by Adam Mitzner
“Bespoke.”
Will had just learned the term last week. He was now throwing it around like he was “to the manor born.”
“No fucking way,” Brian said as they entered the elevator.
“A tailor in the Bronx that Sam Abaddon hooked me up with. It was actually quite the weekend for me. I attended a black-tie event at Sam’s penthouse on Saturday night, where I met about a dozen or so potential new clients. Then Gwen and I . . . well, use your imagination.”
Brian laughed loudly. “Who the hell are you, and what did you do with my friend Will Matthews?”
Will couldn’t help but laugh too. Brian wasn’t wrong. He was a new man today.
He felt so confident, in fact, that he decided there was no time like the present to set up the meeting between Wolfe and Sam. As soon as he got off the elevator, even before going to his cube, he headed across the floor to Wolfe’s office.
It was empty. The lights were off.
“Is he in yet?” Will asked Maria Murano, Wolfe’s administrative assistant.
“Not yet. Must be a problem with traffic.”
“I need to set up a meeting between him and my new client, Sam Abaddon. Can you put something on his calendar?”
“Sure.” She clicked on the keyboard. “How soon you want to do it?”
“Thursday, if that works for him.”
“I think so. He’s got some room at eleven.”
“Perfect,” Will said.
As Will walked away, Maria said, “You look different today. Did you get a haircut?”
At nine, a man who identified himself as Clayton Lewis called. Will couldn’t place the name at first, but surmised quickly that Lewis must have been an attendee at Sam’s party. He wanted to open three accounts and planned to transfer $2 million into each of them.
While Will was filling in the last of his account information, establishing that Lewis’s investment horizon was two to four years and that he could tolerate a medium amount of risk in the portfolio, he caught a glimpse of two of New York City’s finest entering the floor. The police officers made a beeline to the corner office—the one belonging to the branch manager. Once they were all inside Joe Mattismo’s office, they closed the door.
Lewis was telling Will to expect the wire later that afternoon, but Will was only half listening. His eyes were fixated on the closed office door.
By the time Will ended the call, the police presence had caused enough of a stir that Brian had poked his head into Will’s cube to ask what he thought was going on.
“I don’t know,” Will said with a shrug.
Ten minutes later, Mattismo came out of his office. He stood on the desk of his secretary’s workstation so that everyone who worked on the floor could see him.
“Everyone!” he shouted. “Gather around.”
There was the rumble of a hundred people getting up from their desks and walking toward the corner of the floor. Once everyone was assembled, Mattismo said, “I have some truly awful news. Our friend and colleague, Robert Wolfe, was found dead this morning. It appears that he was the victim of some type of road-rage incident. We don’t have all the details yet, but on his way into the office today, he became involved in an altercation with another driver.”
Mattismo looked visibly shaken by the news, as if he were reconsidering every driver he had ever flipped off. “I’ll circulate more information when I get it, and also about funeral arrangements. But for now, I think it will be appropriate for us all to engage in a moment of silence to remember Robert, and to pray for his wife and three young daughters.”
SPRING
18.
The Tenth Floor had become Will’s go-to lunch spot. He and Sam met there at least once a week. Warren ran the restaurant’s front of the house, and he always greeted Will like he was a soldier returning from battle.
“Mr. Matthews, what a pleasure to have you dine with us again,” Warren said while pumping Will’s hand with both of his. “Mr. Abaddon has already arrived and requested to be seated. Follow me, please.”
The interior of the restaurant was even more magnificent than Will had imagined when he was relegated to staring up wishfully at the space from the lobby. It boasted floor-to-ceiling windows that created glass walls along the northern and eastern exposure. Although Will had never actually counted, he guessed there were at least twenty crystal chandeliers. Virtually every surface was a bright white, with the only color provided by the aquarium, which filled a good portion of the center of the dining room. Will had once thought that nothing could be more beautiful than the way the water shimmered like a rainbow from the lobby. But up close it was even more spectacular, a kaleidoscope of gold, silver, reds, and blues.
