Catching the Bad Guy (Book Two) (Janet Maple Series) (17 page)

The hardest part was breaking the news
to his father, Hank Bostoff, who had put his life into building the company.
Jon had expected chastisement and banishment;  instead, his father had
surprised Jon with mercy and understanding. “Anyone can slip, son,” Hank had
said. “What sets the man apart from the rest is how he gets back on his feet. I
know that you have it in you to get back on track.”

From that moment on, Jon dedicated his
entire existence to repairing his credibility. With the ban hanging over him,
the financial industry was closed to him. He had to find a new way to make a
living. He would have to start over. The answer surprised him most of all. One
night, as he was contemplating his options, Jon received a call from his lawyer
asking him if he would be interested in providing consulting services to a
financial company that had caught a rogue trader among its staff and was
looking to strengthen internal controls. “I have not given your name or
anything like that, Jon, but I thought that you could provide valuable input to
this company from your recent experience.”

Thus began Jon’s consulting career. He
was surprised by how quickly his client list grew. His clients consisted of
companies that had already experienced problems with nefarious employees and
were looking for ways to avoid a repeat experience, and those that were being
proactive and were looking for preventive measures to avoid having such
experiences firsthand. Jon understood the needs of his clients, and, most
importantly, he understood the motivation of the culprits. Finance was a game
of high risk and high reward, and the temptation to seize the reward often
surpassed the fear of risk. Emboldened by profits made in a good year, traders
often lived beyond their means, certain that each year would be better than the
previous one. A trader who had made a wrong bet and was losing money on a stock
position could turn into a desperate man, willing to go to great lengths to
conceal the loss so that he could get that coveted bonus to pay for the lavish
condo or vacation home he could barely afford in the first place.

Lies and cover-ups were a slippery
slope: once one started, it was almost impossible to stop. Just recently, Jon
had helped a client catch a rogue trader who was forging profit and loss
reports. The trader had a programming background, which made it easy for him to
break into the firm’s systems and manipulate the data, making his losses look
like profits. The management began to suspect things, but could not quite make
heads or tails of things, and they wanted an independent party to investigate,
which was where Jon’s expertise came in. Still, the job was no picnic, for as
much as he enjoyed the idea of helping his clients, Jon could not help feeling
compassion for the culprits. After all, not so long ago he had been one of
them. He just hoped that the bad guys he now helped to catch would have the
will and decency to transform their lives, as he had done. It had been a long
road, with an even steeper road lying ahead of him. To cover his legal fees and
settle the regulatory fine, he had to sell his recently acquired beach house in
the Hamptons and his mansion in Westbury, Long Island and move his family to a
modest three bedroom house in Connecticut. Had it not been for his wife’s help,
Jon doubted that he would have survived this mortification.

Candace Bostoff, née Covington, had been
standing by Jon’s side ever since he planted a wet one on her at a party at
Duke University over twenty years ago. Candace came from a wealthy family.
There were many young men with far more impressive pedigrees than Jon’s who
were vying for her attention, but Candace chose Jon. They got married right
after graduation, by which time Candace was already pregnant with their
firstborn, Tyler. The Covingtons had not approved of Candace’s choice of
husband and had made it clear that the Bostoffs would not partake in the
Covington fortune. It had been just as well with Jon who intended to make his
own way in the world. Granted, Jon did not exactly come from nothing himself.
His father’s boutique investment firm generated a steady stream of revenue,
which Jon hoped to take to new heights. As a young man, Jon was eager to share
his business ideas with his father, but Hank Bostoff liked doing business the
tried and true way. So Jon bid his time, waiting until his father was ready to
retire and hand over the business to him. By the time Hank Bostoff was ready to
hand over the reins to Jon, time had passed, and the business opportunities
that Jon had wanted to take advantage of were already taken. Still, he was
eager to make up the lost ground and transform Bostoff Securities into a money
making machine, so that he could finally provide Candace with the lifestyle she
was born to have. Not that Candace had ever made a comment about their
comfortable middle-class lifestyle: she had been perfectly content. It was Jon
who had wanted more. How reckless he had been! Pride and ambition were valuable
qualities, but when left unchecked they often drove men to do unthinkable
things. If there were one thing that Jon Bostoff was certain of, it was that he
would never let his pride or ambition get the better of him again.

