Michael Ridpath - Free To Trade

Typical Waigel, I thought. His ego required as much space as all six people who worked for him.

'I know Waigel's secretary, Jean, quite well. She's a nice woman, but she can't stand his guts. She's on the point of quitting. I think she will probably help us, especially when she hears what has happened to me. She can let us know when he is out. We go up there, and she shows us into his office, as though we had an appointment with him. Simple.'

'Good,' I said. 'But how do we get in the building? Haven't they taken your pass away?'

'Yes they have, but I am sure Jean can take care of that.'

'There's no need for you to come,' I said. 'I can go by myself.'

'Oh yes there is. If Jean's going to let you into Waigel's office, I am going to have to be there too.'

'Is there anything between you and this Jean?' I asked smiling.

Tommy laughed, 'Oh no, nothing, I promise you.'

We finished our lunch, I paid, and then we set off for Tommy's apartment so that he could ring Jean. I needed to get into Waigel's office that afternoon.

Tommy's apartment was on the second floor of an old brown-stone on Barrow Street. We walked up the stairs, and as Tommy fished for his keys, he hesitated. 'Oh, I have a friend of mine staying with me. Gary. He works in the evenings, so he may well be in.'

He opened the door, and I followed him through a small hallway into a tastefully decorated living room. There was an expensive oriental rug on the floor, and another on one wall. A number of attractive abstract paintings adorned the other walls. Gary was sitting in a comfortable leather armchair. He shouted a welcome as we came in.

Gary had a full moustache, a crew cut, and was wearing tight light blue jeans, the uniform of the gay New York male. So this was why Tommy had laughed when I had mentioned the possibility of a relationship between him and Waigel's secretary. I looked again at Tommy. There was no outward sign of his sexual orientation.

Tommy caught my look. 'OK, so I'm gay. Does it surprise you?' he said.

'I suppose it does a little,' I said. 'But I'll get over it.' I couldn't suppress an involuntary chuckle.

'What are you laughing at?' asked Tommy, looking at me suspiciously.

'Oh, I was just thinking of Lloyd Harbin's face if he ever found out.'

Tommy smiled. 'Yes, I see what you mean. Mind you, I saw him in a bar on Christopher Street a few months ago with some very unsavoury company. Do you want some coffee?'

Tommy made some coffee and then called Waigel's secretary. While he was on the phone I sipped my coffee and chatted to Gary.

After three or four minutes Tommy put down the phone. 'Waigel's out now, and won't be back for an hour. If we are quick, we should be able to find what we want before he comes back. Just wait a moment while I get changed.'

A minute later Tommy emerged from his bedroom in a suit. I put down my coffee, said goodbye to Gary, and followed Tommy out of the door. We quickly found a cab, and headed downtown to Wall Street.

We pulled up outside the great, black, looming building of Bloomfield Weiss. We took a lift up to the reception area on the forty-sixth floor, which was where Corporate Finance was located.

Tommy walked up to the receptionist and said, 'Tommy Masterson and James Smith to see Mr Waigel.'

The receptionist looked at Tommy and said, 'Don't you work here, Mr Masterson? I thought you were on the trading floor.'

Tommy gave her a friendly smile. 'I used to work here until very recently,' he said.

The receptionist looked at her book. 'Well if you have an appointment, I guess it's OK.' She tapped some buttons on her phone. 'Jean? Mr Waigel's guests are in reception.' She put the phone down. 'Please wait here, gentlemen.'

Jean was out in a flash. She was a tall woman with round Lennon glasses and long brown hair plaited down her back. She had a baggy blouse and a long skirt. She looked as much like a hippy as one can look on Wall Street, which is not very much. She showed no hint of recognition of Tommy. She led us through some corridors and into an open-plan office. There were six desks cramped into a small area. Five of them were occupied with people hard at work. One guarded a glass-encased office on one side of the room. There were curtains on the inside of this office, making it impossible to see in.

'I am afraid Mr Waigel is not expected back for another half-hour,' Jean said. 'I am terribly sorry for the mix-up on appointment times. I can't think how it could have happened. Would you like to wait or come back later?'

'We would like to wait if we may,' Tommy said.

'Well, why don't you wait in Mr Waigel's office until he returns?' said Jean.

As she showed us into the office, Tommy gave her a broad wink. She smiled back at him and closed the door on us.

The office was large, with a big desk, two armchairs, a sofa, and a coffee table. The room was littered with 'tombstones', advertisements of previous deals encased in clear plastic blocks. Waigel had done a lot of deals, and he wanted everyone to know about them. There were two framed photographs on the wall, one of Waigel shaking hands with Lee Iacocca and another with Mayor Ed Koch. The Koch one would have done any New York Chinese restaurant proud.

Along one wall was a row of wooden filing cabinets. Two full cabinets were marked 'completed deals'. I tried them. They were locked.

Tommy went outside, and under the pretext of asking for some coffee, came back with a key from Jean. He opened the cabinets.

Inside were rows of files in alphabetical order. I quickly flipped through until I came to T. No Tremont Capital. Damn. I began to look back through some of the other files. I noticed that many of them had titles which were obviously code words.

'What do we do now?' Tommy said.

'There's nothing for it but to go through each file individually,' I said.

'But there are at least a hundred. It will take an hour! We only have twenty minutes.'

'We've got no choice. I'll start at A and you start at Z and work back.'

'Just a moment. Let me see if I recognise any of the code words,' Tommy said.

I was riffling through my second file which turned out to be about the takeover of a beauty-products company code-named 'Adonis', when Tommy whispered, 'Here, I've got it!' He held up a file labelled 'Music Hall'.

'How did you work that one out?' I asked.

'Tremont Capital reminded me of Tremont Avenue in the Bronx. There was a music hall there that used to be very popular.'

'Well done!' I said, and grabbed the file. I hadn't connected the word 'Tremont' with the Bronx. Interesting.

I laid out all the documents in the file on the desk and worked my way through them. There were drafts, and then the final version of the prospectus I had looked through back in London. There was correspondence with the lawyers Van Kreef, Heerlen discussing a number of detailed legal points. One letter dealt with how to ensure that the ownership of Tremont Capital was kept strictly anonymous. Needless to say the owners were not mentioned there.

Then I found a letter with the Harzweiger Bank letterhead. It was from Hans Dietweiler. It confirmed account numbers for the payment of funds raised by Tremont Capital from its bond offering.

Damn. If the money De Jong had paid for the private placement had gone into Switzerland, it would be next to impossible to trace it.

I moved on. Then I found it. It was just a scrap of yellow legal-pad paper. Scrawled on the top was the word 'STRUCTURE'. Below were a series of boxes. It laid out the complete structure of the fraud.

I took a piece of paper from Waigel's desk and copied out the diagram. I was interrupted by a tap on the door. It was Jean. 'You guys had better hurry up. Dick will be back any minute now.'

I hurriedly finished the diagram, carefully reassembled the 'Music Hall' file and placed it back in the filing cabinet. Tommy and I checked the office to make sure everything was as we had found it. My eyes fell on Waigel's desk diary. I quickly checked the week Debbie had been killed. It was filled with appointments, all of which seemed to be in New York. There was no mention of cancelled meetings or flights to London.