Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street (31 page)

The cab pulled to a stop in front of No. 20, a four-story, brick Federal that had been subdivided into four floor-through units. Bonnie’s was the third floor, and as she stepped into the elevator, Anson followed her and held her from behind, kissing her neck and kneading her breasts. His glasses had been pushed up to the top of his forehead, and Bonnie giggled as she removed them. He was slipping his hand under her skirt on the landing when she unlocked her front door, and she had to struggle a bit to get it closed before he pulled her toward the couch in the living room. She saw that the lock hadn’t caught, but Anson was all over her, pushing her skirt up over her hips, grasping her firm bottom in his palms, and pressing her down onto the couch with his weight.

She moved with him now, pressing up against him, opening her mouth to his kisses, helping him slide off his suit jacket. He had her skirt up and was grinding his hips into her, his erection pressing through the cloth of his suit against the slight swell at the front of her panties. She reached between them for his belt, and he lifted his weight slightly to open a path. She worked it open, then undid the clasp and zipper of his pants, ducking her hand inside the opening to stroke him. He moaned slightly and worked the buttons of her blouse open to reveal a floral bra, which he pushed aside, and covered her breasts with his lips. He used his free hand to push his pants and shorts down to his knees, then tore at her lacy underwear. She stopped him and simply pushed the covering to one side, using the same hand to curl her fingers around him, guiding him into her in a tangle of loose clothing.

Anson began pumping his hips frantically, his face a mask except for the tight grimace of lust. She was responding to him now, almost forgetting who he was and what she was doing. His pace slowed, then quickened again, and she could feel that he was close to coming. She wasn’t ready yet, but encouraged him with her moans. His breath was shorter, his eyes clenched tight. She leaned her head back and closed her eyes, giving herself up to him, casting away whatever doubts she had.

From the front door, her knees were visible over the back of the couch, as was the back of Anson’s head. The intruder had not expected the door to be unlatched, and the entrance had been perfectly quiet. The figure paused for a moment, head tilted down for a look at the scene being played out below, then reached out with a long, black baton, which fired blue sparks as it touched the back of Combes’s neck. Combes went rigid, then started to shake slightly as the voltage passed through his body for two, then three, seconds. Bonnie did not notice the slight snapping sound. She felt an odd tingling, but before she could react to it, the intruder touched the baton to her knee, and the surge of electricity left her senseless before she could even open her eyes.

thirty-five

“I’m not sure I understand, Miss Chian. Let’s try to get this one more time.” Roger Wittlin was tired, pissed off, and frustrated, and McDermott gaping at her long, elegant legs wasn’t helping things any. What the hell is wrong with men, anyway? he thought, disgusted that his partner couldn’t keep his thoughts clean.

“Okay. Okay. I told you. We were on the couch, making love, and I kind of felt weird, then something hurt, and I couldn’t breathe. I think I blacked out. When I got back up, Anson was in the bedroom like … like that, and then I called you. That’s it. That’s all I remember.”

Anson Combes lay facedown in the bedroom, the back of his head crushed, evidently by a marble obelisk that lay shattered across the carpet. His blood had soaked into the rug, his naked body pale and limp in the light. A photographer was working, and two technicians were searching for fingerprints, fibers, hair, blood, anything that new forensic technology could help in turning a cipher into a suspect, or even a profile of a suspect. They seemed to be satisfied with their progress.

“You saw nothing at all, heard nothing at all? You don’t know where those marks on your neck came from?” Wittlin jabbed his finger at two small, red bruises on her throat.

“I meant what I said, Officer. The last thing I remember is making love on the couch, then some pain, then this. If I remembered anything else at all, I would tell you. God, he was my boss, for God’s sake. I can’t fucking believe this.” She was shaken, trembling, crying now, pathetic.

Wittlin patted her on the shoulder. “Hey, Wall Street’s murder, right? Let’s just be glad it was him they were after and not you. I think you got very lucky.” Wittlin remembered something his mother had told him. She said she had married a Jewish man because they almost never drank and almost as rarely cheated on their wives. So he was a half-Jewish, half-Irish cop, which had probably explained why he’d taken to it and also done well on the police exams. Which reminded him. “And I’m not an officer, I’m a detective.”

