Reckless (14 page)
Authors: Andrew Gross
This second dead Wall Street trader was on her radar. She was taught to look for patterns, and for this one she didn’t have to look very far. By seven, a staff assistant would forward her links to any news story that might be of interest, and over the
Post,
coffee, and the
Financial Times
Naomi would scroll through them to bring herself up to speed for the day. Yesterday, news came out on James Donovan, who had died under unusual circumstances. From Beeston Holloway. Hung himself. Couldn’t stand the pressure. These young guys had come out of college, made more their first year than Naomi had to her name. They’d only seen the market go one way—up!—their entire lives.
At least that’s how it was being portrayed in the press. She’d already brought it to Rob Whyte, her boss at Treasury. It didn’t smell right. No matter how it was being portrayed. “You watch,” she told him, “something’s not right on this. I should go check it out.” She scrolled through her in-box, looking for whatever had been posted on the trader’s suicide.
There was a new item flashing. Along with the red message light on her BlackBerry.
It was a text from Rob. Naomi saw that he’d posted a link.
The subject was “Second Trader Dead.” The only thing it said was “Need to talk on this TODAY!”
Something else had happened
.
Putting her yogurt down, she clicked on the link, which turned out to be an update of the earlier story, on Bloomberg, dated only an hour ago.
DEAD BEESTON TRADER IMPLICATED IN SECOND INVESTOR SCANDAL. BILLIONS UNACCOUNTED FOR. COMPANY CALLS DAMAGE “MATERIAL AND PERVASIVE.” AUDIT UNDER WAY.
STOCK REELING IN OVERSEAS TRADING.
She knew it! She turned on the TV. CNBC was on it. Their angle was an out-of-control Wall Street unable to cope with the downturn. First Wertheimer, now Beeston.
No, she now felt sure—that wasn’t what was going on.
Not at all.
She was taught to look for patterns. Patterns that could be woven into puzzles. Threats.
This one was right in front of her.
Naomi grabbed her BlackBerry and texted her boss. “Already on it,” she said.
T
he second investment manager to die under suspicious circumstances quickly became front-page news.
The media paraded it as a sign of Wall Street “on ’roids!” No controls. All oversight shattered. Donovan became a tragic case of the life-altering pressures of highly remunerated “dice rollers” unable to cope with their evaporating positions. The post-boom world.
First it was the subprime debacle, Wertheimer going belly-up. Then it was Fannie and Freddie teetering, AIG coughing up blood. Now it was Beeston. Portfolio managers having to double down on their bets to make up their widening losses, taking their firms down with them. Over the edge. These people weren’t programmed for anything but success.
James Donovan had only known life one way. Up.
He just couldn’t handle it.
Hauck opened the door to the Seventeenth Precinct station house. He’d left work early that afternoon and driven to the city. Monday was the night he usually had Annie over and cooked dinner, but tonight, this new development was on his mind.
On the way in, he’d caught the news. Beeston said it was engaged in heated talks to save the company. They were now admitting Donovan had cost them billions. Pundits were speculating that he had started to panic when the scandal at Wertheimer hit, knowing he could no longer keep the lid on his own giant losses. Now the only momentum on the Street was toward outright panic. Wertheimer was history. Beeston Holloway could be next. The whole financial sector had zero support.
Hauck winced. The Dow had tumbled to its worst level in eight years yesterday.
The precinct station was on East Fifty-first. Hauck went upstairs and asked a woman sitting behind the duty desk for Detective Campbell.
The woman pointed toward a portly, red-haired man at a desk against the window in a V-neck sweater who was on the phone. “Over there.”
Hauck walked over and waited for the detective to finish up. Campbell was scribbling notes on a pad, his foot up on an open drawer. “Gimme a second,” he said, signaling Hauck with a look that told him to wait. His desk was piled high with open files and paperwork; against the wall he had two framed pictures of his kids. There was a wooden chair next to his desk and a couple of books stacked on it. Hauck took note of one:
The Idiot’s Guide to Understanding Wall Street
.
He chuckled.
