Mike Offit - Nothing Personal - A Novel of Wall Street

“I dunno. Whaddaya want?” He shrugged his shoulders. Picking a restaurant in New York was impossible. There were simply too many to choose from.

“Oh, anything. Maybe seafood. Clams. Shellfish. Whatever.” Her eyes half glazed over, and Warren imagined for a moment that little lobsters were floating in her eyes, like in the cartoons.

“Anything, as long as it comes in a shell?” Warren asked, picking up the scent.

“Yeah. Salty, maybe even briny. You know. That’s what I want.” She hugged his arm.

“How about the Oyster Bar right over there at the Plaza?” Warren pointed a gloved finger across the street at the famous hotel. “They have oyster pan roasts, you know.”

“That sounds yummie. Okay!” The pair made their way across Fifty-Eighth Street to the side entrance to the restaurant. The dark walnut paneling, bright lighting, and red leather banquettes hadn’t changed in almost a hundred years, since the days when men would think nothing of quaffing two dozen oysters and two or three pints of beer before a serious eight- or nine-course dinner. Sam ordered only one dozen Cotuits and a bottle of Sam Adams, to be followed by a half dozen littlenecks, an oyster pan roast, and finally by a plate of snow-crab legs. Warren had a dozen littlenecks and asked if she’d share her pan roast. She looked a little crestfallen, but agreed.

“Let me ask you something,” Warren started as she inhaled the fifth oyster and took a pull of beer. “Do you always eat like this? How do you stay so thin?” He’d also ordered a crabmeat cocktail and a cup of clam chowder.

“I like to eat. No, I don’t really put on weight, unless I go to town. Hey, once, in Austria, on a trip for work, I put on twelve pounds. I got hooked on buttercream. I think I had it on toast and maybe even on fish. It was this incredible stuff they had in their cakes. I had to dry out for a week or two when I got back. I did the same thing once with my ex-boyfriend.” She jabbed a tiny fork into another oyster, then changed her mind and just sucked it down.

“Ex-boyfriend, eh? And here I thought I was your first man.” Warren smiled and took a sip of his beer.

“Oh, maybe my first real man. Yeah, he turned out to be a cretin. Stole almost all my money.” She put down the shell. “That really was not a great moment.”

“I thought you said your business manager took your money?” Warren was confused. “Was this a habit with the men in your life?”

“No. They were the same. He was my boyfriend. Or so I thought. Told me he had a Harvard MBA. Put me into offshore hedge funds, leveraged buyouts, blah, blah, blah. They were all phony. Except the car dealership. Took about a million bucks. Six hard years of modeling, a house I bought and sold, two commercials, and a sitcom. Hey, but he nailed some Hollywood big shots for some pretty good dough too, so it wasn’t just me.”

“Oh, yeah, like who?” Warren was interested in gossip, though he denied it.

“Well, for one, this big, hotshot lawyer who represents all the singers and supposedly does these big deals, but actually just bails them out of trouble and helps supply them with drugs and chicks. She’s married to this sleazeball art dealer. He used my boyfriend to sell me some bogus painting for eighty-five thousand bucks that was worth maybe ten, but who knew? He was selling stuff to these idiot studio heads for millions. They used to drive everywhere in this Rolls convertible, each of them talking on their own fancy car phone. So when Artie screwed them out of five hundred thousand, I didn’t feel so bad about it. Uggh.” Sam had finished the oysters and was working on the littlenecks. “These are good. Really cold and sweet. Want one?” She held the pinkish bivalve under Warren’s nose.

He detested the slimy creatures unless they were cooked to a cardboard consistency. “No, no thanks. Well, I’m glad to see your experience hasn’t hardened you at all.” He looked the other way as she chewed the clam.

“C’mon. What about you? You think these are fun people I’m talking about? In your business? The world’s full of them. It doesn’t mean you have to be one of them, but it pays to know what you’re dealing with. I wish I had a lot earlier.” She put her beer mug down on the table with a bang. “Some people want to screw you in every possible way.”

“I don’t think I’m naïve. Hardly. I just think you’ve gotta look for the best in people rather than the worst. My dad always said he tried to find one thing to like in everyone.”

“A noble idea. Most people do find one thing to like in everyone. Their hand in your pocket.” She had made short work of the creamy pan roast—Warren had managed to spear only two bites before it ws gone—and was already halfway through the crab claws, picking the meat out expertly with the fork. “Could you wave him down and get me another beer?”

“Yeah, you’re probably right, but I try to maintain a more positive attitude and just watch my butt, so there’s nothing else going in someplace it doesn’t belong. But you can only control so much.” He put down his spoon and asked the waiter for another Sam Adams. “It’s like Anson—the guy who got killed. He manipulated everyone at work, screwed lots of people, probably had all kinds of strange stuff going on. Then one day, despite all the plotting and planning, strategizing and tactical analyzing, he wakes up dead with his head pounded in, and none of it matters any more. He kind of deserved what he got, but that doesn’t happen very often. Usually bad things happen to good people and vice versa.”

“Well, if someone could catch up to Artie and bust his skull, I wouldn’t be crying at the funeral.” She punctuated the comment by cracking a claw with a resounding crunch.

“What happened to him? Didn’t he get caught?”

“No. Guys like him never get caught.” She was relishing the last few bites of the sweet, white meat. The second beer arrived and she downed half of it quickly. “He stole like ten million bucks and then moved it around all these countries. He took me to Liechtenstein, on my credit card, supposedly to visit these friends of his in a big castle for a vacation. We stayed three days. That’s how long it took him to move my money from the Channel Islands through Liechtenstein to an Arab bank and then into never-never land. Two weeks later, he was gonzo alonzo . He spoke pretty good Greek and real good Italian, so everyone figures that’s where he is—Greece or Italy.”

“But they have treaties with the US. Can’t you trace the money?”

“Nope. Between Panama and Liechtenstein, the banking laws are unbelievable. We got absolutely nowhere. The US Justice Department couldn’t even trace the money. Besides, my investigator thinks he turned it into hard currency and smuggled it out. It’s gone. I gave up, and so did everyone else. He won. But he left me in the car-rental business with the Demecelli brothers. Thank God they’re silent partners. Ten to twenty in the federal pen will do that.” She had finished the crab claws, drained the beer, and threw her napkin on the table. “Great snack. Perfect choice.”

“You’re welcome. Snack? I can’t believe he just got away with it.” Warren picked up one of the discarded oyster shells. “ Hey! What’s that in there? What’s going on?” He had palmed the earrings and seemed to pluck them out of the shell. “We better ask the waiter what kind of oysters these are.”

“What?” Sam looked confused. Then she saw the earrings. “Oh my God… They’re beautiful.”

“They’re for you. Kind of a welcoming present.”

“Come on. Wait a second here. I can’t be taking something like that from someone I hardly—”