loans to Ainsley. But the absence of a smoking gun hadn’t deterred the lawyers, and it hadn’t saved Gregory Danes’s reputation. Pundits, politicians, and op-ed columnists feasted on the Piedmont affair- and on Danes- for many months, until a host of larger and more garish frauds came along.
The search engines returned links to interviews that Danes had given over the years, and I skimmed through a few of them. There was something almost quaint in his rosy pronouncements- on e-commerce, broadband, data mining, and a dozen other jargon-soaked topics. It was like reading about eight-track tapes or bongs. I read farther down the list of links and stopped at something called LindaObsession. com. I clicked, not knowing what to expect.
It was a disturbing and aptly named site. A page entitled “Our Mission” summed it up:
We are here to appreciate and adore the most beautiful and intelligent and most totally HOT host/reporter/superstar/diva on television today (OR EVER!)- the Amazing, Incredible, Spectacular LINDA SOVITCH! We Are Totally Linda!!!
Linda Sovitch was the blond glossy host of Market Minds, the Business News Network show that offered analysis of the day’s market action and features on investing, the economy, and politics. In recent years, Sovitch had also become the glamorous face of BNN itself. Gregory Danes had been a frequent guest on Market Minds, practically a fixture there since the show’s debut in the late nineties, and this was why LindaObsession had come up in my search.
Along with the fevered deconstruction of Linda Sovitch’s physical charms- the cornflower eyes, the ash-blond hair, the delicate nostrils and bee-stung lips and swelling bosom- and the meticulous parsing of what seemed her every utterance, there were stills and video clips from the Market Minds show. In among these was Gregory Danes.
There was Danes on the show’s premier segment, and when the Dow hit 10,000. There he was when Cisco surpassed GE in market capitalization. And there was Danes on the first anniversary show and on every subsequent one- except for the last few. I clicked on a video clip.
It was fuzzy and jumpy but watchable nonetheless. The topic was the significance of adding Microsoft and Intel to the Dow Jones Industrial Average. Sovitch was smiling and flirty and pitching softballs; Danes was arrogant and preening and knocking the hide off them. But there was a twitchy, adolescent quality about him too, which came through even on the murky video- like the class wiseass who’s suddenly found himself captain of the football team. Even so, his message was simple and clear: It’s a whole new world, and there’s no place to go but up. For sure, Greg.
Most of the references that turned up in my search were several years old, and they were all business. There were no references to him in the social pages, and- apart from Ainsley’s posh barbecue- no reported sightings of him at any of Wall Street’s many charity events. Even the few magazine profiles of him mentioned nothing more personal than his fondness for classical music.
The only exception was a mention of Danes in a 1998 article from a Newark, New Jersey, newspaper. It was a short piece, reporting on an administrative action by the SEC against a tiny Jersey City firm and a broker there named Richard Gilpin, for a slew of violations that seemed to stop just short of outright fraud. Gilpin, the article noted, was the younger brother of “prominent Wall Street analyst Gregory Danes.” The reporter was almost right; according to Nina Sachs, Richard Gilpin was Danes’s creepy half brother. Gilpin was on my list of people to talk to, assuming I could find him, and I took down the details.
I went to the kitchen and warmed my coffee in the microwave and looked out the window as I drank it. The sky was a soft, even gray, and the gulls, wheeling slowly over the building across the street, were nearly lost against it. I had a lot of windows opened, and a small breeze wandered in with the street noise.
I thought about Danes and the traces he had left behind on the Web- his footprints across the big stage of Wall Street- and I thought about the other actors recently brought to heel. I recalled the televised hearings and the faces, pale under their golf-course tans. Some had been annoyed at being called to testify and others had been downright angry, and a few, perhaps, had been something close to scared, but regardless of demeanor they seemed to share a common sense of astonishment that questions had been asked at all.
