“Oblivious? About what?”
“That lady upstairs is nuts about you. Don’t you have any feelings for her?”
“Sure. She’s a good…friend. But nuts about me? What are you talking about?”
Massarino laughed. “You’re not just oblivious; you’re obtuse. She thinks you’ve kept what you’ve been doing here from her because you don’t trust her.”
“That’s crazy. I’ve kept her out of it to protect—”
Massarino held up his hands. “I know that, Bruno. But she doesn’t because she has no clue how you feel about her. She told me she wants to go back to California. She would have been gone if there’d been a flight out tonight at a reasonable hour.” Massarino smiled. “You’re a fool if you let that gal leave here not knowing your feelings.”
“Until Rosen, Rice, and Stone are behind bars, there’s still a risk. She doesn’t need to be—”
Massarino stood and waved a hand at Bruno. “You’re hopeless,” he said as he went to the staircase.
After thinking about what Louis had said, Bruno mounted the stairs from the basement to the second floor. He felt conflicted. He wanted to see Janet, talk with her, but he knew that he couldn’t tell her what he’d done. What he still planned to do. He tiptoed down the hall and clenched his jaw when the wood floor creaked underfoot. Still ten feet from her room, he saw the door was open. After taking in a large breath and letting it out slowly, he stepped to the doorway and knocked on the doorframe.
Her back to the door, Janet turned and shot Bruno a sour look.
“What’s up?” she asked, her tone impatient with a tint of anger.
Bruno took a hesitant half-step into the room, then stopped and backed up. He felt his face go hot as he stammered, “I-I thought I’d….”
Janet turned around and placed clothing into an open suitcase on the bed.
“Can I come in?” Bruno asked.
“I can hear you from there.”
“Listen, Janet, I want to apologize for keeping you in the dark, and for getting you involved in all of this. I mean…you could have been killed by that gang in California and by that Nguyen woman here in New York. It seems to me I’ve done nothing but put you in jeopardy since you intervened with those two teenaged thugs in that alley in Redondo Beach.”
Janet whipped around, her hands full of clothes, and glared. “People don’t complain when their friends need them. They step up and do whatever’s necessary.”
Bruno opened his mouth as though to respond, but she held up a handful of blouses to stop him. She momentarily closed her eyes and slowly shook her head. She turned back to the bed and dropped the clothes into the suitcase. When she turned again, there were tears in her eyes.
Bruno took a step into the room and then froze, not knowing what to do next.
“I think you’ve been hiding out too long, Bruno. You’ve been a recluse for so many years that you’ve lost the ability to connect with people. Or maybe you were always that way. You have a generous nature, but you have no clue when it comes to relationships and sharing your feelings.” She sighed and then moved toward him. She planted a hand in the middle of his chest and lightly pushed him backward, out into the hall. “I hope whatever you’re doing brings you peace and happiness, Bruno.” With that, she closed the door.
Sy Rosen had told Richard Stone and Wayne Summers to go home and to neither answer their phones nor respond to email or text messages. “I’ll take care of this,” he assured them. Then he called the firm’s five junior partners and told them the same things he’d told Stone and Summers. When those calls had been made, he called Wallace Becker, his personal attorney, at his Central Park West condominium and told him he needed to see him right away.
“It’s late, Sy. Can’t we do this on Monday?”
“Wallace, you’ve got thirty minutes to be here before I fire you and hire another lawyer who will kiss my ass for the millions I spend in legal fees every year.”
It was fifteen minutes shy of midnight when Rosen and Becker finalized a strategy for dealing with the fallout they anticipated was about to rain down on Rosen, Rice & Stone. Two minutes later, Rosen received a call on his cell phone from the SEC. He shuddered. This is worse than I thought if the SEC is on this matter late on a Friday.
“I’ve been expecting your call,” Rosen said, as Becker smiled and nodded at him from the other side of the desk. “Of course, we will fully cooperate with any investigation.” Rosen listened for a few seconds and then said, “Yes, I’m in my office right now. I’ll meet you at the front door. One hour.”
“Okay,” the lawyer said. “I’m going to take a walk while you clean up things.”
At first, Rosen was confused by his lawyer’s statement, but then he realized that Becker was giving him time to delete files and correspondence relating to the Sunrise deal.
“What’s the point of getting rid of the computers? Whatever’s on them will be on the servers.”
“That’s true. But by the time they look at the servers, you’ll have a deal with the Feds.”
“Aah,” Rosen said.
DAY 10
CHAPTER 29
Louis Massarino and Bobby Tennucci sat in the backseat of Massarino’s Town Car. Silvio Caniglia was behind the wheel. The radio volume was cranked up high enough to overwhelm any listening device that might be on the vehicle. Caniglia swept the Town Car daily with a bug, phone tap, GPS and spy-cam detector, but Massarino was paranoid about his privacy.
“It’s almost three o’clock,” Massarino said. “Is everything set?”
“Yeah, boss,” Tennucci said. “At least for two of them.”
Massarino kept his gaze straight ahead, on the back of Caniglia’s head. “What’s the problem?”
“The SEC’s all over Rosen’s building. They’ve been there with Rosen since around midnight.”
“You talk to our SEC guy?”
“Cyril Kalinov? You bet. Rosen and his lawyer have agreed to turn over everything they’ve got to the Feds in return for blanket immunity.”
“So, Rosen’ll work a deal that leaves his partners holding the bag.”
“That’s what Kalinov told me.”
“What’s Kalinov say will happen to the firm?”
“It’s going down. They borrowed a ton of money from their bank and took a billion dollars from client trust accounts. It’s likely the bank will take over the company.” Tennucci chuckled.
“Our friend, Bruno, says he’s going to make the bank and the firm’s customers whole. He’s going to wait a couple weeks so that a shit storm rains down on those bastards. Then he’ll wire their money to the SEC.”
Tennucci gave Massarino a bug-eyed look. “What is he, crazy?”
Massarino smiled. “He’s a good man, Bobby.”
“Hell, he’s a saint. But I still think he’s nuts.”
Massarino nodded. “At least he’s keeping the partners’ money. Over half-a-billion. Without that money, the company will have no capital. You’re right. It’s going down.”