Too Close to Home

by Andrew Grant

  “None taken. I don’t necessarily disagree. That’s why shorting’s illegal in some countries. It’s controlled here from time to time, when the economy’s struggling. I’m just describing the game. I don’t make the rules. And don’t forget, these transactions keep people in jobs. Generate taxes. Help pay for roads and schools. And soldiers.”

  “That’s fair. But here’s another question. Can shorting be used as a weapon? Could you use it to attack a company?”

  “Sure.” Ro sipped some more water. “It happens. There are cases where a high-profile investor doesn’t like a CEO, for example, so he hits the share price to drive the guy out. Or he may think the dividends they’re paying are too small, and shorts the stock to punish them.”

  “One investor could do this?”

  “It depends on the size of the company. How big of a stake the investor has, or can borrow. How much clout he has in the industry. And he could also add some unsavory tactics into the mix.”

  “Unsavory, how?”

  “Well, say you want to make sure a certain share price falls, and you get the ball rolling by selling your stake. Then you help build momentum by having a quiet word in the right ears. Not necessarily a truthful word, if you know what I mean. It’s not legal. But it happens.”

  I stood up. “This could be it. How we nail him. Thank you, Ro. You’re an angel.”

  “Wait a minute.” Ro stopped moving. “Who are we nailing now?”

  “Some asshole. Apparently he shorted some stock, and that ruined a guy I met. I quite like the guy, but now he’s in a heap of trouble. Evidently some retaliatory fire-starting occurred, which has taken all the attention away from what the asshole did in the first place.”

  “Does this asshole have a name?”

  “Jimmy Klinsman, I’ve been told.”

  “Oh. Well, that’s interesting.”

  “Do you know him?”

  “Not personally. Apparently he’s known as Jimmy the Jester. That’s partly due to the unpredictable trades he has a habit of making. And also because people who’ve met him say they feel like he’s laughing at them, even when he’s not.”

  “Like I said, he’s an asshole.”

  “He most likely is. But have you considered that maybe he didn’t do anything wrong? Maybe he had better instincts, and was right to bet that the price would go down?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “The price shouldn’t have gone down. Something made that happen. I thought it was him, dumping shares. Now I’m wondering if he helped his cause by spreading a few lies.”

  “How can you be so sure about the price, Paul? Have you been going to business school on the sly?”

  “As if. No. But I know that the company whose shares Klinsman shorted makes sensitive equipment for telecom networks. It was about to announce that the government had disqualified its only rival—a big Chinese corporation—from bidding for a bunch of huge contracts. Its ship was coming in, big.”

  “And your friend—the guy who got ruined—he knew about this impending announcement? And he bought shares based on commercially confidential information?”

  “He’s not a friend. Just a guy I met.”

  “Whatever your degree of bromance, you know what this means? Your guy definitely broke the law. We don’t know if Klinsman did or not.”

  “We don’t know. But I’m going to find out.”

  “Why do you care?”

  I shrugged. “Look. Here’s a guy trying to scrape two bucks together to keep his own business afloat. He wound up losing his house because of something Klinsman did. And to what end? So that the guy could build an even bigger heap of cash. Buy more expensive wine that he probably won’t ever even drink.”

  “None of that’s illegal.”

  “Maybe not. But it seems like there’s wrong on both sides. It’s not fair that only one guy’s getting punished.”

  “I can see that. I think you’re on a hiding to nothing, though. But still, let me know how you get on.”

  “Will do. Thanks for your help, as always. And when I come back, I’m bringing a chair. I’m serious.”

  Ro stepped back from her desk. “I have an idea. You don’t like the way I’ve set up my office. So how’s this? I’ll pull my old treadmill out of storage. Put it next to the new one. And next time, you can keep pace with me. I’ll talk as long as you walk. Then visiting me will be good for your body as well as your mind.”

  “No, thanks.” I shook my head. “I’m not a fan of treadmills. I knew a guy who had a nasty accident on one once.”

  “An accident? On a treadmill? Really?”

  “Well, not really. But we sure made it look that way.”

  When I was on leave from the army one time years ago, and making a rare visit to my father’s—which I generally tried to avoid because he was always nagging me to join him in his business—I heard that a friend from high school had been arrested for ripping off a bunch of banks. This was back in the early days of the Internet and online accounts, and he’d found a back-door way to siphon a few odd cents from a huge number of customers, which taken together netted him a lot of cash. He’d got caught by the FBI in a sting operation and was out on bail, awaiting trial. His father was rich and influential, so he got a buddy to write an op-ed piece in The New York Times. He tried to position what had happened as a victimless crime. Each customer’s loss was tiny, and the banks were all insured, anyway. So if no one had really lost anything, there was no harm and no foul. The argument didn’t work, of course, and the book got thrown at my friend, but the concept fascinated me. I’ve thought about it a lot over the years. And now if Atkinson was right that there was no link between Klinsman and the Chinese, and Ro was correct that short-selling wasn’t illegal, it seemed that the position had been flipped. Len Hendrie was a crimeless victim.

