challenged her class to list the things they knew to be true, yet didn’t believe were absolute. Love, honor, justice, truth itself. Where are the absolute moral precepts? She could be comfortable knowing how the foundation-her foundation-got its money without actually knowing. She called Mel Gold when she returned to New York. They met for a sandwich at Artie’s Deli on Broadway. She told him the foundation, The Center for Consumer Concerns, had offered her the job as Executive Director and she had taken it. Her resignation from the New York Times would be effective January 31st.
“The Center for Consumer Concerns?” said the Moose. “Never heard of it.” It was new, she told him. Headquartered in Atlanta. Just getting started. He asked no more questions and she offered no more details.
“Put it in writing, kiddo,” he said, meaning, of course, her resignation. “They got great pickles here, you know that?” Somehow, she figured, some way, she had to tell him. She wanted to tell him. Perhaps he saw it in her eyes-perhaps not-but he reached across the table, laying both of his huge hands on hers, and said, “If he walked in here right now you’d know him and I wouldn’t, right? And that’s been so all along, hasn’t it? Unrecognizable.” He shook his head and smiled. “That was bullshit wasn’t it?”
“Mel-”
“Don’t tell me, Isobel. I’ll have to print it.” She leaned forward and kissed him gently on the cheek. Mel Gold tried to remember the last time a reporter kissed him. He couldn’t.
Walter sat alone on his empty deck. The lights of St. Thomas flickered in the distant darkness. There was a slight chill in the air, for St. John, that is. Clara brought him a cup of bouillon and a light sweater.
“Put this on before you freeze to death,” she said. Hardly a chance of that. “The woman has a great sense of humor,” he thought. In the morning he’d call Tom Maloney and make another trip to New York. The specifics of Leonard Martin’s plan were dense and complicated, and a good deal of the data and supporting materials were pretty much incomprehensible to Walter. However, it was his job to bring all this-this most amazing and unexpected turn of events-to his clients. After that, he hadn’t the slightest idea what he would do.
Leonard Martin was gone.
New York
“I have no doubt that can be arranged,” Walter was saying. He was reviewing the materials Leonard had given him with Nathan Stein and Tom Maloney. Stein was subdued, perhaps resigned, to the futility of his patented outbursts. He’d just mumbled something like, “I’d rather be dead.”
It was getting late in the afternoon. The sixty-seven degree temperature had been a record for New York on this day in January. Now it was cooling fast. It had been such a lovely day the doors to the rooftop patio had been open most of the time. The illusion of spring was disappearing now, together with the warmth of the setting sun on the Waldorf’s Jersey side. Walter arrived with three copies of everything Leonard gave him. One was for him and one each for Stein and Maloney. He made no introductory remarks. He told them only that he’d met with Leonard Martin, who had given him instructions for them. With that he handed each a file. They took their pile of papers and read quietly to themselves for more than an hour. Tom didn’t make a sound, and Stein only mumbled something from time to time. Walter could hardly make it out. He waited.
Dinner arrived unordered and unannounced. Walter was not at all surprised, figuring they had to know what he liked by now. Two room service waiters laid out a simple yet elegant tray before him. On it was a bowl of tomato-based soup of some kind and a Caesar salad topped with both blackened shrimp and grilled chicken. Rolls and butter, coffee for later, and a chilled bottle of Chardonnay completed the spread. Nathan Stein had a steak, which sat alone on the plate with no side dishes. He would eat less than half of it. For Maloney, just a club sandwich. “Whoever ordered this stuff,” thought Walter, “has a pretty good take on whose life is in jeopardy and whose isn’t.” He had no idea it was Elizabeth Reid, patiently working out of sight elsewhere in the suite every day since Nathan Stein joined Maloney in this seven-thousand-dollar-a-day-tower prison.
“You’ve read this?” Tom asked Walter.
“I have.”
“Why didn’t you kill him?” Stein inquired, with only a small edge to his voice.
“He came to my house.”
“On St. John?” asked Stein.
“On St. John.”
“Gutsy sonofabitch,” said Maloney.
“That. And dangerous,” Walter said.
“Here’s what I want you to tell him…” Tom started.
