James Grippando Read online

  Money to Burn

  A Novel of Suspense

  James Grippando

  In memory of James V. Grippando…Papa.

  “It’s another beautiful day in paradise.”

  Wall Street got drunk.

  —George W. Bush, July 2008

  Contents

  Epigraph

  November 20, 2003

  1

  THE WARNING SIGNS WERE THERE. I JUST COULDN’T SEE THEM.

  2

  IVY LAYTON WAS ABOUT TO BLOW HER BRAINS OUT. NOT…

  3

  I COULDN’T WAIT TO GET OFF THE SAXTON SILVERS PARTY…

  4

  MY WIFE WAS UNEMPLOYED. I FOUND OUT TEN MINUTES AFTER…

  May 2007, New York

  5

  THERE WAS A TIME WHEN PEOPLE ALL BUT WORSHIPPED GUYS…

  6

  MALLORY CANTELLA CHECKED HER WATCH. SHE WOULD HAVE BET her Jimmy…

  7

  AT ONE THIRTY A.M. I WAS STANDING AT THE WINDOW…

  8

  MALLORY WATCHED FROM THE BED AS I RIFLED THROUGH THE…

  9

  I WAS IN THE BACKSEAT OF A YELLOW TAXI, ABOUT…

  10

  I COULD HAVE BEEN KILLED.

  11

  CHUCK BELL GOT TO WORK EARLY—EIGHT HOURS BEFORE HE USUALLY…

  12

  THE THUMB AND INDEX FINGER ON MY LEFT HAND WERE…

  13

  ERIC DIDN’T OFTEN MAKE ME SWEAT, BUT HE WASN’T WEARING…

  14

  I CAME TO MY SENSES IN THE ELEVATOR. OF COURSE…

  15

  WALL STREET.

  16

  RUMSEY COOLIDGE HADN’T SEEN MICHAEL CANTELLA IN YEARS. THE man towering…

  17

  I DIDN’T GET HOME UNTIL SIX-THIRTY. SAXTON SILVERS STOCK ended…

  18

  MALLORY WAS ALONE IN THE BEDROOM WHEN SHE HEARD THE…

  19

  THE RED SAUCE SMELLED AMAZING, BUT I HAD NO INTEREST…

  20

  I KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG THE MINUTE I SMELLED TODAY’S…

  21

  I SPOKE TO ERIC FROM THE BACKSEAT OF A TAXI.

  22

  ANDREA WAS DRESSED IN HER PAJAMAS, STANDING BEFORE THE BATHROOM…

  23

  I COULD HAVE THROWN THE TELEVISION SET OUT THE WINDOW.

  24

  CHUCK BELL SIGNED OFF THE AIR AT MIDNIGHT. TONIGHT’S ROUND-TABLE…

  25

  IT WAS ONE A.M., AND IT OCCURRED TO ME THAT…

  26

  I CALLED MY BROTHER FROM THE VINTAGE 1970S LOBBY OF…

  27

  THE COFFEE ASSAULT FORCED ME TO BACKTRACK TO THE GYM…

  28

  TEN MINUTES LATER, I WAS HEADED FOR LONG ISLAND. THE…

  29

  I WAS BACK IN MANHATTAN IN TIME FOR A LATE…

  30

  A FEW MINUTES BEFORE FOUR P.M., TONY GIRELLI WAS SEATED…

  31

  I WAS AT STREET LEVEL, STANDING AT THE RAIL THAT…

  32

  MALLORY WAS ALONE IN THE BACKSEAT OF A TAXI, PEERING…

  33

  I WAS IN JAIL. I COULDN’T BELIEVE IT. I WAS…

  34

  FROM THE DETENTION CENTER I WENT TO MY CAR, THEN…

  35

  TONY GIRELLI WENT FOR A RIDE. HE WAS SEATED IN…

  36

  I WASTED THE RIDE BACK FROM LONG ISLAND. I SHOULD…

  37

  IAN BURN STARED OUT OVER THE FLAME OF HIS BUTANE…

  38

  “IT’S OVER,” SAID ERIC.

  39

  IVY LAYTON WAS ON THE RUN. THAT WAS NOTHING NEW.

  40

  “MICHAEL, IT’S ME.”

  41

  MALLORY POURED HERSELF ANOTHER GLASS OF WINE, EMPTYING THE bottle.

