The Vulture Fund

by Stephen W. Frey

  Leeny looked away from Mace and shook her head slightly. The conflicts were suddenly too deep. She could not make the pieces fit together as they should, and she felt herself beginning to shake. Perhaps this was what people meant by the term nervous breakdown. Perhaps she was in the middle of it right now and did not even realize. She hadn’t realized it the last time.

  “Where were you going?” She smiled at Mace, attempting to cover up the emotions within through an outward display of calm.

  He nodded at the door leading from the inner offices to the reception area. “Down to the street to get some fresh air. I have something I have to get at the store.” For some reason he did not want to tell her about the visitor.

  “Which is it?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Are you going to get some fresh air or do you have to go to the store?”

  Mace did not respond immediately. She was a sharp character. “Both.”

  “And you were going to go in just your shirtsleeves. Without even your jacket? It’s twenty degrees outside.”

  “I’m from Minnesota, Leeny. When it reaches twenty degrees in Minneapolis, summer can’t be far away. At twenty degrees men start thinking about their golf clubs and women start thinking about their pool boys.”

  Leeny laughed. “Okay. Well, would you mind some company? I need to talk to you for a couple of minutes.”

  “That sounds ominous.”

  “No, it’s nothing serious. I just have questions about some of the investors.” She inhaled deeply. If he only knew how ominous his situation was. Perhaps she should tell him everything. So he could save himself. But the thought melted away as quickly as it had come to her. Save yourself, Leeny. No one else will. “It won’t take long.”

  Mace nodded. “Fine.”

  Leeny began to walk back toward her office. “Just let me get my coat. I feel the cold more than you do. I’ll be right back,” she called back to him.

  “Okay. I’ll be at reception.” He moved quickly to the door and pushed through it, then stopped abruptly. Rachel sat in one of the chairs next to the receptionist’s desk reading a magazine.

  For a moment Rachel continued to read. Then suddenly she became aware of Mace’s presence. She dropped the magazine on the glass table in front of the chair and ran to him, stopping just short of where he stood. “Hi.” She was full of enthusiasm, obviously glad to see him.

  “Hello there.” The door leading to the office area clicked shut behind Mace.

  Rachel peeked at the receptionist, who was busy with a crossword puzzle. “I missed you,” she whispered.

  “I thought you couldn’t stand me. You sort of left me holding the bag the other night, as they say. Kind of a strange way for a person who misses another to act. Wouldn’t you say, Ms. Sommers?” He was being purposely formal.

  “You didn’t let me finish. What I was going to say was that I missed you at class the other night.” She smiled coyly.

  A hurt expression crossed Mace’s face.

  “I’m trying to apologize, Mace,” she said.

  He began to laugh. “I know. I’m just having fun. Hey, you’d better toughen up before you get down here to Walker Pryce.”

  Immediately she punched him in the arm.

  “Ouch!” He grabbed his arm where she had struck him.

  The receptionist glanced up at them for a moment and then back at her crossword puzzle.

  Mace lowered his voice. “That hurt.” But he was obviously enjoying himself.

  “You big baby.” Her whisper was tough, but her smile beautiful.

  It had been only a few days since he had seen her, but it seemed forever since he had seen that beautiful smile. Suddenly he realized how much he had missed her. “What the heck are you doing here?” He stopped rubbing his arm and grinned at her. “Couldn’t wait until tonight to see me, huh?”

  Rachel rolled her eyes.

  “You can’t fool me. You just couldn’t wait, could you?”

  “You’re too much.” Her expression became serious. “I have to talk to you.” She nodded at an envelope she held in her right hand.

  “Talk away. Just don’t hit me again.”

  Rachel shook her head solemnly. “I don’t want to talk here.”

  “It must be serious. God, everybody has serious things to talk to me about all of a sudden.”

  She looked at him strangely for a second, not understanding. “It is serious. It concerns your partner.”

  The door leading to the offices swung open. Leeny almost bumped into Mace again as she came into the reception area. She stopped short, her gaze fixed immediately upon Rachel. “Hello.” Her tone was cool, and she did not extend her hand, as she had done in Webster’s office.

  “Hi.” Rachel was equally distant.

  Immediately Leeny touched Mace on the arm. She watched as Rachel’s eyes followed her fingers to Mace’s shirtsleeve. “Come on, sweetheart. Let’s go.”

  Rachel felt the heat rush through her body at the word sweetheart. Her eyes met Mace’s instantly, but she could discern nothing from his gaze.

  Leeny tugged at Mace gently. “Come on.” She was persistent.

  He resisted Leeny for a moment. Something was wrong. Two nights ago Leeny had manipulated her way into his apartment, baiting the trap with the possibility of sex, only to fall asleep, or perhaps fake sleep, he realized now, and subsequently steal into his home office and rifle through his personal affairs. Now she was calling him sweetheart in front of Rachel, something she had never done before. It didn’t add up.

  Leeny pulled at Mace again, this time more firmly.

