Outside, New York City greeted us with pungent odors of a different sort. What was it about hot muggy nights in July that released the street’s toxins? Twenty-third and Fifth reeked like a pissoir, though I doubted dogs had been responsible for the acrid aromas.
So many homeless. Such a rich city.
Garbage from surrounding restaurants already lined the streets. The late-night exhaust fumes almost made me grateful for yellow cabs combing the streets for fares. The occasional shrieks from their horns reminded me I was mistaken.
Funny location for a competitor
.
Credit Suisse’s New York headquarters sat off to our right, on the other side of a small park. Sam took my arm and snuggled close. She felt vulnerable, almost needy. The contact flipped a switch, her body against mine. Her perfume reminded me of all those weekends when the Kelemens had been tonic for my loneliness.
Don’t drag Sam down with your shit,
I told myself.
“Let me walk you home.”
“You sure?” Sam asked. “It’s a hike.” She was right. By foot, it would take about thirty minutes to reach her brownstone in the Village.
“Maybe we should cab it,” I conceded, wondering how best to please Sam. “You’re walking for two after all.”
“I’m pregnant. Not crippled,” she scolded playfully. “What is it with all you guys?”
Why “guys”? Why plural?
We squeezed against each other and joined Manhattan’s relentless foot traffic, beating our way through the shadowy streets of the Flatiron District. My feelings confused me. It wasn’t desire I felt. Not for my best friend’s wife. The emotions weren’t dark, nothing like jealousy over Sam’s baby, envy because I had lost Finn.
Perhaps I was savoring the forgotten pleasure of companionship. Sam’s touch warmed me inside, reinforced the wine’s rosy afterglow. I prized her friendship even more. It had been so long since I had spent any time with a woman, one on one.
Unsure of my feelings, certain of my obligations, I retreated to Switzerland. Money was safe. I could always talk about money. “Betty Masters said hello. I saw her over the weekend.”
Sam stopped. She looked into my eyes with an odd combination of warmth and surprise. “You drove up to New Paltz for me?”
“I made a day of it.”
“Thank you,” she said sweetly, squeezing my arm. “How’d it go?”
“I told her where we are. That I’m helping you unwind the Kelemen Group. That I called the accountants and your lawyer.”
“My lawyer?”
“Popowski. Ira said he would sort out probate with the state. He can help in ways I can’t.”
“Thank you,” she repeated, appreciation clear in her tone. “Did you hear from the accountants?”
“No.”
“Me either,” Sam sighed, worry now in her voice.
“It’s the summer,” I soothed. “Everybody’s on vacation.”
Pisses me off they haven’t called
.
“Do you know the names of anyone on the audit teams?” I asked.
“Crain or Cravath,” Sam suggested logically.
Duh.
“We don’t need them quite yet,” I said, trying to save face.
“What do you mean?”
“Betty found a financial statement for the fund. It will list the hedge funds where Charlie invested. We’ll start redeeming, one by one.”
“Are there many?”
“Don’t know. Betty hadn’t faxed anything by the time Annie, Chloe, and I left.”
“Do we even need the auditors?” Sam asked.
“Absolutely. Their info is more current.”
“I would love to wrap up this whole thing,” Sam announced. “My parents are investors, too. They’re starting to ask questions.”
Charlie’s body isn’t even cold.
“Too bad I can’t go through Charlie’s office.”
“I know,” Sam agreed. “There’s tape all over the place. The cops pulled out the servers, the answering machine, the works.” Sam paused and added, “But they overlooked one thing.”
“Which is?”
“I have Charlie’s laptop.”
“Why didn’t you tell them?”
“Why didn’t they ask?”
Inside the Kelemen brownstone Sam poured me a steep shot of limoncello. The alcohol and sugary lemons chased the aftertaste of Cajun spices. It also saved Sam from my Live Bait breath as we huddled silently on a taupe sofa in the family room. Un, Deux, and Trois licked my hands with a vengeance, hoping to root out the source of chicken-fried-steak scents, and Ray Charles belted out “Georgia on My Mind” in the background. I sipped the syrupy liqueur. We were all happy, dogs included.
