T
onight’s dinner with Kriegel was work, but nice work. Doug was always a kick. Maxi parked her car in the lot behind the legendary Musso & Frank in the heart of Hollywood, slipped in the back door, and found him already comfortably settled in one of the plush red-leather booths along the wall enjoying an iced martini straight up. Musso served their martinis in generous glass cruets set in bowls of crushed ice, with condiment dishes of olives, onions, and lemon peel on the side. A cruet would fill your chilled martini glass at least twice. Just one of those and Maxi wouldn’t even think about driving home. She scooted into the booth opposite Kriegel and ordered a glass of Cabernet from a waiter who instantly appeared.
Looking around the crowded room, she took a moment to catch her breath. Musso & Frank was always fascinating. Founded in 1919, as its menu touted proudly, it would be in its eighties now, a rare Hollywood survivor. The waitstaff at Musso’s were actually lionized for their rudeness. It went with the territory: If you didn’t get at least a small serving of abuse with your dinner, you felt a little cheated.
Their waiter came back with her glass of wine in what seemed like seconds, and slammed it down on the table in front of her.
“How long have you worked here?” she asked him.
“Fifty-two years,” the white-haired gent stated brusquely, and moved off.
“I’m having the short ribs,” Kriegel said. “Specialty of the house. Their homemade chicken potpie is great, too.” With Doug, food was a serious matter.
Maxi raised her glass to his. “Cheers, Douggie,” she said. “So what do you know?”
“Well, the villain in the Rose International stock skid would seem to be Goodie Penthe of the Penthe Group, and—ahhh . . .” He stopped as their waiter unceremoniously swatted aside their bread basket, butter bowl, and water glasses and dropped a big plate of fried calamari in the middle of the table.
“I went ahead and ordered an appetizer for us,” Kriegel explained with a smile that lit up the room. Maxi knew that his beatific smile was not for her, it was for the crisp calamari garnished with lemon and cocktail sauce. He picked up his knife and fully buttered another hard roll, took a healthy bite of the bread, sipped his martini, then spooned a good-sized helping of the steaming seafood onto his hors d’oeuvres plate and tucked into it with exaggerated relish.
When he took a short breather, Maxi ventured, “Yes … so you say the villain seems to be Goodman Penthe. I know him.”
“I figured you did when I heard a page for you the other day, a Mr. Goodman Penthe to see you. You can bet my ears pricked up. I wanted to run out and get a look at the guy, but I was on raging deadline for the Noon. Then later that day, I happened to come up with this stuff.”
Kriegel paused to help himself to more calamari. “Have some of this while it’s hot,” he said.
“What stuff, Doug? What stuff did you come up with?”
“Well, all of it is a matter of public record, but it’s so heavily layered with bullshit it’s hard to decipher. But lucky for you, I do speak fluent Wall Street ca-ca, so after about thirty thousand computer clicks I was able to translate the information into understandable English. And a recognizable cast of characters.”
Their waiter pounced on the table and whisked away the appetizer platter, which happened to have a few pieces of the crispy calamari left on it. Too late for Kriegel to stop him. Wistfully, he watched after the man as he hurried down the aisle. These ancient waiters were nothing if not fast. Kreigel sighed, then resumed his story.
“Sometime back around the beginning of September, well before Gillian Rose died, a total of six entities that I could find started trading heavily in Rose International stock. All six were on the East Coast. With some digging, I found out that four of them were high-management types out of companies that circuitously traced back to the Penthe Group. Another one turned out to be Goodman Penthe’s married daughter who lives in New Jersey, one Margaret Hill. And the sixth one filed under the name J. J. Ruff. I couldn’t find out who that was, nothing about him or her on the Net, but I linked that one with the other five because the trading patterns were similar: large blocks of Rose International bought and sold within a short period.”
“Ruff? First name Jay?”
“Just initials. J. J. Ruff.”
“Could be Goodman Penthe’s dog.”
“Hah! Good one. And why not?”
“I was kidding, Doug. Can a dog buy and sell stock?”
“Sure, if he pays his taxes.”
“Doesn’t he have to have a social security number?”
“Not that hard to get. You can buy one down on Third Street for forty-five bucks.”
“Jeez—could he also get health benefits and stuff?”
