Trump Tower (37 page)

“That's all right . . .”

“No, it's not. I'm not usually rude. Please have that accountant send me his bill.”

“Don't worry about that. It's more important that we set a date for him to come back. This week, perhaps. Today, if you like. The sooner he can advise you . . .”

Still not looking at him, she started shaking her head. “I couldn't bring myself to come in yesterday. I couldn't bear the thought of finding out that the company is broke. I'm so confused. I don't know if I'm capable of running the business. And I don't want to be told that I have to close the business.”

“I'm sure he can help you . . .”

She looked up at him and started to cry. “Pierre . . . I don't know what to do.”

He hesitated, leaned forward to reach for her hands, and held them.

They stayed that way for a moment, her hands in his, then she slowly pulled away. “I'm being a silly little girl.” She wiped her eyes.

He leaned back away from her, feeling clumsy and awkward. “I'll phone the accountant right now. I'll try to get him here today. This morning if he can. Otherwise, this afternoon.”

She shook her head slowly. “My husband's family . . . actually his cousin . . . is insisting that I give him complete control of the business.”

“He wants you to sell out?”

“No. He wants me to hand it to him and walk away.”

“That doesn't seem fair.”

“He's not a fair person. He says I can't run it, that I don't know what I'm doing, that I will ruin it. He says my husband never intended on leaving the business to me. Except he did.”

He looked at her for a few moments, until he realized he was staring, then stood up. “Let's see about that.” He got Ronnie Rose on the phone. “Mrs. Battelli wasn't available yesterday, but she's in my office now. Can we do something for her today?”

“The shoe lady?” his accountant said. “Let me tell you, Pierre, when I came home last night without any shoes . . . my wife can get very nasty when she needs to make a point.”

Belasco tried not to laugh in front of Rebecca. “I really appreciate it. What time is good for you?”

Rose said, “Two?”

Belasco repeated it to Rebecca and she nodded.

He hung up with Rose, then escorted her to the elevator. He instructed Miguel, “Please take Mrs. Battelli to twenty-four,” then said to her, “You know how to change elevators there, don't you?”

She said she did.

“I will see you with the accountant at two.”

“Thank you.” She extended her hand. He shook it gently, smiled, and she stepped into the elevator.

When the doors closed, he went back to his office.

A bird with a broken wing
.

“Sir?” Pierro startled him. “Mrs. Essenbach is in the lobby . . .”

Coming around his desk, Belasco was at his door when she spotted him. “You betrayed me,” she yelled. “I will never forgive you.”

He went to her and extended his hand. “May we speak privately?”

“No . . . we may not.”

Belasco could see out of the corner of his eyes that both Shannon and Pierro were pretending to look away, but that David was watching from the door and Jaquim was watching from in front of his elevator.

She said very loudly, “Your betrayal is unforgivable. You made me a promise.”

“Madame, I did nothing of the kind. If you would please step into my office so that we can discuss this.”

“I will expose you for the fraud that you are,” she continued. “A lying, cheating fraud.” She turned toward the concierge desk. “You will all know what a fraud he is. I will expose him.”

With that, the woman stormed out of Trump Tower.

Both Shannon and Pierro shook their heads to show Belasco that they weren't going to believe anything that the woman said.

He looked at David and Jaquim, and now both of them turned away, as if to pretend that they hadn't witnessed this scene.

Saying nothing to any of them, Belasco returned to his office and rang Bill Riordan. “There's been an incident in the residents' lobby with Mrs. Essenbach.”

“Star of our latest video,” Riordan laughed. “You see it yet? It's going onto our ‘Best Hits' reel.”

“She was ranting and raving and making vague threats. She did it in front of my staff.”

“Keep your powder dry, Pierre. I'll pull a copy of the lobby CCTV and send one to you.”

“And one to the lawyers.”

“Obviously, there's no sound . . . write it up the way it happened . . . you know . . . what she said and what you said . . . and add who was there to witness it. Then, maybe, you should meet with the lawyers to go over this. She's got enough money to make trouble for everyone if she wants to.”

“Thanks.” He hung up and rang Carole Ann Mendelsohn, the woman who ran the in-house legal team.

“It's Mrs. Essenbach,” he told her.

“I've seen the DVD,” Mendelsohn said. “Did you know she had a husband? I was surprised. I thought black widow spiders ate them.”

He smiled. “We should talk about her. She's been ranting and raving in the lobby. Bill Riordan will send you a copy of the CCTV footage.”

“How's two this afternoon?”

“Two thirty would be better.”

“Done. See you then.”

They hung up.

That's when Belasco's phone rang.

It was Rebecca Battelli and she was hysterical. “I've been robbed.”

A
n e-mail was waiting in the office for Carson, with a large attachment from the lawyers in Tokyo. “As per your request. There was nothing in English, but we've done a fast translation of the summary. Let us know if you need more.”

He e-mailed back, “Thank you. I'm in Tokyo this week. Can we meet Friday morning?”

Opening the attachment, he started to read it, then quickly got Ken Warring on the phone.

“If you're still in LA, then I'm waking you again.”

“No,” Warring said. “I'm in Dallas. And, yes, you're still waking me.”

“Shigetada. Remember that we said there was nine percent missing? Yesterday we found six of the nine at a small, family-owned investment bank called Chiba. The managing partners are Shigetada's cousins.”