Eventually, my arm draped around Sam. There was no special significance. We held each other like siblings rather than young lovers yearning for more. The dachshunds watched intently. All three sat tall on their haunches, vertical hot dogs defying the laws of physics.
I surveyed the exposed brick walls and twenty-foot ceilings. The bones of the room dated back to the late 1800s, to a time when people and money had poured into Greenwich Village. Architects would never again design residences with six-foot stained-glass windows. Nor would they fill homes
with chiseled marble fireplaces from Milan or staircases carved from West Indies mahogany. The crown molding was anything but symmetrical. Carpenters had whittled it to look like vines from overgrown rain forests, like jungle creepers triumphing over people in the age-old war to dominate the environment. The effect was spectacular.
Charlie’s karma enveloped us. He had commissioned the whimsical glass chandelier, shaped like an enormous octopus, for $25,000 just as he had commissioned a fourteen-foot painting. The painting’s abstract explosion of swirling reds, textured blacks, and earthy oranges could easily have overwhelmed the room. Instead, the gargantuan canvas complemented the faded hues of a $125,000 Oriental rug that graced wide wooden planks.
Charlie believed the artist to be the next Picasso. “That painting cost a quarter million,” he told me once, “but I can sell it for double.”
To my eye, the artist was a con artist armed with a brush and a sack of paint. “Hit the bid,” I had advised.
That was trading lingo for, “Take the offer.”
Charlie scoffed and shook his head, sure of his cunning. “Grove,” he admonished, “stick to your numbers and leave the art to me.” He was right. He always made money on collectibles.
Sam poured me another shot of limoncello and placed it on the coffee table, a hand-painted Indonesian antique. The colors, once bold, had mellowed through the centuries. “Grove, I can’t thank you enough.”
“You know me, always searching for a good meal.”
“That’s not what I mean. I can’t keep the money you sent.”
“I don’t expect you to keep it. The money is a loan. Besides, I’ve been thinking.”
“It’s about time.” Sam’s playful smile stirred the limoncello inside me.
No matter the late hour, I intended to cover one last idea. “I can arrange a home equity loan, enough to tide you over until we liquidate the Kelemen Group. Or find accounts. Whatever comes first.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Her words were less question, more accusation.
“What do you mean?” I bristled. “Seventy-five won’t last forever.” Then I realized Sam was worried about her credit. She had not worked a day during their marriage. “How much is your first mortgage? Maybe we can get you approved with a low loan to value.”
“We rent. We don’t own.”
“No way. You spent at least a hundred thousand dollars renovating this place.”
“We have an option to buy the building. We can always get our money back.”
Her admission stunned me. Not knowing what to say, I changed course. “No insurance on Charlie, right? I told the Boston police he didn’t believe in it.”
“You got that right. Insurance torqued him off.”
“Everybody in finance thinks they can earn better returns elsewhere.”
“That’s one reason,” Sam agreed. “But I think the medical requirements made him sensitive. Charlie hated the way doctors told him to lose weight.”
It wasn’t obesity that got him
.
“I went through our safe,” Sam continued.
“I’m glad you double-checked.”
“I was actually looking for jewelry,” she explained, “not insurance documents. Frankly, that’s another problem. My good jewelry isn’t in the safe. The everyday stuff is there. But my expensive things are gone.”
“The black pearls?”
“Gone,” she replied.
“That peacock thing?”
“Can’t find it.
“The necklace with greenish sapphires and emerald-cut diamonds?”
“It would have been perfect with my dress at the aquarium. I first missed it that night.”
I realized Sam had not worn her magnificent jewelry either at the funeral or during her visit last Friday. “You know, there’s something that’s been troubling me.”