Warren led the way to Will’s usual table, situated directly alongside the pool. Sam stood as they approached and extended his hand.
“I hope you haven’t been waiting long,” Will said.
“No, you’re right on time. I haven’t even had an opportunity to order the wine.”
“Go easy on me, please. The 2013 Bond Pluribus we had last week wiped me out. Believe it or not, I actually have some work to do today.”
“Speaking of work, let’s get a little out of the way while you’re still sober enough to hold a pen.”
Sam reached for his attaché case, unlocking its ends and then snapping the clasps open. Out came the usual sheaf of papers that often accompanied these lunches.
Will gave the documents a cursory review. He would have studied them more carefully, but experience had taught him that, regardless of the level of attention he paid, he still couldn’t fully comprehend their contents. Usually they were filled with dense legal jargon, and sometimes entire sections were in a foreign language. Turkish or Russian, maybe Greek—at least as far as Will could discern, which wasn’t very far because he didn’t speak any languages other than English. Any questions Will raised were invariably met with Sam nonchalantly saying, “The lawyers insisted on that being there.”
Today’s document was at least short. Two pages. And it was in English.
At the top of the first page, in all capital letters, it read STATEMENT OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS BY UNANIMOUS CONSENT. Will flipped to the last page. The signature block listed Will as secretary of the company, although the name of the company was left blank.
Will had been named the secretary or treasurer, sometimes both, of scores of corporations. “Shelf companies” they were called, because their registration documents simply sat on the shelf, like a book no one had read for years, until called into service. As an officer of the corporation, Will could sign on the company’s behalf, thereby eliminating the need for signature pages to be messengered back and forth with Sam. Not to mention that such positions always came with five-figure stipends and didn’t require much work beyond attending a few meetings, which were usually held over the phone.
“Which one is this?” Will asked.
Sam looked at the sheet. “Oh, they forgot to fill it in. It’s for Stormborn, Inc. Cyprus-based. There was a death of a board member, so we needed to elect a new one. Nothing very important.”
“What does it hold?”
“You know, I’m not a hundred percent certain myself,” Sam said with a grin. “I’ll check and get back to you.”
The answer hardly mattered. Will knew that Stormborn didn’t own stock in Microsoft or Apple, or any other company he’d ever heard of, or one that traded on any public exchange. It owned stock in another shelf company. If Will peeled back the layers, he’d find more of the same. A labyrinth of holding companies, like Russian nesting dolls, most with Game of Thrones–related names, and all of which were incorporated in Cyprus or the Isle of Man or some other tax haven. Will didn’t know just how far down he’d have to dig to find that Sam Abaddon was the person with authority over everything, but he thought he’d done the paperwork equivalent of tunneling to China and back and still hadn’t.
In Will’s discussions with more seasoned brokers, he’d learned
that such subterfuge was standard operating procedure for high-net-worth clients. It was perfectly legal to minimize taxes, and in fact tax havens existed solely for that purpose. But whenever Will considered that Sam’s businesses might not be solely on the up-and-up, which meant that Will might be aiding and abetting illegal activity, his concerns were assuaged by the fact that Maeve Grant’s Compliance department had blessed every deposit and every trade. Or at least no one ever raised a concern with Will, which in his mind was the same thing.
He turned the page and then came to a stop. “George Kennefick?”
“Yeah. The poor bastard. Car crash. He was on his way back from the pub.”
“That’s the guy from Australia, right?”
Will hoped that he was wrong about the fact that the dead man who needed replacing was the same person who had earned Sam’s not-too-veiled contempt after commenting about Eve at Sam’s party.
“Did you know George?” Sam said, nonplussed.
“We met at your party a few months back. The first one, at your apartment.”
Sam smiled as if he was recalling the party—not the fact that one of his guests was now deceased. “That’s right. He did make the trip over for that. Excellent memory, Young Will. Take a look at who gets his job now.”
