Reckless

by Andrew Gross

  He looked at the wall of photographs of him with leaders and celebrities that had been taken over the years. Yes, he’d been paid millions over that span. Yes, he had the cushy duplex on the park and the compound at Lyford Cay in the Bahamas, not to mention the place on the beach in East Hampton. But most of what he had was still tied up in company stock. And he’d been buying it all the way down. He had to show faith, didn’t he? Now, having borrowed against a substantial part of it, he had to wait it out. At their current value, his holdings were only worth maybe double what he owed.

  And now Marc. Cantwell turned away from the screen. He had barely been able to sleep the past two nights. There was pressure from everywhere. The board. The investor community. Even the Fed. Now the fucking press…People were saying they might have to merge. Cantwell responded with defiance. Wertheimer Grant doesn’t merge. The firm had been around for ninety-five years. It was an American icon. Wertheimer Grant acquires firms. Maybe it stumbles; maybe it loses its way for a while. But it doesn’t fall.

  Wertheimer Grant is Wall Street.

  Cantwell’s stomach tightened as he watched the stock tick down to a new yearly low. Eight and a quarter. Just two months ago it had been fifty! “Murder of prominent trader creates market unrest…Redemptions reportedly high. Wall Street speculating on whether the firm can remain independent…”

  They didn’t need this kind of exposure now.

  “Mr. Cantwell…” His secretary Mary’s voice buzzed in. “Mr. Biondi and Ms. Pearlstein are here to see you.”

  “Sure, yes,” Cantwell answered. He got up and turned away from the screen. “Send them in.”

  Stan Biondi was his senior investment manager who oversaw all trading at the firm. He was Marc Glassman’s senior boss. Brenda Pearlstein was their corporate counsel in charge of compliance issues. They’d buzzed him a while ago to see if they could come on up. What the devil could the two of them be up to?

  “We have to stem this fallout over Marc,” Cantwell said, stepping over to the conference table as they came in.

  Biondi shut the door behind them. He and Brenda came over to the table. Biondi’s face looked like the Dow had just nose-dived eight hundred points. “Roger, we need to talk.”

  Brenda, always tough to read, wasn’t providing any more cheer.

  “Here, sit down.” Cantwell pulled out a chair. But as he did, Biondi pointed to his desk. “No, over at the screen.”

  The head of trading went around Cantwell’s large architect’s desk. He bent over his monitor and punched in a request. At the prompt, he added his security code.

  Cantwell tried to read their faces. “What’s going on, guys?”

  “It’s about Marc.”

  “I know. A complete nightmare.” Cantwell sighed. “I don’t know how we’re ever going to replace…” He was about to say him, but, in fact, what Cantwell knew he meant was the trader’s earnings.

  “Roger,” Biondi said, “I don’t give a shit about replacing him. Come around.”

  An unsettling feeling rose up in Cantwell’s gut as his manager steered the computer screen around. Several columns appeared on the screen. Cantwell immediately saw it was Marc Glassman’s trading positions. They would be current as of today, and Cantwell saw many of the numbers were highlighted in green, representing profits.

  He exhaled. “We’re actually lucky to have all that now, Stan, considering…”

  “Considering what?” Biondi clicked to the summary page, known as the Recap. It listed the cost and current value of all of Glassman’s positions. “Look,” he said to Cantwell, and fixed his eyes on him, his face ashen.

  He ran the cursor to “Total Outstanding Position.” It showed Glassman had open positions of $4.9 billion. Cantwell looked at his head of trading, puzzled. That couldn’t be right. No individual had that kind of limit. The firm’s exposure could be fatal. Even a senior trader like Marc had maybe three, three and a half as his max.

  “What’s going on here, Stan?”

  “Okay, Roger, l-look…” Biondi always spoke in a rapid cadence, but now he was almost stammering. “I admit, I may have let some of this go on…We needed earnings. You know that. Marc always delivered. I realize how this looks. It didn’t all happen in one swing. It was gradual, over time. I know I’m on the line here…”

  “Let what happen, Stan?” Cantwell went to advance the screen. “The guy’s more than a billion dollars overdrawn. What kind of effing controls do we have here, anyway?”

