Payne, clearly in thought, was quiet for some time.
“I appreciate how you’ve handled this with me, Uncle Denny.”
Coughlin nodded solemnly.
“What kind of time line are we looking at?” Payne said. “I’d like to see through Camilla Rose Morgan’s case. I feel I owe it to her.”
Coughlin shrugged.
“It’s going to happen—Jerry as much as said it’s a done deal—but not today, or tomorrow. I think I can buy you a little time.” He paused, then added, “But, for the love of God, in the meantime just try and keep your head down.”
Payne shook his head in resignation.
“This is bullshit,” he said again.
“I know it is. But it’s not the end of the world, Matty. Not like if that damn bullet had hit you elsewhere.”
Payne sighed. He stared at his feet. His mind spun trying to process all of what had just happened. His ears rang.
First I have problems with Amanda, he thought. And now this?
I just can’t fucking win.
But . . . I should have seen it coming.
He looked up and met Carlucci’s eyes.
“I guess you’re right, Uncle Denny. On all points.”
[ TWO ]
The Rittenhouse Condominiums
Residence 2150
Center City
Philadelphia
Saturday, January 7, 9:15 A.M.
When Michael Grosse woke up and peered at the clock, he felt angry again. He had tossed and turned most of the night, unable to sleep as the anger built.
And now I’ve overslept, he thought.
Damn you, Johnny.
Grosse came out of his bedroom and found that the small flat-screen television hanging under the kitchen cabinets was on, its volume low. Grosse also saw that, next to the TV, the single-serve coffeemaker was on and warm, and he picked through the assortment of coffee cartridges. As the machine filled a white china cup and he smelled the rich dark blend, he glanced around the condominium and out at the balcony.
John Austin was nowhere in sight. But the two bottles of whisky that he consumed almost by himself were.
He has to have one killer hangover, Grosse thought.
Grosse picked up the steaming coffee cup and walked toward the bedroom that Austin was using. Its door was wide open, the lights on.
“Hey, you up?” he said. “We need to talk.”
There was no answer. He sipped his coffee as he looked inside.
The bed was empty, its blankets pushed into a pile to one side of the mattress. The lights blazed in the bathroom, and when he looked in, there was a toilet kit on the counter and a toothbrush left in the sink. It was otherwise untouched. Towels still hung in neat rows on the wall rack, with another folded over the glass door of the shower.
Grosse felt a knot form in his stomach. He walked out of the bedroom.
“Johnny?” he called out, then repeated it louder. “Johnny?”
He went back to the kitchen and looked out the wall of windows. The sky was overcast, an ugly gray morning that looked bitter cold—and, he thought, depressing.
He ran his fingers through his hair, pulled out his cellular telephone, and tried calling Austin. Voice mail picked up on the third ring.
Grosse, thinking about all that Austin had said and done the previous night, began wondering how desperate he had become.
What the hell could he have done?
He put the phone on the island as he took a deep breath.
He glanced back out at the balcony—and his heart sank. Against the glass panel wall, a white china coffee cup lay upside down.
—
Immediately after Matt Payne had left, Michael Grosse watched John Austin almost run into the kitchen. There, Austin fumbled pulling something from his pocket and eventually came up with a clear plastic bag containing a white powder. He removed a small knife from the stainless steel rack by the sink.
“Hey,” Grosse said. “No more of that.”
Austin ignored him. He poured a small pile on the counter.
Grosse marched into the kitchen and with a smooth, fast motion brushed the pile into the sink with his hand. He turned on the water.
“You son of a bitch!” Austin said.
“That shit has caused enough trouble, Johnny. You need to lay off.”
Austin picked up the knife and held it tight as he concentrated on pouring another pile.
Grosse did not think that Austin would try to attack him, but it was clear the threat was made.
“You snort that, I’m calling Payne. I’m sick of this. You can spend the night in jail, for all I care. Then you can go back to rehab, or whatever.”
Austin stopped. He turned his head and glared at Grosse.
“You don’t like it,” Grosse added, “then too goddamn bad. Call it tough love, or whatever else they say in rehab.”
Austin stared at the bag in his hand.
“Have a drink, if you really need to self-medicate, Johnny. But not that.”
Austin finally tossed the bag on the counter and started for the bar.
Grosse considered pouring that down the drain, too, but decided that could really cause Austin to turn violent.
—
“I understand you being upset about those pictures Matt Payne showed us,” Grosse said as they stood on either side of the kitchen island, an almost empty bottle of Johnnie Walker between them. “But you have got to get yourself together.”
“Easy for you to say. You didn’t get ‘lucky.’”
Austin took a big swallow from the drink he had just refreshed. Grosse saw that Austin’s hand shook, and that, in addition to the deep bruising, he saw there was real anguish in his face.
“Johnny, you want to tell me about the money?”
“What money?”
“C’mon, man. First, the Morgan investments. And then that hundred-grand payoff that Payne said.”
“I don’t know.”
