Mike Offit - Nothing Personal - A Novel of Wall Street

Unlike many Weldon salesmen, he tried to screen out the garbage before attempting to sell anything to his accounts. All Street firms needed the revenue from new deals to keep the machine greased, so some stinkers would inevitably sneak in, even at a relatively conservative place such as Weldon. Larisa’s Temenosa deal had been a prime example. One day, the firm is raising money selling bonds for Temenosa, supposedly a hot, growing diversified oil services company with fabulous cash flow. Seven months later, all the money raised in the bond offering is gone, spent on a lousy acquisition, investment-banking fees, and a lot of executive compensation, and the firm files for bankruptcy. It seems the bankers on the deal had been a little too optimistic about that cash flow. Oh, well, there went a billion dollars or so. The amazing part was that Weldon got assigned the plum reorganization advisory job by the bankruptcy court. Since they already knew so much about the company, the receiver would save the expense of a new firm’s starting from scratch. The fees were generous, even though the company itself was virtually busted. It was all a funny joke, as long as you were on the magic gravy train.

It took Warren about an hour to decide that the leasing company was a house of cards that would collapse almost immediately if the airline business softened even slightly. With all the new debt, it would actually fail if business just stayed the same and didn’t improve. Meanwhile the CEO and majority owner lived like a king and would no doubt use a chunk of the bond proceeds to fund his lifestyle. He stuck a prospectus in an envelope with a printed “For Your Information” card and scratched out Information, substituting Amusement, sending it off to David Schiff. He loved this kind of deal. They could laugh together as it crashed in flames.

Thinking of Larisa again made Warren a little uneasy. She had seemed genuinely sad when he’d run into her. She was a tough cookie who had gotten where she wanted to be, but paid a price personally. She had been made one of the youngest vice presidents in Finance at the firm and was on the path to be an MD within a few years. It may not have worked out with him, or even with Anson, but she’d find someone new. Besides, having kids or a family was something that would wait. At the pace she was going, she’d be able to retire and have a brood at thirty-five. He could see her point and couldn’t fault her logic, although her sleeping with the guy he was most scared of hadn’t exactly warmed his heart. For a minute he wondered if she might have known about Anson’s accounts. He dismissed it—she had always warned him never, never to do anything even in the gray area between legal and questionable. He felt that she was not yet resolved as a part of his life somehow, and that thought did not make him comfortable. He had a great girlfriend, a good career in a tough business, and a great big bag of salty pistachio nuts that the shoe-shine man had sold him that morning. All was right, or at least allright, with the world. For now.

A cold hand ran down his spine, grabbing at his stomach and squeezing hard enough to make him gasp. A yawning pit opened inside him, and hot flames shot up from his groin to his cheeks, setting his skin afire, and his heart ablaze. He felt himself shrinking suddenly and violently, until he felt like a pin dot, white-hot, searing down through his seat, the floor, and into the earth and bedrock below.

“Warren, there’s someone from the police here to see you” was all the receptionist had said to him, and he struggled for his breath as he answered, “I’ll be right out.” In the three months since they’d returned from Europe, there hadn’t been so much as a peep. It had lulled him into a sense of calm. It only took an instant to shatter into a billion shards, and his composure returned only slowly as he walked to the elevator foyer as if to the gallows.

The familiar and intelligent face of Detective Wittlin peered up from a copy of Forbes magazine, which he was flipping through. The round, smiling face of Donald Trump stared out from the open page.

Wittlin closed and dropped the magazine back on the small coffee table and greeted Warren with a handshake. “Hey, sorry to drop in on you unannounced. I needed to talk to you right away.” Wittlin swiveled around. “Is there someplace we can go?”

Warren held up a finger. “Mary, are any of the conference rooms open? The detective and I need some privacy.”

The receptionist consulted a logbook briefly. “Only the War Room, and only until two.”

Warren looked at Wittlin, who nodded approval. “Fine, pencil us in.” He showed Wittlin the way, through a set of double glass doors, and down a short hall. The War Room was actually a big conference room, with the most advanced teleconferencing technology available. Every branch office of Weldon had a room just like it. From this room priority sales calls were made, and senior executives could address every employee in the firm simultaneously. It was ridiculously large for just two men, but they sat at the corner of the immense conference table.

“Okay. What is it?” Warren crossed his legs and tried, quite successfully, to look relaxed. His heart was pounding.

“I have something I want you to take a look at.” Wittlin reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a manila envelope. He slid out of it a small stack of photographs and handed them to Warren.

They were obviously from a security camera in a building foyer or lobby. A distorted overhead view showed two people, quite clearly Anson Combes and Bonnie, entering the foyer. A second showed a lone figure, head covered by a hat and some kind of face covering, leaving. Warren started to flip through the others, but Wittlin stopped him.

“That’s the one I wanted you to see.” Wittlin reached for the rest.

“Can I see the others?”

“You don’t really want to. They’re shots of the body. Pretty rough stuff.”

Warren pursed his lips. He was beginning to feel relief—Wittlin was asking about the murder, not about European bank accounts or sham mortgage sales.

“I guess not.” Warren studied the shot. The shadowy figure was completely covered by a big parka and the hat. On closer inspection the mask appeared to be a scarf, and Warren could make out some kind of pattern on it. “What can I tell you?”

“We think that’s the killer. The timing seems right. No one else in that building remembered going out or having a visitor. It has to be. I wondered if you could tell anything from it?” Wittlin looked Warren square in the eye inquisitively.

“Why’d it take so long to get this? It’s been, what, about five months?”

“Yeah. Well, we were checking it out, computer enhancing it, and following up leads. We got nowhere. I figured I’d take a shot and see if anyone else could get something from it.” Wittlin shrugged. “We’re just about out of gas on this case.”

Warren nodded and studied the picture again. Something about it unsettled him. The posture of the man? The scarf? He spent a long minute scanning it before he handed it back. “I’m sorry, Detective. I’d like to help. But I can’t see anything there that you can’t. It’s somebody walking out of a building. Could be anybody, any building.”

“I know. Listen, I appreciate you taking the time. I’m afraid I’m going to let you down on this one. Some of the jewelry from the girl’s place turned up—the watch anyway, on a kid we arrested uptown. Not a killer, just a pusher. He bought it from a fence we know, who couldn’t even remember his own name. Twenty bucks, for a three-thousand-dollar Rolex. A woman’s watch, too, on some punk crackhead. Anyway, that makes the B and E look real, and we’ll probably scale it down.” Wittlin looked sheepish.