“For that he’d have to show a birth certificate. But the street will take anybody’s money.”
“Ya, but—wouldn’t it be illegal to have your dog trade stock?”
“It’s not that much different from having your corporation trade stock.”
“But then you have to have names—”
“Hey, J. J. Ruff. Perfectly good name.”
“Are you actually saying, Doug, that you think Goodman Penthe’s dog could possibly—”
“You know, Maxi,” Kriegel put in, “just when I think I’ve seen everything in this fairly corrupt business, the next nutty thing comes down. On and on, a conga line of CEOs pounding Wall Street in a wave of accounting scandals that have cost small investors their life savings. Corruption reeking at the loftiest levels. Criminal behavior by the really rich and mighty. So, did a dog buy and sell some blocks of stock? Doesn’t matter. Rose stock got manipulated, and it tanked. End of story.”
“And the Darth Vader behind it was Goodman Penthe?”
“Looked that way to me on my virtual travels over the money trail. Oooh … here come the short ribs!”
Several miles to the west, at a little-known Italian restaurant called Boccia on a quiet corner in Brentwood, another couple were having dinner: Carter Rose and Kendyl Scott. After the fiasco at Spago, Carter chose an eatery that was well off the Beverly Hills glitterati track. When the couple got there at eight, the restaurant was half empty, because either Monday nights were generally slow or the food wasn’t great. Or both. But the chances of Carter Rose running into anyone he knew were slim there. And the chances that paparazzi would be staked out at Boccia were nil.
A bottle of Pinot Grigio sat chilling in an ice bucket beside them, and a small, important-looking Tiffany box lay between them on the table.
“Open your Christmas present,” Rose said with an ingenuous smile.
Kendyl reached for the box and languidly removed the narrow red ribbon. And slowly rolled the ribbon neatly around her fingers, and set it down in front of her on the table.
“Come on, Kendyl, open it,” Rose urged.
“I’m so used to the present being all I get that I like to make it last. Is the present still all I get, Carter? Tell me there’s much more.”
Though her words were delivered up in mellifluous tones and with a loving smile, they scraped across Rose’s psyche like fingernails across a blackboard. Kendyl always knew how to needle him, he reminded himself, her whining usually served up with a spoonful of honey. Barbs sheathed in scented white satin. Stifling the urge to react, he said again, “Open it, Kendyl,” and sat back and sipped his wine.
In the glow of the restaurant’s low amber lighting, the diamond earrings, nestled against their black velvet background, sparkled brilliantly. “They’re beautiful, Carter,” Kendyl purred.
“Six carats, and the stones are flawless,” Carter pronounced, as if he’d know the difference if they weren’t. He knew only what the sales clerk at Tiffany had told him, and he knew how much he’d paid for them. He could have got the same quality diamonds for half the price at the wholesale jewelry mart downtown, he was sure, but Carter’s women were used to those little blue boxes from Tiffany. An extra fifteen thousand bucks for a fucking cardboard box, he thought ruefully. With about fifty cents’ worth of Tiffany’s seasonal red silk ribbon thrown in. He sighed. But in this case, a small price for keeping Kendyl happy, he conceded to himself. Promise her anything . . .
“What, darling?” she asked.
“Nothing. Just tired, I guess. A little jet-lagged.” He’d flown in from Maui that afternoon.
“They’re breathtaking,” Kendyl reiterated in low, ice-cool tones, tilting the box back and forth and admiring the jewels as their multi facets caught the light.
“But what I really want, Carter, is a diamond
ring,
” she said, glancing wistfully down at her hands. She wore her college ring on her right hand instead of an engagement ring on her left. Yes, she was smart, said the bulky, rounded UCLA ring with the big royal blue stone. But what she
wanted
to be was married.
She was not going to stop, Rose thought, still sitting back in his chair, sipping his wine. “Kendyl—” he started.
“Really, Carter. I can’t think about anything else. I love you. I always have. And you love me. Don’t you?”
“You know I do.”
“Then say you’ll marry me. Tell me we’ll be married sometime in the new year. I can wait, as long as I know we have a future together.”
