James Grippando

by Money to Burn

  Eric’s admonition—you’re not the spokesman—was buzzing in my ear. “I’m not here to talk about any of that,” I said.

  “I understand. But stay with me. Let’s assume that people in the market are lying about the financial condition of Saxton Silvers. Let’s assume that in the same twenty-four-hour period, Michael Cantella—the firm’s two-time investment advisor of the year—is wiped out by an identity thief. Is there something afoot here?”

  “I don’t understand your question.”

  “Are you prepared to say here on this show today that there is some kind of financial assault on Saxton Silvers?”

  “I’m not saying that.”

  “I think you are.”

  “You’re saying it, not me.”

  “Is it possible?”

  “Is what possible?”

  “That there is some connection between the rumors about Saxton Silvers and your alleged identity theft.”

  “I can’t speculate on that.”

  “Are you saying it’s not possible?”

  “Well, anything’s possible but—”

  “Aha!” said Bell, slapping his thigh. “Folks, you just heard it here on Bell Ringer—right from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. Michael Cantella says there may be some financial conspiracy against Saxton Silvers. That’s a Bell Ringer!”

  “What? No, I didn’t—” I started to say, but I was cut off by the sound of that damn pretend bell.

  Ding, ding, ding, ding.

  Bell checked the board again. “Perhaps someone out there has a serious interest in driving the value of the stock down fast—in ‘murdering’ Saxton Silvers virtually overnight. With the stock price already down as much as ninety dollars per share today, this supposed financial assassin is well on his way.”

  “I’m not the one who said—”

  Bell cut me off with another slap of the effects button. This time it was the sound of a telephone ringing.

  “It’s for you, Michael,” said Bell, pretending to talk on his cell. “It’s Chicken Little. He wants his sky back.”

  I needed this to end—quickly.

  “Chuck, I’m here to talk about identity theft.”

  “Yes, yes, of course. Let’s put this Oliver Stone conspiracy stuff aside. And for the moment, let’s just assume your claim is true. Here’s the question I have for my viewers,” he said, staring straight into the camera. “Why would any investor trust his money with a Wall Street investment bank whose fastest-rising star can’t even come up with a hack-proof password for his own account?”

  Reynolds grumbled. “Oh, come on.”

  “I’m serious,” said Bell.

  “Hackers can be very sophisticated,” I said.

  Bell said, “Investment banks are also supposed to be sophisticated.”

  “I’m working with the FBI and the firm’s security director now to find out exactly what happened.”

  “Was your account password protected?”

  “Chuck, now you’re being silly,” said Reynolds. “Of course it was protected. And I would bet my last dollar that Michael Cantella is not the kind of dummy who would use his phone number or his wife’s birthday as a password.”

  I hesitated. It was nice to have Reynolds’ support, but I didn’t want to start talking about passwords on the air. “Let me just assure our clients that their investment portfolios are intact.”

  “Well, I hope so.”

  Bell hit another button. This one was the sound of screeching tires and a car wreck.

  “That’s enough crashing for one day,” he said. “Michael, thank you for joining us. I’m not saying that we believe you, but we do thank you.”

  Had he offered his hand, I wouldn’t have shaken it. But he simply moved on.

  “And now, ladies and gentlemen, are you ready for the Bell Ringer main event?”

  As I walked away, I could feel the stares of surrounding floor traders who’d seen the interview—and then they ran off with their sell orders. I was trying to think of what to say to Eric, but I could still hear Bell building up the Wall Street battle of the century.

  “It’s time for me to step outside and put another bear on the canvas!”

  Cell phones weren’t allowed on the trading floor, but mine was ringing just as soon as I exited through the revolving door and stepped outside to Broad Street. It was Eric.

  “What the hell just happened to you?” he said.

  “He was putting words in my mouth.”

  “It’s Chuck Bell. You should have cut it off. That whole exchange was supposed to last two minutes, tops.”

