Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street (46 page)

“Larisa, stop now. It’s enough. How was Anna for me? To open up a recruiting spot for you?” Warren couldn’t back up any farther. He was against the closet doorframe.

“It just worked out. She was drunk and tired, and all I did was point her the wrong way. And Serena too. She went down those stairs like a sack of potatoes. But I cracked her head on the stair after, just to be sure. She would have gotten your spot, you idiot. Anna would never have beat me out for the spot at Weldon, but the chance came and I took it. I didn’t even have to push her, she just skied right past me and over the edge.” Larisa laughed. “You shoulda heard her wail. But, besides, I had
you
working for me, right? I was in no matter what, Mr. Superstar. That was a long time ago. Come on, Warren, finish it. Everything is always my fault anyway, right? Take this knife away from me. Put it right here.” She ran her hand between her breasts, then cupped one, rolling its nipple between her fingers. “You love my tits, don’t you? All you fucking assholes love these things. Dutch Goering used to tell me how he wanted to fuck me there. He had such a nice cock too. I loved to suck on it.” The knife was coming up slowly.

“Jesus Christ, Larisa, come on.”

“What? You can’t take it?” She had the knife up now, slowly moving toward him. “Come on, Warren, you walked out on me. I knew you would come back to me once this useless cunt was dead. Now let’s see if you’ve got any guts.”

“Larisa, cut it out. Put the knife down. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Hurt
me
?” She laughed and kept coming, backing him up to the wall, still held off by the steel racquet. She paused for a moment, looking for an opening, and he took the opportunity.

“It’s time for you to meet someone.” Warren pronounced the words loudly, a preset trigger to action.

“That’s about enough, Miss Mueller.” The light came on by the bed, behind her. Detective Wittlin, who looked a little silly with Warren’s pajamas over his clothes and a bulletproof vest, held a 9 mm pistol in his right hand. “We don’t need anybody else getting hurt.” He had climbed out of the bed behind her while she was confronting Warren. He stepped around it while she was still stunned, and twisted the knife out of her hand with a smooth motion, then stepped away. “Mr. Hament, do me a favor and put that thing away before someone makes a stupid joke.”

Dick McDermott and a uniformed officer came into the room, with Sam trailing them. The patrolman couldn’t help but notice Larisa’s chest, and he took off his jacket, handing it to her with a look of remorse. She put it on as if in a trance, then Wittlin handcuffed her.

A compact, wiry man came out from under the bed. “I think it came out perfectly.” He had a bulky recording deck with him, which trailed a thin wire to a tiny camera on top of the armoire. “The new night-vision camera worked pretty well.”

“You’re pathetic, Warren,” Larisa spat at him. “Pathetic.” The impact of what was happening had finally hit her. “Without me, you’re going
nowhere
. You fucking
idiot
.” She spat the words at him, enraged.

“I’m sorry, Miss Mueller. You are under arrest for the murders of Anson Combes and William Dougherty, and Anna Meladandri. And Serena, whoever she is. I am Detective Lieutenant McDermott of the New York City Police Department Homicide Squad. I want to advise you of your rights. ‘You have the right to remain silent. Anything…’”

As McDermott read Larisa her rights, she looked at Warren with disgust. “You pansy. You fucking wimp. You owe everything to me. You’d still be some little trainee in diapers.” McDermott paused while she spat out the words, then kept going. The tech collected the machinery, and Wittlin sat on the bed.

Warren looked at her, his shoulders sagging. “Larisa, I had everything anyway. Not everyone is in the rush you were. It was enough for me.” She was a striking sight, her arms pinned behind her, the long red-gold hair falling over her shoulders, her eyes ablaze, her mouth curled in contempt. She struggled a bit when the policemen took her away, but didn’t say anything.

“I don’t believe it.” Wittlin shook his head from side to side. “We only had to follow her for two nights, and she showed up like clockwork. How did you figure it out?”

“It was the photo from Bonnie’s building. I thought I might recognize the scarf.” Warren smiled and sat down next to Wittlin.

“So why didn’t you say something?”

“Because I didn’t even realize it until much later. Also, I figured she’d have gotten rid of it, and then if you’d asked about it, she’d have known you were on her case.”

“That’s complicated reasoning. Okay. How’d you know she was going to try for your girlfriend here?”

“Fiancée, Detective.” Sam smiled at him. “Well, I guess I tried to provoke her. Make sure her sister told her how awesome Sam is, let her know I wasn’t without options. Then she sent a spousal life insurance application to Sam. I asked HR. They didn’t send it. It was a dumb mistake, but her temper got the best of her.” Warren gestured in bewilderment. “I guess she wanted to punish me.”

