The Adored (47 page)

What Santa Alba gave away in grace at LaBretagne earlier, she made up for here. Now the hair was undone, flowing across her shoulders as she wiggled toward a red faced Sebastian Ball, calling him forward with her fingers as the trombone wailed and as she shook her body to the left and then slowly moved it across its center and rolled right. Her head flung itself back.

“I love that move!” Gideon laughed to Winston. The two tables of friends were laughing at the boldness of the dance. Valerie had thrown down the gauntlet they theorized, and here was Santa picking it up.

As had happened in San Juan, the dance was so hot, what with pulling the pretty print dress to the high side of the thigh as she did a limbo shimmy toward Sebastian, that the floor was ringed with spectators encouraging Santa on. Sebastian was now way out of his comfort zone and meekly pulled back to the edge of the floor with the others.

The DJ knew a good thing when he saw it, and as the song was winding down, he easily restarted it without missing a beat. Santa was in her element.

It struck Winston that Santa must be lonely inside. How could a girl constantly seek that much attention? This was the second time in two weeks he was seeing the dance of the century performed for two different men, or was it. Maybe it was just for Santa. Maybe it was just for one man, Eddie.

The music hit a climax, and it paused as if it were a plane about to go into a dive. Then, Bang! The trombone gave a long wail in the night, next the whole band joined in and above it all the trombone with a strong hot melody carried Santa across the floor—legs flashing, arms swinging and always the hips punctuating.

Winston’s fiancée, a modest, young lady, face flushed, asked Winston, “Does she do this all the time? Is this what you said happened in San Juan?”

“It’s exactly what happened in San Juan. When the girl needs attention, she takes to the dance floor.”

“Honey, not to be immodest, but I’d love to be able to dance like that.”

“I’d love that too but only in our bedroom.” They laughed. The two tables were having fun, even Valerie and Ed were laughing, enjoying the dance.

“Did she ever do that dance for you,” Valerie poked Edward.

“No,” he said smiling.

“Would you like me to do that for you?” she said grabbing him on the inner thigh.

Pulling back from the under the table grope, he laughed and said, “No, I love your dances and only your dances.”

Chapter 64

Jim Conroy joined the New York City police department right out of the Army where he had achieved the rank of Sergeant First Class. He enrolled in John Jay College nights and studied criminal justice on the GI Bill.

Conroy grew up in Queens. His father was a cop as was his older brother and uncle.

At John Jay his minor was information technology. His studies continued an expertise he developed in the service, while stationed in Iraq, in using technology to follow money trails of Arab terrorists. He was part of an elite team working out of Baghdad Airport as part of Central Command’s Terrorist Surveillance Unit.

These experiences and interest were noticed early on in the police department. Conroy had a beat in Times Square for all of six months when he began offering his opinions to the department on how to track financial cyber criminals operating in New York. Lieutenant Jack Kent, who had formed the Cyber Crimes Unit (CCU), noticed the stream of tips that flowed into the unit with a buck slip “from Officer James Conroy” attached to the information he offered along with his badge and unit numbers. These tips were usually followed up on by a call from Conroy inquiring how the unit was proceeding on his suggestions.

CCU was put together at the request of the Police Commissioner, who in turn was responding to a request from the Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC had been taking extreme heat for a lack of oversight on securities crimes, particularly Ponzi schemes, wire fraud, and insider trading. The members of the unit were more seasoned detectives, so Kent thought some fresh blood would be good for the unit. He reached out and plucked Conroy off of the beat and made him a detective in the unit.

The unit stumbled onto a number of what looked like insider trading schemes coming out of Blackthorn Investments, the hedge fund. The hot line had received a call stating that one Sidney Rogers, a managing director at Blackthorn Investments, was buying large chunks of Rocket Solar before the company was set to announce a series of large contracts with Chinese companies. The female caller said that news of the contracts, which were to be made public within the week and which were worth seven hundred million dollars, would cause the price of the stock to rise dramatically from its ten dollar a share value.

This was the second such call in the past week on insider trading in Rocket Solar. Another individual named Leonard Crane, a trader with the Brunswick Fund, was identified as having made insider transactions on the same information that Sidney Rogers was trading on. This tip was also made by a woman. The police unit put surveillance in place on Rogers’ and Crane’s phones and computers. For Rogers they had access to his trading accounts at both Blackthorn and a smaller brokerage firm he was using for personal trades. His bank records were in the police unit’s hands, and they were able to trace the funds movements from two different banks through the brokerage account at the smaller firm.

The pony in the surveillance was the linkage Rogers was able to provide through his phone contacts, and where, once identified as fellow conspirators in the insider trading scheme, the CCU was able to link in other individuals through their phone, computer, bank, and trading accounts. In the office of the CCU were “war walls” with “family trees” for different investigations underway. The individual at the top of the “Rocket Solar” tree was Sid Rogers. They had a picture of him, along with a sheet of key details, such as origination of the tip, date of the first trade, trading history, and profits and losses. Then beneath Rogers were other players in the scheme, their pictures if the unit could get them or a description of the individual if they did not. The Rocket Solar tree had four squares beneath Rogers, and they in turn had other blocks beneath them. There were two additional squares under Rogers that had names penciled in showing it was a work in progress. The first branch of the tree listed Rocket Solar in the square and beneath it were two pictures, Tom Barrett and his brother Rob Barrett; they were identified as CEO and VP of World Wide Sales, respectively, at Rocket Solar. The next branch was Blackthorn, and the name Valerie Samson with information about her and beneath her the name Alice Kraft was listed with information about her. The third branch was Barnes Construction with a picture of Parker Barnes. The fourth branch identified the Brunswick Fund and had a picture of Edward Wheelwright; beneath Wheelwright’s picture were two names, Kishenlal Moira and Leonard Crane. A fifth branch was outlined in pencil with the name Trout Solar, and the name Winston Trout written in. A sixth branch was also outlined in pencil with the name Clayton Reed. It listed him as Sid Rogers’s brother-in-law.