  Sheet-white, Biondi grabbed his arm. “Roger, there’s more.”

  Cantwell looked up, his eyes no longer just on Stan but on Brenda as well, the compliance lawyer, wondering what she was doing here, a deepening worry building in his chest. “How much more?”

  Biondi wet his lips. He typed in another account on the screen. A second ledger of stocks and open positions came up.

  Glassman’s.

  Another trading account.

  Roger Cantwell’s eyes stretched wide. The dread in his chest wormed straight to his bowels. “Stan, tell me what the hell is going on here, now…”

  This new account held over $3.7 billion. That made over eight total. “It’s out of the Singapore office,” the head of trading said. “Roger, I don’t even know how this got set up. I know I once signed some letter of authorization that he could trade the Pac markets out of there…But a lot of this is just murky. Papered over. I still don’t understand—he’s been shifting funds between accounts, all over the globe, covering his trades…”

  Now a tremor of panic ran through Cantwell. This was all they needed. He put his fingers to his temples. “Are there more?”

  Sweat had come out on Biondi’s brow and he hesitated, glancing at Brenda.

  “Don’t screw with me, Stan!” Cantwell’s glare bore right through him. “Are there more?”

  “One,” Biondi said, swallowing. He brought up a last screen.

  The Recap read $2.8 billion. Two-point-eight billion. Dizzily, Cantwell started doing the math, but Brenda Pearlstein beat him to it. “It’s over eleven billion dollars, Roger.”

  Eleven billion dollars. Cantwell felt his legs buckle. He sank back down. Biondi could be fired for this.

  He could be fired.

  “How long has this been going on?”

  “A while.” Biondi fell into the leather chair across from him. “Look, you know the numbers, Roger. We needed earnings. Marc’s always been driving them. I just let it go on. But, Roger, listen, there’s—”

  Cantwell leaned forward and clicked back to the three Recap pages again. Most of the positions were in green. Gains. Each account showed Glassman well ahead. Up almost 7 percent. Close to eight hundred million. Thank God. An exhalation of relief poured out of him.

  “At least the little prick knew what the hell he was doing.” Cantwell blew out his cheeks, feeling a second wind, sitting back down. The bastard had done it again! This might actually help them.

  “Tell him,” Brenda said, her eyes trained on Biondi.

  The head of trading nodded, gulping.

  “Tell him,” Brenda said again, “or I will.”

  “Tell me what?” The iciness of her expression didn’t suggest she was buying Cantwell’s image of a happy ending. “Tell me fucking what, Stan,” he turned back to Biondi, “before I throw you off the forty-eighth floor!”

  “It’s a disaster,” the trading manager said, spitting it all out. “Worse than a disaster, Roger. All these gains…” He pointed to the screen, the columns of green. “Here, and here…They’re merely paper trades. Made up. To cover his losses. They never took place, Roger.” Biondi’s face was white. “They’re all completely false.”

  “False…”

  Cantwell’s jaws parted as he stared at the screen, the full enormity of what Biondi was telling him slowly, impossibly, settling in. Their reserves were already shredded. The market would drop six hundred points tomorrow on the news. Their stock would open up at two.

  This could sink the firm.


  “How much are we in for?” Cantwell uttered.

  One word fell off the head of trading’s lips. “Billions.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  Over the next days, Hauck began digging into the background of Dani Thibault.

  Merrill had given him some things to work with, Thibault’s Dutch passport number and the name of two businesses he supposedly owned: Christiana Capital Partners, of which his business card listed him as managing director and founder, and Trois Croix Investments, Limited, out of Luxembourg (which Merrill suggested was supposedly named after the street in Brussels where Thibault had been born). She also indicated he had served in the Dutch army. “Dani said he was in Kosovo. Part of the peacekeeping forces there.” That was one of the things that initially had set off her doubts. Her lawyer had been unable to find a record of any military service.