“Are you ready to give your speech,
honey?” Candace Bostoff squeezed her husband’s hand.

“As ready as I’ll ever be.” Jon smiled,
pressing Candace’s hand to his lips. Jon glanced at the bustling reception
hall. It was reassuring to see that even after the Bostoff name had been
dragged through the mud, true friends remained by their side. Jon was about to
turn his attention back to Candace when he felt blood flow to his face. There,
among the guests who were supposed to be the closest of family and friends, sat
David Muller, the man whom Jon held personally responsible for all of his
misfortunes.

“Jon, what’s wrong?” Candace whispered.

He frowned, debating whether he should
mention Muller’s presence at the wedding to Candace. He was not sure if Candace
had seen him, and he did not want to ruin the mood. “Oh, it’s nothing. Just
nerves I guess.”

“Nerves? When have you ever been shy
about public speaking?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I guess I’m just
tired. How about a kiss to give me some courage?”

 Jon attempted to steer Candace’s
attention away from the guest tables, but was too late. “Is that David Muller?”
Candace asked, her face turning pale.

“That’s the bastard in the flesh,” Jon
hissed. “I have no idea who invited him. He’s got some nerve showing up here.”
Jon saw the pained expression on Candace’s face. This was the last straw.
“That’s it. I’m going to go over there and throw him out.”

“Wait.” Candace grabbed his hand. “Who’s
that woman sitting next to him?”

“The redhead? I have no idea, but I’ve
got to say that Muller has certainly come down in his standards. He used to
date supermodels. I guess life’s not treating him as well as it used to.”

“Jon, I think I know who she is. Her
face looks familiar; I remember seeing her in one of those society magazines.
I’m pretty sure that’s the daughter of the state attorney general.”

“You mean Cornelius Finnegan’s
daughter?”

“I’ve never been good with names, but I
never forget a face when I see one, and I swear I saw her picture in one of the
newspapers. She was photographed next to her father, who is this hefty, bulky
guy, and her mother who is actually quite pretty, and I remember thinking what
a shame it was that the girl took after her father.”

“Candace, you are brilliant.” Jon pulled
his wife close to him and planted a long, passionate kiss on her lips.

Candace blushed. “Jon, what’s gotten
into you? You are the brother of the groom. There are people watching us.”

“What’s wrong with a man kissing his
wife?” Jon beamed. “Baby, I think you just figured out a way to make Muller pay
his due.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t you think it’s suspicious that he
got away with a slap on his wrist, and I was put through the mill?”

“Jon, do you mean to say that Muller got
off the hook because he had the attorney general to protect him?”

“That’s exactly what I mean. I’ve been
made a scapegoat, and I don’t like being anyone’s cat’s-paw. I’ll show that
bastard.”

“Jon, please don’t make a scene.”

“Oh, I won’t. In fact, I’ll go over
there and say hello, being my most cordial self. Sooner or later the bastard
will slip, and even his friends in high places won’t be able to protect him.”

“Baby, I missed you.” David tightened
his arms around Mila’s lanky body. To say that he missed her was the
understatement of a lifetime. His attraction to the woman had reached the level
of addiction. When he was not with Mila he was thinking of making love to Mila,
and when he was with Mila he was anxiously counting the hours until their
separation, already longing for the next time he would see her.

“I missed you too, honey.” Mila pressed
herself against him, making every muscle of his body ache with desire.

“Oh, yeah? I bet that I missed you
more,” David whispered, reaching for the zipper on the back of Mila’s dress.

“Hold on a minute, honey. I want to show
you what I’ve done with the place.”

Ever since David had gotten Mila the
lease on the new place, she had gone gung ho on the idea of decorating. Last
week it had been a set of art deco lamps for the bedroom and a Roy Lichtenstein
lithograph for the living room. True, Mila’s taste was expensive, but it amused
David to discover that underneath the sexy vixen exterior, Mila possessed the
genes of a homemaker.

“It’s in your study. I can’t wait for
you to see it.” Mila tugged at David’s arm. “Come on!”

“What is it?” David asked, cocking his
head sideways to make better sense of the image that hung on the study wall.