  He resisted again for a moment. As Leeny looked away for a second, he quickly held up three fingers and mouthed the words Paul Revere. Then he was gone, into an elevator and away from Rachel.

  She ran a hand through her long hair, wondering what in the world he had meant, disappointed that he had given in to Leeny so easily. Then she began to smile.

  * * *

  —

  “I thought this would be an appropriate place to meet,” Mace said as he glanced around One If By Land Two If By Sea, the restaurant at which they had eaten several nights before. It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and the place was all but deserted. There was only one other table of patrons in the room. “I wasn’t sure you’d figure out my code as Leeny was pulling me away.”

  “I figured it out.”

  “Obviously. Of course we could have just waited another few hours until class tonight.”

  Rachel shook her head. “No. You need to see this right away.”

  Mace watched her for a moment. She was serious. He could see that. “Okay,” he said softly. “What do you have?”

  She hesitated. “First I want you to know that I’m really sorry about the way I acted the other night, leaving you here without telling you that I was going.” Her voice was almost inaudible. “The offer you made me at dinner is really generous. I received the letter outlining the offer by messenger a couple of days ago. I really do want to work at Walker Pryce. I hope my behavior hasn’t affected my opportunity to join the firm.”

  “No, it hasn’t,” he said convincingly.

  A waiter began moving toward the table. Mace saw him. “Two coffees,” he said forcefully. He did not want the man ruining the moment. He was going to lay out everything for Rachel, and he did not want to be interrupted.

  The waiter thought about complaining at the small order, then shrugged and walked away.

  “It was really immature of me.” Rachel continued.

  Mace shook his head. “No, I acted badly. I’m to blame. By the way, I did try to get in touch with you.”

  “I thought that was probably you.” She smiled at him.

  “You were there? And you didn’t pick up the phone?”

  “I had to teach you a litt
le bit of a lesson.” She smiled at him shyly.

  Mace feigned disgust for a moment, then grinned again. She was something all right. “So here I am calling all over New York and you’re sitting in your apartment ignoring me.”

  “All over New York?”

  “Hell, yes. I even tried to call you in Brooklyn. But each of the Sommers’ residences I called didn’t know who you were.”

  “Of course not.” She was still smiling.

  Mace gazed at her. “What do you mean, ‘of course not’?”

  “The listing in Brooklyn is under my stepfather’s name. Bond. Francis Bond. I kept my birth father’s name, though I’m not sure why. He left my mother high and dry when I was two years old.”

  “No wonder I couldn’t reach you,” Mace whispered. “Look—”

  “Mace,” she interrupted him.

  He stopped speaking.

  Her fingers slid across the table and touched the back of his hand. “I know you were just protecting me against myself the other night Walker Pryce is a tremendous opportunity. It’s a chance for me to make something of myself. I’ve worked too hard to get where I am. I can’t be distracted. I know you’re right.”

  So she had figured it out on her own. He laughed to himself sadly. He was about to open up as he never before had, and she had short-circuited him. He wanted to tell her how much he cared. He had decided that they would just deal with the fact that they both worked at Walker Pryce if the time came to deal with it. Maybe he would move to another investment bank, so that she could stay at Walker Pryce, if that was what it took. The new job wouldn’t be as lucrative as the one at Walker Pryce, but lucrative was a relative term on Wall Street. And what good was money without the one you wanted? Wasn’t that what people said? But now he couldn’t tell her. She had come to the right decision all on her own, and to tell her now that he really did want her would be completely unfair.

  “I’ve worked very hard in the last few years,” Rachel continued. “But Walker Pryce will expect even more out of me. I have to be prepared to make the sacrifice.”

  Mace nodded solemnly. “You’ll work twenty-hour days. You’ll be in your office when all your friends are out having a good time. You’ll hate it. But you’ll make more money than you ever thought possible.”

  “I know.” She withdrew her fingers from his hand.

  Mace watched her fingers move across the table away from his. If they had started dating and a relationship had developed, they would never have seen each other anyway. It was better this way, but somehow it didn’t feel better.

  The waiter brought the coffees, then left without a word.

  Rachel opened the overnight envelope lying on the table in front of her and removed several pieces of paper. She considered them for several moments before speaking. “Kathleen Hunt is a bad woman, Mace.” Rachel looked at him evenly.

  Mace recoiled slightly. “What?”

  “I think there’s a lot more to her than meets the eye.”

  Mace began to smile. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Rachel shook her head, reading his thoughts. “It’s not that I’m worried that she’s competition. I promise. I care about you, and I also care about Walker Pryce now that I’m going to be an employee in a few months.”

  Her tone confirmed to Mace that this was not some ploy to drive a wedge between him and Leeny. “What do you have there?” Mace pointed at the papers on the table in front of Rachel.

  Rachel’s voice dropped to a whisper even though there was no one near them. “Remember you told me that Leeny had worked at LeClair and Foster before coming to Walker Pryce?”

  Mace nodded.

  “I have a friend who knows some people at LeClair and Foster,” she said.

  “And?”

  “And he talked to them for me. It seems that about a year ago three people in the San Francisco office of LeClair and Foster were indicted on insider trading charges.”