Will turned the page to see who had been elected by unanimous consent to fill the director position. Needless to say, Sam’s buildup hadn’t left too much mystery in the matter.
“Me?”
“Congratulations,” Sam said with a smile. “It comes with a fifty-K salary, and the obligation that you attend a once-a-year conference call that lasts five minutes, if that.”
Given the news Will was about to share, the extra $50,000 didn’t mean much. Besides, the more pressing issue was whether Sam would actually kill a man for just ogling his girlfriend. Maybe Kennefick’s behavior had gone further than leering, and Sam truly had something to be jealous about. Of course, it was still far more likely that Kennefick had drunk too much and driven his car into a telephone pole.
Will had dismissed the timing of Robert Wolfe’s death as coincidence. The story everyone at Maeve Grant had heard was that Wolfe’s Mercedes was T-boned about a mile south of the on-ramp for I-495. The cops speculated that words must have been exchanged, and unfortunately for Wolfe, the other driver, who’d fled the scene, was either on his way to the golf course or kept his three iron in the car, because all it took was one swing to Wolfe’s head and it was lights out.
In the weeks after the incident, the members of Wolfe’s team had all been interviewed by two detectives from the NYPD. Will assumed that everyone painted the same picture of their fearless leader, and the cops quickly reached the conclusion that Wolfe was, in fact, the kind of guy who wouldn’t hesitate to start an altercation if anyone even dinged his car. And if the NYPD had concluded that his death was a road-rage incident, who was Will Matthews to think otherwise?
After Will told Sam about Wolfe’s untimely demise, which was not until a full week after the event, Sam didn’t look the least bit surprised that a man he’d just agreed to meet had bitten the dust. Then again, when Will shared the news with Gwen, she didn’t register surprise either.
George Kennefick was now the second person in Sam’s orbit who had died in a car-related incident. That wasn’t entirely right, Will told himself. Robert Wolfe had been in his orbit, not Sam’s. Besides, Will wasn’t even sure that there was any jealousy between Sam and Kennefick. He’d witnessed only a short interaction between the two men, after all. So it was entirely possible that he’d misread it.
“Aren’t you just the gift that keeps on giving?” Will said as he pulled out a pen—his own Mont Blanc, a gift from Sam—and scribbled his signature where noted.
Sam relieved Will of the executed papers and tucked them back into his briefcase. Once again, he spun the dials on the catches, this time to lock it. Then he stored the case beside his chair.
“Just had my sit-down with the branch manager,” Will said.
The meeting between Will and Joseph Mattismo was a long time coming. In fact, as soon as Will’s AUM topped $100 million, which was more than two months ago, Mattismo told him that Maeve Grant would present him with a retention package. It had taken longer than they originally thought, because every time another of Sam’s associates opened an account, the value of Will’s package increased.
“And?”
“Ten for ten.”
Maeve Grant had provided Will with a $10 million loan, payable in ten years, although Will would actually never pay a penny of it back. Not directly, at least. Instead, Maeve Grant would divert 60 percent of the commissions Will earned each year to satisfy the principal and the low interest that had accrued, with the expectation that in ten years, if not sooner, he’d have paid back the loan. When that happened, Maeve Grant would give him another loan based on his projected earnings at that time.
The firm’s stated rationale for offering such arrangements to its top-producing brokers was that it was more tax advantaged than a lump-sum bonus, because a loan didn’t have to be recognized as income. Of course, the true reason was that it was the ultimate set of golden handcuffs, tying the broker to the firm with the strongest bind there was: money. In Will’s case, lots and lots of money. If Will were to leave Maeve Grant’s employ, the balance of the loan would immediately become due.
“My, my,” Sam said. “Welcome to the world of the multimillionaires. What do you plan to do with your newfound wealth?”
“Find a place to live that I don’t have to share with four other guys, for starters.”