There were connecting lines showing linkage of who talked to whom. Lines were drawn from the Barrett brothers to Rogers, from Kraft to Crane and Wheelwright, from Samson to Wheelwright, from Wheelwright to Trout. However, beside Leonard Crane’s name were lines connecting other family trees. From him, in only one week, they had found what they suspected were major securities fraud—all out in the open, very easily tracked. Besides Rocket Solar, going back in time every trade he made while at Brunswick or in his own accounts seemed to be based on inside information. From his phone records, they could see he would make a call to another securities firm, follow it up with several other calls to the same firm and phone numbers, and then he would make a trade. The Cyber Crimes Unit was able to trace the company whose stock Crane traded, and sure enough, their investment banker was the original firm Crane called. Then they started listening in to the calls, and their assumptions were confirmed—every time.

Joe Whelan, one of the senior officers on the Cyber Crimes team was providing a briefing for the SEC Deputy Director, Gail Donaldson, and took time to describe a couple of Crane’s transactions and the path he took: “He’d call the investment banking firm, make a trade after the call; the police unit traces the investment traded right back to the investment bank he called. We’re in the process now of identifying these individuals Crane’s been talking to.”

She interrupted, “And for this Rocket Solar stock, you said the numbers beside ‘traded shares’ for each person represented what each person has bought since Sidney Rogers made his first purchase six weeks ago.”

“Yes, “said Whelan.

“But you said the two owners there,” and she pointed to the Barrett brothers, “are not buying but selling. Is that right?”

“Yes, maam.”

“Well, why would they be selling with news like this and everyone else who seems to know the news is buying.”

“Good question. It’s at the top of our list to ask the brothers when we bring them in once the news of the orders goes public. Right now it makes no sense.”

Jack Kent volunteered, “Unless the brothers are pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes and the orders are no good. So as the stock begins to rise, as it has, you sell into that buying.”

“I see this tree you’re talking about has links into the other three trees on the wall, but they all seem to be linked together to this Mr. Crane in Brunswick,” the SEC Deputy Director went on.

“Exactly, maam,” Whelan said, and unable to hide his glee, added, “He’s a goddamn gold mine, maam! A lot of the information we’re learning about Rocket Solar is new in the last few days. But these other links from Crane, he has tentacles everywhere.”

The briefing concluded once Whelan covered the other three large family trees on the wall that were similar to Rocket Solar and tied umbilically to Leonard Crane.

Chapter 65

Despair needs its own haven. Leonard Crane chose Bryant Park. The chess players were at work. A Pakistani and an Orthodox Jew were waiting for their turn at the table. Further back the street person with a gold front tooth waited at the other chess table to challenge the winner of a grueling match taking place.

Crane walked past them; there were three Chinese girls from the office building at the corner of Sixth Ave and Forty Second Street having lunch at one of the round iron tables. As he looked back at one who was particularly cute, he noticed that the chess players had all risen and were looking in his direction.

Crane looked ahead to see if he could notice what they were looking at. He saw the portable book mobile with rows of books for lunch time reading. He saw the two ping pong tables in use with two games underway, one with two Filipino men, the other with a man in a white shirt and tie playing a bearded college student.

He looked back again, and the chess players’ faces seemed angry. The three Chinese girls were now looking at him, saying something he could not understand. The cute one was wagging her finger at him. Play at the ping pong tables stopped, and the four players were now walking towards him.

He quickened his pace. A black woman picked up a book from the mobile shelves and threw it at him, barely missing his head. He turned to look back at the chess players, and they were now running towards him. The three Chinese girls merged with the chess players. The path was now four deep across and at least five people deep as the ping pong players joined in.

Crane was running along the flagstone walk heading toward Sixth Ave. The man playing bocce ball came up to the walk and cut him off. He ran towards Forty Second Street and jumped over the fence.

He was out of the park. All of his pursuers were lined up along the wrought iron fence, maybe twenty-five now, waving their hands and yelling at him, but he couldn’t hear them.

Leonard Crane woke. He sat up in bed. A nightmare. There was no longer a place to hide. He was cornered. In two hours he would have to meet with Jim Conroy of the NYPD Cyber Crimes Unit. Conroy would be asking him about what he knew about insider trading in Rocket Solar; why else would Conroy want to see him.

Detective Conroy began the interview with Crane by telling him they knew he was engaged in insider trading and had frozen all of his assets and his trading accounts, including the three that he had used to trade Rocket Solar shares.

“We see you have two accounts with Merrill Lynch and one with Blackthorn Securities. All of the shares you have traded, roughly three hundred thousand, were bought on margin and are in Rocket Solar shares. Plus, in one of your Merrill accounts you have several hundred call options on Rocket Solar,” Conroy said, adding, “Please tell us how you came to buy these shares at this time.”

Crane, still alarmed at the call he received from Detective James Conroy to come in to talk with the NYPD as part of an investigation into insider trading, thought for a moment and agreed with his conclusion on the taxi ride to this police location that he would stonewall any questioning.

“Well, Detective, I do know the stock market and invest in it daily.”

“I’m not asking you that,” Conroy shot back, “I want to know what caused you to buy three hundred thousand shares of Rocket Solar on margin over four days when you do not have a job.”