Sam walked over and shoved him down on the bed. “Options? I’ve always wanted to be live bait. Big step up from car-rental jockey.”

Warren let out a little laugh.

“Insurance application? Why didn’t you tell me about it?” Wittlin seemed annoyed.

“No insult intended, but having the police department suddenly sniffing around HR could only have tipped her off. You told me yourself you had no evidence, that the DA would only indict with a confession. So I made their job easy.” Warren got up. “I got them their confession.”

“Yeah. The DA is kind of a joke with investigations, that’s true. But, I’ve gotta be honest with you…” Wittlin looked a little sheepish.

“I know. You guys figured I had something to do with it all.”

“Yup. Or your dad. He was in town for all the murders. I guess there is such a thing as coincidence. McDermott owes me a hundred bucks, though. That’s why he was so testy.”

“Well, I’m glad you had faith in me. I’m flattered.” Warren touched his fingers to his brow in a mock salute.

“Don’t be. I laid off fifty of it with our captain.” Wittlin stood up. “Anyway, I’m glad to see this case closed. If we lost any more investment bankers, the whole city’d shut down.” He walked to the door.

“Yup, that’s why we get the big money. Solving these big cases. Are you going to need us for anything?” Warren had his arm around Sam.

“Tomorrow we’ll need to take statements at police headquarters. You two get some sleep tonight. If you can.”

“Detective, tonight I’m going to sleep like a baby.” Sam smiled.

“I’ll see myself out. Take care now.” As Wittlin walked out of the bedroom, his voice trailed off down the hall, “I’d change those locks if I were you, especially if you’ve got any other ex-girlfriends I don’t know about.”

Sam gave Warren a hug, and they stood still for a moment.

“If you do—” she started.

“Yeah, I know.”

“—I’ll kill you.”

fifty-six

“Jesus, Dutch, that whole story is kind of hard to swallow.”

“I’m tellin’ you, it’s true. Jojo’s too fuckin’ dumb to make something like that up.”

“But Mats’s dad is the chairman of Jones Fyfe, for crissakes. Jason Leeson’s been on top there for ten years already. They may be a second-tier broker, but he must have put fifty or sixty million bucks in the bank by now. There’s no way his kid’s gonna do something so stupid. I mean, I’ve met some of the people over there. There are some dummies, for sure, but that whole thing’s too far gone even for them.”

“Listen, Jojo heard it from this babe he’s poking on Jones’s repo desk. That fuckin’ dope Mats was hiding bad trade tickets and blaming the mismatches on the back office! I heard he dropped about seventy-five mil before they shut him down. That slimeball Grant Bradley’s his boss. This broad tells Jojo that Bradley’s been on the take from all the guys in Jones’s finance side for years—pieces of their deals through Bahamian shell companies—that kind of stuff. Anyhow, even that sack of shit had to cut Mats loose. Of course all those dumb Irish guys over there couldn’t figure their way out of a paper bag with a machete and a chain saw, so no one ever noticed the books didn’t balance.”

“Man, what is wrong with that company? They can’t do anything right. God, the parent company must just be pissing blood about it!”

“I guess. But, hey, they hired the fuckin’ guy. Remember when he was down at Bache, and they booted him for that bank deal?”

“Dutchie, that was a little before my time … you’re showing your age.”

“Come on, you remember the fuckin’ story. He and Anson were big buddies back then too. He was trying to get us to hire that fucking goofball Bradley Savings and Loan. They were doing all those S-and-L deals with Scholdice. Said Bradley’ was one sharp fuckin’ cookie.”

“Oh, yeah? Anson and Bradley were pals?” Warren knew that Grant Bradley was well-known around the Street for being a second-rate talent who had a big job at a third-rate firm. Just like Jason, the chairman of Jones Fyfe Securities, they both were big players in the world of retail stock brokerage, but regarded as lightweight sleaze in the higher-powered milieu of institutional investment banking and trading. Something was falling into place. If everyone thought Bradley was on the take from the S&L and bank deals his firm did, and Anson and he were friends, it wouldn’t be much of a stretch to think that Anson had cooked up his own scheme to salt away a real fortune. That the chairman’s kid had tried to hide losses and then blown up was interesting, but not material to Warren’s situation. It wouldn’t be too hard to hide the missing money by creating losses on the trading desk and blaming the kid. A perfect crime with the boss’s son as the fall guy. He’d lost his job, but mismarking positions wasn’t technically a crime unless you worked for a commercial bank. And if he split $75 million or so with his dad, well worth it.