Thoughts of arrogance and money and Wall Street led me, inevitably, to my family. Money is the family business- on my mother’s side, at least- and it has been ever since my great-grandfather founded the merchant bank of Klein amp; Sons. One of my uncles runs the bank these days, with help from my eldest brother, Ned. My other brother, David, and my older sister, Liz, work there too, along with the rest of my uncles and countless cousins. Not every Klein offspring has gone into banking, though. My baby sister hasn’t, and through the years there’d been heretics who’d wandered off into medicine, law, and academia. But there’d never been a cop or a PI before- not until me.
This was not a source of particular family pride, but I was used to that. By the time I’d found a career- or it had found me- I’d already amassed twenty-two years’ worth of underachievement and unfulfilled expectations. Even now I could hear my mother’s chilly tones: You surprise me, John, only in the particulars of your choices, not in the degree of their foolishness. She’s gone now- both my parents are- but her sentiment lingers like a ghost around my family.
Not that I’d never toed the family line. I had, albeit sporadically. In college, I was a business major for about ten minutes, and for several summers I’d interned on the trading floor of a big broker-dealer. I’d gotten coffee, answered phones, run pricing models, reconfirmed trades, and tended my hangovers there, and I’d listened quietly, over long expensive lunches, while people barely older than I tried to sell me on a future with the firm. It didn’t take. The avarice, egotism, and self-delusion I’d seen there approached caricature, and when the dismay wore off, Wall Street had bored me to tears.
Several times in recent years clients and cases had led me back there and afforded me a darker but more interesting view of the place. In seven years as a cop I’d seen what greed and arrogance could do when they were mixed with desperation and opportunity; that was old news. What was different on Wall Street was the stakes that people played for, the variety of their games, and the particular mix of brains and vanity they brought with them to the table. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
I topped off my coffee, found the Pace-Loyette phone directory that Neary had given me, and turned to the listings for Gregory Danes’s department, Equity Research.
Research wasn’t a big group at Pace-Loyette- fewer than thirty analysts in all- but it didn’t need to be. Pace- Loyette wasn’t a big firm, and they didn’t cover every sector of the market; technology was the specialty of the house. Danes’s name appeared at the top of the page, with the title Director of Research. Immediately beneath his name was his assistant’s, Giselle Thomas. Neary had put a check alongside it. Below her, also with a check by her name, was Irene Pratt, Assistant Director of Research. Halfway down the page, another name was marked: Anthony Frye, Telecommunications Research. Leafing through the rest of the directory, I found only one other name with a check beside it: Dennis Turpin. According to the directory, Turpin was head of the legal department- the chief in-house counsel. Turpin, Neary had told me, was the guy who had had the shouting match with Danes, right before Danes’s sudden vacation. I carried my coffee to the table and picked up the phone.
Giselle Thomas answered on the first ring. Her voice was mature and musical and Caribbean. I asked for Danes and there was a little sigh at the other end of the line.
“Who’s calling, please?” I gave her my name. “Mr. Danes isn’t in, Mr. March. Is there someone else? Irene Pratt, maybe?”
“When is the last time Mr. Danes was in, Ms. Thomas?”
She paused. “I need to refer you to Ms. Mayhew, in Corporate Communications, sir.”
“Does she know when you last heard from Mr. Danes? Does she know where you think I might find him?”
Giselle Thomas laughed. It was liquid and pleasant. “Well, Mr. March, I can’t say exactly what Ms. Mayhew knows, but I expect it’s many things. And she’ll be pleased to tell you, I’m sure. Shall I transfer you?”
“I understand the company has its rules, Ms. Thomas, and I appreciate that you’ve got to follow them, but it’s not Ms. Mayhew who can help me, it’s you. You know Mr. Danes. You’ve worked with him forhow long has it been? If you’d rather not talk at the office, I’d be happy to meet you someplace. Just name the spot.”
She laughed some more. “You sound like a nice fellow, Mr. March, you do. And it’s nice that you want to talk to me. But that just isn’t going to happen. Now, would you like me to put you through to Nancy Mayhew?” I declined politely and rang off.
I tried Irene Pratt’s number next, but it was answered immediately by a computer voice that asked me to
