The Last Trade (17 page)

9

New York City

H
avens sits on a bench on the High Line, laptop open, staring at the photo of the board in Weiss's apartment. He enlarges the image until it begins to break apart, leans in, and squints at the symbols in the box for Sunday.

It's the only sequence on the board that has letters in addition to the numbers. He doesn't think it's a book thing, an
Odyssey
thing. Suddenly it occurs to him that it's not a clue, it's a fact. It's a trading account. MS: Morgan Stanley. PH: Philadelphia. With trades of American securities in Dubai, China, and South Africa, someone with a U.S. trading account would have to place the order to Berlin on those securities or the financial authorities in each of those countries wouldn't have allowed the trades.

He zooms out and looks at the entire board. After a moment he stops and thinks, looking back across the Hudson. He snaps open his phone and whips through the texts. He stops at the words that Weiss had sent him at the club.

Wilt thou not be brotherly to us
?

“Brotherly,” he thinks. Then, he looks at the sequence, specifically the letters PH. “Philly, the city of brotherly love?”

He searches the account number and Morgan Stanley, but there's no match. Perhaps, he thinks, he can ID it through his account at the Rising Fund, but he's told he's an unauthorized visitor at the company that for the past four years was his life. As a fallback he calls his friend Neil Grote at Morgan, a coworker from his back office days at Citi. Two minutes later he delivers the information Havens needs. “Dude's name's Jameson. Rondell Jameson. 1456 Pennypack Street, Northeast Philly, which, as a former resident of the city of Brotherly Love, I can without a doubt assure you is an absolute, Grade A shithole.”

“Phone number?”

“Yup.” He gives the number to Havens, who immediately calls, but, not surprisingly, it's no longer in service. An online search reveals a half dozen Rondell Jamesons in Philadelphia, but according to a brief mention in the Metro section of today's
Philadelphia Inquirer
, only one was murdered yesterday. Shot down outside a crack house on Pennypack Street. Survived by a brother, Charles, of Newark. There were no witnesses.

10

Berlin

Once, while discussing Sobieski's relationship with her father, a shrink in Prague told her, “Gambling, promiscuity, living your life as an act of revenge, or to avenge the way someone else lived
his
life, is not healthy.”

“Tell me about it,” she replied.

In between sleep and dream, she wonders, If that hadn't happened, what would you have done? If he hadn't been evil, what would you have become? Her father's disappearance after the scandal, she reasons, left her with two choices: become a better thief than him, or the person who punishes people like him for their actions.

It doesn't take a shrink to recognize where the gambling issues originated.

She rolls over and sees the inbox on her laptop screen blinking. The message came while she was sleeping. Sleeping because she gambled, because she was too twisted to have a normal relationship with a man.

 

Dear Agent Sobieski,

 

I am the person whom you urged to contact you.

 

I am alive (obviously), for now. I have left my family in a safe place while I attempt to reconcile my role in this situation. I would very much like to communicate in real time, but for now, because as you say, lives are at stake, I will tell you what I know (and soon, what I hope to discover): Yesterday morning I received a call from a foreign client. A person with whom I had never done business. Male. Seemingly American. Claimed his name was Homer. He wanted to execute a series of short positions on a number of American new media securities (a list of which I can provide you as soon as I am able to safely access them). Almost a billion $US total, spread out over the course of the day.

Several hours later an attempt was made on my life in the Alexandra section of Jo'burg. Some sort of machine gun. In the afternoon, after NEVER receiving an oversees call at work, my Assistant said I had received many. From Berlin, Hong Kong. And a man in New York. Although I was asked not to contact anyone or do any research about the client or the transaction, I did (and I believe they found out and this is why they tried to kill me). Also, the man who made the initial call, who had a specific set of orders regarding the execution of his requests, was working through a trading account in the United States. Philadelfia. The first name of the person whose name was attached to the account was Rondell. Presently, I cannot think of his surname.

Cara Sobieski stares at her laptop screen. She types an immediate reply.

 

Can you talk NOW?

Then another.

 

I apologize. I stepped away but I am here for you now.

Shit!
She kicks the leg of the couch and smacks her hands together. Then, quickly, she forwards Sawa Luhabe's note to Michaud in Hong Kong. If Michaud can get in touch with someone working TFI or Treasury in Johannesburg, or at INTERPOL, then maybe someone can get in touch with Luhabe and she will have a chance.

This wouldn't have happened if I had done my job, she thinks. If I hadn't gone to the casino and had stayed in my damned room and been here for her, as I told her I would, she might already be in safe hands, and not on the run and fearing or her life.

But now . . .

She kicks at her mattress. She knows that it's ludicrous to think that she should have been on call between five-fifteen
and
nine in the morning. But the fact that this happened at all twists her conscience nonetheless.

