Trump Tower (50 page)

“That good or bad?”

“Expensive. There's no way a firm with their reputation ever does anything without first billing hundreds of hours.”

“Am I paying for it?”

“You could be.”

“What's her list look like?”

“Like everything you own.”

“What's she going to settle for?”

“A whole lot less. The pre-nup is solid.”

“Bobby . . .” He took a deep breath. “I can't deal with this now. Tell me what else.”

“The better news? The Truman brothers are signing this morning. You now own a sports agency.”

“Ah shit,” Zeke said.

“You sound thrilled.”

“No . . . last night . . . how dumb. At the party. Roberto Santos was there. He's a Sovereign Shields client. I had it in my head to tell him . . . and I completely forgot.”

“Doesn't he live in Trump Tower?”

“Yeah. I'll call him. Or tell him next time. Let me phone Perry and Monica. We'll deal with Birgitta tomorrow.”

Now he dialed his office in LA and spent the next hour and a half on the phone with the two young lawyers who would be running the sports side of the agency.

“Take nice premises,” he said, “but don't go wild. I want to see a request for anything and everything that costs more than a hundred bucks. Furniture. Stationery. Scotch tape. Paper clips. Water bill. Trips. Lunches. I don't care what it is. If it's more than a hundred bucks, you need my approval. Take your secretaries with you, and each of you chooses an assistant. How many agents from Sovereign do you intend to keep?”

“We're making up a short list now of about a dozen,” Perry Griswald said.

Monica Rosenblatt warned, “Obviously the ones we let go will set up on their own.”

“Obviously. So what you do is offer them first rights on the deadwood. We'll keep a core base of their clients, then see what we can get for the ones we don't want. Sell whoever you don't want or can't use. But don't bilk the old staff. Give them a chance to survive.”

Monica wanted to know, “What happens when they wind up killing us because we didn't kill them first?”

“You get fired for not doing your job well enough.”

Perry suggested, “A little harsh, no?”

“What's the line from Jerry McGuire? This isn't show friends, this is show business.” He paused for effect. “I want to set up an advisory board. Make up a short list of old clients, men and women . . . retired . . . and put them on a sensible retainer. Some of them may still be viable clients, some of them may bring in new clients. But if we get the right people on the advisory board, it gives us the cred that the former management lost.”

“Sounds good,” Perry said and Monica agreed.

“First name on that list,” Zeke added, “is Carson Haynes.”

“Who's he?” Monica asked.

“Find out for yourself. If you're going to survive in this business, you need to know the players.”

“I never heard of him, either,” Perry said. “And I know all the players.”

“He's a player because I made him a player. Also, set up a pitch to sign Romain Neal. I had dinner with him last night.”

“The guy's married to Audra Kaleigh Harris?” Monica said. “See, I know the players when they're players.”

“I'm back tomorrow. By then I'll try to come up with more players you never heard of.”

While he was on the phone with LA, half a dozen calls came in, mostly to his cell, and at least twenty e-mails did as well. The only call that seemed important was from his New York office, so hanging up with Perry and Monica, he called over there and spent another hour on the line taking care of his New York business.

There were contracts they wanted him to see and a financial statement to go over. He asked them to send it over to Trump Tower right away and promised he'd read everything on the plane home.

He was still on the line with the New York office when Christina said she was leaving. He waved to her, “See you next time, and thank you.”

More calls came in, and more e-mails came in, too, and after he hung up with New York, he checked his voice mail and skimmed through his e-mail and finally decided, the hell with it.

Assuring himself,
everything can wait until tomorrow
, he phoned his pilot. “Let's go home.” The pilot said he'd arrange to have a car pick him up at Trump Tower right away.

Then he phoned his mother. She was complaining about something, and he heard himself repeating over and over again, “Everything will be all right.”

After that, he phoned his kids.

He got Zoey's voice mail and left a message.

But he managed to find Max. “How you doing?”

“Fine.”

“What's new?”

“Nothing.”

“Where's your sister?”

“Dunno.”

He almost phoned Miriam but decided he'd had enough for one day.

Walking into his bedroom, he thought about taking clothes back to LA, decided no, then checked the kitchen. He was running low on mineral water and beer and made a note to have some delivered.

While he was putting his shoes back on, a fax came in from the auction
house summing up his four sales and one purchase, and invoicing him for the difference. He didn't even look at it. He simply folded it and put it into his attaché case.

Then Felicity rang from downstairs to say there was a large envelope waiting for him at the front desk. “Shall I send it up?”

“No,” he said. “I'll pick it up on my way out.”

He checked the apartment one last time to make sure the lights were off and that he could leave.

That's when someone knocked on the door.

I told her I'd pick it up
, he grumbled, and opened the door to find a young man in a drab suit, with a white shirt and dark tie.

He'd never seen this man before. “Can I help you?”

“Excuse me for disturbing you like this. My name is Eric Arnold Ronaldsay. Mr. Isbister asked me to stop by and give this to you.”

It was a manila envelope. Zeke took it. “Thank you very much.”

The man turned and walked away.

Closing the door, Zeke opened the envelope and found several dozen pages inside. On the first page, the typed title read, “Our counter-proposal for the full financing of your project.” The first line of the second page read, “Why we have decided to forgo our preference for cross-collateralization.”