“Fuggin’ A. They were at Hahhhhvard together, don’t you know? Coupla peas in a fuckin’ pod.” Warren doubted Goering could get through an entire sentence without using some form of the word
fuck
.

“Jeez, Anson went to Harvard? Really? I never knew.” That got a good laugh from Goering. He had been the first to notice that Anson somehow made certain that everyone found out his alma mater within five minutes of making his acquaintance—a not-uncommon trait among Harvard alums. As Goering had put it, a conversation about sheep mating habits in the Australian outback could somehow include the interjection “It’s funny … when I was at Harvard, I had a professor who did his master’s thesis on bovine…” and so on.

“Well, at least you won’t have old Anson sticking his nose into your business anymore.” Warren sighed.

“Me or you, pal,” Goering said. “Man, it’s hard to believe that fuckin’ broad of yours actually knocked two guys off. God, if I’d only known, there were a few fuckin’ people she could’ve taken care of for me. I mean, what’d she have against them?”

“Well, technically, it was four people. She pushed a girl off a cliff in B-school and killed another shoving her down the stairs. And she may have pushed a girl in front of a car in high school. But she didn’t have anything against them. It was nothing personal.” Warren shrugged. What could be more personal than murder? “But, hey, I’ve gotta ask you something. And you’ve gotta tell me the truth.”

Goering’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh? Depends. What’s the question?”

“Did you nail Larisa while I was with her?”

Goering laughed, his even, white teeth showing. Tears almost began to roll out of the corners of his eyes, and he slapped his thighs. “Whoooeee! I’ve finally got your butt just where I want it, don’t I, poopsie pie?”

“God, if I’da known you were going to get such a big kick out of it, I never would have asked.” Warren waved his hand dismissively at Goering.

“Hey, no problem, son. I tried. Lord knows, I tried, but I could never get anywhere with her. She only liked the big hitters, not the fuckin’ peons like me.”

“Well, it’s nice to know even a vicious killer has some standards. Thanks for trying to seduce my girlfriend, though. I appreciate it.”

“Touchy, touchy. What about that old school pal you nailed after she got engaged?” Warren had forgotten he’d told Goering about Eliza. Despite his show of being crude and his reputation with the ladies, he had to admit that Goering was actually a loyal friend and had a moral compass when it came to business and his family. And knew how to make a buck.

“You’re right. There’s no honor among thieves.”

“Never was. That’s a fuckin’ myth.”

“Hey, Dutchie boy, I’ve got some news—so are you.”

fifty-seven

The streets of Vaduz didn’t seem as narrow as he remembered them. Sam looked relaxed and happy in the passenger seat, and the big Mercedes sedan slid around the corners quietly. The wedding had been small, simple, and pleasant. Cornelia Harper had invited them to hold it at the beautiful party space in her apartment house on Fifth Avenue and held the reception in her apartment. The honeymoon was a trip to Europe. They had spent a couple of days in London, followed by a quick trip to Stuttgart to buy the car for shipping home—after all, he was a successful young bond salesman with a seven-figure income, and she had an import license for used cars for her rental lot.

In the months since Larisa’s arrest, it became clear that the money Warren and Sam had found in Anson’s accounts was not the subject of any sort of search or investigation. The two West Coast banks had taken the markdowns exactly as Warren had surmised, and in a seemingly innocent conversation Warren had with Scholdice, the broker had announced his retirement and relocation to a ranch in Australia: “Warren, this business has been good to me, but times are changin’. My accounts are all headed for a big bust, and the days of easy money are over. Me and my pals made hay while the sun shone.” Beker and Largeman had left Warner as well and set up a money management firm.

Warner had been audited twice by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, and nothing had come of it, except that the bank was clearly in trouble, like all the S&Ls that had overleveraged in the mortgage markets once the effects of the new tax laws passed by Reagan hit home on real estate. Warren could see that all the “missing” money had properly been accounted for as write-offs that were balanced by other profits on their new investments and income each year, and the last thing the regulators wanted, it seemed, was to find any kind of scandal. Of course, if those profits proved ephemeral over time, the focus would be on those bad investments, not on what had happened years before. Warren could only wonder how many other schemes to milk money out of the savings-and-loan industry there were. It looked as if Mike Milken at Drexel was in some serious trouble for many such schemes on a much grander scale. The one at Warner had clearly been good for at least a half a billion or more and was essentially untraceable.