  The same thought kept rattling around my head as I made the long trek through the tunnels in the Bryant Park subway stop, wedged myself into a corner seat on a grubby D train, then set off walking south on Lafayette. I couldn’t shake the rage I was feeling toward Klinsman. He was Hendrie’s buddy. Hendrie had told him about the telecom opportunity. He could have invested in the normal way. He could have passed altogether. But he chose another path, knowing it would hurt his friend. Maybe even destroy him. I was still trying to figure out how a guy could live with himself after doing a thing like that when I reached the front of the courthouse. Then I noticed a woman heading down the steps, talking on her phone. She moved with the controlled elegance of a dancer or an athlete. She had dark blond hair, which I knew was her natural color. It was shoulder length, but she was wearing it tied back, and her black Burberry raincoat wasn’t fastened over her navy suit. She had on a white blouse. Navy pumps. And a burgundy purse slung over her shoulder with a matching leather briefcase.

  I didn’t have to guess her age. I knew it to the minute. There was no need to estimate her height. I knew it to a sixteenth of an inch. I knew the sound of her voice. What made her laugh. What made her mad. Or what had done so twenty years ago, when I thought we’d spend our lives together. Before I surprised her with my decision to join the army. After which she never spoke to me again.

  Her name was Marian Sinclair. Our houses were close together, growing up, and throughout our teenage years we were inseparable. I knew she was the one for me. I never had eyes for anyone else. Her heart was set on law school, and she wanted me to go to the same one. I’ve spent countless hours in some of the nastiest places in the world wondering what had happened to her. Whether she followed through on her dream to become a lawyer. Now, unless she was in some kind of trouble, I guess I had my answer.

  I’ve spent even more hours imagining a time when we could reconnect. When we could rekindle what we lost. What I destroyed, with my impulsive decision to spite my father. I’ve dreamed of her countless times, from thousands of miles away. Now sh
e was within ten feet of me. My first impulse was to leap up the steps and sweep her off her feet. My second was to throw myself at her feet and beg forgiveness. Anything for the chance to pick up where we’d left off.

  It was force of habit alone that kept me moving. Marian clearly had business at the courthouse. I had to protect my cover at all costs. That was more than instinct. It was part of my DNA now. It meant I had to make sure she didn’t see me going anywhere near the employees’ entrance, so I swung to my right, crossed Centre Street, and looped around behind a group of Dutch tourists that was loitering in front of the Triumph of the Human Spirit statue. I peered out between the tallest pair. Marian was stationary, one step lower than she’d been when I first spotted her, with her phone low down by her side. She was looking in the direction I’d gone. She stayed stock-still for a moment, like she was frozen in time. Then she brought her phone back up to her ear, continued down the steps, turned to her right, and was carried away from me by the tide of pedestrians.

  The smart move would have been to abort my visit to the courthouse that day. The move I wanted to make was to chase after Marian. But when the tourists moved off—with pizza apparently next on their itinerary—I ignored both impulses. I crossed back over Centre Street and carried on around to the back of the building. It wasn’t just that I had cleaning to do. There was information that I needed, and the courthouse was the only place I could get it.

  We figured it was unlikely that anyone would actually be watching the house, but old habits die hard. Robson filled his travel mug with tea, grabbed his backpack, and was out of the door before 0800 the next morning. That was two full hours before my appointment with Rooney for the alarm system quote.

  Rooney arrived at 0959, which he probably considered punctual. I considered it fourteen minutes late, but I wasn’t mad. I was adapting. Rooney had brought a panel van, not the Ford that Robson had seen him with in Rye on Thursday night. It was navy blue, spotlessly clean, and shiny, and there was a gold shield–style logo painted on the side. I watched from the living room window as it pulled up directly outside and Rooney jumped down from the passenger side. He was holding a clipboard, and he waited for a guy I’d not seen before to join him from the driver’s side before climbing the steps to the front door and ringing the bell.

  “Good morning, gentlemen.” I opened the door wide. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Good to see you again, Mr. McGinn.” Rooney shook my hand. “I’ve brought an expert with me. Mike Parrie. Old houses like this one are more complex, structurally, and I like to get everything right the first time. No surprises down the road, that way.”

  “Sounds good to me. I don’t like surprises. Not when I’m on the wrong end of them, anyway.” I smiled at the new guy. “Come on in. You might want to find a better place to park, though.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll only be an hour.” Rooney winked at me. “Twenty years on the job buys a lot of slack. And the twenty-five percent blue discount I offer doesn’t hurt, either. No one wants to blow that.”

  “How about a green discount?”

  “Don’t worry.” Rooney mimed a salute. “I didn’t forget you served. I’ll look after you when it comes time for the price. I look after all my clients. You saw my office. No frills, no waste, that’s my motto.”

  I stood aside and the others slipped off their shoes and filed past. Rooney paused midway along the hall and patted the wall, then stamped his foot.

  “Nice house. Solid.” He smiled appreciatively. “I used to have a license in Connecticut. No need now—I get more than enough work in New York—but I had this one client. Built himself a brand-new house. Spent a fortune on it. Wanted an alarm, and a safe. I put in the alarm for him—top of the line. Gave the safe contract to someone else. And guess what happened? The house was built for such shit, two weeks later a douche drove straight through the wall in an old Grand Cherokee. Cleaned the place out. Even took the safe.”

