On the way from his room, euphoric about the news Rosen had passed on, he sat down at a blackjack table. This is my lucky day, he thought. But he quickly dropped three grand. He blamed his losing streak on his inability to concentrate. The thought of the fee Rosen had promised him diverted his attention from the cards. Two hundred thousand dollars. Twice that if I permanently solve Rosen’s problem. The cocktail waitresses who cruised past the blackjack table also diverted his attention. Their skimpy outfits left little to the imagination. But they pissed him off. None of the women showed any interest in him. Despite his stature—six feet, two inches tall—his athletic build, and his Latin good looks, women reacted to him as though he had leprosy. His sister had once told him that he scared the crap out of women because he looked at them as though they were prey. He’d laughed at that. Because that was exactly how he perceived women: prey.
Once I find Bruno Pedace and get paid by Rosen, I’ll have all the women I want, he thought.
Sy Rosen spent a couple hours on the telephone, then checked his tie and collar in the mirror in his private bathroom. He wiped away imaginary dandruff from the shoulders of his Armani suit jacket, and flicked off a lint particle on a lapel. He showed his “master of the universe” smile, then wheeled around and moved to the conference room adjacent to his office for the meeting he’d called.
“What’s up, Sy?” Richard Stone asked. “I have a golf game with Jack Leonard in two hours.”
“To hell with Jack Leonard,” Rosen groused.
“Leonard’s one of our best clients,” Partner Karl Rice said.
Rosen glared at the two men, in turn, and forced himself to maintain a neutral expression. Short, overweight, and lazy, Rice and Stone disgusted him. He said, “You remember those bonds that Bruno Pedace included in the financial disclosures we had to file with the SEC?”
“Sure,” Karl Rice said. “What’s the big deal? He only had a couple million dollars’ worth of those ATC bonds.”
“One of those bonds just surfaced.”
“After all this time?” Stone said. “Unbelievable.”
“So what?” Rice asked.
“The private investigator I hired is on his way to California, where the bond was cashed in.”
Rosen noticed that Rice suddenly looked nauseated.
“What the hell’s your problem?” Rosen barked.
Rice swallowed hard and blew out a loud breath. “None of this would have happened if we hadn’t set up Bruno. Your strategy was to deflect the SEC’s attention from us onto one of the second-level partners. It didn’t accomplish a damned thing except to chase away one of the best people in the firm. The SEC never did a damned thing to us or, for that matter, to any of the Wall Street firms.”
Rosen scowled at Rice. Fuckin’ wimp, he thought. He didn’t need anyone to remind him that the Securities & Exchange Commission was on the warpath almost a decade ago, looking to place blame on investment bankers who sold mortgage bonds backed by subprime loans. How could he have known that nothing would come of it? His plan had been to make one of their executives the fall guy so that none of the senior partners became an asshole cellmate of Bernie Madoff.
“What eats at my gut,” Rice continued, “is that Bruno was the only guy here vehemently opposed to us selling subprime paper.”
Rosen shot Rice a venomous look. “The fact that Pedace’s wife got killed in a car wreck on the way home after meeting you in a hotel room is probably eating at your gut, too.”
Rice slumped in his chair and muttered, “Asshole.”
“Hah,” Rosen shouted. “I won’t argue with you about that. My being an asshole is what’s made us one of the top Wall Street companies.”
“What’s the P.I. going to do?” Stone asked.
“Recover the documents,” Rosen answered.
“And, if Pedace doesn’t cooperate?” Rice said.
“Don’t worry about that. I assure you, he’ll cooperate.”
“What the hell does that mean?” Rice said.
“What do you think it means?” Rosen said.
Rice stood and said, “Pedace was with us for eighteen years. Eighteen years! We ruined his life and now you’re telling us some guy you sent to California is going to kill him.”
Rosen glared at Rice and then looked at Stone. He spread his arms in a helpless gesture. “Did I say anything about killing anyone?”
Stone shrugged.
Rosen said, “How many times do we have to go over this?” He chuckled. “Bruno Pedace was the perfect fall guy. He was a cipher.”
“Bullshit,” Rice shouted. “He was the best junior partner we’ve ever had. The guy was a market genius.”
Rosen felt his face go hot. He suspected that he looked as though he was about to explode. “So what? We can always find market analysts. They’re a dime a dozen.”
“Nonsense,” Rice said. “Good market analysts are worth their weight in gold and Pedace was the best I’ve ever known.”
Rosen shook his head. “All he did was work. He had no personal relationships. Hell, Rice, you were shtupping his wife. The guy couldn’t even keep his own wife happy; he gave no emotion to anyone. He had no friends or allies inside the firm. He was the perfect victim.”
Rice dropped back into his chair, looking sick at heart. Rosen shot him a contemptuous look. “You two need to remember that Pedace betrayed us when he took those confidential documents.”
Rice glared at Rosen. “If you hadn’t been sleeping with Pedace’s assistant and sharing your darkest secrets with her, he would never have been warned of what was about to come down and wouldn’t have taken the docs.”
The room went quiet for a few seconds. Then Stone added, “Remember that when Pedace took off, his stake in the company was worth at least twenty-five million. Today, it would be worth more than twice as much. Maybe we could negotiate something with him.”
“How the fuck are we going to negotiate with Pedace if we can’t find him?” Then Rosen stood and, in a low, menacing tone, said, “I’m going to say this one last time. If the documents that Pedace took ever fall into the hands of the SEC, we’re toast. It’s one thing for the commission to ignore billions of losses caused by the sale of subprime mortgage loans, if the investment bankers claim that it was all due to bad judgment. It’s an altogether different matter if there’s proof that fraud was perpetrated.” Rosen sneered at Stone, then at Rice. “You won’t like prison.”
Rice hung his head.
Stone said, “If those documents are potentially so harmful, why the hell hasn’t Pedace turned them over to the SEC?”
Rosen spread his arms and said, “How the hell would I know what’s going through his mind?”
What Rosen didn’t say was that he had suspected all along why Pedace had gone underground and hadn’t released the stolen documents. Bruno Pedace may have been a personality-less cipher, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew if he ever surfaced with the documents, his life wouldn’t be worth a damn. I would have eliminated him.
CHAPTER 3
“A glorious start to another day in paradise,” Frank Mitchell announced to the staff gathered in the conference room at St. Anne’s Shelter for Women & Children.