“I think I can help you with that. Of course, it would come with strings attached. You’d have to be Evelyn’s neighbor. She lives on the building’s fourth floor, in a place much less grand than the one I’m suggesting you take a look at, believe me.”
Sam pulled out his iPhone and began typing. “Today at six work for you?” he asked, lifting his eyes up from the screen.
“For what?”
“To see the place. I just texted the broker. She was pitching it to me as an investment property, but I think it would be perfect for you. It’s her exclusive, and it hasn’t yet hit the market. Trust me—you’re absolutely going to love it.”
“How much will I love it? In dollars, I mean.”
“It’s less than ten mil, that I know. But here’s what I was thinking . . . Allow me the honor of putting up the funds for you to buy the apartment. That way, you can present an all-cash offer and lock the place down. If all goes well, you could move in by the end of the week.”
Will considered Sam’s offer. It was certainly extremely generous. But like the Maeve Grant loan, Will assumed that there would be handcuffs.
“Thank you. That’s very unnecessary, but much appreciated. I’ll only agree if you charge me market interest. After Maeve Grant processes the paperwork on my deal and the funds come through, which should be within thirty days, I’ll pay you back. Plus the interest.”
Sam shook his head. “No, I’m afraid that’s not going to work for me. I’m going to need more than just the lousy six percent interest to make the deal.”
Will was confused. Sam had made the offer in the first place. Will would have been perfectly happy to go to the bank for a mortgage.
“Okay. What then?” he asked.
“The only payment I’m willing to take is the promise that you’ll invest the Maeve Grant ten mil smartly. I’m closing a new fund with my friend Sanjay Argawal. Have you met Sanjay?”
Will had met so many people over the last few months that most of the names had blurred together. “Maybe . . .”
“Yes, yes, you did. In Paris. Remember that party we attended? The one at that place with the dead-on views of the Eiffel Tower?”
Will did remember. It had been quite a party.
“Right.”
“Sanjay was the one throwing it. Anyway, the fund is a billion-five raise, with a ten million minimum. Five-year time horizon. Projected one hundred perce
nt return, twenty annually.”
Sam reminded Will a bit of how he must have sounded back when he was cold-calling. Throwing around projected returns as if the money were already in the bank, as opposed to what it really was: wishful thinking.
“What’s the fund?” Will asked, because he feared that rejecting Sam’s proposal out of hand would make him seem ungrateful.
“Emerging companies on the subcontinent.”
“I’d love to, Sam, really. But if—and I’m sure the fund will be a huge success—but if it goes down at all, I wouldn’t be able to pay you back for the loan for the apartment, not to mention make the interest payments. Also, Maeve Grant won’t allow it. They require that I keep at least fifty percent of the proceeds of the note with them.”
Sam laughed, as if Will had told a joke. Will, on the other hand, had the sixth sense that the joke was on him.
“Look. You know as well as I do that the only reason Maeve Grant imposes that restriction is so they can recapture the float on the money that they are supposedly giving to you. They claim it’s yours, but it’s still really theirs. So just tell them that a client is threatening to yank a few hundred million under management if his own broker doesn’t put some skin in the game. I guarantee you, that’ll do the trick. They’ll be begging you to make the investment with Sanjay.”
“Okay,” Will said. “I’ll make the request as soon as I get back to the office.”
“Good man. Let me tell you another thing, Will. You’ll sleep better knowing that your entire net worth isn’t in the hands of Maeve Grant. Isn’t that what you’re always telling me? To diversify? Not to be so at risk from any one sector? It’s good advice when you give it to me, and it’s even better when I’m giving it to you. Trust me, the last thing you want is for Maeve Grant to have that kind of power over you. Am I right about that?”
Will nodded in agreement. The one thing he was unsure about, however, was whether Sam appreciated the irony in that statement.
Then again, what choice did he have? Turning down Sam’s generous offer would be risking everything he had.
