Money to Burn (24 page)

48

I
FELL ASLEEP IN THE CAR AND WOKE IN A BED
. T
HE SIGHT OF A
woman seated at the foot of the mattress scared me into the jackknife position.

“Who are you?”

“It’s okay,” she said as she turned to look at me.

I quickly realized it was Olivia—and that last night had not merely been a bad dream.

“Where am I?”

“North Bergen.”

“New Jersey?”

“On Tonnelle Avenue, to be exact.”

The street noise was so loud that I wondered if we weren’t literally
on
Tonnelle Avenue. I sat up in bed, still wearing last night’s jeans and sweater. Only my shoes had been removed. A sliver of morning sunlight was streaming in through an opening between drapery panels, and I noticed Olivia’s car parked right outside our motel room. One of the local morning shows was playing on the television atop the bureau, but the volume was too low to hear it.

“What time is it?”

“Not yet seven. When we got here last night, you woke up just enough for me to help you in from the car, but you were out like a drunk the minute your head hit the pillow.”

I’d needed the rest, to be sure, but the lingering effect of whatever Burn and his men had injected into my body undoubtedly had more to do with it.

“You want coffee?”

“Black, thanks.”

She poured some from an in-room machine. There was so much I wanted to ask her, but I figured I’d go right for the home run.

“Why does Kyle McVee want Ivy dead?”

I expected a show of surprise, maybe even shock—at least a reaction of some sort. Olivia simply handed me the plastic coffee cup and sat on the other bed, facing me.

“How did you know it was McVee?”

“He was the last person Ivy worked for before she disappeared.”

“You were the last person Ivy married before she disappeared.”

Clearly she was playing devil’s advocate.

“McVee has the kind of capital it would take to short-sell Saxton Silvers into the ground and make it look like I did it.”

“So do dozens of other hedge-fund gurus.”

“McVee is into credit-default swaps in a big way. That’s the point my brother’s friend at the DTC was making tonight: Credit-default swaps are where the huge money is going to be made when Saxton Silvers files for bankruptcy today.”

“Credit-default what?” she asked.

In another six months, even Papa would have a working knowledge of the esoteric derivative products that investment geniuses like Warren Buffett had labeled “financial weapons of mass destruction.” But at this point, not even Wall Street fully understood the dangers.

“Credit default swaps,” I said. “They’re not technically insurance, so there’s no government regulation to speak of. But in essence they are a form of insurance that investors cash in if Saxton Silvers can’t pay its debts.”

“So if you borrow money from me, I would buy a credit default swap that would pay me off in case you defaulted?”

“Correct, assuming you and I are major financial players. And what’s really interesting is that if you loan me money, Tommy Ho in Hong Kong or Crocodile Dundee in Australia or Hansel and Gretel in Germany can also buy a credit default swap that pays them off in case I default on your loan.”

She did a double take, as if not quite comprehending. “So total strangers basically place a bet that you’re going to default on my loan to you?”

“You got it. On six billion dollars of debt, it wouldn’t be unheard of for there to be sixty billion dollars in credit default swaps. Of course, no single person really knows how much is tied up in the swaps, because they’re not sold through the stock exchange. It’s an over-the-counter market.”

“Isn’t that a problem?”

“Hell yes, especially when you tie in other strategies. Think of it this way: Buying credit-default swaps on Saxton Silvers’ debt obligations and then going short on Saxton Silvers stock is kind of like buying a life insurance policy on your neighbor and then running him over with your car.”

“So when Saxton Silvers goes bankrupt, McVee cashes in.”

“Big-time. On an investment bank like Saxton Silvers, he could conceivably be sitting on a billion dollars’ worth of credit default swaps.”

“That’s incredible,” she said.

“It is. But it’s also a little beside the point.”

“How do you mean?”

“Let me ask you again: Why did McVee want Ivy dead?”

She tasted her coffee, then rose and went to the Formica counter beside the closet. “I don’t know exactly,” she said, adding more sweetener to her cup. Then she turned and looked at me. “But this much I am certain about: It’s not what you think. McVee’s reasons for wanting Ivy dead have nothing to do with credit-default swaps or short selling—it has nothing to do with business at all. This is personal.”

“It’s about me, isn’t it?”

My words seemed to confuse her. “Why would you say that?”

I told her about the black SUV that had run me off the road before the trip to the Bahamas. “I think it was a warning,” I said. “I ignored it at the time. And I think Ivy paid the price.”