  Two minutes? I didn’t know he’d wanted it that short. “I’m sure I would have done better if I’d actually gotten to sleep last night.”

  “That’s not going to cut it. We’re in a financial crisis. There are people in this firm who are looking to point the finger at someone other than themselves.”

  He meant the structured-products people like Kent Frost. “I know.”

  “Now they’ll say our stock dropped because Eric Volke let his fair-haired boy go on FNN, not because of a twenty-two-billion-dollar subprime nightmare.”

  “Which is ridiculous.”

  “They’ll say it anyway. Michael, you’ve always had your own mind. When we invited you to join management, you bucked company policy and refused to give up your book of business. When subprime started to look ugly, you stepped over division lines and wrote me a damned convincing memo about it. I actually respect all that. But I’m one of the few who does. To some people, you’re just trouble. And now I have to tell those same people that it was my idea to put you on the air.”

  I drew a breath. “I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too. Because I need to know who I can count on.”

  My hand was shaking as I gripped the phone. I’d let him down, but I could make it up to him. I was far less sure about redeeming myself on national television, about ever seeing my money again—or about surviving a second attack in an elevator.

  Stop it. Don’t freak.

  “You can definitely count on me,” I said.

  He paused—and the silence killed me.

  The call ended, and I was back on Broad Street. A crowd had gathered around the FNN boxing ring, and the TV cameras were in position. Bell had already rolled up his shirtsleeves and tied on his boxing gloves. A seven-foot bear waited in the center of the ring.

  “All righty,” Bell shouted as he climbed through the ropes. “Let’s see about those bare necessities!”

  16

  RUMSEY COOLIDGE HADN’T SEEN MICHAEL CANTELLA IN YEARS. THE man towering over Rumsey didn’t believe him.

  “I swear,” said Rumsey, his bloodied face pressed to the floor. “I’m telling you the truth, mon.”

  Rumsey had returned to Harbor Island in a rainstorm. A five-day sail in the northern Bahamas had left him exhausted and annoyed at the way customers just didn’t seem to tip their captain the way they used to—as if the weather was his fault. He’d climbed the front steps to his rented town house slowly, thinking only of a good night’s sleep before heading out on another charter in the morning. The sprawling tropical canopy in the front yard shielded him from the falling rain, and even though sunset was almost two hours away, the storm made it feel like night. The door was unlocked, just as he’d left it. Crime wasn’t exactly unheard of in the Bahamas, but something about island living seemed to encourage unlocked doors and open windows, as if to deny, or at least defy, the existence of evil in paradise. Rumsey entered his living room and tried the wall switch. The lights didn’t come on. No great surprise. Power outages were a way of life in his neighborhood, especially during thunderstorms. The hallway was dark, but he could have found the bedroom blindfolded. He dropped his duffel bag on the bed, and as he pulled off his shirt, a blur emerged from the closet. Before he could react, a huge hulk of a man hit him like a freight train and took him down.

  The man was now sitting on Rumsey’s kidneys, the cold metal barrel of a pisto
l pressing against the back of Rumsey’s skull.

  “I’ll ask you just one more time,” he said. “When was the last time you talked to Michael Cantella?”

  Rumsey coughed nervously, and a little blood came up. At least one rib was broken, he was sure of it. His smashed-in nose was a mess after a face-first collision with the floor.

  “The trip,” he said, grunting. Talk was difficult with the man’s considerable weight pressing down on his internal organs. “It was that trip with him and his girlfriend—wife—who disappeared. We ain’t never talked since then, mon.”

  The gunman rose, and Rumsey could breathe again.

  “Stay right there,” the man said.

  Rumsey lay perfectly still, breathing in and out, tasting the salty blood that trickled from his nose into his mouth. He had yet to get a good look at the man in the darkness, but the tumble to the floor had told him something about the man’s size and strength. He listened carefully, following the intruder’s footfalls across the room. For a brief moment, Rumsey’s heart raced with excitement.

