Money to Burn Read online

  Money to Burn

  James Grippando

  In this timely stand-alone thriller ripped from the headlines, New York Times bestselling author James Grippando, whom the Wall Street Journal calls "a writer to watch," explores a world in which the destruction of financial institutions and the people who run them can occur in a matter of hours – perhaps even minutes.

  At thirty-one, Michael Cantella is a rising star at Wall Street's premier investment bank, Saxton Silvers. Everything is going according to plan until Ivy Layton, the love of his life, vanishes on their honeymoon in the Bahamas.

  Fast-forward four years. It's the eve of his thirty-fifth birthday, and Michael is still on track: successful career, beautiful new wife, piles of money. Reveling in his good fortune, Michael logs in to his computer, enters his password, and pulls up his biggest investment account: Zero balance. He tries another, and another. All of them zero. Someone has wiped him out. His only clue is a new e-mail message: Just as planned. xo xo.

  With these three words Michael's life as he knows it is liquidated, along with his investment portfolio. Saxton Silvers is suddenly on the brink of bankruptcy, and he's the leading suspect in its ruin. Michael is left alone, framed, and facing divorce, with undercover FBI agents afoot, spyware on his computer, and mysterious e-mails from a "JBU." Embroiled in corporate espionage, he's desperate to clear his name and realizes that several signs point to his first wife, Ivy, as a key player. But what if Ivy has come back from the dead, only to visit on Michael a fate worse than death?

  With echoes of The Firm, James Grippando's newest thriller takes readers to the inner circle of Wall Street, illustrating the very real dangers of what Warren Buffett called "financial weapons of mass destruction."

  James Grippando

  Money to Burn

  © 2010

  In memory of James V. Grippando…Papa.

  “It’s another beautiful day in paradise.”

  Wall Street got drunk.

  – George W. Bush, July 2008

  NOVEMBER 20, 2003

  1

  THE WARNING SIGNS WERE THERE. I JUST COULDN’T SEE THEM. MY nose was in my BlackBerry-“crackberry”-except when I was talking into it.

  “Can you get me the numbers on Argentine debt denominated in Japanese yen?” I said. I was on with my Asia investment team leader.

  The cabdriver glanced at me in the rearview mirror as if I were speaking Martian.

  “Michael, give it a rest,” said Ivy. “We’re supposed to be on vacation.”

  Ivy and I were stuck in traffic on the busy Dolphin Expressway, having just flown in from New York. We were headed to the port of Miami for a Caribbean cruise that was luxurious by anyone’s standards, all expenses paid-one of the perks of being a top young producer at Saxton Silvers, one of Wall Street’s premier investment banking firms.

  “This is the last phone call, I promise.”

  She knew I was lying, and I knew she really didn’t mind. More than any woman I’d ever dated, Ivy Layton understood my world.

  We’d met when she was a trader at Ploutus Investments, a multibillion-dollar hedge fund with offices in Manhattan and-where else?-Greenwich. It was also Saxton Silvers’ biggest prime brokerage client. Ivy’s boss managed the fund and steered all that business my way because he was incredibly intuitive and completely understood that on the day that I was born the angels got together and decided to create a-puh-LEEZ. Chalk it up to the fact that I was one of the lucky bastards who had correctly timed the burst of the IT bubble, making me a financial genius in a field of idiots. Idiots who apparently believed that overpaid CEOs of dot-com darlings didn’t have to do anything but pick out flashy corporate logos for negative earnings reports and watch the NASDAQ rise like a helium balloon on steroids. I gave Ploutus a reality check on a barfing-yes, barfing-dog that looked like a sock puppet but turned out to be the proverbial pin in the bursting bubble. Ploutus made me the go-to guy on Wall Street, which would never change so long as those aforementioned angels continued to sprinkle moon dust in my hair and starlight in my…whatever.

  “Whoa,” Ivy said. “I haven’t seen this many fifty-story cranes since Shanghai.”

  I glanced up from my BlackBerry. She was right. Downtown Miami had more empty towers under construction than South Beach had palm trees. I tried to imagine the skyline without the works in progress-what it must have looked like just three or four years earlier. Maybe a handful of skyscrapers over fifty stories.

  “Condo crazies,” said the cabbie. “I bought one preconstruction in dat building over there.”

  Our driver was a Bahamian immigrant, which was cool. It was as if we were already in the islands.

  “Congrats,” said Ivy.

  “And one in dat really tall one, too,” he said, pointing upward.

  “Two condos in downtown Miami?”

  “Plus three more in Fort Lauderdale.”

  I was going back to my BlackBerry, but Donald Trump with the island accent had snagged my full attention. “You own five condos?”

  “Yeah, mon.”

  “No offense, but-”

  “I know, mon. I drive a cab. But my mortgage broker says no problem.”

  “Who’s your mortgage broker?”

  “A friend who live in Little Haiti. He used to drive a taxi like me. Dresses really smart now. We call him the Haitian Sensation. Got me a NINA loan for one-point-six mill.”

  NINA-no income, no assets, no problem. Just find a property appraiser to certify that the real estate was worth more than the amount of the loan and $1.6 million was yours. All you needed was a credit score and a pulse. Actually, that pulse thing was optional, too. Reports of dead people getting loans were proliferating. To me, the whole subprime market was beginning to stink like an old fishing boat, and I was glad to have absolutely nothing to do with mortgage-backed securities-even if they were making a few guys at each of the major investment banks filthy rich.

  “They tell me so long as the property value keep going up, I’m safe, mon. I just flip dis condo, make a nice flippin’ profit, pay off dat flippin’ mortgage, buy another flippin’ condo. Just keep on flippin’ and flippin’.”

  “That’s the flippin’ theory,” I said.