Olivia came back and sat on the edge of the other bed, looking me in the eye. “None of this was your fault. That SUV wasn’t a warning to you. It was a warning to Ivy. As long as Ivy was alive, they were going to take it out on you and everyone else Ivy loved—including me.”

Again I was thinking about that anti-FTAA protestor who’d pulled me from the cab in Miami. “Is that what that man who sprayed me with pepper spray meant when he said, ‘It’s only gonna get worse’?”

She nodded. “You and Ivy were followed all the way from the Miami airport. Ivy knew that. And she knew that the man was talking to her, not to you. Things would only get worse…so long as she was alive. So Ivy made them think she was dead. That’s why she disappeared.”

I was having trouble comprehending how a normal person with a normal life could pull off something like this, but from what Olivia was telling me, I was beginning to wonder if Ivy ever had been “normal.”

“That man last night—every time he mentioned Ivy, he called her Vanessa. What’s that about?”

The mere mention of “Vanessa” made Olivia flinch. “That’s the name Ivy used after faking her death.”

It was a plausible explanation—but it didn’t really explain the way Olivia reacted when I mentioned the name.

My phone chirped. Actually, it was Mallory’s phone. I was reluctant to use it. If Ivy was right and the calls on my cell had been monitored, it was possible they were monitoring Mallory’s, too. I got up and checked it. The message was from me, which took me aback. Those goons had taken my cell last night, so it had to be from them.

Want to see your lover?
the message read.

I was confused at first, not sure what they were trying to tell me. Then I realized that they weren’t telling
me
anything. They had no way of knowing that I had Mallory’s phone, and the message was for her. It was like a roundhouse kick to the solar plexus, even if she was divorcing me.

Of course that guy she was meeting in the gay bar wasn’t gay, you moron.

I had been in denial, but it was time to take my final lumps and officially crown myself “the last to know.” I scrolled through the text messages stored in Mallory’s phone, found a recent one from “Nathaniel,” and read it. It made me cringe. There were many messages just like it, dating back more than a month. It was clear now why Mallory had been so reluctant to give me her cell.

“What’s wrong?” asked Olivia.

“Nothing,” I said. “Just a little high-tech confirmation that I’m a blind fool and that my wife was seeing another man.”

She leaned over and laid a hand on my forearm. It was the first sign of any affection she’d shown toward me—and strangely, I felt some of Ivy’s warmth in her touch.

“We’ll get through this,” she said. “It
will
get better.”

“You think?”

She smiled a little. “Can’t get worse, can it?”

The television suddenly caught my eye. “Today’s Big Story” was at the top of the
Today
show, and right behind Ann Curry was an image of me. The mug shot taken at the Tombs after my bomb-scare arrest had, as I’d predicted, come back to haunt me. I actually looked like a criminal.

I jumped up and raised the volume, catching the report somewhere in the middle:

“—arrest warrant for Wall Street power broker Michael Cantella, who is facing charges in a murder-for-hire conspiracy that resulted in the fatal shooting of Financial News Network’s Chuck Bell.”

I listened in stunned silence as the national coverage recapped my nightmare for the entire country, before shifting to the mud slides in California.

My phone—Mallory’s—chirped again. Another message, a follow-up to
Wanna see your lover?

It read:
He’s hot
.

I knew what these guys were capable of, and I got the double meaning. But that didn’t lessen the shock when I clicked on the attached file and saw the photograph. The image was gruesome—several pyromaniacal steps beyond what I had witnessed last night. But it was definitely the same man. Burn had killed my wife’s lover.

And he’d sent these taunting messages to Mallory—proof of a grisly homicide—with
my
cell.

“What’s wrong?” asked Olivia.

“So much for your promise that things
will
get better.”

“What do you mean?”

I glanced at her, then back at the image on Mallory’s cell. “They just got worse.”

I laid Mallory’s cell on the nightstand and started dialing on the room’s landline.

“Who are you calling?” asked Olivia.

“My brother.”

“What for?”

I paused after punching out half of Kevin’s number. “He can’t guarantee that I’ll be released on bail, so I need to tell him that he won’t be seeing me in his office or in court this morning.”

“Smart move.”

“And to make him understand that I can’t be a sitting duck in a prison cell waiting to have my throat slit by another thug hired by Kyle McVee.”

“You can’t mention McVee’s name.”

“I’m going way beyond that. I’m going to instruct Kevin to write down everything I’ve learned, wrap it up in McVee’s name, and take it to the FBI.”

