I finally pulled the cell phone from my pocket, brandished it like a sword, and said, “My attorney. Can you hear me now?”
“Go ahead,” Fitzsimmons encouraged with a sneer. “Lawyer up. Mandy Maris will love what she hears from us.”
“Right. You can tell her how we sat down in a big conference room and I repeated myself over and over again. Skipping records make for a great story.” I expected Fitzsimmons to roll his head and crack his neck, but the big man spared his vertebrae.
He went for my jugular instead. “Let me set the scene, chowdahhead. Wall Street wizard questioned in death of best friend.” He paused to ensure my attention. “Here’s where it starts to get interesting.” He rolled his head for dramatic effect. “Did a lovers’ tryst end in murder? Questions abound regarding broker’s behavior with bewitching, beguiling widow.”
“Be hard not to bang,” Mummert quipped on cue.
“Over at the
New York Post
,” Fitzsimmons continued, “they’re a rolling ball of whoop ass when it comes to innuendo. Stuff that would never fly in Boston.” He yawned and looked at his nails. “Even a Harvard man can be tempted by money.”
“And one nice piece of ass,” Mummert added.
“I wonder what your clients will think,” Fitzsimmons sighed disingenuously.
“Your clients,” Mummert echoed.
That was it. “Why don’t you pour yourself a steaming cup of shut the fuck up?” I snapped at the weasel-faced officer.
“Oh my,” Fitzsimmons soothed or taunted or both.
Mummert started to say, “Oh my,” but he thought better of it. He wilted under the weight of my piercing stare.
“You know,” Fitzsimmons said, “I bet they read the
New York Post
in Nome, Alaska.”
“All the news that’s fit to print,” Mummert added.
“Wrong newspaper. And I’m not your guy.”
“I wonder how the Eskimos will see it,” the big officer countered. “The morning paper, a few logs on the fire, tales of scandals from the far reaches of Wall Street. A stockbroker who won’t cooperate. The story beats mushing the dogs all day.”
“Okay, okay. I get it.”
“I thought you would see it my way,” Fitzsimmons said. “Let’s go back to the beginning. How long have you known Sam and Charlie Kelemen? What do you know about their marriage? When did you first suspect a Ponzi scheme? Did Sam Kelemen know about it?” And so on.
“Your interest in me makes no sense,” I protested more than once. “There were five hundred people watching me when Charlie died. Why don’t you investigate the people who invested in Charlie’s fund of funds?”
“Leave the sleuthing to us, Harvard Boy.”
I hate that expression.
Three hours after the police interrogations first started, I walked out the front door of the Fifty-fourth Street police station. I felt like the star of an Alfred Hitchcock movie, an innocent man unjustly accused. My cell phone reported twenty-three messages in voice mail.
Meandering, my head in a listless fog, I headed up the West Side toward my apartment. The streets blurred until I passed the Star of Bombay, an Indian restaurant on Eighth. Three or four union men were striking outside, picket signs, the whole ball of wax. They chanted raucously, “Bombay is not okay.”
One of them jammed a yellow flyer into my hands and repeated, “Bombay is not okay, brother.” The page showed a turbaned man, presumably the
owner, looking grotty and severe. Cartoon rats encircled his photo. Underneath, the union detailed its grievances.
Everybody has issues.
My focus turned to Cliff Halek. We spoke nearly every day. Our work required constant communication because of the business I generated for his team—zero-cost collars, prepaid forwards, and all the other hedges for large blocks of stock. Cliff was one busy guy, in great demand among PCS advisers. How long would it be before we had nothing further to discuss? Our friendship would fade into nothingness.
There was Annie. She had been dancing through my thoughts as of late. Her stories, her looks—I had been falling for her winsome charms. Once I was a statistic at SKC, just another broker who had come and gone, how long would it be until Annie forgot me?