Walter laid his soupspoon down, shook his head, and said, “I’m positive, certain as I can be, that I’ll never see or hear from Leonard Martin again.”
“Then what the fuck do we need you for?” Stein said, more frustrated than angry. “Why are you here?”
“I’ll be happy to leave-soon as I finish my salad, if you don’t mind.”
Tom said, “No, no. Don’t go. Nathan’s… upset. We’re all upset.” Walter continued eating as if nothing had happened. There were no secrets among them. Not anymore. Not Dr. Roy. Not Knowland. Not even Na Trang. Walter considered his surroundings. Three killers having an early supper, two of them trying desperately to stay alive.
According to Leonard, Alliance Industries Inc. had to come up with $3.8 billion. A lot of money, but not too much, said Stein, for a corporation that did not cook its books and was legitimately valued at somewhere between forty-five and sixty billion, and they had three to four years of lead-time. SHI Inc., Billy MacNeal’s old Second Houston Holding, was a different story. Leonard’s demands called for them to pony up $1.3 billion to The Center for Consumer Concerns. That was about three-quarters of the company’s net asset value, according to Tom Maloney. That amount pretty much put them out of business. But, Maloney said, since Alliance owned a controlling interest in SHI, they could effectively buy that company with a stock exchange-Alliance shares for SHI Inc.-roll it into the parent organization, and even after eating the $1.3 billion, still add about five hundred million to Alliance. SHI Inc. couldn’t survive on its own, but it didn’t have to. Walter mostly listened as Stein and Maloney discussed this part of the arrangement with each other. “This is what they do with their pathetic lives,” he thought. He realized they were actually enjoying themselves. After weeks jailed up here, they were finally working again.
When they were finished, when they had determined to their mutual satisfaction that the incredible amount of $5.1 billion could be successfully secured from the two corporations, they turned their attention to their own firm. To Walter, it seemed both men would do anything to avoid talking about their own individual situations.
Walter, as was his habit, had done his homework. He knew quite a bit about the company his clients directed and worked for. Stein, Gelb, Hector amp; Wills Securities Inc. traced its roots to a small investment banking company started in 1923. The partnership of two young men, Andrew Hiken and Michael Sears, known derisively on Wall Street as “the children,” had only sporadic success, and always seemed as if it were on the verge of dissolution. In 1929, the youngsters were bought out by a more substantial investment banking house, Brown, Roote amp; Higgins. While Hiken and Sears ran with the cash, Brown, Roote amp; Higgins ran headlong into disaster with the Great Crash. After the flames of their destruction subsided, the smoldering embers of that esteemed partnership were rescued by Benjamin Stein and Henry Witherspoon. In time, Witherspoon gave way to Larry Gelb, who many thought was Jewish but was not, and after World War II Randolph Hector joined the crew. They maintained a subtle yet influential presence in the financial world with a list of topnotch clients that read like a roll call of the capitalist nobility of the twentieth century. Then, in the full bloom of the Reagan deregulation frenzy in the eighties, Stein, Gelb amp; Hector merged with Lumpkin, Hewitt amp; Wills, a full service brokerage firm. While Messrs. Lumpkin and Hewitt found themselves unemployed-rich, but out of work-Mark Wills prospered in league with his new partners.
Nathan Stein, grandson of Ben, joined the firm right out of school. His rise to Vice Chairman was not without merit, though a little too meteoric for some. When his grandfather retired, Nathan became the ringmaster and Stein, Gelb, Hector amp; Wills his circus. He knew where every dollar was hidden and was, frankly, astonished at how accurate Leonard Martin’s analysis was. Nathan calculated his firm’s income from the Second Houston-Alliance Industries deal at $716 million. Leonard showed him where he’d missed seven million more. Rather than argue with it, Nathan was impressed, and not a little disturbed, that the people who worked for him had failed to see it. He wanted credit for every penny. As for Leonard, he wondered who helped him with all this. One way or another, almost all the data was public, but very little of it was easily accessible. What’s more, some of it required a sophisticated understanding of modern finance and an advanced computer capability to connect the dots. Leonard Martin had help, for sure. Good help.
