maybe just because I finally was intrigued and didn’t have anything better to do for the next few days. Or maybe because I too, found myself in a position to get something I never dreamed of. I might have told Leitz those are good times to think twice, go home and sleep it over.

  I put down my next bet. “One million dollars. And the Malevich.”

  That caught him by surprise. The kidney pools widened. He started to shake his head.

  I said, “Hear me out.”

  He stopped.

  “One million dollars, cash—if I’m successful. Plus, the Malevich—four months, one third of the year, on loan, in perpetuity. You own it, I get to enjoy it, part of the time. You sell it, that’s your prerogative, but I get ten percent as compensation for loss of use.”

  The laugh that exploded across the room almost blew both Foos and me through the frosted glass. Foos steadied his feet and smiled.

  When the laugh softened to a chuckle, Leitz said, “You’d make a good trader. You’ve got creativity—and chutzpah. But you’re trying to take advantage of having me over the proverbial barrel.”

  “And when you’re about to clip some guy on the other side, you stop, revisit the Golden Rule, tell yourself that’s not the Christian thing to do, and walk away?”

  He was still smiling. “Touché. But what you want is too complicated. The insurance alone…” He shook his big head. “It’ll never work.”

  Mathematicians are good card players because they can calculate odds. They’re not always the best psychologists.

  “That’s it then. Good luck.” I looked at Foos. “See you back downtown.”

  I was out on the trading floor when Leitz called, “Wait!”

  I returned to the door.

  “You’d walk out on a million dollars?” he said.

  “A prospective million. I have to find the guys who bugged you to earn it. That won’t be easy, as I said. But, yes, and here’s why: My last client paid me seven hundred thousand to find his daughter, who was never really missing to begin with, and now wishes he never met me. His wife was murdered, the girl’s a borderline basket case, and he’s got one foot in the slammer, although that’s not my fault. It ended badly for everybody—including me. I lost something more valuable than money. The fee wasn’t enough. I’m sorry to tell you, this has a similar feel.”

  I had to hand it to him, he didn’t hesitate. I think he was almost smiling. “Okay. But, the Malevich…?”

  “You didn’t listen to what I just said. I’ve already been beaten up once on your nickel. I’m going to be compensated on my terms in ways that satisfy me, however difficult and complicated. If that doesn’t make sense to you, I’m sorry. One more thing, while we’re at it—if you really want my help, I go about things as I see fit. You hire me, I’m in to the finish. I talk to whomever I want. I find whomever bugged your computers, I earn my fee. What happens with your TV bid, or your other affairs—that’s your concern.”

  He hesitated this time. I turned to go.

  “Stop,” Leitz said.

  I turned back one more time.

  He said, “Te
ll me this. You charged the last guy seven hundred thousand. You want a million from me, plus the Malevich. What’s the difference?”

  My turn to smile. “The last guy didn’t try to crush my legs under his conference table. You get a hazard premium.”

  CHAPTER 7

  I should have kept walking. To think I could find the guys who bugged Leitz was my own brand of hubris. To think I could find them without suffering consequences was hubris squared. Then again, to think I began to understand what I was getting into was blind stupid. We have another proverb—every fox praises his own tail.

  Foos said, “You still playing him?”

  “Some. This was an inside job. The data trail you found. The guy who bribed the cleaner knew the office layout, told him where to place the bug. Employee, client, family, friend, someone Leitz does business with.”

  Leitz hadn’t wanted to hear any of that. I’d mostly dismissed the employee possibility on the grounds that he or she wouldn’t need the risk of involving a third party. Leitz confirmed he’d only lost two staff in the last year, neither on bad terms. Clients rarely, if ever, visited the office. Vendors were a possibility, but Nosferatu would have had to obtain a list from somewhere. I asked about the bankers and lawyers descending at 11:30.

  “All trusted advisers,” he said.

  “All potentially for sale. Put the trading floor and all offices off limits. Have them escorted from the elevator to the conference room and back again.”

  He didn’t like that idea either, but he said he’d follow my advice.

  I broached the subject of family.

  “IMPOSSIBLE!” he shouted, temperature headed skyward. “Don’t even … None of my…”

  “Any of them pissed off at you?”

  “OF COURSE NOT!”

  That answer came too fast.

  “Anybody under pressure, financial, personal or otherwise?”

  “NO!”

  Much too fast. I shook my head. “You’re not being candid. That’s not going to help them or me.”

  “Chill, man,” Foos said to his friend. “All in the Big Dick anyway.”

  Leitz looked from me to him. Big Dick is Foos’s nickname for what he calls the Data Intelligence Complex, the network of computers and databases—government and private—that store just about everything we do that involves anything electronic, from our purchases and paydays to our dental records and divorces. It is all there—death and taxes too.