What about Jumping JJ and Frank Kurtz and Radio Ray? What about all those meals stinking up the trading floors and festering in our cans after lunch? Continuing north, I considered the most devastating loss of all. In my job I managed ideas, not people. Now there was nothing to fill the recesses of my mind, nothing to prevent me from dwelling on Evelyn and Finn. My island was sinking faster than Atlantis.
As the chants of “Bombay is not okay” faded behind me, I understood how the union felt.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
Back in the safety of my condominium, away from the corner of Fifty-fourth and Abu Ghraib, Fitzsimmons’s warning reverberated through my brain.
Don’t be a chowdahhead and take a trip somewhere. We wouldn’t like it.
His meaning was clear.
They think I’m dirty.
There was also the worst of Mummert to consider.
Crotches and gravy, crotches and gravy.
His refrain rumbled inside my head like bad lyrics from a British rock band. He watched too many police shows, the ones where the spouse is always guilty.
Sam has nothing to do with Charlie’s death.
It was late afternoon. I fixed coffee and promptly splashed Kenya Bold all over my starched white shirt. “Damn it,” I cursed to the dead quiet of the condominium. Then I knocked my calculator to the floor while pulling a laptop and photo from my briefcase.
Not my best stuff.
Moments later Windows cycled through its start-up. The blinking lights cautioned me to steer clear of the computer lest I knock it over, too. The calculator rested safely on my desk, next to the picture from PCS.
Over a year.
That was the last time a photo of Evelyn and Finn had appeared in my apartment. The awareness gave me hope. It reinvigorated me with a dark kind of solace.
Glad they don’t have to see this shit.
Step one was to call Sam. Some help I had been. Her money was missing, and I had done nothing to recover it. Confused and conflicted about what to do, I remembered the worst fact of all.
It’s not Sam’s money.
The Ponzi theory only heightened police suspicions. They identified Sam as a “person of interest.” Mummert remarked during our interview, “It’s always the wife.” My wife’s best friend didn’t need that kind of help.
Sorry, Evelyn.
Fitzsimmons had instructed me to send the “Investors” spreadsheet. His urgency made no sense. “Why? You have Charlie’s computer.”
“Our techies haven’t hacked the files yet.”
“The password is ‘pleaser,’ ” I had announced triumphantly. It was the wrong thing to say, exulting over a lucky guess the wrong thing to do.
Fitzsimmons asked, “How do you know?”
“Yeah, how?” Mummert echoed. “Did he tell you?” The officers and I circled this topic for the next twenty minutes.
The phone rang and extricated me from these recollections. “Hello.”
After two or three seconds of silent eternity, a strong, steady, caring voice boomed into the receiver, “Where have you been? What’s going on, Grove?” There was no “hello” or friendly introduction, though I could feel the gush of relief. The caller added with a hint of anger, “You never returned my calls.”
It was Annie. She probably left twenty-two of the twenty-three messages on my cell phone. I had not listened to any of them.
“Sorry.”
Her tone absorbed me for a moment. She always called me “Boss.” She always walked the fine line between playful and deferential. Not this time. She was different, commanding, no monkey business. There would be no mention of fruit flies or Radio Ray.
Annie’s voice drew me close, forced me to forget the Boston police. I hit the send button on my laptop. The “Investors” spreadsheet zipped off to Fitzsimmons’s mailbox.
Time to move on.
“Compliance Nazis are scouring the place,” she reported. “Kurtz has been rifling through your desk since you left. Your files, your drawers, everything. He kept asking us about Sam Kelemen. We said you had dinner with her at Live Bait.”
“Answer all his questions. I have nothing to hide.”
“Kurtz told us not to call you.”
“What did you say?”
“Think I care what he said?” Hearing the irreverence, I glanced at Evelyn. “I’m calling,” Annie continued. “Right?”
“Where are you?”
“The office. Level with me, Grove. Have you done something wrong?” Suddenly, our age difference of eight years no longer existed.
“Don’t call me from the office,” I barked, not answering her question. “They monitor calls.”
Annie barked back, “You think I’m stupid? I’m on my cell.” She dropped her voice several notches, less aggressive and more conspiratorial. Us against them. “Besides, what can they do?”