When the detective finally got off, he wheeled around in his chair to face Hauck and crossed his legs. “Shep Campbell, sorry…”
“My name’s Hauck.” Hauck draped his sport jacket across his arm. “I used to be in homicide with the one fourteen in Queens, and later at the DOI, under Chief Burns.”
Campbell nodded, jabbing his finger in recognition. “Yeah, I know you, don’t I? Didn’t you get your face on the tube for some big case you had up there? The Grand Central bombing, right? That guy who wasn’t dead…You’re Hauck.”
“That’s it.” Hauck took out a card and handed it to him. The detective pursed his lips and blew out a frowning chirp. Cops who jumped ship to the private sector generally weren’t esteemed by those who had stuck around, worked out their time on a city salary. They came across a bit like sellouts.
Campbell took note of Hauck’s firm and put the card down. “Went over the wall, huh? Can’t exactly blame you. You found your ticket. Kids gotta go to school.” He cleared the books off the chair next to his desk and motioned for Hauck to sit down. “Bet yours are in some fancy academy up there now, right? What brings you back down?”
“The Donovan thing.” Hauck ignored the rest. “I was hoping I might ask you a few questions.”
Campbell sighed loudly. “Topic of the day.”
“I’m trying to figure out if there are any links to that other thing that took place up in Greenwich. That trader who was killed with his family.”
The detective nodded, grabbing a bag of pistachios, not offering one to Hauck. “I see. That thing was connected to a home break-in ring up there, wasn’t it?”
Hauck shrugged. “That’s what it was deemed at first.”
“Then I’m sure you read that this one was deemed to be a suicide.” He split a nut and tossed the shell into his trash bin. “What sort of similarities are you looking for?”
“Two money managers dead under suspicious circumstances? I was wondering if you had a chance to look over the victim’s phone records yet.”
“Phone records?”
“Or maybe at the building’s security cameras. I assume they have them.”
“For what?”
“For anyone who might’ve entered close to the time of death.”
“Security cameras…” The detective popped the nut into his mouth and looked at Hauck’s card again. “Hauck, right?
Talon…
Heard of it. Big firm. This says you’re a partner up there. I know it’s hard to turn down these kinds of opportunities. Maybe if something came my way…We all have to make a choice. You mind telling me just what is your particular point of interest here?”
A pushy ex-cop from out of town. A well-paid one at that. Coming around and sticking his nose into an active case. No particular jurisdiction. Hauck expected the response. “I knew a member of the Glassman family who was killed up there. I’m just following up to see if there’s any link between these two cases. Two rogue traders. Lots of losses. Two Wall Street firms driven over the edge. You heard the news today?”
“Yeah, it’s all here on page one oh six, right in my trusty bible.” Campbell picked up the Wall Street manual, smirking. “I assume you’re not buying into the home-invasion angle?”
Hauck shrugged. “All I’m buying is just to follow up. For a friend.”
Campbell nodded again, mock-sympathetically, but his gaze stayed on Hauck, then shifted again to his card. “Hmmph, you know, maybe this is
my
ticket out.” He snorted. “I’m not exactly Warren effing Buffett, y’know…Not much ever came my way. Listen, Mr.
Hauck
”—he made the name sound like “cancer”—“I know you’ve got some time in. You seem to have a personal interest here, and I don’t want to be nosy. I also know what it’s like when you leave the force.”
“Sorry?”
“You know, you leave early, miss the action. You probably deal with a lot of corporate stuff up there. White-collar clients. Like to keep your hands on the tiller.”
Hauck didn’t respond. The suffering-cop routine was starting to wear thin.
“But the facts are, Mr. Hauck, Mr. Donovan left his apartment in the night around three fifteen A.M. Like he was prone to doing lately. His wife woke up and took note of the time. Fell back to sleep. He had a key to the super’s office in the building, which is likely to get the poor sucker canned in this environment. The fingerprints on the door handle to the office were
his
and his alone. He used electrical wire the super kept in the storage closet there, which he slung over the ceiling pipes. The guy had a recent history of being upset. Not sleeping. He was on mood stabilizers. People at work said he was wired like a fuse. Not exactly a big surprise when someone’s lost the equivalent of the GNP of Belarus.” Campbell chuckled. “You notice how nothing less than a billion even makes the news today? Even his wife suggested the man was acting a little off lately. Forgot birthdays. Walking the dog at three A.M. You don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to see the guy was depressed. Even his firm’s not pushing that anything was screwy on this. So why would we need to check his phone records? Or any video? Just who should we be looking for?”