A look of horror came over her. “Have you lost your mind?”

“Sorry, but if you can’t tell me why McVee wanted Ivy dead, maybe Kevin and I can help the FBI figure it out.”

I finished dialing, and Kevin’s line was ringing. Olivia continued pleading.

“Don’t you understand? The FBI couldn’t protect Ivy from Kyle McVee. They can’t protect you, me, or anyone else from a man like him. That’s why she ran.”

The call went to Kevin’s voice mail. I hung up, immediately hit redial, and as the line starting ringing again, I tightened my stare on Olivia.

“Why did McVee want Ivy dead?” I asked her.

“I told you, I don’t know.”

“You told me there were things about Ivy that I was better off not knowing. That’s not the same thing.”

“That’s exactly what Ivy told
me
. Can’t you see she’s protecting us?”

“Can’t you see the game has changed? I’m not willing to live the rest of my life the way she’s been living hers.”

“If McVee finds out you’re helping the FBI, you won’t have to worry about
living
, period.

The ringing continued, but not even her desperate tone could make me hang up and hide out in a motel room while Kyle McVee framed yours truly for crimes that would bring down me, my firm, and maybe all of Wall Street with us.

Olivia lowered her head into her hands.

On the fifth ring, Kevin answered his cell.

“Kevin, it’s me,” I said.

“Please, don’t,” said Olivia.

I looked away and told my brother everything I wanted the FBI to know.

49

K
YLE
M
C
V
EE ARRIVED EARLY TO THE OFFICE FOR AN EIGHT A.M.
meeting. The Midtown headquarters of Ploutus Investments occupied the top four floors of a Third Avenue skyscraper, the highest floor being off limits to anyone but McVee and his closest confidantes.

The penthouse level had just two private offices. One was McVee’s. The other had belonged to his son Marcus, untouched since his death, a de facto vault for thirty million dollars’ worth of original artwork by Jasper Johns, Andy Warhol, and other masters whom Marcus had collected over the years. Art had been his final passion in life. Before that, wine had been his thing, and before that, a collection of classic cars. Marcus never went into anything half baked, and that passion was his trademark. In the hallway between the two offices was a photograph of him at base camp on Mount Everest. In his first attempt he’d managed to scale the hard blue ice of Lhotse Face and climb to Camp III at 23,500 feet, where weather forced his team back. Few people doubted that he would someday get beyond Camp IV and on up to the top at 29,028 feet. Even fewer doubted that he would soon be at the top of Ploutus Investments.

Marcus’ involvement in the business went against a certain logic. McVee had essentially worked through Marcus’ childhood, so busy in the world of Wall Street that he barely noticed his son. As an adult, Marcus would have had every right to disown his old man. But the opposite had occurred.

Three months after Marcus’ graduation from college, McVee and his wife had traveled to Bermuda for their twenty-fourth wedding anniversary. A business commitment forced McVee to fly back to New York for a day, which turned into two. When he returned to Bermuda, he found his wife in the hotel room beneath a cool white sheet, an empty bottle of Valium beside her in the bed. Her death made him recall the special things he had loved about the young bride he had married—and regret how little he knew about the seriously depressed empty nester she had become. After the funeral, he started to see the best of Evelyn in their son Marcus. Not just the dazzling intelligence but the bursts of awe-inspiring creativity, the way he devoured things that interested him. McVee reached out to his son, and his son reached back. For nearly ten years they were an inseparable team that not only grew the business but sat right behind home plate in Yankee Stadium together. By his thirtieth birthday, Marcus McVee had become everything a father could want in a son—and more. The “more” part was the problem.

At various times in his life, Marcus—like his mother—had been treated for anxiety and depression.

“I have good news,” said McVee, shaking off the constant thought of his son. “Saxton Silvers will file for bankruptcy just as soon as the courthouse doors open today.”

McVee was standing at the window, the morning sun throwing a zebralike pattern across the room as it shone through the venetian blinds. An English solicitor named Graves was seated on the silk-covered couch, listening. He represented a Kuwaiti multibillionaire whom McVee had never met in person. It was a rare occasion that a client was allowed in the penthouse. This was one of them.

“The sheikh will be very pleased, I’m sure,” said Graves. “What will the final numbers look like?”

McVee stood at the window, casting his gaze across Third Avenue toward the Lipstick Building, a thirty-four-story office tower that, to some, resembled a tube of lipstick. The seventeenth floor there was the center of operations for the king of hedge-fund managers.