“Hey, Rog, we got some good shit in here,” Stuart Jermon called from the bedroom. Wittlin got up and left the slim woman alone with her thoughts and a cup of Greek-diner coffee, picking his way into the bedroom.

“Where the fuck is the meat wagon? And tell those idiots downstairs to lay off the fucking lights, already. Let some people around here get some sleep.” Seven patrol cars were on the street, all pulled up at odd angles, half on the sidewalk, although plenty of spots to park normally had been open. Four detectives were canvassing the building for witnesses, and forensics men were examining the stairs, halls, and elevators. The uniformed guys were hanging out on the street, their potbellies spilling over their belts, several slurping coffee and chewing on the doughnuts a rookie had picked up at the all-night grocery around the corner.

“What is it?” Wittlin looked up at the tall black man in a pair of cotton coveralls.

“Well”—Jermon held up a small, clear plastic envelope—“we’ve got some hair here. And a partial footprint there. He was wearing gloves for sure, and probably some kind of cap. He just walked in. The girl said the door didn’t close. Bad luck. No struggle to speak of. I’m not the doc, but that looks like at least two whacks on his head over there, so I’d guess one smack with some kind of club while he’s on the lady. It doesn’t put him out, but gets his attention. Stumbles in here while our boy tries to choke her lights out, hence the marks on her lovely neck. He sees lover boy trying for the phone and finishes the job right there with that stone thing. Literally bashed his brains out. He nails the wallet and the purse, runs a few drawers”—Jermon pointed to some lightly ransacked drawers—“then bags it. This was not too big a boy. Took him a couple of good shots to put lover boy down for good, and he didn’t go back to finish her. Probably thought he’d done ’em both, though, since she was out cold.”

“Makes sense. What do you think we’ll get from the samples?” Wittlin was pacing the room, glancing back and forth.

“Africanus Americanus. Shoe size maybe ten and a half. Probably Pumas from the sole grid. Done a little B and E before, pretty careful. The hair I got from the sofa. Maybe bending over to straddle our girl. Natural curl. Definitely belongs to neither of these two here straight-hairs. The lab tests will tell us more, but my money’s down.”

“So, we got a black male, probably five feet eight inches plus, light to medium build from the shoe size, record of B and E, not afraid to mix it up and add assault or homicide to the tab. That about right?” Wittlin was relieved to see the ME’s personnel show up, despite the delay.

“Yup, that’s my best first guess. But, no B, ’cause they didn’t lock the door, remember? But
every
body was getting some E.”

“Clever! Jesus, that narrows it down to thirty-two percent of the city. I can count out maybe a third of them, ’cause they’re already in the system. I figure that leaves me two, maybe three hundred thousand prime suspects. That about get it?”

“Nope. Way high.”

“Why’s that?”

“First off, this gentleman missed some valuable electronics”—Jermon pointed to a small computer and an expensive miniature stereo system on the desk—“and second, there was a Knicks game on cable tonight, so one hundred and fifty thousand of those suspects minimum were at home, with a bucket of chicken, screamin’ at the tube. That’s got to narrow it some.”

“Yeah, fine. By the way, in case you don’t already know, you’re a racist, self-hating misanthrope. But I’m wondering about something.”

“What’s that, Sherlock?”

“When the brilliant Miss Chian says she felt kind of weird and something hurt, do you figure that’s how she describes sex in general, or just the way she felt about fucking her boss?”

“Hey, Detective Officer Wittlin, you can answer that better than me, because I know you’ve been dreaming about fucking your boss for years.” The technician smiled and plucked one of the hairs from his own neat Afro and stared at it. “I am going to find you.”

thirty-six

“Warren, Carl Dressler and Pete Fowler would like to see you in Frank Tonelli’s office, right now.” Patricia Mulvey’s tap on the shoulder had caught Warren staring idly into space, thinking about the interest-rate swap option he was trying to layer on top of a currency hedge, and wondering how it was that Anson was dead so soon after Warren had decided he’d been the one who could be nailed for killing Dougherty. “They say it’s important.”

Warren was up and moving instantly, reacting to the call, swiveling his hips to slide past chairs protruding into the aisle. His stomach tightened with anxiety because he knew that this was the call he’d anticipated. Pete Fowler was the head of the Investment Banking Division, and on the executive committee of the firm. Between him and Dressler, the only person more powerful at Weldon was the chairman. Fowler was a big, genial guy, a lousy tennis player who loved the game anyway. He’d always seemed a little out of place to Warren, a bit too decent a guy for his job.

