Bull Street (25 page)

“I don’t mean hard copies of the printouts. I mean electronic copies, the files in your computer.”

“No. I have one memory stick with the electronic copies of everything with me, another in my apartment.”

She nodded, thinking.

Richard thinking, too, trying to stay ahead of her, said, “And, of course the ones on the mole’s Internet provider’s server, and on the computers at Walker.”

“At Walker,” she repeated. She was looking at Richard but her eyes unfocused, thinking about it. It made him uneasy.

“You represent Walker & Company, don’t you?”

“I represent you and Walker & Company, unless you can tell me that there’s some reason why your interests should diverge, in which case I could potentially have a conflict.” She was eyeing him again now, like maybe she was going to turn on him. Richard felt his pulse quicken. He eased himself back in the chair, trying to calm down.

“I don’t know of any reason why our interests would diverge.”

“Is there anything you want to tell me about?” She was observing him now like he was a lab specimen. “Is there anything you
suspect
might indicate that your own interests could be divergent from that of the firm’s?” Now she was squinting again.

“No. But obviously someone at the firm is the mole. I just don’t know what direction this thing will take, and who the mole is.”

“Be straight with me. Now, and throughout the rest of this thing.” Richard felt like she was looking inside his head.

“I won’t lie to you,” he said.

“Better not.”

A guy, probably the Associate she’d asked for, appeared in the doorway. She looked up. Richard exhaled. He realized he’d been clenching the arms of the chair, relaxed his hands.

“Martin, come in. Martin Springs, this is Richard Blum, our client. He’s an investment banker from Walker & Company.” Richard stood and shook his hand. Toto pointed to Richard’s briefcase, motioned to Richard. He pulled out the memory stick and the hard copy printouts. “Martin, this is critical evidence in this matter. I want chronological transcripts prepared similar to that which we normally do for a deposition, bound in a volume. I need all this by early afternoon. Understand?” Springs grabbed
the materials and headed out the door, jumping to it. Richard was certain Springs knew why her nickname fit.

“Does this make me a gun moll?” Kathy said. It was good hearing her be a smart-ass, but Richard thought he heard her voice quavering.

“Harvard Business School girls gone wild.”

Kathy was silent a moment, then said, “Babe, you alright?”

“Yeah. Yesterday was touch-and-go, today I’m in good hands.”

“Where are you?”

“I can’t tell you right now. I’m afraid your phone may be tapped.”

She paused for a long time before saying, “When can I see you?” her voice airy now.

Richard was seeing her on the bed the other night, smelling her perfume mixed with her scent.

“Soon.” He felt better hearing himself say it, but he was uncertain. “Go see Freida. Get the phone number, make sure you aren’t being followed and call me.”

Ten minutes later she called back. Toto’s secretary transferred the call to a conference room across the hall.

“Hi,” Richard said, trying to sound normal, but his voice strained.

“I love you, Richard.”

“I love you, too, Kath. Everything’s fine. I’m up at Shearson & Stone with their head litigation partner. She’ll want you here sometime late this afternoon. We have meetings scheduled to go over the whole thing. When we get done I’d like for you and me
to get together on this mole thing this evening. I’m staying at the Carlyle under the name Richard Diver. Can you do it?”

“Nah, I’ve got other plans.” Being game, trying to lighten it up, but he could hear the stress in her voice.

“Okay,” Richard said. “Here’s what I need you to do…”

Kathy hung up the pay phone from her call with Richard. She crossed Water Street and entered the bank. She cashed a check for $2,000. Then she hailed a cab. As she rode, she was thinking this must be what panic felt like: unable to hold onto a clear thought, buzzing, itchy. She took another cab, got out, then another, all the time checking behind, around her. She got out of her fifth cab at 30 Lincoln Plaza, Richard’s apartment building at 62
^nd
& Broadway. She waved to Geraldo, the doorman, acting nonchalant, knowing she wasn’t carrying it off, and went upstairs to Richard’s apartment.

Upstairs, Kathy stuffed three of Richard’s suits and enough shirts, underwear and ties to last him for a week into a garment bag. On his bureau, she found the memory stick with the mole’s data, put it into her purse, then ran to the elevator. Downstairs, she hurried out of the building through the service door that exited onto the plaza. She startled a guy sitting smoking a cigarette, saw him jump up when she went past him. As she looked back over her shoulder she saw him motioning to somebody. She had to tell herself this was really happening, felt a wave of shock and ran across the plaza to Broadway, hailed a cab. She saw the same guy from the plaza jump into a car behind her on Broadway just as she drove off in the taxi. “Downtown,” she said to the cabbie. “I said downtown! U-turn right here!” she yelled at him as they reached 64
^th
Street.

“Damn, girl, relax,” he shouted back as he slammed on the brakes.

“Don’t give me any crap, buddy. I’m not in the mood. Drive.” The cabbie did a U-turn on Broadway at 64
^th
Street. “Stop here,” she said at Columbus Circle and got out of the cab. She ran across the street lugging the garment bag. She looked back to see the guy get out of the car a block north of her.