“A hell of a lot more impressive than the twelve percent Madoff gets you.”

“Bernie’s been very good to us.”

“Unfortunately, Ponzi schemes are illegal.”

“You don’t know he’s running a scheme.”

McVee scoffed. “Ever seen the man’s golf scores? My Palm Beach caddy told me Madoff didn’t play for a year, then he came out and claimed to shoot an eighty-four—one shot worse than the last time he picked up a club, and dead-on his handicap since 1998: twelve. That’s an interesting number, considering his clients have been earning twelve percent returns through two decades of booms, busts, bubbles, bears, and bulls. Even the SEC knows it’s a Ponzi scheme. He’s one of many.”

“Are you telling me
this
is a Ponzi scheme?”

McVee smiled thinly. “No. That’s the beauty of it. There’s nothing illegal about credit-default swaps.”

“And you’re sure no one will know how much we make?”

“No chance. We made your purchases through a web of derivative instruments that no one can unravel.”

“And the sellers can pay?”

“We’re talking about the biggest insurance companies in the world. All A-plus-plus ratings. Nothing to worry about.”

McVee handed him a summary of the instruments, the cost basis for each, the expected ten-figure payoff—and, most important, the hefty fee payable to Ploutus Investments. Graves inspected it, obviously pleased.

“You’re brilliant,” said Graves.

“I know.”

True, McVee was never modest, but in this case he was really in no position to share the credit for a scheme that had been conceived aboard a sailboat on Lake Como six months earlier. The essence of the plan—bringing down an overleveraged Wall Street investment bank through short selling and rumors on FNN, then cashing in on credit default swaps—had been the brainchild of McVee and one very smart lawyer. A mob lawyer. To be a Ploutus client, all it took was money. Lots of it. From any source. And the deep desire to make more of it.

“Who’s next?” asked Graves. “Lehman? Merrill?”

Another strike was not out of the question. It had indeed been McVee’s decision to target Saxton Silvers, but in the subprime insanity, other firms had made themselves equally vulnerable, borrowing as much as thirty or forty dollars for every dollar of capital they held in reserve, and then using it to purchase toxic NINA mortgages.

“We’ll see,” said McVee. “They can all come down.”

“If that’s the case, I’m curious: Why did you start with Saxton Silvers?”

“I had my reasons.”

“Cantella?”

“Nothing to do with Cantella.”

“I don’t believe you.”

The solicitor’s tone was not merely one of idle conversation, and McVee knew where it was coming from. Just this morning, a story in the
Post
raised the possibility that Cantella was a fall guy for bigger players in the market. Graves, it seemed, was barking up that same tree, and flat denial would only have made him more curious.

“Okay, I admit,” said McVee. “It was a little personal. For two years I’d been wondering when Wall Street would realize that subprime lenders all over America were ignoring a fundamental rule that’s been around since the Stone Age: You make loans based on the borrower’s ability to repay, not on Wall Street’s ability to repackage them and pass the risk of default up the daisy chain to someone else. But it really hurt that it was Michael Cantella—a guy who didn’t even have direct responsibility for mortgage-backed securities—who sounded the alarm last October and told his firm to wake up and smell the poison. My nephew and his mortgage-lending associates had over nine hundred million in NINA mortgages already funded and in the pipeline, and suddenly there was no Wall Street buyer. It was as if Cantella had finally stopped the music, and I was left without a chair.”

“So this is especially sweet for you.”

“You have no idea.”

Graves seemed satisfied. He rose from the couch, and the men shook hands. Together, they walked down the hall and boarded the elevator. On the ride down, Graves reiterated that the sheikh would be “more than happy” to be the financial muscle behind the next go-round. McVee made no promises. He certainly didn’t bother to disclose that he didn’t really need outside money, that the sheikh was along for the ride only because the mob wanted an oil-rich Kuwaiti to blame on the off chance that Congress would finally drop its obsession with steroids in baseball and maybe even hold a hearing or two on what the hell was going on with Wall Street.

McVee walked them out to the street, where Graves climbed into a limo.

“We’ll be in touch,” said Graves.

McVee watched from the sidewalk as the limo pulled away. His explanation for targeting Saxton Silvers had placated the sheikh’s solicitor, but destroying Michael Cantella was about so much more than money. The obsession had begun last fall, when he received a phone call from Florence.

“She’s
alive
,” Ian Burn had told him. “She’s changed her look, but we locked eyes just before she ran, and I would bet my life it was her.”