She can't resist writing one more note to Luhabe.

 

I can get you into contact with people who will protect you. wherever you are. Or you can go to them when you are ready. Be safe. Again, I am so sorry for missing your message.

For the next ten minutes she stares at her inbox, trying to will a reply from Luhabe, but nothing appears.

After rereading Luhabe's note she does a search of Philadelphia-based brokerage accounts owned by people with the first or last name of Rondell. There are seventy-nine different Rondells with open brokerage accounts in Philly. Who knew? However, this number is reduced by seventy-eight after she refines her search with the criteria that the person has to have executed recent trades overseas, specifically in Hong Kong, Dubai, or Johannesburg, with possible connections to a firm in Berlin.

The lone result:

 

Rondell Jameson, 1456 Pennypack Street NE, Lindenfield Projects, Philadelphia, PA.

Her next search takes her to an article in the
Philadelphia Inquirer
. She pick up her phone and calls Michaud.

“Frauline Sobieski, how goes it in the fader land?”

“I got an e-mail from Luhabe. She's alive and on the run. I'm waiting to hear from her.”

Michaud grunts. “She dropped her mother and kids with relatives in Swaziland and is heading back toward Jo'burg. We're trying to intercept.”

“She mentioned a brokerage account in Philadelphia behind the trades. Belonged to a guy named Rondell . . .”

Michaud finishes. “Jameson. Crackhead. His brother sold his identity to a bald dude from New York with a Russian accent, and now someone has whacked the crackhead, so to speak.”

Sobieski blinks. “Next time I'd appreciate a call before I spend half the night repeating your work.”

“You'd have only spent it in the arms of another, and that would break my heart, Sobes.”

“Anything else, because I've got—”

“Yeah, Hong Kong, Dubai, Philly—what they all have in common is your boy at Siren.”

11

Darien, Connecticut

“I
t's so quiet,” Miranda observes. “Where is everyone?”

Deborah Salvado smiles. They're having tea in a sunlit conservatory off the great room, surrounded by lavender-hued cattelya orchids. “I let them go. The only people left are a cleaning lady who comes once a week and a caretaker for the grounds. I'll do my laundry and cook my own meals, but I'm not quite ready to landscape seventeen acres of lawn and gardens.”

“Why do any of it?” asks Miranda.

“Because I'm sick of having people live my life for me. Before I moved up here to
Hedgistan
, I was a relatively self-reliant human being and I want to get a small part of that back. If anyone should understand this, it should be you.”

“Me?”

“From the first time you visited, I saw that you were determined to retain what I and the others had lost: individuality, creativity, self-reliance.”

Miranda nods. “Hardly true, but thanks. If that's the case, then why still live here at all?”

“Because he won't let it go. Out of spite. Out of ego. And I'll be damned if I'll leave it and let him come back to live here with some gold-digging whore and then stonewall me on a settlement.”

Miranda runs her finger along the stem of an orchid. “I'd walk. Let him have it.”

Deborah lifts her chin toward the flower. “We used to have someone who was specifically in charge of the indoor plants. But you know, they never bloomed until I took over.” She fixes her gaze on Miranda. “I believe you. You
would
walk. You'd let him have everything.”

“But you won't?”

She shakes her head. “I won't . . . I can't.” Deborah lifts the teapot and refills their cups. Miranda stares at the pot, a hand-painted blue and white eighteenth-century Chinese porcelain piece that she imagines cost more than her Prius.

“You know,” Deborah continues, “you never returned my calls, and I really could've used a friend through all this.”

Miranda tries to smile, but her true emotions won't allow it. The fact that she lost a child and never received a call from Deborah after the funeral is moot. It's still all about Deborah Salvado. But rather than offer an excuse or an explanation, she thinks of Drew and Danny Weiss and the real reason she's here. “This is true, Deb,” she concedes. “You're absolutely right. I should have called.”

In the kitchen, while she makes lunch, a chicken Caesar salad, Deborah Salvado reveals the recent developments in her life—her latest personal accomplishments and the fierce and ongoing legal battles with her husband. Rather than getting directly to her point, Miranda allows Deborah to talk. She sees her host's self-absorption as an opportunity to elicit information via a series of well-placed questions.

She wonders aloud, “How could someone so seemingly good have become such a monster? What was his childhood like, Deb?”

“His father was a bricklayer. A veteran of the Korean War who lost the use of his left arm but declined VA benefits. Told Rick he wanted to contribute to, not drain, the system.

“In the early seventies he decided to use all of his savings to build three homes on spec and promptly lost everything to the teeth of a recession.