“Damn you! I have to know. It involves Camilla Rose, and I’m here to start settling her affairs. Tell me now or I’ll find out later.”
Austin took a deep breath, slowly exhaling. Grosse could tell that he was considering what all he should share.
“In my private equity company,” Austin began, his voice strained and uneven, “I set up funds that were venture capital vehicles for investing in real estate development, mostly high-rise buildings, and in start-up companies. I get investors to buy in. Camilla Rose was one of many—”
“I knew that,” Grosse said, impatient.
“Including other private equity firms eager to place money in solid performing funds. What you may not know is that, over the years, Camilla Rose would oversee the investment of the Morgan International money, from which she would make her charity contributions. Morgan International moved money—the majority of it coming in cash, the rest stock in the Morgan parent company—into the philanthropy’s accounts. Those funds were invested, and the dividends, the interest, et cetera, earned from those investments was what got distributed to charities.”
“Okay.”
“For the last five years, she has put tens of millions of the Morgan International philanthropy’s money into my funds—like the recent Morgan Partners Florida Capital Fund III that funded the high-rise condo project on Biscayne Bay that’s already sold out—which have been paying returns of fifteen to twenty percent—”
“Twenty percent!”
“And also gave some of the philanthropy’s money to her own pet projects, such as Camilla’s Kids and the cancer hospital. And then those charities had to have somewhere to park that money from the Morgan philanthropy, as well as the other monies that they raised.”
“And so she also invested that in your funds.”
“Not all of it, b
ut enough. Because they were paying fifteen to twenty percent returns.”
“She did not share this with me,” Grosse said, sounding surprised, if not annoyed.
Austin took another gulp of his drink, and shrugged. “She didn’t share it with anyone. Why would she? It was all really performing.”
“I wonder what Mason Morgan thought of that.”
“As far as I know, he thought nothing. Like I said, the funds were flush. The company accountants auditing her books were happy. So, he never said a word. But Camilla Rose knew it would piss Mason off no end if he knew that I was handling the money.”
“Could he have overridden that?”
“If he wanted to push it. But I think he decided that it was a battle he didn’t want to fight. She had already raised all kinds of hell about his hand in Old Man Morgan redoing the will. He left Camilla Rose alone.”
“Until now,” Grosse said. “He must have gone right to the books after she died, saw that she’d invested in your funds, and told the accountants to demand it back.”
“Yeah, looks that way.”
Austin met his eyes, then tensed up his bruised face and shook his head.
“But it’s impossible to just pull out the money he wants,” Austin said. “It’s tied up.”
“There’s probably a huge early-withdrawal penalty . . .”
“Yeah, there is.”
“What about offering to waive the penalty if they let you return only a fraction of the investments? Mason might decide to wait.”
“Not really possible.”
“Why? Is there a problem?” Grosse said.
“The funds are illiquid.”
“Illiquid? Why?”
Austin didn’t answer.
“What is Camilla Rose’s exposure?” Grosse said. “Twenty million?”
“Just over fifty mil of Camilla Rose’s charities in the Trust III fund.”
“Jesus Christ!”
“And another seventy mil, give or take, of the Morgan International’s charity, the philanthropy’s, in the Trust II fund.”
“A hundred and twenty million? ‘Give or take’?”
“I used some of the money to pay off the early investors their premiums, then put other money into projects, such as the Miami high-rise and Ming House here.” He paused, then added, “And bought options on the Standard and Poor’s index.”
“Index options?” he said, shaking his head. “Are you serious? Betting on the market swing? For how much?”
Austin, crossing his arms, visibly started to shake. His eyes glistened.
“Twenty mil,” he said, his voice strained. “The first time.”
“And you lost your ass . . .”
Austin stared at him.
“All but two mil,” he said. “But I got it back.”
“And you bet again? Bigger?”
He nodded.
“How much?”
“I was on a roll—”
“How much?”
Austin began to weep.
“A hundred,” he said, almost in a whisper.
Grosse felt the hairs on his neck stand up.
“A hundred million? My God . . .”
Austin tried to sound upbeat. “But I’m going to get that money back and more. I will.”
“How?”
“I was planning on using proceeds from the sale of the Future Modular Manufacturing company and the stock in NextGenRx to cover the loss. NextGen, by itself, would more than cover it when the patents are approved and the stock soars. But the goddamn government keeps delaying that. So last month I started setting up another fund.”
“Hold on a moment. Let me see if I have this straight. Because of this bind you got in, you’re creating another fund to use to bail out—illegally bail out—the ones you took money from to pay artificially inflated returns and to gamble on the market.”
Austin put his hands on his head, closed his eyes, and nodded. He wiped at his tears.
He opened his eyes, and blurted, “I could’ve easily ridden it out if Kenny and Camilla Rose were still alive!”
And then hunched over his big frame, his head in his arms on the counter, and began bawling.
“All I need,” he added after a minute, “all I need is time. I . . . I still can do it.”