Hauck could have answered,
Maybe for a connection to Dani Thibault, or for the man April Glassman’s son had taken a shot of, with the braided red-brown hair, tattoo on his neck.
But he didn’t want to bring up Thibault as a topic until he had something more to go on. Or until Foley gave him the green light.
And this guy was just trying to clear cases. And this one didn’t require much work.
“Like I said, just following up for a friend,” Hauck said, taking his jacket off his arm.
“You said you knew him, huh?”
“Knew whom?” Hauck wrinkled his brow, not sure who the guy meant.
“Donovan,” the detective said. “The vic.”
“I didn’t say I knew him. I said I knew one of the persons killed in Greenwich. A minute ago you didn’t seem to imply he was a vic.”
“No dealings with him at all?” the detective asked, removing another pistachio from the bag.
“No dealings.” Hauck looked at him quizzically. “Why?”
“No reason. Just trying to get things straight. That’s all.” He held up Hauck’s card. “Talon, huh? Mind if I keep this? May need some advice someday, if my ticket ever comes in.”
Hauck stood up and folded his jacket back over his arm. “Be my guest.”
“You know, maybe I will,” Campbell said, standing up as well; his gut was round and he was five inches shorter than Hauck. “Check out those phone records after all. Like you said. You never know what might turn up. If I did, you have a name I should be looking for?”
“You’ll let me know when you do,” Hauck replied, “and I’ll see if one comes to mind.”
O
n the way home, Hauck took a chance and stopped on East Fifty-third Street, at the building where Donovan had lived.
He was met by the doorman at the entrance and asked to speak with Donovan’s wife. The man, who’d clearly been alerted to keep the press and any interested outsiders at bay, looked over Hauck’s card as if there was a secret code in the paper stock. Hauck convinced him to call upstairs. “He says he was a policeman from Greenwich,” the doorman said into the phone, “that he’s following up on some things pertaining to some other case up there. He said it would only take a minute, Ms. Donovan. You want me to let him up?”
The answer was apparently yes, and, eventually, the doorman directed him to an elevator bank on the far end of the lobby. The lobby was a full walk-through with a rear entrance that led onto Fifty-second. Hauck spotted a security camera perched on the wall above the rear door.
As he passed, it occurred to him he’d like to have a shot at checking out that film.
When the elevator opened on fifteen, he was met by a dark-haired woman with a pained demeanor in a black dress, her hair tied back in a bun. She introduced herself as Deena Wolf, Leslie Donovan’s sister. “We just buried my brother-in-law yesterday,” she said, as if to dissuade him. “My sister’s already spoken several times with the police…”
“I’ll only take a second,” Hauck promised. “It’s important.”
The woman nodded, looking harried.
“Please…”
Inside, about a dozen people were gathered in the foyer and small kitchen. Sounds of laughter and food being served mixed with the somber looks and hushed replies. A couple of young kids ran through the living room chasing a white bichon with their parents yelling after them.
“My sister’s in here.”
She took him into a small room that looked like a combination TV room and study. Wood shelves filled haphazardly with books and brochures. Financial documents all around. A leather couch and a wide-screen TV. Leslie Donovan sat on the couch. She had thick dark hair pulled back tightly and a pale complexion, and was dressed in a dark burgundy sweater and skirt.
“I appreciate you seeing me,” Hauck said. “I’m sorry for your loss. I won’t take up much of your time.” He’d been in these situations many times and didn’t want to impose.
The woman nodded a little blankly. She was pretty, with a small nose and high cheekbones, though the stress was apparent. “It’s okay. Carlos said you were a Greenwich policeman?”
“I was in charge of the detective unit up there for six years. Now I work for a private security firm.” Hauck sat down across from her and put his card on the coffee table. She picked it up. “You’re familiar with the Glassman murders that took place up there a month ago?”
“Of course we’re familiar with it, Mr. Hauck. Everyone in the industry followed it. That was when Jim first started acting a little strangely.”