“Hey, Warren, come on in and sit down. Hope we didn’t interrupt anything.” Dressler was standing at the glass wall to the office overlooking the trading floor. Fowler was seated on the small Queen Anne sofa. Frank Tonelli stood quietly in a corner.

“No, just a little daydreaming. Only about a deal, nothing important like women or golf.” Warren plopped into an armchair. “What’s up?”

“Well, you know Anson had a very tight relationship with Golden State. And you’re the only one who really knows about the deals he’s been working on. Do you have any read on how we should pick up on it, now that Anson’s out? And what’s going on with Warner?”

That was what Warren loved about this business—Anson hadn’t been dead a day, and he was simply “out.” Gone. That almost nobody liked the man made his disappearance even more seamless. Warren took a breath and dove in.

“Sure, Carl. The deal with Warner is a little unusual, but simple. Straightforward. Anson worked out a deal with them to buy their mortgages, both performing and delinquent. It’s very promising. He’s also got a couple more deals pending with Golden State. As you know, we made about twenty million on our last deal with them, and this potential deal with Warner could be much bigger. As far as Golden State, it seems Anson wasn’t in that tight with Leahy, only with this broker, Tom Scholdice. All his business went through Scholdice as far as I could tell. Kelly Hughes at Golden State told me that they very much want the relationship to continue. I spoke to her this morning, before Goering came in.” Warren wanted Goering out of the picture completely until he could add something of value. “I think we can make this work to our advantage.”

“How’s that?” Fowler had uncrossed his legs and was leaning forward, his eyes focused intently on Warren’s.

“Well, Anson wasn’t exactly loved around Golden State. If you went out there, Pete, to introduce them to a new finance team, I bet you could wrap the whole thing up.”

“Hey, take it easy on old Anson. He may have been a psycho, but he was our psycho.” Dressler had a grin on his face.

“Yeah. Great. It seems obvious that we’ve got to keep working with Scholdice, but we should also work on building a direct relationship with the rest of the people at Golden State. Anyway, that’s how I see it. There’s a ton of biz out there, and someday there’s going to be a complete restructuring too.”

“You mean we should get in there and buy out everything we can before the shit hits the fan?” Fowler was catching on.

“Look, all the California savings and loans are going to blow up someday. Probably soon. Once they’re under a regulatory agreement, everything has to be competitive. Scholdice seems to have been able to direct a huge amount of business our way through Anson. If the bank goes under, that connection will be useless. After the regulators take over, if they want to sell assets, they have to hold an auction, and we’ll have everyone from Goldman to Lehman in there bidding ’em up. It’s got to work to our advantage that Anson had this angle to Leahy. Plus, if we do everything through Scholdice, Weldon can’t be accused of getting special treatment later on. It’s pretty amazing. Up till now, Anson had the exclusive on everything they sell because Scholdice doesn’t let anyone else even bid. Don’t ask me how, ’cause I have no idea. Dutch really hasn’t been working this side, and we should not let it slide for a minute.” Warren had thought this through, seeing an opportunity to take over Anson’s relationship with Scholdice, move Goering out of the way, and start getting the credit for all the big trades to come. He let his enthusiasm show.

“Interesting.” Fowler paused, rubbing his chin. “What do you know about this broker?”

“He’s a guy that Leahy did a lot of deals with. He supposedly gets capital from some wealthy clients and generally gets in for a quick flip on residential whole-loan trades. He was the President of a big California insurance company a while back. He started profit sharing with Anson years ago—he basically took a cut of the profits in exchange for the contact and some capital. That way he wasn’t just working for a quarter of a point, but he’d get exclusives and sometimes half of the upside.” Goering was far from an expert on the financial structure of banks and thrifts, and Warren had volunteered, as a team-oriented guy, to help out with some presentations. He’d used the opportunity to check out what Anson had been up to. Cozying up to Annlois Baker, his secretary, had helped Warren get a lot of information. He’d taken her out to dinner at La Grenouille one night after she’d worked until eight o’clock typing up the final draft. All Anson ever did was allow her to order in Chinese food. She’d been flattered by the invitation and, after a half a bottle of Burgundy, opened up, explaining the setup, and the key role of Tom Scholdice.