“And?”

“And this morning I learned that they hate him.”

“We love hate,” Warring said. “You should meet with them.”

“Not yet.”

“Why wait?”

Carson explained, “We need to hold this card close. If the shit hits the fan, they'll be the first to bail out.”

“Then we need to be there selling parachutes.”

“What I don't understood,” Carson confessed, “is why, if they hate him, are they still holding his shares?”

“Ask yourself the same question. Why would you?”

He pondered that. “The obvious thing is that I'd be looking to get more than they're worth now.”

“Or?”

“Or . . . I could care less and put them away forever because it's a family thing.”

“Unlikely. Emotion shouldn't enter into the equation.”

“It often does.”

“And when it does,” Warring reminded him, “that's when you lose money.”

“So . . . what else?”

“You're asking me to second-guess some Japanese guys I've never met before the day's first cup of coffee . . . but how about this? If you really hated some guy, wouldn't you want to hold onto his shares until you could use them to hurt him?”

Carson smiled. “Kind of like what we're thinking of doing to Shigetada.”

“Kinda . . . exactly.”

“Speaking of which,” Carson said, “I never heard back on those three hundred thousand shares in the dark pool in Hong Kong, which means no movement there. And we put twenty-five thousand out at forty and haven't heard back about that, either. Have to presume no one is interested.”

“Keep me informed,” Warring said.

“How was LA?”

“Might be interesting. I'll let you know. Might be something you want to put some of your own money into.”

“And how's Dallas?”

“I'm meeting with RD Cove this morning for breakfast.”

“I think I've mentioned that his nephew David lives in Trump Tower.”

Warring wasn't impressed. “I'll let you know if anything works out here.”

“Go back to sleep.”

“You keep waking me and then saying that.”

“Sorry.”

“FYI,” Warring said, “I'm home tonight. Which means you can find me there tomorrow morning. In case you want to wake me three days in a row.”

W
HEN
A
LICIA
got her first job in television, as a young woman fresh out of school in Miami, there was an old news editor named Cornelius O'Casey who, every time he sent her out on an assignment, never failed to remind her, “Start at the beginning.”

She never forgot that, and this time, like every time, she started at the beginning.

Instead of going to the gym, she put together her clothes for that night—it
was much too early to call Cyndi, so she made the decision herself, settling on a Dolce & Gabbana black strapless dress with satin ankle-strap heels—put everything in a garment bag, left it in the living room, then called for a car to take her downtown.

She was the first person to walk into the New York City Municipal Archives—across the street from city hall—when they opened their doors at exactly nine o'clock.

Some of the clerks working there recognized her, and one of them offered to help her. She said she wanted to find everything they might have on Trump Tower. He showed where she could locate a few documents, but there wasn't much.

Next door, at the New York City Hall library, she found a few additional records, but she didn't learn more than she already knew.

Across the park, at the Department of Buildings, a clerk walked her through the process of finding building plans. He even photocopied a few things for her.

She thumbed through the photocopies in the car back to Trump Tower, dumped them in the apartment, grabbed her garment bag and had the driver take her to 30 Rockefeller Center.

Leaving her dress hanging in the makeup room, which was a few doors down from the newsroom on the seventh floor, she went into the morning meeting. Greg, her editor, threw a bunch of story ideas around. A homeless man in Brooklyn who won $110,000 in the lottery. A three-alarm fire on Staten Island that the NYPD were calling arson. A Board of Education meeting planned for Wednesday where, according to leaked documents, school closures were going to be announced.

Then the party came up.

Alicia reminded him, “I'm a guest . . . a paid guest . . . not a working girl.”

Greg looked at Alicia. “Just the president.”

She shook her head. “Not fair.”

“But then it's not fair that you get to go and I don't. So, as long as you're there . . .”

“We've been through this.” She pointed to Meagan O'Donnell, who'd been hired one week ago as a local street reporter. “I'm conflicted. Anyway, you already told Meagan she could do a live feed.”

“Yeah,” Meagan said. “You promised me.”

Greg shook his head. “Meagan gets everybody coming in. I'm talking about Clinton upstairs on the roof.”

“I'll go to the roof,” Meagan offered, anxiously. “I can do that. No big deal.”

“Except it is a big deal. Except you don't have a roof pass. Except Alicia's already up there.”

“Except,” Alicia cut in, “I'm paying for my ticket and that makes it look like I'm paying for access. It's a conflict of interest. And, it's not fair to Meagan.”

“If life were fair,” he pointed out, “I'd be batting cleanup for the Yankees.” He turned to one of his staff who was sorting out the rundown. “Meagan does a live feed from the museum steps at the opening . . . then we go back to her at the end, and at that point we'll run tape with whoever she's got.”

“Thanks,” Meagan nodded to Greg, then smiled at Alicia. “Thank you.”

“If you can get Bill,” Greg said to Meagan, then looked at Sammy Stevens, who was going to produce Meagan's feeds from the street, “If you get Bill, we'll run a short piece at six, then a longer piece at eleven. Maybe we can get him on the way out, too.”

“Is he coming in the front door?” Stevens asked.

“Find out,” Greg said.

“We'll cover all the bases,” Stevens promised and nodded at Meagan.