Swimming with Sharks (51 page)

Suddenly, he had an idea. If SeaStarFriends—which was the owner of MPM—didn’t belong to him and Levy but rather to someone else, then it was possible their names would never come into play.

“I’ll be in my office,” Zack said with a sullen expression and walked toward the door. “I’ll try to make something happen in Europe or Asia.”

“Good,” Levy replied, “but stay in the building. I might need you later on.”

“Sure, Vince.” Zack put out his cigarette and shuffled out. Sergio waited until he left.

“Vince,” he said slowly, “is it possible to change the owners of a partnership?”

“Officially no,” Levy replied, “but maybe…”

He understood, and a hopeful smile flitted across his face. He snapped out of his lethargy and quickly dialed a telephone number.

“Monaghan?” he said after a while, and his voice sounded as businesslike as usual. “This is Vincent Levy speaking. Could you please come to my office immediately?”

“What can Monaghan do?” Sergio asked.

“He’ll be able to tell us whether his people can change the MPM registration,” Levy replied and smiled. “Because if that’s possible, then we can let MPM go bankrupt without worrying.”

The smile vanished from his face, and he rubbed his neck pensively.

“Now,” Levy said, biting his lower lip, “someone needs to be the new owner.”

“Yes, of course.” Sergio grinned coldly. “That someone is Zack.”

Vincent Levy nodded slowly.

“We need to get rid of him,” Sergio said. “He’s lost his nerve.”

“But he knows too much!” Levy said. “He knows the names, the accounts, and—”

“Don’t worry about that,” Sergio said. “You take care of changing MPM’s ownership and removing SeaStarFriends from the commercial registry. I’ll take care of the rest.”

Vincent Levy nodded. Without a doubt, this was the best solution. They would shift all the blame on Zack and come out of this mess clean. Sergio walked to the other side of the room and called Silvio Bacchiocchi.

“Take your two best men and come to LMI,” he ordered, adding quietly, “I have a job for you. Bring an unregistered gun.”

Henry Monaghan was at the door. Levy quickly explained to him what had to be done. LMI’s head of security listened impassively and then glanced at his watch.

“I’ll see what I can do. We can get into the commercial registry’s central computer and make a change. But if any registration certificates are filed, we’re out of luck.”

“So be it,” Sergio interjected. “If there’s an investigation they’ll look at the current printout instead of older documents.”

“Good point,” Monaghan said with a nod. “I’ll work on it.”

“Whew.” Vincent Levy loosened his tie. “This could have blown up in our faces. I can’t understand how Zack could do such a thing.”

“I can,” Sergio countered. “He wanted to make up for his recent mistake. And he’s envious of Alex’s success.”

“I have the same impression,” Levy said. “The jealousy of a spurned lover.”

Sergio turned around quickly. “What did you just say?”

“If I understood St. John correctly, there was something going on between them some time ago.” Levy poured himself another whiskey. “They were colleagues at Franklin Myers, after all.”

Blood rushed into Sergio’s face. He banged his fist on the table with such ferocity that Levy winced. How could he be so stupid? Alex and St. John!

“You didn’t know that?” Levy asked in surprise.

“No,” Sergio growled, “and I don’t care.”

His cell phone vibrated again, and he felt like throwing it against the wall. It was Luca.

“Boss,” he said, “we’re cleaning up the penthouse apartment.”

“Why should I care? You want me to tell you where the vacuum cleaner is?”

“We found something,” Luca continued unfazed, “under the TV. It’s a computer printout of a bank statement.”

“A bank statement?”

“It’s a statement in the name of Levy & Villiers, dated July of this year,” Luca said, “and the name of the account holder is Bruce Wellington.”

Sergio froze. His nerves tingled. Bruce Wellington was the chairman of the city council and one of the more important people on his bribery payroll. How did his bank statement end up in Alex’s apartment? No one had statements from these secret accounts. Not even he or Levy had seen them. He hadn’t needed them in order to remind his “friends” that they owed him a favor. These highly confidential statements had never left the bank building.

“I want to see them,” Sergio said in a gruff tone. “Come here immediately.”

He hung up the phone and stared silently into space. St. John was the only one who could get to these statements. Were he and Alex secretly in cahoots together, and only pretending to hate each other?

“What’s the matter?” Levy asked. After solving the MPM problem and drinking some whiskey, he was in a good mood again.

“Alex Sontheim,” Sergio said without looking at him, “had bank statements from Levy & Villiers in her apartment.”

“That can’t be true!” Levy turned pale. “Not more bad news!”

“Maybe the two of them were working together,” murmured Sergio. He frantically tried to put everything together, but he simply didn’t get it. Alex had been in touch with Kostidis. The statement that Luca found was dated July. Had Alex already informed that bastard of a mayor in the meantime? No, that was impossible! Kostidis would never keep such a thing to himself.

“Pour me a whiskey!” Sergio said, and Levy handed him a glass. Sergio flushed in anger when he noticed that his hands were shaking.

It was shortly after eleven when St. John entered Levy’s office. His pale face looked extremely frustrated.

“I managed to sell some more stock,” he announced, letting himself fall into an armchair, “but that was it.”

“MPM will go bankrupt tomorrow,” Levy said.

“Yes, it looks like it,” Zack replied grimly. “Nothing will happen, right?”

“No.” Sergio stood up. He had himself under control after three double whiskeys, even though wild rage was boiling inside of him like a volcano.

“Nothing will happen. A brief investigation, some arrests…two, three years in prison—that’s all you’ll get.”

