Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street (41 page)

Thinking about the whole situation made Warren anxious, and he buried himself in his work. The corporate trading desk had been at the morning sales meeting, hawking a big new deal for an airplane leasing company, so he hunkered down and started studying the financial summaries to see if he wanted to sell it to his clients. He’d gone about halfway through the pack of Rolaids in his pocket already, the chalky, mint flavor somehow soothing to the spirit as well as the belly.

Unlike many Weldon salesmen, he tried to screen out the garbage before attempting to sell anything to his accounts. All Street firms needed the revenue from new deals to keep the machine greased, so some stinkers would inevitably sneak in, even at a relatively conservative place such as Weldon. Larisa’s Temenosa deal had been a prime example. One day, the firm is raising money selling bonds for Temenosa, supposedly a hot, growing diversified oil services company with fabulous cash flow. Seven months later, all the money raised in the bond offering is gone, spent on a lousy acquisition, investment-banking fees, and a lot of executive compensation, and the firm files for bankruptcy. It seems the bankers on the deal had been a little too optimistic about that cash flow. Oh, well, there went a billion dollars or so. The amazing part was that Weldon got assigned the plum reorganization advisory job by the bankruptcy court. Since they already knew so much about the company, the receiver would save the expense of a new firm’s starting from scratch. The fees were generous, even though the company itself was virtually busted. It was all a funny joke, as long as you were on the magic gravy train.

It took Warren about an hour to decide that the leasing company was a house of cards that would collapse almost immediately if the airline business softened even slightly. With all the new debt, it would actually fail if business just stayed the same and didn’t improve. Meanwhile the CEO and majority owner lived like a king and would no doubt use a chunk of the bond proceeds to fund his lifestyle. He stuck a prospectus in an envelope with a printed “For Your Information” card and scratched out
Information,
substituting
Amusement,
sending it off to David Schiff. He loved this kind of deal. They could laugh together as it crashed in flames.

Thinking of Larisa again made Warren a little uneasy. She had seemed genuinely sad when he’d run into her. She was a tough cookie who had gotten where she wanted to be, but paid a price personally. She had been made one of the youngest vice presidents in Finance at the firm and was on the path to be an MD within a few years. It may not have worked out with him, or even with Anson, but she’d find someone new. Besides, having kids or a family was something that would wait. At the pace she was going, she’d be able to retire and have a brood at thirty-five. He could see her point and couldn’t fault her logic, although her sleeping with the guy he was most scared of hadn’t exactly warmed his heart. For a minute he wondered if she might have known about Anson’s accounts. He dismissed it—she had always warned him never,
never
to do anything even in the gray area between legal and questionable. He felt that she was not yet resolved as a part of his life somehow, and that thought did not make him comfortable. He had a great girlfriend, a good career in a tough business, and a great big bag of salty pistachio nuts that the shoe-shine man had sold him that morning. All was right, or at least allright, with the world. For now.

forty-nine

A cold hand ran down his spine, grabbing at his stomach and squeezing hard enough to make him gasp. A yawning pit opened inside him, and hot flames shot up from his groin to his cheeks, setting his skin afire, and his heart ablaze. He felt himself shrinking suddenly and violently, until he felt like a pin dot, white-hot, searing down through his seat, the floor, and into the earth and bedrock below.

“Warren, there’s someone from the police here to see you” was all the receptionist had said to him, and he struggled for his breath as he answered, “I’ll be right out.” In the three months since they’d returned from Europe, there hadn’t been so much as a peep. It had lulled him into a sense of calm. It only took an instant to shatter into a billion shards, and his composure returned only slowly as he walked to the elevator foyer as if to the gallows.

The familiar and intelligent face of Detective Wittlin peered up from a copy of
Forbes
magazine, which he was flipping through. The round, smiling face of Donald Trump stared out from the open page.

Wittlin closed and dropped the magazine back on the small coffee table and greeted Warren with a handshake. “Hey, sorry to drop in on you unannounced. I needed to talk to you right away.” Wittlin swiveled around. “Is there someplace we can go?”

Warren held up a finger. “Mary, are any of the conference rooms open? The detective and I need some privacy.”