  Is he leaving?

  “You disappoint me,” the man said. He pulled the blinds shut, making the room even darker, then walked back over.

  Any optimism vanished. Rumsey waited for him to say more, but there was only a long, uncomfortable silence. Several strands of speculation raced through his mind, none of which led to a happy ending. The inescapable conclusion was that his attacker was simply debating whether to shoot him here, in Rumsey’s own living room, or to take him somewhere else to do the job.

  “Please,” said Rumsey. “What you want with me, mon?”

  The man’s chuckle was laden with insincerity. “Good question.”

  He took a few more steps, as if circling his prey. Out of the corner of his eye, Rumsey caught an up-close glimpse of the man’s steel-toed boots. That explained the pain in his ribs.

  “I know you’re lying,” the man said.

  “No, no! I tell the truth, mon.”

  The man was silent.

  Rumsey swallowed hard. He wanted to speak, but he was too afraid of saying the wrong thing. He heard a faint scratching sound, and then there was a flicker of light. The man had struck a match. Rumsey gritted his teeth as the man came toward him, and he instinctively closed his eyes as the flame neared his face.

  “Open your eyes,” the man said.

  Rumsey did as he was told, his cheek still pressed to the cold terra-cotta tile. Oddly, there was money on the floor, right in front of his nose. American money, which was no surprise. The man’s accent was definitely not Bahamian. It was a hundred-dollar bill.

  The man dropped the match onto the bill.

  “What are you doing?” Rumsey asked nervously.

  The man was silent. The lit match scorched the bill, and it was quickly aflame. The small fire threw some heat onto Rumsey’s face, but not enough to hurt him. In a minute or two, the fire burned out, and the room returned to darkness.

  “I need you to help me,” the man said.

  He was suddenly moving quickly, and Rumsey got another dose of his attacker’s overpowering strength. He grabbed Rumsey’s wrists and, in what seemed like a split second, bound them together with plastic cuffs. He grabbed Rumsey’s ankles and bound them in the same way. Somewhere in the back of Rumsey’s mind a voice cried out, begging him to resist. But it happened too quickly. Rumsey was hog-tied.

  The man stood upright, and Rumsey could almost feel him towering over his body. He imagined that the gun was pointed directly at the back of his head, and he wondered how many days it would take for the postman or a neighbor to notice the telltale odor and find him dead on the floor, shot execution style.

  “Please, don’t—”

  “Shut up. I need your help.”

  “Okay, mon. You got it. Anything.”

  The man paused, seeming to enjoy the way silence tormented his victim. Finally, he said, “Here’s the problem.”

  There was another pause, and fear coursed again through Rumsey’s veins. He prayed that it was a problem he could actually solve.

  “It’s a crime to burn money,” the man said.

  “What?”

  “You can’t just burn money. It’s a federal offense. They’ll throw me in jail.”

  Rumsey could hear himself breathing. He had no idea how to respond, so he fumbled for anything.

  “But—but that’s American money. You in the Bahamas now. No worries, mon.”

  “Makes no difference. It’s a crime to burn money no matter where you do it.” The man leaned closer, now speaking in a low, threatening voice: “We need to cover up our crime.”

  Before Rumsey could say anything, he felt a cold wetness on his shirt and trousers, and then another glob of gel all over his face. It stung his eyes terribly, and the odor told him it was gasoline—goopy gasoline.

  “No, please don’t burn me, mon!”

  His plea went unanswered, except for that dread scratch of sound again—the striking of the match, a sudden burst of light, the roar of the flames, the intense heat that consumed him.

  What followed was the piercing sound of his own screams.

  17

  I DIDN’T GET HOME UNTIL SIX-THIRTY. SAXTON SILVERS STOCK ended the day down almost a hundred bucks a share, so if there was a financial assassin, as Bell had put it, he was halfway there. In between phone conversations with panicked clients, I spent most of the afternoon with our director of security trying to track down my money.