“It’s a Pablo Picasso lithograph! It’s
called Cubist Composition. It’s a numbered edition and it’s been hand-signed by
Picasso himself,” Mila replied with the air of an art historian.

“Wonderful.” David stood back, regarding
the image on the wall, wondering how much it had cost. Mila certainly had
expensive taste. Good thing that his earlier chat with Finnegan and Magee
promised to provide a sizeable bump to his net worth.

“Oh, I almost forgot, this came too.”
Mila motioned toward a metal cabinet by David’s desk.

David was pleasantly surprised by the
news. He had been so consumed by Mila’s presence that he failed to notice that
the safe he had ordered earlier had been installed in his office, three days
ahead of the scheduled delivery date. The timing could not have been more
perfect—funny how even the smallest things began to turn out in one’s favor
when one’s luck was coming around.

“What do you need this ugly thing for?
It’s ruining the whole ambiance.”

David traced his fingers over the safe
lock. “It’s a safe, baby.”

“I know it’s a safe. My question is, what
do you need it for?”

“To keep important things safe.”

“What things?”

“Things that could make us both very,
very rich.” David nuzzled Mila’s neck.

“In that case, I guess it’s not that
much of an eyesore,” Mila conceded.

“I’m glad to hear that. Now, where were
we?” David reached for the zipper on Mila’s dress, undoing it in one swift tug.
“I think we’d better move into the bedroom,” he whispered.

An hour later, after he had his fill of
her, David rose from the bed. “I have to work for a bit, baby.”

“All right,” Mila mumbled into the
pillow.

With one last, longing look, David tore
himself away from her and walked toward the study where he had established a
work camp. Mila’s apartment had been rented under an alias, which would make it
difficult to trace it back to him. Besides, he felt confident that the records
he kept at Mila’s place would never get into the wrong hands.

It was hard to concentrate on business
with the knowledge of Mila lying naked in the bedroom, but it had to be done.
David forced himself to focus on the market charts on the computer screen. So
far, the information Magee had given him had worked like a charm. Magee was on
the board of Rover Industries, a giant manufacturing conglomerate. Rover had a
number of different divisions that manufactured commercial equipment for a
variety of industries. Some of their products included commercial chillers,
engines, and even construction cranes. But the best part about Rover, the part
that interested David, was that Rover often subcontracted projects to other
companies. A multimillion dollar contract from Rover could easily result in a
three- to four-dollar jump in the stock price of the company that received the
contract. Of course by the time the news reached the market, it was impossible
to take any advantage of the price jump, but if one had advance notification
one stood to make quite a profit.

Rover had a tiered approval process for
its business: smaller contracts were approved by senior management, but the
most substantial contracts were presented for approval to the board of
directors. So far, Kevan Magee had given Muller two leads. The first one had
been Orion, a mid-size publicly traded manufacturing company that was to
receive a fifty-million-dollar three-year contract from Rover for the manufacturing
of engine components. When Magee had given David the information, Orion’s
shares were trading at seven dollars a share. According to Magee, the news of
the contract award was to be announced in a week’s time, which gave David
plenty of time to load up on the option positions for Orion’s stock. At seven
dollars a share, purchasing a physical stock position would have required a
significant capital commitment; instead, David purchased stock options that
would enable him to purchase Orion shares at nine dollars a share. The beauty
of option contracts was that they did not have to be exercised: one could
simply buy an option for a stock and then sell it at a later time without
having to acquire the stock position. Orion was a quiet stock without anything
in the company fundamentals indicating shift in revenue or growth, so Muller
had been able to snap up the options for less than a dollar per contract. With
the money wired to him by Magee and Finnegan and the addition of his own funds,
David had acquired option contracts for close to a million shares of Orion’s
stock. This time he decided not to trust any particular brokerage firm to
execute his trades, but split the orders between several brokers. All the
trades were placed in the name of Phoenix Fund, a charity that sponsored
scholarships for young men and women who were interested in pursuing careers in
finance. Who would ever question a charity? Hell, David had even gone so far as
to dole out a few thousand bucks in scholarships to several lucky buggers to
make it look legit. Once the news of Orion receiving the contract from Rover
was publicly announced, Orion’s stock jumped to ten dollars, making the options
jump two dollars in price. David sold off his option position at a hefty
profit, which made Finnegan and Magee two very satisfied customers.