The receptionist consulted a logbook briefly. “Only the War Room, and only until two.”

Warren looked at Wittlin, who nodded approval. “Fine, pencil us in.” He showed Wittlin the way, through a set of double glass doors, and down a short hall. The War Room was actually a big conference room, with the most advanced teleconferencing technology available. Every branch office of Weldon had a room just like it. From this room priority sales calls were made, and senior executives could address every employee in the firm simultaneously. It was ridiculously large for just two men, but they sat at the corner of the immense conference table.

“Okay. What is it?” Warren crossed his legs and tried, quite successfully, to look relaxed. His heart was pounding.

“I have something I want you to take a look at.” Wittlin reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a manila envelope. He slid out of it a small stack of photographs and handed them to Warren.

They were obviously from a security camera in a building foyer or lobby. A distorted overhead view showed two people, quite clearly Anson Combes and Bonnie, entering the foyer. A second showed a lone figure, head covered by a hat and some kind of face covering, leaving. Warren started to flip through the others, but Wittlin stopped him.

“That’s the one I wanted you to see.” Wittlin reached for the rest.

“Can I see the others?”

“You don’t really want to. They’re shots of the body. Pretty rough stuff.”

Warren pursed his lips. He was beginning to feel relief—Wittlin was asking about the murder, not about European bank accounts or sham mortgage sales.

“I guess not.” Warren studied the shot. The shadowy figure was completely covered by a big parka and the hat. On closer inspection the mask appeared to be a scarf, and Warren could make out some kind of pattern on it. “What can I tell you?”

“We think that’s the killer. The timing seems right. No one else in that building remembered going out or having a visitor. It has to be. I wondered if you could tell anything from it?” Wittlin looked Warren square in the eye inquisitively.

“Why’d it take so long to get this? It’s been, what, about five months?”

“Yeah. Well, we were checking it out, computer enhancing it, and following up leads. We got nowhere. I figured I’d take a shot and see if anyone else could get something from it.” Wittlin shrugged. “We’re just about out of gas on this case.”

Warren nodded and studied the picture again. Something about it unsettled him. The posture of the man? The scarf? He spent a long minute scanning it before he handed it back. “I’m sorry, Detective. I’d like to help. But I can’t see anything there that you can’t. It’s somebody walking out of a building. Could be anybody, any building.”

“I know. Listen, I appreciate you taking the time. I’m afraid I’m going to let you down on this one. Some of the jewelry from the girl’s place turned up—the watch anyway, on a kid we arrested uptown. Not a killer, just a pusher. He bought it from a fence we know, who couldn’t even remember his own name. Twenty bucks, for a three-thousand-dollar Rolex. A woman’s watch, too, on some punk crackhead. Anyway, that makes the B and E look real, and we’ll probably scale it down.” Wittlin looked sheepish.

“Look, Detective, if it makes you feel any better, Anson Combes was a world-class shit. Nobody liked him, probably not even his wife, who he was cheating on with more women than just Bonnie. Hopefully, she’ll get remarried, and her kid will have a decent father. He is not missed around here, I can tell you that.” Warren risked the candor because he felt bad for Wittlin.

“I know. It’s amazing, everybody says the same thing about that guy. If you had to look at everyone that hated him as a suspect, you’d bring in anyone who ever met the guy. Still, some perp is laughing his ass off at me and may do it again. This fucking job can get on your nerves. Do you know the lab guys identified the hair and skin samples to a black male, probably twenty-five, type O positive blood. There’s about a million suspects in that category, just like about sixty percent of the murders in this city. Same basic profile for the guy who killed Dougherty. Similar samples, different blood type, different DNA. We can test for that now.

“So it wasn’t the same guy. Just the same act, ending a man’s life.” Wittlin had gotten up and was slouched over as he talked, disheartened.

“Well, if anything else comes up, I hope I can be of more use next time.” Warren held the door for the detective and escorted him back to the elevator landing.

“Thanks again, Mr. Hament. You gotta understand. The DA’s office won’t arrest anyone without almost a signed confession these days. We have to build an air-tight case. And listen, you be careful, okay? This is a rough city for you bankers these days.” Wittlin smiled, and they shook hands again.