Pathetic, Grosse thought, shaking his head in disgust as he looked at him.
“Jesus Christ,” he said. “Stop conning yourself, Johnny. You don’t have time. With Mason wanting back the investments, it’s over. And wait until the Security and Exchange Commission gets a whiff.” He paused, then jerked his head to look at Austin. “Did Camilla Rose know all about this?”
Austin stood back up from the counter, wincing as he rubbed his right arm. With a shaking left hand, he drained his drink and poured a fresh one.
“Johnny, did she?”
“Not all. She knew I was shorting. But just not to what degree. She was helping me with getting the Future Modular business to where it could be sold. And helping with NextGen.”
“If she had found out she had that much exposure, that much risk, including her kid camps going broke . . . my God. What the hell were you thinking, Johnny?”
Austin met his eyes.
“I thought—no, I knew, because I already had been on a roll—that I was going to recover, get a windfall to make up for what Mason cheated her out of. Leverage the Morgan philanthropy money into a big payout that she could use to build more camps in other countries, like she wanted.” He sighed, adding, “We were so close to telling that Mason to go fuck himself!”
Grosse was stunned at the depth of damage Austin had caused.
Grosse sipped his drink, and said, “I’m afraid to ask, but what about that hundred grand in cash that Payne brought up?”
“That’s just chump change,” Austin said. “It’s grease to keep the union guys from squeaking.”
“You’re paying off the unions?”
“Have to,” Austin said.
“What unions?”
Austin gave a brief explanation of his relationship with Willie Lane and Lane’s close involvement with Joseph Fitzpatrick.
“We don’t have union workers at the Future Modular plant in Miami,” he explained. “And when we built the new plant up in Bucks County that’s assembling the units for the hospital and the Chinatown condos, we brought in our own skilled laborers.”
“Who aren’t union?”
Austin nodded. “The higher cost difference would’ve been huge. We were stuck—and took a huge hit—using union workers to build the hospital and condo. But for the modular plant, it was cheaper paying off Joey Fitz and promising more later. Otherwise, they might’ve done a work stoppage, or even sabotaged the building worksites. I mean, they’re already pissed off that the buildings’ steel is coming from Korea, and that China’s supplying all the materials for the modular units.”
Austin drained his drink, then stared out at the balcony.
“A couple hundred grand doesn’t seem to really matter now, though,” he said, reaching for the bottle and realizing that it was empty.
Grossed watched as Austin looked toward the bar.
“More booze is not going to help anything,” Grosse said. “The problems will still be here tomorrow.”
Austin glared at him.
“I need to think about all this,” Grosse went on, “and plan on what, if anything, I can do. I’m going to bed, Johnny. I suggest you do the same. And now.”
—
Looking at the upside-down coffee cup, Michael Grosse now wondered if he had been too hard on Austin—and feared that the despondent Austin had done something really desperate.
He put down his coffee cup and went to the sliding glass door and through it. He tried to ignore the bitter cold as he quickly crossed the balcony
and finally reached the glass railing.
His heart pounded as he looked over and down.
And saw nothing.
He realized he was holding his breath, then exhaled audibly. He realized he was shivering.
Oh, for chrissakes!
Damn that Johnny. That craziness can really be contagious. You start thinking like them . . .
Had I been thinking clearly I would’ve realized that if he’d actually jumped, there would’ve been police, ambulances, whatever.
Grosse heard his cellular telephone ringing on the kitchen island in the condominium. He walked back to get it. Just as the screen dimmed, he saw it had been Austin.
Well, at least the bastard is alive.
Why I care, I don’t know.
Am I going to have to help him get Camilla Rose’s money back?
A second later, the phone chimed, the screen showing a new voice mail message.
He tapped the glass face, and Austin’s voice, its tone upbeat, came across the speakerphone: “Hey, you called me? I’ve got to take care of some things. All good. I’ll call later.”
Austin shook his head as he put the phone down.
“‘All good’?” Grosse said aloud. “Now he’s all happy, like last night never happened? That bastard really is crazy.”
He turned to the coffee machine and fed it another cartridge of dark-roasted coffee. As it hissed and filled the cup, his eyes went to the small television hanging under the cabinets.
Tuned to a local newscast, it showed video of a half-dozen police officers working behind a yellow tape imprinted POLICE LINE DO NOT CROSS. Then the same photograph of the two faces Payne had shown them appeared. He heard the well-built blonde anchor saying police needed help identifying them, then said something about the mayor scheduling a press conference at noon to address the city’s record crime rate.
At the bottom of the screen, it flashed BREAKING NEWS! three times. The news ticker began its crawl, announcing POLICE CONFIRM 4 KILLED AND 16 WOUNDED IN OVERNIGHT VIOLENCE . . . SOURCE SAYS 2 FOUND YESTERDAY HANGING DEAD NEAR DELAWARE RIVER IN FISHTOWN HAD THEIR SKIN SHREDDED AND PEELED . . .
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