  “I don’t think that’s likely to happen here.”

  “Guess not.” Rooney turned to move. “Unless they’ve got a tank.”

  Rooney’s expert, Parrie, led the way. He was thorough. He went through every room, every corridor, every closet, and made detailed notes in a black moleskine with dotted pages to make it easier to sketch out diagrams. He seemed to pay the most attention to entry points, actual or potential, such as doors and windows. I also saw him plotting backup locations that could pick up anyone who’d managed to breach the perimeter. His focus seemed to be on efficiency, as he was always looking for single points that could reinforce multiple vulnerable areas. He also scanned the walls with a handheld device. It had a gauge in the center surrounded by half a dozen colored lights, and it emitted a variety of angry-sounding tones as he moved it across the surface. In some areas he made three or four passes, then scribbled furiously in his book. Rooney didn’t make a single mark on the sheet of paper clipped to his board, but I guess carrying it around made him feel managerial.

  “That’s a clever machine.” Rooney noticed me watching his guy. “Multipurpose. Gives us clues about what’s hidden in the walls. Structural beams in unexpected places. Water pipes where they shouldn’t be. Knob-and-tube cabling, obsolete stuff like that. Knowing in advance helps keep the installation problem-free for us, which keeps the price down for you.”

  Parrie finished his inspection in the basement with the electrical panel. He closed it up, scratched his temple with his pen, and turned to look at me. “Have you had any work done recently? Rewiring? TV distribution? CAT 5 cabling for a bunch of computers?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “I only recently inherited the place. I just moved in. I’ve done nothing to it. Why?”

  “I was getting weird readings in some of the rooms. It was like there were all kinds of extra circuits running through the walls. The spacing was odd, too. Not like anything you’d expect. And not connected back to the panel, either.”

  “Will that be a problem?”

  “It shouldn’t be. It’s just odd. I thought if you’d had work done, maybe you used a European contractor? They have different ways of cabling things there. Also, you’re ex-army, right? I’ve seen some real botch jobs on some of the bases I’ve worked on. Things that wouldn’t be allowed near a civilian installation. I wondered if you’d done any modifications yourself.”

  “I’ve never even picked up a screwdriver.” That wasn’t entirely true. I had temporarily hooked up some cameras and a microphone in the course of helping a corrupt developer find new accommodations at the Otisville Correctional Facility. But those devices were wireless, and I’d removed them before Robson and I moved in.

  “OK, then.” Parrie closed his notebook and looped the elastic strap around its front cover. “It’s probably just something eccentric done back when the house was built. You don’t usually see places this original. But nothing looked like it should get in the way. There are no red flags here, for me.”

  “Good news. Thanks, Mike.” Rooney slapped Parrie on the shoulder. “So here’s what we’ll do. First thing Monday, Mike and I will confirm the technical specs and document our recommendations for the core system and the positioning of the sensors and keypads. I’ll also put together three appendices. Optional extras. Monitoring packages—which will be essential based on the value of your home and what you told me about the recent occurrences in the neighborhood. And finally, maintenance support options. If I send them all on email, does that sound good?”

  “Sure.” I nodded. “That’s better than waiting for snail mail. Like I say, I want to move fast.”

  “Good. In that case, there’s two more things you need to know. First, I won’t be the cheapest. I’m telling you now, there are half a dozen guys out there who’ll quote you way less. But there’s a reason for that. Those guys cut corners. They use low-quality components. Their installation guys suck. They have no experience. No local maintenance techs. And th
eir monitoring is all done in India, or someplace like that. Their options might seem attractive when you’re looking at the numbers. But trust me, it’ll be a different story if you come home and find the house has been ransacked, or you’re lying in bed and hear a window getting smashed or a door kicked down, and you realize no one is coming to help. Do you follow me?”

  “I get the picture.”

  “Good. Now, second thing, I don’t believe in quoting an inflated price so I can drop it later during a bunch of bogus back-and-forth. The number I give you will be the lowest I can make it, right out of the traps. I just think that’s a more honest way to do business.”

  “I’m with you on that. I’m not a fan of negotiating, myself. In fact, in some situations, I refuse to do it at all.”

  “So we’re on the same page.” Rooney looked me in the eye. “If you like what you see on my email, do you think we can do business?”

  “Let’s just say, I’m pretty sure this won’t be the last you hear from me.”

  We shook hands, then the guys retrieved their shoes and headed out to their van, which was, as Rooney had predicted, ticket free. As soon as they were rolling I checked my phone. There was a text from Robson that had arrived twenty-five minutes before—

  10-18.

  It was our old army code for assignment completed. I smiled and replied with—

  10-17.

  That meant return to headquarters. Then a moment later another thought struck me and I texted Robson again, though there wasn’t a convenient code for this message—

  Please stop at the liquor store and buy a bottle of wine. Anything red.

  I figured I’d have some time on my hands that afternoon because Robson would have work to do. I might as well put it to good use.