She looked gorgeous, sitting tall and straight across the table from him, in a dusty emerald green velour dress that hugged her body. Sensuous. Exotic. She was more dazzling than the jewels, as glances directed at her from other diners attested to. As Rose watched her across the table, he saw something more. She looked intimidating. Threatening. To Carter Rose, she looked dangerous.
“Yes, we’ll be married,” he heard himself murmuring.
“Oh, Carter! Sometime in the next year?”
“Sure,” he said. Knowing it wouldn’t happen.
A
news breaker. Maxi heard the computer ding and watched the story roll on the wires, then grabbed her phone. It was Tuesday morning, December 31, the last day of the year.
The Associated Press had a new lead in the mysterious death two weeks ago of Gillian Rose, co-founder and CEO of Rose International. The wire story said police sources had just revealed that the late Gillian Rose was last seen alive in the company of Goodman Penthe, chairman of the East Coast–based Penthe Group conglomerate.
The story went on to report that Penthe and Mrs. Rose had been spotted together by one of the guards at the Rose company building at around two in the morning of Monday, December 16, the same day Mrs. Rose was later found dead on the floor of her office by her assistant, Sandie Schaeffer, who herself was later shot, and so on.
Maxi checked her computer Rolodex and dialed the number for Goodman Penthe in Baltimore. The nervous Ms. Gray picked up. Obviously she remembered the name Maxi Poole and the fact that this Poole woman had seemed to be important to her boss. She put her through to Penthe immediately.
“Yes, Maxi, how are you?” Goodman Penthe asked.
“You didn’t tell me—”
“No,” Penthe interrupted. He’d obviously seen the news. “I didn’t want that coming out, which I’m sure you can understand.”
“What were you doing in the Rose building at two in the morning?”
“I was in town that weekend to meet with Gillian. She wanted to fill me in on the results of extensive testing her outside lab had done on the Schaeffer formula.”
“I thought she didn’t have the formula, just a letter of intent.”
“Schaeffer had given her a sample of the product. She had the stuff analyzed and replicated. Simple.” Poor, trusting Bill Schaeffer, Maxi thought, no match for this oily crowd. He still believed that Gillian was doing a simple comparison with Xalatan, in her own company lab, and hadn’t yet come up with results.
“Anyway, she’d been working with the product, and she wanted me to see how far she’d come with it.”
“You flew in for that? I understand why the two of you didn’t want to put anything in writing, but why couldn’t she just bring you up to date on the phone?”
“Gillian didn’t trust phones. And neither do I, frankly, with all the illegal wiretaps, cloning, and the rest. This project was much too important to take even the slightest risk of disclosure before Gillian could complete her divorce and settlement.”
“What
was
this all-important project, for heaven’s sake?” Maxi threw out casually, just on the off chance that Penthe would actually tell her. He wouldn’t. No surprise, but it never hurt to ask.
“By the way,” she said to Penthe, “this time we’re on the record. Don’t tell me anything you don’t want on the air.”
“That’s fine,” he said. “I have nothing to hide.”
“What about the formula? And the super-lucrative product you say was at the heart of all this?”
“That’s dead now. It died with Gillian.”
Oh, I’m sure,
Maxi thought. “All right,” she said. “Be aware that I’m going to run tape on our conversation now, okay?”
“Fine. The two of us had a late dinner that Sunday night. In my suite at the Peninsula Hotel, so we’d have privacy. As I told you, it was crucial that Carter have no idea what we were doing.”
“Don’t you care if he knows now?”
“No. Why should I?”
“I thought you were still trying to buy the company.”
“This project had nothing to do with the Rose company. Besides, Carter will sell. He has to.”
“Why?”
“Well … and this part is
off
the record. Agreed?”
“Agreed.” Evidently he trusted her, Maxi noted silently, because he didn’t ask her to stop the tape. Which made her suspicious of what he was about to tell her, of course.
“Carter Rose has consistently cooked his books, and siphoned off millions into offshore accounts. Now there’s word on the street that the SEC is nosing around, and the stock is plummeting.”
I thought
you
were responsible for the stock dive,
she thought but didn’t say. Penthe might have deliberately let that one drop to see if she’d go for it, since major accounting fraud happened to be Wall Street’s white-collar crime du jour.
“And how do you know this?”
“Due diligence. My team couldn’t miss it.”
“Are you going to report it?”