If true, the tip meant Tony Girelli was a liar—he hadn’t turned Ivy Layton into fish food. McVee was skeptical at first, but Burn was adamant that his eyes had not failed him. The way to lure Ivy out of hiding, he said, was to put the people she loved in danger—the very people she had protected by disappearing in the first place. McVee began cautiously, but last November’s sit-down between Burn and Cantella at Sal’s Place had been far too subtle, drawing no reaction from Ivy. Burn pushed for more convincing measures, and it was the anniversary of Marcus’ suicide that had put McVee over the edge. The thought of Ivy living a new life while his thirty-year-old son rotted in the ground was too much. It was then that McVee decided to turn the attack on Saxton Silvers into an all-out assault against Michael Cantella—destroying his marriage, wiping out his personal fortune, making him a traitor to his own firm. Then Ivy blinked. She warned her precious Michael and, in so doing, revealed herself. Tony Girelli—liar that he was—became the first wave of collateral damage. There would be more. But eventually McVee would get Ivy. And make himself richer in the process.

Another limo with dark-tinted windows stopped at the curb. The driver got out and came around to open the rear passenger’s-side door. McVee climbed in, and the door closed.

“Hello, Ian,” he said.

Ian Burn was seated on the bench seat with his back to the soundproof partition. McVee sat opposite him, facing forward, and the limo pulled into traffic.

“My nephew told me about last night,” McVee said.

“Went well,” said Burn.

He was wearing a hooded jacket and dark sunglasses that reminded McVee of the old FBI sketches of the Unabomber.

McVee said, “I’m concerned about the number of bodies.”

“I agree: The Bahamian was a long shot. He didn’t know anything about Ivy. That was a needless one.”

“I don’t care about him. It’s this flurry in my own backyard that worries me. It’s a dangerous cycle. Girelli put a bullet in Bell’s head because Chuck didn’t have the balls to buck a subpoena and refuse to name Mallory’s boyfriend as his source. The boyfriend had to go because sooner or later he would name my nephew. Girelli had to go—well, just because Girelli had to go.”

“Is there someone in that group you wish was still alive?”

“I just want to make sure we’re efficient. You kill these fringe players, yet you let Michael Cantella go.”

Burn removed his sunglasses. The lighting was dim, most of the sun’s rays blocked by the tinted windows. But with the glasses off, the scars on the right side of Burn’s face were evident.

“This is my life’s work,” he said.

“I understand.”

“No, you don’t. Have you ever wondered how I got these scars?”

Of course he had. “Not really,” said McVee.

“It has to do with money.”

“Doesn’t everything?”

“This was a very special kind of money,” Burn said, his Indian accent suddenly more noticeable. “Dowry. It still exists in some parts of my country. If a bride’s family doesn’t deliver as promised, that can be very dangerous for a new wife. The husband might even take her into the kitchen or garage, douse her with kerosene, and burn her alive. Happens about every ninety minutes in India. It happened to my sister.”

“I’m very sorry.”

“So was her husband after I caught up with him. That was my first experience with homemade napalm. I got the job done,” he said as he pulled back the hood, exposing his melted ear. “But it didn’t go perfectly.”

McVee sat in silence.

Burn tightened his stare. “Everything since then
has
gone perfectly.
Everything.
”

“I’m sure.”

Burn pulled up the hood and put on his sunglasses. “Michael Cantella’s freedom is only temporary. He’s holed up with Ivy’s mother in a motel over in Jersey. Your nephew is watching him as we speak. The minute Cantella makes a move, I’m on him. There is no doubt in my mind that he will lead me to Ivy Layton. Then they’ll both be toast. Literally.”

“You should have just put a gun to Cantella’s head and threatened to blow his brains out if Ivy didn’t show up in thirty minutes.”

“Wouldn’t have worked. Even if we could get a message to her, it’s not like a normal kidnapping. We can’t say, ‘We have your husband, give us a million bucks.’ Ivy knows that what we’re saying is, ‘We have Cantella, now come here and get him so we can burn you both alive.’ She’s not going to walk into that. We need Cantella to lead us to her.”

“There’s logic to that,” said McVee.

“Of course there is. Trust me. This is going to go perfectly.”

The limo stopped. McVee pulled an envelope from his breast pocket. It was filled with cash.

“Money to Burn,” he said, handing over the envelope. “If you don’t wrap this up soon, I may have to create a special expense category on my balance sheet.”

Without a word, Burn opened the door, climbed out, and left McVee alone in the back of the limo.