“Detective, believe me, everyone here has been a lot more careful since this all happened. Christ, the secretaries have a subway pool—no one rides home alone anymore. Take care.” The elevator door closed behind the man, and Warren turned back to the trading floor.

He stopped in the bathroom and washed his face. The fear that had seized him was irrational. He hadn’t done anything. Wittlin’s inquiry was a wild-goose chase. Still, something in that security photo drew Warren in, something he felt he should have noticed, should have seen. He checked his wallet. Wittlin’s card was still there. If it came to him, Warren could call. But, he wondered, if it did, would putting Wittlin on the trail inevitably lead to Faaringsbank, and the snotty little Herr Dohlmer? Or would keeping quiet lead a young, maybe black man with a special mission and a peculiar talent to decide that Warren Hament’s house was the next one to burglarize?

fifty

Angelo was surprised to see Warren in the middle of a weekday afternoon. The building had a fair number of retirees and wealthy dilettantes, most of whom would often linger for idle chats with the garrulous Italian doorman. He was something of a font of gossip about the building, and if you caught him slightly off guard, or after a lunch that included a little wine, there was no telling what you might find out.

“Hey, Mr. Hament, nice to see you.” Angelo touched his cap as he opened the taxi door. He was a little wobbly, a sign that his lunch break had been well catered by Mrs. Ingrisano. Warren generally tried to remember to bring home the tiny service bottles of wine from his plane trips to leave for Angelo. That way, at least the portion would be small. He knew Angelo’s favorite was a Sutter Home cabernet.

“Same here, Angelo.” Warren climbed out, then paused to check the seat behind him, an old habit that had saved him countless umbrellas and several wallets. “How’s tricks? There are some bags in the trunk.”

“Not bad, not bad, Mr. Hament.” The older man smiled under his salt-and-pepper mustache and motioned to the driver to pop the trunk lid. “Of course, not anything like you. Not at my age.” The lascivious grin was meant as a compliment to Warren’s taste in women. Sam was definitely a hit with the doormen and car valets on both coasts. Angelo struggled a bit with the two large shopping bags, which were not heavy, and Warren helped him with one.

“Yeah, well, Angelo, you never know. This one looks like it might last a while.” He paused in the lobby, a beautiful marble hall with elegant neoclassical moldings and a circular plan. It always irritated Warren that the board of the building was too cheap to give the walls a good cleaning, but the patina of age was not badly served by the layer of dirt. It almost suggested an unearthed ruin, a Pompeian tomb, but with an automatic elevator.

“Oh? I’m happy to hear that. Umm, your most recent … I mean, the young lady … before…” Angelo was lost for a tactful way to refer to Larisa, as he had obviously forgotten her name.

“You mean Larisa, my last girlfriend?” Warren came to his rescue.

“Oh, yes. Exactly. Larisa. Well, I hadn’t seen her around for a while, and what with the new one, I sort of figured…” Angelo’s grin was huge.

“Well, we’ll see, won’t we, Angelo?” Warren handed him the $5 bill he’d gotten in change from the cabbie. “See ya.”

“Oh, yes. Thank you, Mr. Hament. And good luck!” Angelo called to the closing elevator door.

Sam was out for the day. She’d gone to New Jersey to visit her cousin, a physics professor at Princeton. She’d hit Warren with a ball of socks when he’d asked if they were going to discuss the behavior of high-energy plasma in a supercooled nongravitational state, or just girl talk. He missed her, but there were some things he needed to do, and he’d taken the day off from work. She had been with him for months now, and he’d stocked up at the discount drugstore for himself and picked up some items on her list. He also bought three new pairs of shoes at Bally, which he dropped in the bedroom. He dumped the bags full of shampoo and moisturizers in the bathroom and had just sat down at his desk when the phone rang. He let it ring a second time before he answered it, a habit he’d picked up somewhere along the line.

“Hi. Is this Warren Hament?” The voice on the other end of the line was unfamiliar, a circumstance that had never meant anything to him before. These days, it provoked a distinct bit of anxiety. He acknowledged his own name.

“Hi, Warren. My name is George Charpentier. I’m with Julian Jameson, the executive recruiter. Do you have a second, or is this a bad moment?”