“Troubling you,” she snorted. “They’re my best jewels.”
“Well, that’s just it. You can’t find your jewels. And you only have six hundred dollars in your checking account.”
“Not anymore,” she said thankfully.
“You know what I mean,” I replied. “Did it ever occur to you that Charlie might be hiding something? Or something from someone?”
“What makes you say that?” she asked. The three dachshunds scratched about in the kitchen, defending their turf against some unknown menace.
“A few things. Like asset protection. Sometimes people hide their money to protect it. And there’s common sense. Charlie wouldn’t put every cent into an illiquid investment.”
“I don’t get the connection to the six hundred dollars.”
“If Charlie hid the jewels,” I explained, “maybe he hid your investments.”
Sam brightened. “It’s possible. He handled everything.”
“Just a theory.” It was important not to inflate Sam’s expectations. “No chance somebody stole your jewels, right?”
“The thought never crossed my mind. Charlie had a key. I have a key. Nobody else has a key, and there were no indications of forced entry. I don’t understand why Charlie would move our things.”
“Did you tell the police?”
“What would I tell them? That Charlie stashed my jewelry somewhere and I can’t find it? Nobody broke into our apartment.”
“You should tell them anyway. Maybe somebody forced Charlie to move your stuff.”
Neither of us spoke for a moment. I remembered Fitzsimmons’s question and broke the silence with the courage of limoncello and the unfortunate candor that had destined me to a career outside the United Nations. “You don’t suppose Charlie was having an affair?”
“No way.”
“What makes you so certain?”
“Where would Charlie find a better piece of ass?” Sam eyed me playfully. During college she never would have joked that way. It was only through Charlie’s tutelage that Sam learned to play the nymph and skirt the bawdy edges of male lechery.
She had a point. They were an odd couple. Sam was buff. Charlie was buffet. I swallowed hard, considered Sam’s comment carefully, and slurred, confident of my charm, “It truly is a come-hither ass, Sam, approachable and well balanced, with tannins that would appear to reward those with the patience to wait. I anticipate a crisp, full-bodied, and strong finish that one should savor through the years. Do you have any more limoncello?”
“Grove, I’m cutting you off.” With mock outrage she added, “And stop talking about my tannins.”
“Probably a good idea.” Suddenly, my little outburst annoyed me. “I’m cutting myself off.”
Stupid. Stupid. Stupid.
“I had fun, Grove.”
The tribe had spoken. It was time to go. “Me too, Sam.”
“Let me get you Charlie’s laptop. Maybe you can find something. I couldn’t get past the password.”
The dachshunds raised hell as I left. All three hot dogs tried to crowd through the front door, drawn by their desire to sniff and pee and rip into the night. Their commotion stopped me from hugging Sam a proper good night.
“Hey, Grove,” she called after me.
“Yeah.”
“Thanks.”
“Whatever it takes, Sam.”
Five minutes later the world started to spin. I sat in the back of a cab enduring the glare of Manhattan’s streetlights, stomaching the mayhem of a wine and limoncello drunk. All the way back to Central Park West, I brooded over new reversals of fortune. No jewels. No title to the real estate. No insurance. No clue. There was only one consolation.
Charlie Kelemen’s laptop sat by my side.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Wall Street is a morning business. Preparations begin long before trading opens on the New York Stock Exchange.
The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,
even the
Financial Times
—brokers and traders read at least two of these publications prior to seven-twenty every morning. That’s when proprietary research meetings start at most shops.
I am not a morning person and have the results from personality tests to prove it. Much to my dismay and counter to the advice from Harvard Business School’s job coaches, I wake long before sunup and begin a self-engineered transfusion of caffeine. I soldier through the periodicals, but it takes time for the brain to engage after five or six hours of sleep. I speak in monosyllabic grunts that linger well into the morning. They temporarily mask my Southern accent and stifle the soothing sounds of syllabic expansion.