An early lunch crowd had packed onto the elevator, including the last person I wanted to see. Scully wore a navy blue suit, yellow Hermès tie, and starched white shirt. There could only be one explanation for his full head of perfectly combed hair. Gel and a blow dryer. He said nothing, spared the elevator from his deafening decibels, but grinned shit-eating smug from ear
to ear. The mocking smile, the meatball face, Scully winked at me as though to ask,
Who’s the fruit?
He made one mistake. He thought Crunch, a man who had once scanned windows and doors for snipers, wasn’t looking.
The events that followed started subtly. The doors closed. Scully inched slightly to the left, carving out some body space, distancing himself from the hairdresser as best as possible in the tight quarters. Crunch looked straight ahead and said nothing, eyes fixed on the doors. He, too, inched left. Left toward Scully.
On the third floor, two people exited. Three boarded. Scully flattened against the elevator wall. Crunch leaned against him and violated the body space, perhaps the body parts, of the world’s loudest stockbroker. From the corner of my eyes, I watched Scully’s growing distress.
His brow is damp
.
On the second floor, one person boarded. There was no more room in the elevator. Nowhere for Scully to creep. Crunch tilted even more, squeezing across the plane of good taste, crushing white oxford against navy blue suit. When the doors closed, I thought Scully would burst.
He did. “Get off me, man,” Scully exploded. He twisted his body and shook his shoulders in the crowded little compartment. With his left hand, he tried to shove Crunch back.
In that split second Delta Force skills reminded me of bicycling. Once you learn, you never forget. Crunch moved quickly but casually, almost like covering his mouth to yawn. He snatched Scully’s mitt with his right hand, stifling the thrust as suddenly as it had started. “Whoa, big boy,” Crunch declared.
The doors opened on the ground floor. People spilled into the corridor. There had been a flash of motion in the elevator. They knew something was wrong.
Crunch clamped Scully’s hand with the detached authority of a shop vice. Squeezing. Crushing. Squashing. Scully’s face turned white. His knees began to buckle.
How’s he do that?
“No, Crunch,” I said, seeing Scully wince, his brow filling with beads of perspiration. “It’s okay.”
Crunch straightened Scully’s tie with his left hand—silver ring on the middle finger—and eased the death grip of his right. Delta Force operative
or stylist, he gently mussed Scully’s gelled hair and smiled. “Have a good day, sweetie.”
Then Crunch turned to me. “Forget the coffee,” he said. “My work is done.”
The incident bugged me. But I returned upstairs to Charlie’s computer and the red folder. Frank Kurtz was right.
Stuff shows up when people die.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
After a bang-up lunch of Coke and two more Advil, I stopped trading. No more calls to clients. My mouth tasted grim, cottony like I had swallowed a Dust Bowl from the 1930s. For a moment I deliberated over what to examine first, the red folder or Charlie’s laptop. The choice proved a no-brainer. Romanov’s investment secrets could wait. I slid the red folder away.
Sam and Betty come first
.
One tap of the return key woke Charlie’s computer from its sleep. Guessing “pleaser” had been lucky. That password never would have worked inside a large brokerage firm. SKC required a minimum of eight characters with at least one number and one capital letter, tough sledding on Wall Street. Our vocabularies seldom progressed past four-letter words, five at the outside.
Where to start?
PCS did not host a wireless connection. But our area intercepted a number of wireless signals, two from adjacent buildings and another from inside SKC. Of these transmissions one connection was unsecured, no password necessary. Clearly, the source company operated outside the securities industry. Their laissez-faire approach to privacy would never fly inside an investment bank and brokerage.
Their Internet connection came in handy. It was the only way to check personal e-mails. SKC’s computers restricted access to accounts on Yahoo!, Google, or any of the other e-mail providers. Management was forever explaining, “Outside e-mail accounts make us vulnerable to viruses.”
The filters bugged the shit out of me. SKC, the ostensible pride of free enterprise and unfettered capitalism, reminded me of Red China. They had their Internet restrictions. We had ours. Using my personal laptop, I had often pirated into that wireless connection. Charlie’s Outlook mailbox indicated there were 661 unread messages.
Another day in the life of a finance jock
.
Unlike the e-mails that flooded my computer on a daily basis, Charlie’s traffic consisted mostly of junk. The subject lines included “Lose 30 lbs in 45 days . . . Rid your colon of toxins . . . Big savings on the little blue pill.” There were plenty of mass forwards, friendly-fire spam from friends containing patriotic diatribes, chain prayers, tips about health, and bitchy jokes about spouses. Apparently, Lila Priouleau needed to weed her distribution list. At least two of her forwards hit Charlie’s in-box over the weekend.
Who reads this crap?
Like the MRI file, Charlie’s e-mails could wait until later. I’d cull through the 661-strong onslaught after work, even though the prospect troubled me. Reading them felt voyeuristic.
Sam. Betty. Fred. Get over it.
For now I clicked on the Outlook calendar. An appointment with “Nurse Pinckney” caught my attention. It was scheduled for next week.
Nothing she can do now
.
That meeting was unmemorable to anyone else in New York City. Pinckney, however, was one of Charleston’s more common and historic names. I absently scribbled the nurse’s name and phone number on the back of the red MRI folder.
Enough calendar.
The Windows search tool located a folder on the hard drive titled “The Kelemen Group.” Bingo. With Charlie’s secrets waiting before me, I fancied myself a master sleuth in the modern era.
Bring it on, Sherlock.
Few people, especially Evelyn, had ever accused me of getting to the point quickly. She had been methodical and verbally sparse, the signature of
a true Yankee with Portuguese roots. She had often accused me of “going around Robin Hood’s barn” to get somewhere right in front of me. I now longed to tell Evelyn. She would have been the perfect ally to snoop through Charlie’s affairs.