  42

  JASON WALD WAS DIPPING INTO PLOUTUS INVESTMENTS’ PETTY CASH. The…

  43

  MY HANDS WERE SHAKING AS I RODE UP IN THE…

  44

  I HAD NO CLUE WHERE WE WERE HEADED. OR WHO…

  45

  IT WAS STILL NIGHTTIME WHEN I WOKE ON THE SIDEWALK.

  46

  “HOW DID YOU FIND ME?” I ASKED AS I BUCKLED…

  47

  AT SIX A.M. ANDREA AND HER FIANCÉ WERE SEATED AT…

  48

  I FELL ASLEEP IN THE CAR AND WOKE IN A…

  49

  KYLE MCVEE ARRIVED EARLY TO THE OFFICE FOR AN EIGHT…

  50

  I DIALED PAPA’S CELL FROM THE MOTEL LANDLINE. I GOT…

  51

  ERIC VOLKE ENTERED THE GLASS SKYSCRAPER VIA THE BOWELS OF…

  52

  IVY TOOK THE EXPRESS ELEVATOR FROM THE SAXTON SILVERS executive…

  53

  I WAS INSIDE THE CLOSET, TAPPING ON THE BACK WALL…

  54

  “JUST GOT OUT OF A CAB?” SAID JASON WALD.

  55

  BECAUSE OF ITS LOCATION ON THE HUDSON RIVER—ON RIVER Road…

  56

  IAN BURN ENTERED THE EMERGENCY ROOM THROUGH THE AMBULANCE entrance.

  57

  THE SIGHT OF IVY GOING DOWN HIT ME LIKE HOT…

  58

  OLIVIA AND ERIC PICKED ME UP IN LESS THAN FIVE…

  59

  IVY HEARD IT ALL—EVERYTHING ERIC VOLKE TOLD MICHAEL IN THE…

  60

  “WE’RE ALL SET,” SAID WALD, AS HE TUCKED AWAY HIS…

  61

  WE ENTERED THE HANGAR THROUGH THE MAINTENANCE OFFICE, AND Eric…

  62

  BURN WAS MOTIONLESS, CROUCHED BEHIND THE SECOND ROW OF passenger…

  63

  THE NOISE FROM INSIDE THE SIKORSKY MADE ME DO A…

  64

  KYLE MCVEE WAS BEHIND THE WHEEL OF A BLACK SUV,…

  65

  THE MAIN HANGAR DOOR WAS CLOSED, AND I HEARD A…

  66

  “WHOA, WHOA,” SAID BURN.

  67

  THE EMERGENCY-EXIT LIGHT GLOWED OVER THE DOOR, CASTING A surreal…

  68

  “WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?” SHOUTED AGENT ANDIE HENNING.

  69

  IT MAY HAVE BEEN A DIRECT HIT, OR PERHAPS MY…

  Epilogue

  I SPENT A COUPLE DAYS IN BED AFTER THE EXPLOSION…

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Other Books by James Grippando

  Credits

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  NOVEMBER 20, 2003

  1

  THE WARNING SIGNS WERE THERE. I JUST COULDN’T SEE THEM. MY nose was in my BlackBerry—“crackberry”—except when I was talking into it.

  “Can you get me the numbers on Argentine debt denominated in Japanese yen?” I said. I was on with my Asia investment team leader.

  The cabdriver glanced at me in the rearview mirror as if I were speaking Martian.

  “Michael, give it a rest,” said Ivy. “We’re supposed to be on vacation.”

  Ivy and I were stuck in traffic on the busy Dolphin Expressway, having just flown in from New York. We were headed to the port of Miami for a Caribbean cruise that was luxurious by anyone’s standards, all expenses paid—one of the perks of being a top young producer at Saxton Silvers, one of Wall Street’s premier investment banking firms.

  “This is the last phone call, I promise.”

  She knew I was lying, and I knew she really didn’t mind. More than any woman I’d ever dated, Ivy Layton understood my world.