  “I remember reading something about that. But it didn’t get a lot of press. It went away quickly if I recall correctly.” Mace picked up his coffee cup and took a sip.

  “It did.” Rachel raised one eyebrow as if Mace had just hit upon a significant point.

  Mace leaned toward Rachel. “Are you saying Leeny was involved?” His voice rose as he anticipated what Rachel was driving at. He shook his head. “I don’t believe it. Lewis Webster would have had her checked out thoroughly before hiring her. He wouldn’t have taken the chance. As important as this fund is to him, he wouldn’t have knowingly exposed it to this kind of risk.”

  “Listen to me, will you?” Rachel’s voice was firm.

  “Okay.” Mace held up his hands.

  Rachel began again. “A year and a half ago LeClair and Foster was retained by the management of Northwest Rod and Steel, a manufacturer of specialty steel, headquartered in Seattle. It was a public company, and apparently the people there had gotten word that someone, a corporate raider type, was going to take an unsolicited run at them. So they decided to retain a financial adviser. They chose LeClair and Foster. The four-person deal team at LeClair and Foster did some sniffing around and determined that indeed there was a hostile buyer about to make a bid. As a defensive strategy they recommended to management at Northwest Rod and Steel that they execute a leveraged buyout quickly, that management partner up with some equity money and some banks and buy up all the shares from the public stockholders before the raider did. Management agreed with the recommendation immediately. LeClair and Foster arranged the financing within weeks and then announced the takeover. Just as the deal was about to close, as the tender offer made by management was ending, the corporate raider surfaced and announced his own, higher offer. LeClair and Foster couldn’t get the money people on their side to go any higher, so the raider won. LeClair and Foster negotiated management contracts for their clients, were paid a huge fee for their work, and the deal was done. End of story, right?”

  “Somehow I doubt it.”

  Rachel nodded. “A few months after the deal had closed a senior person at LeClair and Foster figured out that the people on its deal team had bought shares in Northwest Rod and Steel after management agreed to proceed with the leveraged buyout but before the tender offer for the shares was publicly announced.”

  Mace’s face was grim. “A clear case of insider trading.”

  “Yes.” She ran a hand through her hair. “The chairman of LeClair and Foster found out what had transpired and called the feds immediately without the deal team’s knowing what he was doing. There was a quick investigation, and within days the feds had put together indisputable evidence of insider trading by the deal team. Subsequently three employees of LeClair and Foster were criminally charged.”

  Mace rubbed his eyes. This wasn’t good information. In fact it was terrible information. Even if Leeny hadn’t actually been convicted in the case, if she had only been indicted, it would probably still have to be disclosed to the Broadway Ventures investors. And they might have the ability to take back their money as a result. “Leeny Hunt was one of them, I assume.”

  Rachel shook her head. “No. She was the only member of the deal team not charged.”

  “Then what’s the big deal?”

  “The big deal is that my friend’s contact at LeClair and Foster says that even though Leeny wasn’t actually indicted, there was no doubt that she was trading on the inside just as the other three were, that she had done so on other occasions during other deals as well.” Rachel straightened up in her chair. “I know you don’t want to hear this because it presents you with all kinds of problems. But Leeny was definitely involved, Mace. She resigned from the firm a week after the charges had been brought against the other three and went into seclusion. Everybody figured that she had cut a deal with the feds, that she was going to testify at the trial and be their star witness. But she wasn’t a witness. She wasn�
��t charged, and she wasn’t a witness. She just went away.”

  “What happened to the other three?” Mace asked. “I don’t remember.”

  Rachel’s eyes met his. “That’s where the whole thing becomes even stranger.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The trial was proceeding normally, and suddenly the judge started throwing out all the evidence, saying it was obtained illegally. Finally the feds didn’t have anything left, and the jury had no choice but to find the defendants innocent. They walked away scot-free.”

  Mace said nothing.

  Rachel kept going. “The person at LeClair and Foster that my friend knows says there was no doubt that these people were trading on the inside and that Leeny Hunt was involved. The feds had them dead to rights. But it all went away. Mysteriously.”

  A car horn sounded outside the restaurant. Mace glanced out the window. “It’s troubling, but what am I supposed to do? The people were tried and found innocent, no matter how strange it all sounds.” Mace hesitated. “What’s really troubling is that Webster didn’t find this out.”

  Rachel tapped the cardboard envelope with her fingernail. “He would have had to know all about this before hiring her. It would have been easy to find out during the process of even a superficial background check. For God’s sake, my contact sent me old newspaper clippings from the local papers out there.”

  “I can’t believe Webster would have hired Leeny knowing all that—even if she was never indicted.” He shook his head. “Who is your contact?” His eyes moved to the sender area of the envelope, but the address had been inked out.

  “I can’t tell you.”

  He rolled his eyes. “What made you think to do all this investigating, Nancy Drew?”

  “You told me that you thought the Stillman Company was going to invest a couple of hundred million dollars in Broadway Ventures.”