James Grippando - Money to Burn

“I haven’t spoken to Kevin in years,” I said.

It had been four years, to be exact-since Ivy’s disappearance, when Kevin turned into an asshole.

“Maybe that should change,” said Papa. “He is family. And he practices right here in the city.”

“Please don’t push this. I don’t need another complication-especially family.”

“You’re right. Let’s you and I talk this out for a minute. It sounds to me like someone is setting you up to look like the bad guy.”

“The financial assassin of my own firm,” I said.

“So let’s think logically. Any successful man naturally has enemies. Who are yours?”

I shook my head slowly, thinking. “I am head of the firm’s Green Division. That doesn’t make Big Oil too happy.”

“Yeah, right. And come June I’m going to muscle out a bunch of twenty-year-old stars and become a starting pitcher for the Chicago Cubs. Come on, think. There has to be someone you stepped on or maybe even squashed-not on purpose, of course-on your way to the top.”

The bathroom door opened. Nana stepped out, clad in the same bathrobe she’d owned when I was in college. A silk cap preserved last Saturday’s trip to the beauty parlor. She’d gone every week, worn the same hairstyle, for as long as I could remember.

“Bedtime, boys,” she said.

I rose and gave her a kiss. Papa walked me to the door. Nana had her hearing aid out, so we didn’t have to worry about her overhearing.

“Where you sleeping tonight?” he asked.

“I thought I would check at the desk and see if they had any vacancies.”

He gave me a hug and whispered in my ear: “Call Mallory.”

I wasn’t sure if that was the right thing to do, but I told him I would, said good night, and rode the elevator down to the front desk. The hotel was completely booked-it must have been the little bottles of free shampoo-so it was on to plan B for sleeping arrangements. Some of Papa’s optimism must have rubbed off on me. I called Mallory, and when she didn’t pick up, I hesitated before leaving a message on the answering machine. Then I found myself sounding more like my grandfather than myself, saying the things I probably should have said more often in my marriage to Mallory.

“I just wanted to let you know that I love you,” I said. “Please, let’s talk in the morning.”

Five minutes later I was in the backseat of another taxi headed up Eighth Avenue. There were two hotels on the West Side that got so much business from Saxton Silvers that they almost had to accommodate me, even if I did show up without a reservation. The cab was one of thousands in the city that had gone high-tech. A touch-screen monitor embedded into the bulkhead bombarded me with ads for credit cards and refinancing opportunities. Strapped into my seat, I felt like Alex undergoing aversion therapy in A Clockwork Orange. The ads stopped, and Taxi TV switched to actual television programming. I was hoping for the Food Network or maybe Lucy and Ricky. Naturally, I got a five-minute snippet from Bell Ringer. I suddenly had a change of plans.

“Make that Fifty-seventh and First,” I told the driver.

Chuck Bell had been featured two months earlier in New York magazine, with several pictures of him in his penthouse apartment. It turned out that we were practically neighbors. The cab dropped me in front of the building, and I asked the front desk attendant to ring Bell’s apartment for me.

“Tell him it’s Michael Cantella.”

Three minutes later, Chuck Bell and I were alone in the cavernous lobby, seated facing each other on matching chrome and strap-leather chairs. He seemed energized-hopeful that another Saxton Silvers insider was about to spill his guts.

“Can we talk off the record?”

“No,” he said. “But I’ll make you the same promise I made to my other source: I won’t reveal your identity.”

“That’s actually what I’ve come here to talk about: your source.”

He was suddenly cautious. “What about my source?”

“I’m asking you to go on the air and state in no uncertain terms that Michael Cantella is not your source.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Because you know who your source is, and you know it’s not me.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “I’m a journalist. I’m never going to reveal a source, not even under a court order.”

“I’m simply asking you to reveal that I am not the source. Even Woodward and Bernstein were willing to do that much when they confirmed that Al Haig and others were not Deep Throat.”

“And they were lucky it didn’t blow up in their faces. I’m not interested in playing a public process of elimination that will inevitably lead to the disclosure of my source. Besides,” he said with a wry smile, “how do I know you’re not a source for my source?”

I watched him closely, wondering if he was merely taunting me or trying to tell me something. Bell rose, and so did I. He took a business card from his pocket and wrote a number on the back of it.

“This is my cell,” he said. “Call me if you decide we should talk.”

I didn’t take it. He placed it on the glass-topped table between us and left it there.

“Be sure to watch me again tonight at eleven-thirty,” he said. “This story is getting so much bigger than FNN. I’m hosting a round-table discussion about Wall Street on network television.”

He turned and headed to the elevator.

When he was gone, I took the card with his cell number and tucked it into my wallet. I didn’t want to take it, but he’d managed to make me feel as though I’d need it-a feeling that triggered a sinking realization as I left his building. Chuck Bell was poison. Rat poison.

And I was the little mouse running blindly through the maze.

ANDREA WAS DRESSED IN HER PAJAMAS, STANDING BEFORE THE BATHROOM mirror and confirming her suspicions: too much of her dark roots were showing. Michael Cantella had seemed fixated on them at the restaurant.

All her life Andrea had been an “exotic beauty,” turning heads with the high cheekbones and raven-black hair of her Native American mother and the striking green eyes of her Anglo father. The idea of going blond for the first time in her life had been kind of fun. The maintenance, however, was a pain in the ass. And a cheap-looking blond dye job wasn’t in keeping with her assumed image.

There was a knock at the door. She pulled on her robe and let in her “fiancé.”

“How did it go today?” he asked.

Phil Shores was a smooth-talking James Bond wannabe who had managed to convince someone in a position of power that he could pull off playing an internal compliance officer at Saxton Silvers. He certainly wasn’t unattractive, but he was nowhere near the eye candy he thought he was-not at all Andrea’s type.

“Not great,” she said. “It seems the word is out that we don’t sleep together.”

“According to whom?”

“Mallory Cantella told me.”

“The ditz is smarter than we thought.”

“She’s no ditz, and she’s not the only one who knows. Our maid let it slip.”

“The maid? She came only once before we were told a housekeeper wasn’t in the budget.”

“Apparently once was enough.”

He leaned against the bathroom door frame, arms folded across his broad chest. “Well, we could always put the rumors to rest-and have a good time doing it.”

“In your dreams.”

Andrea switched off the light, breezed past him, and went to her bedroom. She knew Phil had been kidding, but not completely kidding.

The jerk would nail anything blond.

Andrea climbed into bed and grabbed the remote. She was tired of listening to Chuck Bell, but her last assignment of this very long day was to watch his round-table discussion at eleven thirty P.M. The guy was to Saxton Silvers what the National Enquirer was to celebrity breakups.