“What?” Zack stared at him in disbelief. “What do I have to do with this?”

“Oh,” Sergio said with a sardonic smile, “we just checked in our computer and discovered that you and Alex Sontheim are the owners of a small but mighty investment firm called MPM.”

Zack sat up.

“That’s a bad joke,” he whispered hoarsely.

“Not at all,” Sergio said, “but we won’t forget about you, Zack, if you act prudently and keep your mouth shut. Once the commotion blows over, you’ll receive a tidy sum. Early retirement at forty—that’s a great thing.”

“No,” Zack whispered as he slowly realized what was going on. Vitali and Levy wanted to ditch him and blame him for everything. He didn’t give a damn about Alex.

“Pull yourself together, Zack. What difference can two years make anyway?”

“No!” Zachary St. John jumped to his feet. Helpless, furious, he stared at both men with bloodshot eyes. “If I do that, then I’m done on Wall Street. And this is all because of the bullshit you talked me into!”

“You’ve also made a pretty penny,” Levy noted coolly.

“You used me!” Zack shouted. “This is just a game for you, a damn chess game! And now you want to sacrifice a pawn to save the king!”

He laughed shrilly.

“That’s quite a plan you came up with! But not for me!”

“Have you seen this before, Zack?” Sergio showed him the piece of paper that Luca had found in Alex’s apartment. Zack glanced at it briefly and then shrugged his shoulders.

“No, I haven’t,” he answered.

“We found this in Alex Sontheim’s apartment.”

Hatred flared in Zack’s eyes.

“Alex,” he said, grinding his teeth angrily, “that miserable bitch.”

“Can you explain how she got her hands on a bank statement from Levy & Villiers?”

“No, I can’t,” Zack snapped. “I’ve got nothing to do with her. That backstabbing snake fucked me over! Ever since she arrived, I’ve played the fool!”

“You’re not in league with her behind our backs by chance?”

This question bewildered Zack even further.

“Never in a million years!” he exclaimed. “I hate that woman!”

“Okay.” Sergio folded the paper and put it in his pocket.

Zack sank down in the chair and buried his face in his hands. “No one will ever talk to me again,” he said despondently. “They’ll all point their fingers at me and whisper to each other when they see me. I’ll be a pariah.”

“Stop pitying yourself!” Levy snarled at him. “You put us in this situation in the first place!”

“No!” Zack roared. “She provoked me to do it! And you left me high and dry! Now you want me to put my neck on the line so that you can keep your names out of this! But I won’t accept it!”

“Think about it,” Sergio said with an almost pitying smile. “It’s not the end of the world. You’ll forget all of this when you’re under a palm tree somewhere in the Caribbean with a beautiful girl in your arms, contemplating how long you’ll have to live to spend all your money.”

Zack stared at him silently and was about to respond, but then he changed his mind and shrugged his shoulders.

“Okay,” he mumbled quietly. “Okay. Okay.”

He turned around and left the office. Sergio stepped to the window and stared out into the night. What kind of game was Alex playing? He believed St. John when he said he wasn’t collaborating with her. His hatred was genuine. Alex must have gotten her hands on those secret bank statements some other way. How could he have underestimated her so? Chaos reigned in Sergio’s head. Had he mentioned something to her himself? Different possibilities presented themselves, only to quickly fall apart again.

He turned to Levy. “Can you check whether any bank statements have been accessed in Georgetown?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ll have to ask Monaghan.”

“Do that. Call him.” Sergio sat down again.

When Levy reached his head of security, he turned on the speakerphone so Sergio could listen to the conversation.

“The commercial registry has been changed,” Monaghan said. “The new owners are Mr. Zachary George St. John and Ms.—”

“Okay, okay,” Levy cut him off, and explained the next looming catastrophe. “Henry, is it possible to get into a computer from the outside to print out bank statements?”

“Theoretically, yes,” LMI’s head of security said pensively. “A clever hacker could access the server, but we’d notice such an intrusion. We put very strict security systems in place.”

“Could you find out whether someone hacked into the server at Levy & Villiers on July 6?”

“I can try,” Monaghan answered.

After the conversation ended, Sergio fell into a deep brooding silence. He had found a clean solution for St. John’s screw-up. He wasn’t worried about that anymore. It was far more important to find out how much Alex actually knew. He had to speak to her immediately. He knew that she had met that dumb journalist just two weeks ago. A cruel smile played on Sergio’s lips. He knew Skerritt’s address and decided that it was time to pay the man a visit.

Oliver winced when his cell phone rang and answered the call immediately.

“Hey, buddy,” Justin said, “I found out a few things. It looks like the shit has hit the fan on Wall Street.”

Alex leaned forward. She, Oliver, and Mark had called Justin and asked for information about MPM’s activities in Whithers stock. For two hours, they’d been waiting for his call back at the Italian trattoria across
from Oliver’s apartment building. The three of them had deliberated all evening over how to proceed. Oliver handed his phone to Alex.

“MPM bought 2.6 million shares of Whithers Computers over the past six weeks,” Justin said, “at an average price of thirty-eight dollars a share.”

Alex quickly estimated the sum in her head. She had assumed that Zack would buy ten million dollars of stock, but it seemed that he’d bought ten times that amount.

“Just like you said,” Justin continued, “the deal is off and Whithers stock has crashed over the last few hours. It closed at twenty-nine and a quarter, which means that MPM has lost thirty million so far. It looks like it’ll be much more.”