She ran down the stairs to the subway at 59
^th
Street, onto a #1 train south that was in the station. Kathy got off at Times Square and walked as fast as she could without breaking into a jog through the transfer tunnels to the Grand Central shuttle platform. She looked around the platform for recognizable faces from the subway car she had just ridden, or the man she’d seen following her.
Nothing.
She then caught the shuttle to Grand Central where she picked up the #4 train south, again checking the faces of the other passengers. After switching subway lines twice more she wound up at Canal Street. In the tunnels there she stopped to buy a copy of
Vogue,
stood thumbing through it to see if anyone else stopped to observe her. She wondered what she’d do if she saw someone.

Then she walked to the #4 train and took it north toward Grand Central again. That was when she spotted the guy. She felt a flash of despair and then anger.
He’s still tailing me!
She breathed deeply to try to calm herself. It was no use. When the train stopped at 14
^th
Street she waited in the open doorway until everyone had gotten off; still waited, forcing herself.
Just a little longer.
Then at the last moment she shoved her way out through the entering passengers. She saw the guy jump through the doors at the other end of the car. She turned and leaped back onto the train just as the doors closed. The guy was swearing at himself on the platform as the train pulled away.

She felt a rush of relief. Then told herself not to relax. She got off the subway at 23
^rd
Street and hailed a cab, still checking behind her, and went straight to the Carlyle Hotel at 76
^th
and Madison. She asked for the envelope at the desk in her name, Nicole Diver. On the way to the elevator she pulled out two phony driver’s licenses and the key to Richard’s room. Upstairs in Richard’s room, she hung up Richard’s garment bag and sat on the floor next to the bed. Then she buried her face in her hands and sobbed for twenty minutes.

When she finished crying, Kathy let out a long sigh. What a relief, letting go after all that. The things a woman had to do for her man these days. She bet her mother never had to put out like this in her day.

Kathy looked like somebody let the air out of her when she walked into the conference room across from Toto’s office.

Dazed.
Richard felt guilty. If he hadn’t started monkeying around with this mole stuff, he never would have dragged Kathy into it. It sucked, doing that to her, seeing her like this.

Jack and Steinberg showed up half an hour later. They had Ken Stern and Karen Summers, Walker’s General Counsel and Assistant General Counsel, in tow. Richard tried to feel out Jack and Steinberg; they seemed okay, the same as yesterday. He’d keep an eye on Jack, nonetheless. The room filled up after that, Toto and team bringing in multiple copies of neatly bound transcripts of all the mole’s emails.

“Let me tell you where we are,” Toto said. “I’ve been through the transcripts of all the emails. You each have a copy. It’s attorney-client privileged. Essentially, Richard’s and Kathy’s descriptions seem to be accurate.”

Richard sat up straight; he hadn’t suspected their account of things was ever in doubt.
Oh, man.

Toto went on, “Someone is obviously sending trading instructions from Walker in New York to GCG in Paris. The pattern of activities is identical for Southwest and Tentron.”

“Any evidence of trades emanating from anywhere else?” Ken Stern asked.

“No,” Toto said. “It’s all outbound from New York.”

“When did the Tentron trading activity start?” Steinberg asked.

Toto flipped open a copy of the transcripts. “Sometime in early September. Here it is, September 2
^nd
,” Toto said.

“That’s weeks before we opened our numbered trading account on behalf of Milner,” Karen Summers said.

“All these emails went from the same email address?” Jack asked.

“Apparently, yes,” Toto said. “They could be from anybody at Walker. Richard tells us that the SEC and the U.S. Attorney’s Office have traced back similar trading activity to three of Milner’s previous deals—Ernest-United, Tungsten Steel and Val-Tech Industries.

Richard watched Steinberg’s gaze move to Jack’s like they were communicating in some unspoken way, then back to Toto.

“And evidently someone inside GCG Paris is a critical link as well,” Steinberg said. “Okay, what next?”

“My recommendation is that you immediately convene an internal task force to investigate this situation,” Toto said. “You can use these transcripts and the tapes of my interviews of Richard and Kathy as a starting point. Next, I should call up Charlie Holden at the U.S. Attorney’s Office and tell him that Walker & Company has undertaken an internal investigation
of the matter. I can offer copies of these transcripts and anything else we might uncover as assistance to the SEC and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in their investigation, in exchange for full immunity for Richard and Kathy and, of course, for Walker & Company itself.”

“You’re dreaming if you think they’ll buy into immunity,” Steinberg said.

“Maybe so,” Toto said. “But it might get a dialog going. And I’d at least like to get in Holden’s face about this scare tactic they pulled on Richard yesterday. That was a cheap trick and I’m going to let them know what I think of it. And I’ll tell Holden that if he tries anything like that again, we’ll haul him in front of a judge with a motion to suppress and a potential lawsuit for harassment.” She spoke matter-of-factly, but her mouth made biting motions at the air. Richard thought of Holden; he’d love to hear Toto laying into him. “I’m also going to see if I can get him off of Richard’s back. I’d like his word he won’t try any more theatrics. On you, either, Kathy,” she said, looking at Kathy. Kathy shifted in her seat and looked at the floor.