  That first visit, after Tom Foley had walked her to the door, he came back to Hauck’s office. “Impressive woman, huh, Ty?”

  “What’s going on?” Hauck asked him. “I thought we don’t normally handle this kind of thing. It’s pretty routine PI work.”

  “Normally we don’t.” His boss stepped over to the door. “But this time we do. You may have had a chance to look over the client list here, Ty.” Of course Hauck had. Talon had a worldwide contract with Reynolds Reid, Merrill Simons’s ex-husband’s firm. “Keep me up to date,” he said, patting Hauck on the back, telling him what a great job he was doing, backing down the hall.

  So Hauck started in. He began with the same steps Merrill Simons’s own attorneys had taken. Thibault was a Dutch citizen. But his background was supposedly Belgian. He purported to have ties to the royal family there, the source of his network of contacts and income. He also claimed to have a degree from the London School of Economics.

  Hauck began with a criminal history. He put in for it in the U.S. and internationally with Interpol too. He Googled “Thibault.” A trail of gossip references popped up. Linked with Merrill in the society pages. Galas they had attended. Charitable foundation dinners. Prior to that he was seen in the presence of a couple Bollywood actresses and a British female race car driver. The article was headlined 2007’S GLAMOUR COUPLES.

  Thibault played in the big leagues.

  There was also a series of references and articles in business publications. Thibault’s firm Trois Croix had been negotiating for a small Caribbean resort chain along with a large Spanish retailer. Trois Croix was described as an investment firm based out of Luxembourg and Thibault as a “well-connected Dutch financier.” One article mentioned a series of companies Hauck had never heard of that were part of his holdings: I-Mrkt; Havesham Property Holdings in London; a boutique hotel on Mustique. He was said to have been a board member of several large firms and a former investment manager at Bank AGRO in the Netherlands. Apache Partners, a prominent New York private equity firm, was mentioned as a financial adviser on the acquisition.

  An article dated four months later, in something called Caribbean Business News, described how the hotel-chain purchase had not gone through and that the company was now seeking another option.

  At the end of Merrill Simons’s visit, as she stood up to leave, Hauck had said discreetly, “I don’t mean to trouble you, Ms. Simons, but it would help if I could have one or two additional things.”

  She took out her car keys from her purse. “I’m listening…”

  “I could use a current cell phone number for Mr. Thibault. And his e-mail account, if you’re okay with that. Banking information…”

  “I don’t know…,” Merrill said, appearing a bit concerned.

  “It would make things easier,” Hauck said. “I promise, he won’t know.”

  “I’m sure you know how hard this is for me,” she said, hesitating. “I have deep feelings for Dani. I’m actually hoping this all is just a small waste of your time…” She went to the door. “Why don’t we just see how this initial pass-through goes?”

  Hauck nodded, walked her over to Foley, and handed her his card. He didn’t like what he was doing either. Ripping up the floorboards of someone’s life. Digging into his affairs. On the job, he had done it a million times. But this was different.

  Dani Thibault wasn’t under suspicion for committing any crime.

  After Merrill had left, Hauck typed in what she had given him, creating a data file.

  This time we do, Tom Foley had said. Take on the PI case. As well as what Hauck saw, with Peter Simons’s ex involved, as an obvious conflict of interest.

  He picked up the phone and buzzed Brooke outside. “See if you can get me Richard Snell at our office in London.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  At the same time, Hauck did his best to keep his hand in the Glassman murders as well.

  He couldn’t put away the image of April. It dogged him—the sweet, bright eyes that shone back from the photographs of her. The light touch of her hand on his when they had last bumped into each other in town.

  It’s been what, Ty—she beamed, happily—four years…??

  Five.

  They had met in a support group Hauck had gone to for a while after Norah was killed. He couldn’t escape the dreams that made him constantly relive it. Grief that wouldn’t go away. Blame unwilling to soften. By then, Beth and he had given up. September 11 had brought with it a whole new scrapbook of faces and lives he had been unable to save. Names of the unaccounted for he was charged with following up on. Frantic loved ones calling in. Not knowing. It was as if he was trying to find a glimpse of Norah, his dead daughter, in every face, every call he fielded.