“Finally, when the house he lived in went under, Rick's father said that the country and the system he served and believed in had abandoned him. He went back to the Veterans Administration to try to claim his war disability, but they turned him away because he'd declined help twenty years earlier.

“The day after he moved his family into a low income apartment over a pizza parlor in the center of town, Rick's father drove into the nearby woods and shot himself. That began phase three of Rick's youth.”

“My God,” Miranda says. “He must have been devastated.”

“He only spoke about it when he was drunk. Then he blamed everyone. Friends and neighbors, the VA, the insurance company that didn't cover suicide. And of course the banks and the regulators and the government. The press describes Rick as a patriot, but they haven't heard the things I have about corporations and the government when he is raging. I'm convinced that he's still so driven to succeed at all costs as a direct response to those events, not because of a sense of fulfillment or accomplishment.”

“Kind of tragic,” Miranda says, “that his being so driven because of what happened to his childhood family led to the ruination of his own, adult family.”

Deborah shakes her head. “Not tragic. I'm escaping with my life and my health. He can have his goddamn hedge. Your husband . . . your ex . . . is different. For him it's an intellectual pursuit. Rick said Drew was one of the only people he knew who enjoyed the hedge business for reasons other than greed. With most of these men it goes beyond greed to obsession.”

“With Rick it seems to border on vengeance.”

Deborah slaps her left palm on the table. “Exactly! He attacks his work and runs his fund with a
vengeance
!”

Miranda tries to imagine how a person who once sat here surrounded by everything money could buy would be driven to kill for more. She measures her words. “Do you think . . . with all that's happened to him, he's capable of going further . . . of doing something criminal to exact his vengeance, Deb?”

Deborah Salvado sits back and folds her arms.

“You know, harm someone?”

“Why are you here, Miranda?”

“Of course, to see . . .”

“Don't condescend. I know when someone is trying to leverage a relationship with me to get through to my husband.”

Miranda sighs. “I got a rare call from Drew yesterday. Not the usual disillusion and disenchantment. He called to tell me that he'd had enough, that he was quitting The Rising.”

“Interesting, but not a surprise. He'd been mortified by the spectacle of it for some time.”

Miranda nods.

“Is he going somewhere else?”

“Not that I know of. He's wanted out for a while. Since Erin died. He threatened frequently, but he always stayed, I think in part because he had no idea what he'd do with the rest of his life and in part because, deep down his relationship with the numbers overshadowed his ethical and moral dilemmas. But something happened this week that made him want to leave in a hurry.”

“Like what?”

Miranda shrugs. “That's really why I came here today. To try to find out. Drew and I hardly talk now, and when I pressed him the other day, he wouldn't say. And now I can't get in touch with him at all. I just thought that you might know what may have happened, if Rick said something.”

“These days Rick tells me nothing.”

“Has he been acting differently?”

Deborah Salvado leans forward and pushes her teacup to the side of the table. “Differently enough to commit a crime? Bigger than the crimes he's been committing with the assistance of corporate and elected masters of the universe for the past twenty-eight years? Is that what you're asking, Miranda?”

“I . . .”

“I'm not as detached as you think. Remember, sweetheart, half of everything he owns will be mine, so I make it my business to know his business.”

“I'm just . . . I'm worried about . . .”

“I know someday this is all going to come crashing down, Madoff-style, but I'll be damned if I'm gonna be the one to set it all in motion.”

“I didn't mean to—”

Deborah interrupts. “The things I know about that man, my husband, you do not want to know. But understand, there's no way anyone is going to hear any of it from me first.”

“Will you tell him that I came here?”

Deborah Salvado tilts her head and considers Miranda for a moment. “I meant it when I said we don't talk.”

“Because, even though we're divorced . . .”

“I know. You're worried about Drew.” Deborah gets out of her chair. To signal the end of the visit she begins walking out of the kitchen and into the foyer. “I'll tell you this because I do like you,” she says as she walks. “When you get involved with someone like Rick Salvado, when you challenge or threaten him, you are going to a very dangerous place, because you are dealing with someone as powerful and egomaniacal as a despot, as the corrupt sociopath head of a third world nation. He is connected to everyone, good and bad and worse, in business and politics and the illicit groups that control them.

“This is a man who has the power to do good or evil, to make something memorable or make it disappear as if it never existed with the touch of the tiniest button on his smart phone. Call it a death app.

“So no, Miranda,” she continues, “I won't tell Rick that you came here, investigating him. Unless of course, he asks. Then I'll tell him everything, because while you would have chosen to walk away from all this, I obviously haven't.”

“I understand, Deb.”

“Good. And for your own good, whatever it is you are looking into, for yourself or your ex-husband, of all people, I suggest you cease and desist, and that he just quit and move on. Because if Rick wants to, he will find you, Miranda.”