He said out loud, “These guys are too fucking strange for me,” and put the envelope in his attaché case.

Downstairs, Felicity handed him a large envelope from his office. He thanked her and said, “See you next time through.”

David, the doorman, saluted, “Your car is there, sir.”

“Thanks,” Zeke said and left Trump Tower.

It was only when he got to Teterboro Airport and climbed into his plane that he wondered, how come the fellow that Isbister sent didn't get announced by the front desk?

R
ebecca Battelli called to tell Pierre Belasco, “I'm going to shut down the business. I didn't sleep last night. I'm looking at this mess again today. I can't cope.”

“Don't make that decision yet,” he urged her. “I know this is very difficult for you, but we're trying to help.”

“My husband's cousin Johnny called me from Florida late last night. He said he'd heard about the break-in and was glad that I wasn't hurt.”

“He actually said that?”

“Yes.”

To Belasco, that sounded like a veiled threat. “Have you heard anything from the police yet?”

“Nothing.”

His second line rang.

“Rebecca . . . Mrs. Battelli . . .”

The caller ID read, “Private Number.”

“Rebecca,” she corrected him.

“You're upstairs?”

“Yes.”

The phone rang again.

“Private Number” could be any of a hundred people he knew, including Donald Trump. But not everybody who hid their number from caller ID knew the number of his second line. “I've got to take this call. I'll be right up.”

“It's such a mess.”

“I'm on my way,” he promised, hung up with her, and picked up the incoming call.

It was Forbes.

Belasco told him, “I was waiting for Timmins to wake up so that he could phone you and we could have a chat.”

“Normally that's best,” he said. “But I'll tell you what . . . write down this number . . .” Forbes gave him one with an area code he didn't recognize—855—which turned out to be a toll-free number. “No one will answer and you won't hear a message. All you get is a beep. Leave a voice mail and I'll phone you back, usually within two hours. Any longer than that, someone else will be in touch with you.”

“Yes, okay, thank you. I've got it.”

“The reason I phoned . . . I was down at One Hogan . . . you know, police headquarters . . . and they've decided there's nothing they can do about the Battelli matter.”

Belasco was astonished. “How about, they can investigate a crime.”

“You know the word, triage? It's French. They look at everything that comes in and decide where to allocate resources. They see this one . . . no violence, no obvious motives, the suspects are not known and probably never will be, no clues, no one even knows if anything's been stolen . . . and how much time do you think they can spend on it? They put resources into crimes where there's been violence, where someone has been hurt, where there is a real possibility of a result. Sorry to say it, but like everything else in this world, it boils down to return on investment. They spend their time working crimes they think they can solve.”

“Unbelievable. Just gets tossed into the wastepaper basket.”

“Nope. Footnoted as a statistic.”

“That's pathetic.”

“That's reality.”

He wanted Forbes to know, “The husband's cousin, Johnny, threatened her last night. He phoned her, said he'd heard about the break in, and said he was glad that she didn't get hurt.”

Forbes paused. “Then what?”

“Then . . . nothing.”

“Sounds to me like condolences.”

“Sounds to me exactly like a threat.”

“A threat is, give me your wallet or I'll kill you.”

“A threat is having hoodlums tear your place to bits, then telling you, I'm glad you weren't hurt. That's saying, next time it will be you.”

Forbes wasn't having it. “That call doesn't prove a thing.”

“You need to talk to her.”

“I have talked to her. Trust me on this, unless she's involved, there's nothing she can say that can move this forward.”

“That's it? That's the end? One day later and everyone has already washed their hands of it?”

“The cops have. But whoever is behind this hasn't. For that person, or those persons, it's not over.”

“You think they're coming back?”

“We need to find out what they took. Then we can figure out what they're going to do next.”

W
HEN
B
ELASCO
walked into Scarpe Pietrasanta, he was surprised to see that nothing had been done. The place was still a mess.

Rebecca was sitting in a nearly broken chair, her head in her hands. Carlos Vela was standing in the corner.

Bill Riordan was also there.

“This man,” he pointed to Vela, “what's he doing in the building? He says she hired him. She says you recommended him.”

“That's right,” Belasco went to Rebecca. “You okay?”

She shook her head, no.

“You're out of here,” Riordan ordered Vela. “Right now. Or I call the cops and have you arrested.”

“No,” Belasco said. “You'll do nothing of the kind. Mr. Vela works for Mrs. Battelli.”

“He's on the Chapman list?”

“No he's not.”

“Then I'll put him on the Chapman list.”

“No, you won't. I run Trump Tower. I decide who goes on the list.”

Riordan glared at Belasco. “You're not the only one with the boss' ear.” He pointed to Vela, “Get out of Trump Tower now, or I will have you arrested.” With that, Riordan turned on his heels and left.

Rebecca looked up at Belasco. “It's all gotten out of hand.” She turned to Vela. “You're a very nice young man, and I'm truly sorry that you've found yourself in the middle . . .”

“I'll worry about Mr. Riordan,” Belasco said. “But first things first. We need to find out who's trying to hurt you and to stop them. If you walk away now, they win.”