  Only two out of two hundred he followed up on ended up being found alive.

  It just got to him. For the first time in his life what was constraining him was greater than what he could do. One day he put in his notice. Out of nowhere, he walked into the office of the assistant chief of the NYPD and told him he couldn’t do it anymore. Their shining star. He had made detective, got fast-tracked into management, faster than anyone before. His career had arced upward in a steady, unflagging line.

  As part of the settlement he agreed to talk it out with someone. A police shrink. The doctor urged him to come to the group. Just to show he didn’t need it, he went.

  Hauck didn’t think about those years much anymore. The Dark Ages, he liked to call them. Depression. Maybe it was a chemical thing, lurking in his brain for years. Maybe it was like the towers, the well-built wall he had erected around himself—sports hero, Colby grad, the pretty wife, the picture-book family, his career—all brought down. Leaving ashes behind.

  Whatever it was, he had built himself back up. He had moved away, to Greenwich. Found a new home. Slowly found new people to love. Rebuilt his career. Clearly, his life was moving upward once again.

  The Dark Ages.

  The memories were back again.

  He remembered watching her from across the circle of twelve patients. She was both pretty and at the same time quiet, hurt. Their eyes met with a brief smile. Both of them saying, in the way everyone there seemed to say, I really don’t belong here, you know.

  “April,” Dr. Paul Rose said, “we have a few new people here. Would you give us a little about yourself and tell us why you’re here?”

  “Sure,” she said, shrugging diffidently. “I’m, uh, Frasier got canceled on Thursday nights, so I was free…” There were a few polite laughs. “Sorry,” she said, flattening her lips. A delicate light shone on her face.

  Then she told everyone about her darkness.

  The Glassman murders received a lot of attention. Marc Glassman’s notoriety and position made all the cable news shows and the front page of the Wall Street Journal. The FBI was involved. Along with the SEC. It seemed unbelievable that Marc Glassman had turned out to be some kind of rogue trader. That he had cost Wertheimer Grant billions of dollars. What kinds of controls were there? Now the firm hung on the verge of collapse. Rumors were everywhere. THE MURDER THAT MAY SINK ONE OF WALL STREET’S MOST RESPECTED FI
RMS, the New York Times headline read.

  All sprung from a local crime spree that had gotten out of control.

  Finally Hauck knew the right thing was just to stay out. He made his decision. Let the right people back at Havemeyer Place handle it. He walked away. He had Annie.

  April, could you tell us why you’re here…?

  Hauck recalled that most mornings Steve Chrisafoulis dropped off his daughter at the high school before heading into work. A few days after the story broke he waited for him, until he saw the blue Chrysler minivan pull up and Emily jump out and shut the door, merging with a group of kids on the sidewalk. She waved. “Bye, Daddy…”

  Steve waved back. “See you tonight, hon…”

  Hauck stepped up just as he was rolling up the window.

  “Funny, I didn’t know you had kids in the school here.” The detective smirked with a roll of his cynical eyes.

  Hauck shrugged. “Can’t help myself. Sometimes I still hang around here, just to make sure everything’s okay.”

  “You better watch yourself. Someone may get the wrong idea and you’ll get yourself arrested, Ty.”

  “Look, I know it’s awkward to talk to me on this, Steve.”

  “It’s not awkward,” the detective said. “It’s more like inappropriate. You’re not wearing a badge now.”

  “You don’t find it just a shade peculiar how this break-in seemed to bust the Wertheimer thing wide open?”

  “Peculiar? I also think it’s peculiar how the safe in the house was emptied and the drawers were rifled through, Ty.”

  “Any thoughts on what they might have been looking for?”

  Now it was Steve who shrugged. “Money, jewelry. Call me crazy…Look, I really gotta get on to the office now.”

  “How’s the boy? How’s he doing?”