  Nana and Papa were trying to track down theirs, too. They were watching Wheel of Fortune in the TV room, dressed and ready to take me to dinner for my belated birthday (read: happy birthday) dinner.

  “Will you buy a vowel already?” Nana said to the contestant on television. The sound of her voice startled Papa, and his sleepy eyes popped open. If we didn’t get going in the next forty-five minutes, dinner was going to be the gastronomical equivalent of a midnight snack for them.

  I went to the bedroom and gently nudged Mallory to move it along. She was brushing her hair in front of the framed oval mirror on the bureau.

  “I’m going as fast as I can,” she said. “I don’t see why they’re so damn set on taking you out. Especially with everything that’s going on. And you just had a party last night.”

  “Which they weren’t invited to. Raising the question: Why not?”

  She was still checking herself in the mirror, speaking without looking at me, her tone icy. “The party was a surprise. You have to be careful about who you let in on a surprise, or it won’t be a surprise anymore.”

  I sat behind her on the bed, watching her in the mirror as she got progressively angrier at her hair.

  “Who were they going to tell,” I asked, “their neighbors in Century Village?”

  “You, Michael. Papa would have slipped up in one of your daily phone conversations and told you he was coming to the surprise party. Then no more surprise.”

  “He kept today’s visit a surprise.”

  “He probably forgot to tell you he was coming. Can’t you see his Alzheimer’s is getting worse?”

  “Papa doesn’t have Alzheimer’s. That’s just the way you are when you’re eighty-three years old.”

  “My God, you are so clueless.”

  She tossed her brush aside, giving up the struggle against her hair. This was usually the moment at which I had to beg her not to make an appointment with some scissor-happy “artiste” named Francois or Diego and cut it all off in the morning.

  “You look great, Mallory.”

  She rolled her eyes at me as she headed for the walk-in closet. I sensed another wardrobe change coming.

  “Don’t patronize me.”

  The atmosphere had officially moved from icy to frozen solid. I followed her into the closet.

  “What’s wrong?”

  She was flipping through the rack furiously, still not looking at me as she spoke.

  “What’s wrong? Our entire life savings has just been wiped out, and th
is morning Saxton Silvers suddenly moved from the top of the mountain on Wall Street to somewhere deep inside the San Andreas Fault. Nothing is wrong. Life is wonderful. Another beautiful day in paradise. Just ask Papa.”

  “Things are going to be okay.”

  Her forage through the hanging clothes came to an abrupt halt, and finally she looked at me—though it felt more like she was looking right through me.

  “It is not going to be okay. You ruined it, Michael. You ruined everything.”

  I stepped closer to give her a hug, but she pulled away and hurried out of the closet. I followed her back into the bedroom.

  “Mallory, I need you to stand with me on this.”

  “You don’t need me. You don’t even want me. I honestly don’t know why you ever asked me to marry you.”

  “How can you say that?”

  She sat on the bed, tears about to flow. She sucked them back and said, “I saw you on TV.”

  “Was I that bad?”

  She brought her hands to her head, exasperated. “Papa’s the blind one in the family, not me.”

  I was getting annoyed by the way she kept dragging my grandfather into this, but I knew it wasn’t anything she had against him. She was lashing out, and Papa was the nearest handle in our version of Wilma grabbing a pot to clobber Fred.

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  “It’s not the money. It’s not Saxton Silvers. It’s you—what’s in your heart—that’s wrong.”

  “You decided this while watching me on Bell Ringer?”

  “Yes. When the Money Honey said you were too smart to use your wife’s birthday as your password, I could see the guilty expression all over your face.”

  I took a breath, uneasy with where this was headed.

  Mallory looked at me coldly and said, “Tell me what the password was.”

  “There were several different accounts,” I said.

  “Tell me the passwords.”