My jubilation proved transient. About three thousand files cluttered the folder, the sheer number overwhelming. Most contained self-explanatory names, although some had useless titles like “Miscellaneous.” The jumble ranged from Excel to Word to Adobe formats. There were hundreds of electronic missives from money managers, all touting their ability to navigate treacherous financial markets. There were no categories, no color codes, and no subfolders to establish order amid the chaos. Charlie, “Mr. Obsessive” about his attire, had been a complete storage pig on his computer. He dumped all the bits and bytes and electronic shit into one big digital compost heap.
The Windows sort tools offered some relief. I hit the sort-by-name button and scrolled down the alphabetical list. It took forever. Nothing jumped out until midway, an Excel spreadsheet named “Investors.” Too bad there was no document that showed Charlie’s hedge fund investments. That way, we could contact the funds and liquidate the Kelemen Group. No such luck. Charlie, the quintessential storage pig, probably never synched his laptop with computers at the office.
The Excel spreadsheet listed investors in Series B, no surprise given the name. The posse had bankrolled the fund en masse. Sam’s parents invested. After Walter and Helen Wells came Lila Priouleau and her father, Cash. Betty Masters invested. So had Sam’s therapist as well as Jane, the busty divorcée who peed in the shower. Several names were unfamiliar, including a guy from San Francisco and one from Chicago. But I knew most and estimated women outnumbered men two to one. Crunch was noticeably absent.
One column showed how much each person had invested. Betty’s $250,000 stake was there. Sam’s parents had invested over $2 million, and Jane accounted for $1 million. The biggest numbers appeared next to the Priouleaus. Cash had invested $8 million and Lila $2 million in her own name.
Great prospects,
I reminded myself wistfully.
Need to take it up a notch
.
The column did not total investments, probably because 25 percent of the
cells were blank. There were two possible explanations. Charlie had not received funds. Or he ran out of time. The “last modified” date of the spreadsheet confirmed what I suspected. Charlie was working on “Investors” the week he died.
Good start
.
But where does the Kelemen Group keep its cash?
That’s when the brain-housing group engaged. At my last Harvard reunion there had been a panel discussion titled “Where We Live on the Web.” Charlie had probably used Web-based banking for both his business and his personal finances. I still believed he had taken some money off the table. Otherwise, why would anybody torture him?
All those cuts on his arms.
Alone in a cone of silence, oblivious to the antics of PCS, I questioned my old friend, “Where did you live on the Web, Charlie?” Internet Explorer launched, and his home page,
The New York Times
, appeared. It struck me as an ordinary choice, a routine place to start surfing the Web.
To the right of the address line, the drop-down menu showed the historical record of Charlie’s surfing sessions. Methodically, I selected the first site on the list, without bothering to look at what it was. Big mistake.
The computer whisked through cyberspace. Up popped a phalanx of penises, every size, shape, and color. The Web site boasted the best in bears, twinks, and bottoms. It promised the finest videos of men in uniforms or college boys frolicking in their dormitory showers. Gay porn everywhere. The site even blasted music across the laptop speakers. I think it was something by Madonna.
“Charlie?” I stammered inside the din of PCS. It was there, with me suspended in disbelief, that my worst nightmare materialized. From over my right shoulder, I heard the two most terrifying words in the English language.
“Hey, O’Rourke.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I slammed shut Charlie’s laptop, buried it underneath elbow and armpit. My face flushed. My throat swelled. Whirling round in my chair, I found Patty Gershon.
For a long humiliating moment, a silent vortex shut out the noise around us. “Hey, whatever floats your boat,” Patty finally relented, smirking ever so slightly. “I don’t care.”
“It’s not what you think.”
“We need to finish yesterday’s conversation,” she continued. “But I want you to know. It’s okay with me. Really. It’s okay. Some of my best friends—”
“It’s not like that.”
“You can talk to me, O’Rourke.”
“You don’t understand.”
“Those Web sites make for hostile work environments,” Gershon observed in a matter-of-fact voice that belied her intent. Wall Street fired people all the time for inappropriate Internet behavior.
Are you threatening me?
“Know what I mean, jelly bean?” she added.
Call her bluff.
“You sound traumatized,” I recovered, shoveling something between sarcasm and Southern largesse. “Why don’t we walk down to Human Resources? Get some counseling together. You and me, Patty.”
“We’ve got better things to do,” she said. “Let’s grab a conference room.”
“I’d rather talk here.” Chloe, distracted by all the commotion, focused on Charlie’s laptop. Annie watched Gershon back me into the ropes.
“What I have to say, O’Rourke, isn’t for public consumption.”
We found an empty conference room, one usually reserved for client meetings. “I’m taking you over the wall,” Patty proclaimed, pompous and self-important.
Translation: “I’m disclosing confidential information about a company. During the foreseeable future, you cannot trade the stock or advise others about its prospects.” Patty’s words tasted like sour milk. I-bankers were the ones who juggled inside information. They took advisers over the “Chinese wall.” Not stockbrokers.
“Are we in Banking now?” I had all but forgotten Charlie’s gay porn.
Patty ignored my sarcasm. “The CEO of Brisbane Oil services is a client,” she said. “He wants to buy Jack Oil.”
“Did he tell you?” I already knew the answer. No fucking way. CEOs rarely confided their buyout plans to personal advisers, no matter how close the relationship. Patty might say something that jeopardized the deal. Even worse, she might accidentally tip someone who traded on the inside information. CEOs feared nothing more than unfriendly visits from the SEC.
“Let’s just say,” she replied, “that I put two and two together.”
Happens all the time.
“Why are you telling me?” I asked.
“Let’s work together.” She leaned forward and wrapped her hands around my balled fists. The gesture was not sexual. But it was intimate.