  We’d met when she was a trader at Ploutus Investments, a multibillion-dollar hedge fund with offices in Manhattan and—where else?—Greenwich. It was also Saxton Silvers’ biggest prime brokerage client. Ivy’s boss managed the fund and steered a
ll that business my way because he was incredibly intuitive and completely understood that on the day that I was born the angels got together and decided to create a—puh-LEEZ. Chalk it up to the fact that I was one of the lucky bastards who had correctly timed the burst of the IT bubble, making me a financial genius in a field of idiots. Idiots who apparently believed that overpaid CEOs of dot-com darlings didn’t have to do anything but pick out flashy corporate logos for negative earnings reports and watch the NASDAQ rise like a helium balloon on steroids. I gave Ploutus a reality check on a barfing—yes, barfing—dog that looked like a sock puppet but turned out to be the proverbial pin in the bursting bubble. Ploutus made me the go-to guy on Wall Street, which would never change so long as those aforementioned angels continued to sprinkle moon dust in my hair and starlight in my…whatever.

  “Whoa,” Ivy said. “I haven’t seen this many fifty-story cranes since Shanghai.”

  I glanced up from my BlackBerry. She was right. Downtown Miami had more empty towers under construction than South Beach had palm trees. I tried to imagine the skyline without the works in progress—what it must have looked like just three or four years earlier. Maybe a handful of skyscrapers over fifty stories.

  “Condo crazies,” said the cabbie. “I bought one preconstruction in dat building over there.”

  Our driver was a Bahamian immigrant, which was cool. It was as if we were already in the islands.

  “Congrats,” said Ivy.

  “And one in dat really tall one, too,” he said, pointing upward.

  “Two condos in downtown Miami?”

  “Plus three more in Fort Lauderdale.”

  I was going back to my BlackBerry, but Donald Trump with the island accent had snagged my full attention. “You own five condos?”

  “Yeah, mon.”

  “No offense, but—”

  “I know, mon. I drive a cab. But my mortgage broker says no problem.”

  “Who’s your mortgage broker?”

  “A friend who live in Little Haiti. He used to drive a taxi like me. Dresses really smart now. We call him the Haitian Sensation. Got me a NINA loan for one-point-six mill.”

  NINA—no income, no assets, no problem. Just find a property appraiser to certify that the real estate was worth more than the amount of the loan and $1.6 million was yours. All you needed was a credit score and a pulse. Actually, that pulse thing was optional, too. Reports of dead people getting loans were proliferating. To me, the whole subprime market was beginning to stink like an old fishing boat, and I was glad to have absolutely nothing to do with mortgage-backed securities—even if they were making a few guys at each of the major investment banks filthy rich.

  “They tell me so long as the property value keep going up, I’m safe, mon. I just flip dis condo, make a nice flippin’ profit, pay off dat flippin’ mortgage, buy another flippin’ condo. Just keep on flippin’ and flippin’.”

  “That’s the flippin’ theory,” I said.

  He changed lanes abruptly, blasting his horn at a speeding motorcyclist who apparently thought he owned the expressway. Our driver was suddenly agitated, but it wasn’t the traffic. He looked genuinely worried. I could see it in his eyes in the rearview mirror.

  “So,” he said in a shaky voice, “you think it keep going up, mon?”

  Sure, if the law of gravity somehow changed. “We can only hope,” I said.

  I went back to my BlackBerry. Ivy was now listening to her iPod, moving to the music. Salsa. I didn’t know she was a fan, but apparently a visit to Miami made her feel more connected to her half-Latin roots.

  We exited the expressway and were headed into downtown Miami. The port was all the way east, near a waterfront mall that Saxton Silvers had financed.

  “What the hell is that?” Ivy said.

  I looked up. Flagler Street was Miami’s east-west version of main street, and we were a block or so north of it. If your principal needs in life were YO MIAMI T-shirts, sugarcane juice, and any kind of electronic device imaginable, this was your little slice of paradise. For me, it was an area I couldn’t get through fast enough—especially today. It was only two o’clock in the afternoon, but the shops had already closed, the doors and windows protected by burglar bars and steel roll-down doors. Something was up.

  “Looks like Biscayne Boulevard is closed,” the driver said, stopping at the traffic light.

  Biscayne was Miami’s signature north-south boulevard, four lanes in each direction that were divided by an elevated tram and rows of royal palm trees down the middle. Office towers lined the west side of the street, and to the east beautiful Bayfront Park stretched to the waterfront. Over the years it had served as everything from the famous hairpin turn in Miami’s first Grand Prix road race to the televised portion of the Orange Bowl Parade route. These days, the Grand Prix had moved elsewhere, the parade was no more, and Biscayne Boulevard had been swept up in the high-rise construction craze. We had to get east of it to reach the port. But on this sunny Thursday afternoon, all cross streets were a virtual parking lot.