“Fire you. Let’s start with that.”
“Who cares,” she snapped. “Now answer my question. Did you do something wrong?”
“Not a damn thing. I’m helping two friends.”
Sam Kelemen. Betty Masters.
Annie went silent. For a long, lingering moment Evelyn and Finn stared at me from the photo. In a sudden storm of mental war games, memories of my family’s brief life span versus disquiet about the future, I decided that Annie did not believe me. I was wrong.
“I know you didn’t do anything wrong,” she finally said. “I just wanted to hear you say it aloud. Now, what are we going to do about this?”
We?
“We are not doing anything.”
“I’m helping,” she argued. “You don’t have a choice.” She had probably been the kid on the block who defied neighborhood bullies.
No matter her words, Annie’s voice still betrayed fear. It could have been fear about money. Broker teams shared their payments from fees and commissions. Annie and Chloe received a base salary from SKC. They made
even more money from their percentage of team earnings. If I blew up, they would lose the bulk of their incomes.
Annie’s angst had nothing to do with money, though. She had already jeopardized her job by calling me. And she knew it. There was something else in her voice.
“Tell me what to do,” she pressed.
“You can start by avoiding me. Charlie forged my name on a reference letter. That letter helped him swindle friends and his wife’s family. SKC and the police both think I’m involved, which makes me a leper.”
“Hey, Grove,” Annie declared evenly.
“Yeah.”
“Shut up.”
This “shut up” was different, not the valley-girl kind I had heard so often among her cabal of twenty-something friends. This “shut up” was the real thing. It was more of a “listen up.”
“You’re innocent. Nothing else matters.”
“I’m damaged goods, Annie. Kurtz will have a fiasco on his hands once the story gets out.”
“I’ll help.”
“No.”
“You don’t get it, Grove.”
“Get what?”
“Ever since Gus escorted you out the door, I’ve been afraid of one thing.”
“Which is?”
“Trust,” she replied, her voice faltering. She had ventured into uncharted wilderness.
“What do you mean?”
“I need you,” she explained, “to be right.”
“Right?”
“To be the good guy, Grove.” Somewhat exasperated by the need to clarify, she added, “Okay? Do you get it?”
She even thinks in stories.
“Annie, I know what it means to lose respect. I lost mine for Charlie.” Digging deep, rummaging through feelings long out of reach, I added, “It would kill me to lose yours.”
“Don’t worry, Boss.” With that word, “Boss,” I knew her misgivings were gone. I had recouped her trust beyond any doubt. It was the boost I needed.
“There’s a way for me to prove I had nothing to do with Charlie’s scam. I just don’t know how. Not yet anyway.”
“Why don’t we go to Goldman Sachs?” she suggested brightly. “Joe Lindmann is always trying to recruit you,” she said, referring to the head of Goldman’s PCS.
“He wouldn’t come near us right now. I’m toxic. What does Kurtz want you to tell clients?”
“He didn’t say.”
“You’re kidding, right?” I wasn’t surprised, not really. Kurtz’s oversight was classic, the habitual behavior inside brokerage firms. Top producers considered customers first. Managers considered politics and kissed asses first.
“Typical Kurtz,” Annie observed with wisdom beyond her years. “We have the clients covered. We’re saying you took a few days off.” She added, “It’s true, too.”
“Perfect. Has JJ called?”
“No.”
“He probably won’t given the deal between Brisbane and Jack. If he does, tell him to reach me on my cell. How about Zola Mancini?”
“She stopped by. She’s moving her stuff here in the morning.”
“Make sure she coordinates with Cliff.”
“Gotta hop,” Annie interjected. “Drive-by,” she explained.
“Duck,” I said.
“Drive-by,” in our world, referred to Kurtz’s patrols around the floor. He left his office sporadically to take the pulse of PCS brokers at work. “Check your BlackBerry,” she added tersely. “I think the compliance Nazis turned it off. And one other thing.”
“Yeah.”
