James Grippando - Money to Burn

I started to give him the firm’s cross streets-“Seventh and…” but stopped myself. It was time to lose the tuxedo. We headed up Broadway to Fifty-seventh and then east to my apartment at Sutton Place. The driver waited with the meter running-he should have worked for Cool Cash-as I hurried into the building.

“Mr. Cantella!” the doorman called.

“Gotta hurry,” I said as I punched the call button for the elevator again and again.

“Delivery here for you, sir. Courier brought it by an hour ago.”

“I’ll get it later, Juan.”

“‘Urgent’ marked all over it,” he said, walking over and handing it to me.

I grabbed it as the bell chimed and the elevator doors parted. I swiped my security card and punched twenty-six. The doors closed, and I inspected what Juan had given me. It was the size of a FedEx envelope, but it was from a local courier service-probably delivered by one of those maniacs on bicycles who pedaled as if they got paid extra for bumping off pedestrians in crosswalks. I had one eye on the numbers over the elevator doors blinking with each passing floor-fourteen, fifteen, sixteen-as I found the zip tab on the package and pulled it.

There was a sudden flash of red and yellow, and I wasn’t sure if the package flew from my hands or if I had thrown it to the floor. The elevator stopped immediately, and the alarm sounded. I was stunned for a moment, then smelled smoke. My sleeve was on fire, and flames were at my feet. I ripped off my jacket and stomped on it and the package in a frantic effort to extinguish the flames. I was winning, but barely. The package seemed to contain some kind of substance that burned with resilience. I smothered it with my jacket until the flames died, but the smoke continued to thicken even after the fire was finally out. It had a chemical odor, and my hands were stinging from the burn. Breathing was nearly impossible in the smoke-filled elevator.

“Are you okay in there?” the voice on the intercom asked.

The car wasn’t moving, and I felt on the verge of succumbing to the smoke. I grabbed the seam between the doors and pulled as hard as I could. At first the doors didn’t budge, but on the second try, they separated-not enough for me to climb out of the car to safety, but at least I could stick my nose and mouth out into the shaft and breathe.

“I need help!” I yelled.

“We’re on our way!” the response came.

I stood there with my face in the crack between the metal doors. I was light-headed but refused to let myself pass out. My focus was purely on survival, but as I caught my breath, Stanley Brewer’s words came back to me.

“When the motive is revenge, you never really know when-if ever-they are going to call it even.”

I cast my eyes downward, peering into the dark elevator shaft below.

“Not good,” I told myself. “This is definitely not good.”

I COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED.

The thought was sinking in as I stood outside the closed door to Eric Volke’s office. The president had the largest corner office on a highly secured floor that was reserved for nine of Saxton Silvers’ most senior executives. Visitors knew they were in the right place as soon as the elevator doors opened: They could smell the flowers. Roses, calla lilies, crepe myrtle, and other assortments were abundant and fresh every day, a two-hundred-thousand-dollar line item in the firm’s annual operating budget. An extravagance, to be sure, particularly since no more than two or three executives were actually in the office on a typical day. Today obviously wasn’t typical. It wasn’t even nine o’clock and the place was buzzing.

“He’s on the phone,” said Nancy, Eric’s assistant.

Of course he was. Eric Volke off the phone was like Tiger Woods off the golf course. “I’ll wait,” I said.

I took a seat on the leather sofa, and suddenly I had to catch my breath.

Damn, I really could have been killed.

Things were moving so fast. I hadn’t really processed how close I’d come to burning alive inside an elevator. My hand was still stinging and red. I had decided not to go to the emergency room, even though that flaming package had probably given me a second-degree burn. I had bigger problems.

As I waited, I wondered how much more harm the anonymous sender had intended.

My cell rang, reminding me that the wheels of commerce were still turning. I had to cancel today’s trip to Chicago, where I was supposed to consult with a group of real estate lawyers, bankers, and architects to make sure their multiuse building qualified as green. It was a nine-figure deal put together by our Investment Banking Division, and by missing a key meeting I ran the risk of some engineer making a decision that would throw the whole thing out of LEED compliance-no more green stamp of approval for the socially responsible class of investors I was trying to make richer. One successful green project had a way of blossoming into more, so it would hurt to lose this one, but not nearly as much as losing my entire personal portfolio.

I checked the call, let it go to voice mail, and peered through the beveled glass door. Eric was pacing from one end of his silk Sarouk rug to the other, speaking into the headset of his hands-free phone. The signs of stress were all over his face.

Eric was my mentor, the man who had hired me out of business school. Two years ago, when ditching Wall Street and changing careers had seemed like a good idea, it was Eric who’d convinced the firm to let me split my time between production and management. It sounded like two jobs, but it was more like twenty. In theory, putting Saxton Silvers’ Green Division on the map meant training investment advisors across the country to “think green,” but all the training in the world wasn’t going to convince them to make less money for the pension funds, retirees, and other investors who counted on the brilliant minds at Saxton Silvers to maximize their returns. Expanding “green” beyond charitable trusts and other special investor groups that were either required or predisposed to go green meant assembling and supervising an investment strategy team like no other, and then traveling across the globe to identify and nail down socially responsible opportunities that would actually make money-lots of money. “Show them-don’t tell them-that green belongs in their portfolio,” was Eric’s charge to me. His own career had soared since then, and for the past thirteen months he’d served as president of Saxton Silvers. Subprime fallout had made the last three hell.

“Does he know I’m here?” I asked his assistant.

“Yes. It’ll be just a few minutes more. Mr. Volke wants to see you as soon as he hangs up.”

I returned to my seat, and my phone buzzed again. It was Mallory, who was still at the Pierre Hotel. This was the third time she’d speed-dialed me since I’d called to tell her about “a little mishap” in the elevator.

“Why is there a security guard outside my door?” she asked.

I could hear the strain in her voice, and I tried to reassure her. “Honey, it’s like I explained earlier: The lawyer thinks somebody might be trying to even an old score with me. It’s better to be safe than sorry, so I asked the firm to arrange for a bodyguard.”

“Michael, you’re not telling me everything. Juan called over here from the front desk to see if I needed a ride home. According to him, everyone in our building is talking about the package that burst into flames and almost burned you alive in the elevator. The FBI was even there.”

It had been a mistake not to tell Mallory the whole story, but my intentions had been good. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to freak you out. I’ve already talked with the FBI, and the security guard outside your door is just a precaution. This is going to be okay.”