  “We’re not moving, mon.”

  We sat through a complete light change and still didn’t budge. I got out of the cab to see what was going on. Up ahead, traffic had ground to a halt as far as I could see. I stepped up onto the doorsill for a better view. The one-way street was like a shadowy canyon cutting through tall office buildings. Peering over the endless row of stopped cars in front of us, I got a cross-section view of the intersection at Biscayne and spotted the problem. Barricades appeared to be blocking all vehicular access to the boulevard. Mobs of people were marching down all eight lanes.

  I climbed back inside the car and said, “Some kind of protest rally.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Ivy. “FTAA is in Miami this year.”

  The Free Trade Area of the Americas was an effort to unite all the economies of the Western Hemisphere, except Cuba, into a single free-trade area that reached from Canada to Chile. Each year since 1994, the leaders of thirty-four democracies met to work toward eliminating barriers to trade and investment. Opposition was passionate, critics fearing the concentration of corporate power and the worst of everything that came with it: layoffs and unemployment, sweatshop labor, loss of family farms, environmental destruction. Thousands of those critics had descended on downtown Miami today to decry the FTAA’s eighth ministerial meeting.

  “Not sure where to go,” said our driver.

  “Obviously not this way,” said Ivy.

  He somehow maneuvered around stopped cars and headed north on Miami Avenue, the plan being to cut east to Biscayne on a higher cross street. It was worse. Not only were the cars immobilized, but pedestrian traffic was also jammed. We saw a sea of young people, most of them wearing bandannas over their noses and mouths, many wearing protective goggles or helmets. A few wore gas masks. Two men had climbed atop lampposts to wave red flags, one with the image of Che Guevara and the other with Mao Tse Tung. Banners and posters dotted the crowd, the messages ranging from GIVE PEACE A CHANCE to SUPPORT THE POLICE: BEAT YOURSELF UP.

  “This looks bad,” said Ivy.

  I got out of the car and again climbed to my perch on the doorsill, peering out over the roof.

  “Michael, get back in the car!”

  I heard Ivy’s warning, but I had to look. Never had I seen such a showing of police muscle. Rows of fully armored and helmeted police moved in formation, meeting the crowd of demonstrators with a line of riot shields and control batons. As police advanced, the anti-FTAA chanting intensified.

  Greed kills.

  Die, Asses of Evil.

  Fuck the Aristocratic Assholes.

  Anarchy Today, Anarchy Tomorrow, Anarchy Forever!

  Demonstrators either yielded to the oncoming wave of police or were pushed back into the throbbing crowds behind them.

  “There’s nowhere to go!” people shouted. “Nowhere for us to go!”

  Squeezed between the surge of police and the barricades behind them, the crowd had run out of
room and was growing angrier by the second. A small group at the front fell to the ground, their actions seen as resistance by club-wielding officers.

  “Michael, get in here!”

  It was crazy, but I was mesmerized. I saw about a dozen canisters launch in volleys from somewhere behind police lines. Tear gas. They landed in the crowd, unleashing panic. One hit a demonstrator in the head and knocked him to the sidewalk. People were soon stepping over other people, coughing and wheezing as they ran. A few held damp rags to their mouths, which eased their breathing but did nothing for the skin and eye irritation. A woman in agony ran past screaming “Pepper spray, pepper spray!” A crack of gunfire erupted, and people on the front line writhed in pain from rubber bullets, beanbags, and chemical-filled pellets. It was impossible to count the number of rounds fired, but it had to be in the hundreds. Angry youths cursed as they picked up the smoking canisters of tear gas and hurled them back at the oncoming police.

  “Michael, get back inside!”

  Someone grabbed me and threw me against the car. It was a man—incredibly strong—dressed all in black, a helmet protecting his head. A bandanna covered his nose and mouth, but his eyes were still visible and they were downright threatening. His knee came up and hit me in the groin, and my face was suddenly on fire with pepper spray.

  “It’s only gonna get worse,” he said in a voice that chilled me, and then he was gone.

  Ivy pulled me back into the car and yanked the door shut. The driver switched on the locks. I couldn’t see, and the sting was almost unbearable. Ivy had bottled water in her purse, which she poured on my face to wash away the spray.