  He changed lanes abruptly, blasting his horn at a speeding motorcyclist who apparently thought he owned the expressway. Our driver was suddenly agitated, but it wasn’t the traffic. He looked genuinely worried. I could see it in his eyes in the rearview mirror.

  “So,” he said in a shaky voice, “you think it keep going up, mon?”

  Sure, if the law of gravity somehow changed. “We can only hope,” I said.

  I went back to my BlackBerry. Ivy was now listening to her iPod, moving to the music. Salsa. I didn’t know she was a fan, but apparently a visit to Miami made her feel more connected to her half-Latin roots.

  We exited the expressway and were headed into downtown Miami. The port was all the way east, near a waterfront mall that Saxton Silvers had financed.

  “What the hell is that?” Ivy said.

  I looked up. Flagler Street was Miami’s east-west version of main street, and we were a block or so north of it. If your principal needs in life were YO MIAMI T-shirts, sugarcane juice, and any kind of electronic device imaginable, this was your little slice of paradise. For me, it was an area I couldn’t get through fast enough-especially today. It was only two o’clock in the afternoon, but the shops had already closed, the doors and windows protected by burglar bars and steel roll-down doors. Something was up.

  “Looks like Biscayne Boulevard is closed,” the driver said, stopping at the traffic light.

  Biscayne was Miami’s signature north-south boulevard, four lanes in each direction that were divided by an elevated tram and rows
of royal palm trees down the middle. Office towers lined the west side of the street, and to the east beautiful Bayfront Park stretched to the waterfront. Over the years it had served as everything from the famous hairpin turn in Miami’s first Grand Prix road race to the televised portion of the Orange Bowl Parade route. These days, the Grand Prix had moved elsewhere, the parade was no more, and Biscayne Boulevard had been swept up in the high-rise construction craze. We had to get east of it to reach the port. But on this sunny Thursday afternoon, all cross streets were a virtual parking lot.

  “We’re not moving, mon.”

  We sat through a complete light change and still didn’t budge. I got out of the cab to see what was going on. Up ahead, traffic had ground to a halt as far as I could see. I stepped up onto the doorsill for a better view. The one-way street was like a shadowy canyon cutting through tall office buildings. Peering over the endless row of stopped cars in front of us, I got a cross-section view of the intersection at Biscayne and spotted the problem. Barricades appeared to be blocking all vehicular access to the boulevard. Mobs of people were marching down all eight lanes.

  I climbed back inside the car and said, “Some kind of protest rally.”

  “Oh, yeah,” said Ivy. “FTAA is in Miami this year.”

  The Free Trade Area of the Americas was an effort to unite all the economies of the Western Hemisphere, except Cuba, into a single free-trade area that reached from Canada to Chile. Each year since 1994, the leaders of thirty-four democracies met to work toward eliminating barriers to trade and investment. Opposition was passionate, critics fearing the concentration of corporate power and the worst of everything that came with it: layoffs and unemployment, sweatshop labor, loss of family farms, environmental destruction. Thousands of those critics had descended on downtown Miami today to decry the FTAA’s eighth ministerial meeting.

  “Not sure where to go,” said our driver.

  “Obviously not this way,” said Ivy.

  He somehow maneuvered around stopped cars and headed north on Miami Avenue, the plan being to cut east to Biscayne on a higher cross street. It was worse. Not only were the cars immobilized, but pedestrian traffic was also jammed. We saw a sea of young people, most of them wearing bandannas over their noses and mouths, many wearing protective goggles or helmets. A few wore gas masks. Two men had climbed atop lampposts to wave red flags, one with the image of Che Guevara and the other with Mao Tse Tung. Banners and posters dotted the crowd, the messages ranging from GIVE PEACE A CHANCE to SUPPORT THE POLICE: BEAT YOURSELF UP.

  “This looks bad,” said Ivy.

  I got out of the car and again climbed to my perch on the doorsill, peering out over the roof.

  “Michael, get back in the car!”

  I heard Ivy’s warning, but I had to look. Never had I seen such a showing of police muscle. Rows of fully armored and helmeted police moved in formation, meeting the crowd of demonstrators with a line of riot shields and control batons. As police advanced, the anti-FTAA chanting intensified.

  Greed kills.

  Die, Asses of Evil.

  Fuck the Aristocratic Assholes.

  Anarchy Today, Anarchy Tomorrow, Anarchy Forever!

  Demonstrators either yielded to the oncoming wave of police or were pushed back into the throbbing crowds behind them.

  “There’s nowhere to go!” people shouted. “Nowhere for us to go!”

  Squeezed between the surge of police and the barricades behind them, the crowd had run out of room and was growing angrier by the second. A small group at the front fell to the ground, their actions seen as resistance by club-wielding officers.

  “Michael, get in here!”

  It was crazy, but I was mesmerized. I saw about a dozen canisters launch in volleys from somewhere behind police lines. Tear gas. They landed in the crowd, unleashing panic. One hit a demonstrator in the head and knocked him to the sidewalk. People were soon stepping over other people, coughing and wheezing as they ran. A few held damp rags to their mouths, which eased their breathing but did nothing for the skin and eye irritation. A woman in agony ran past screaming “Pepper spray, pepper spray!” A crack of gunfire erupted, and people on the front line writhed in pain from rubber bullets, beanbags, and chemical-filled pellets. It was impossible to count the number of rounds fired, but it had to be in the hundreds. Angry youths cursed as they picked up the smoking canisters of tear gas and hurled them back at the oncoming police.

  “Michael, get back inside!”

  Someone grabbed me and threw me against the car. It was a man-incredibly strong-dressed all in black, a helmet protecting his head. A bandanna covered his nose and mouth, but his eyes were still visible and they were downright threatening. His knee came up and hit me in the groin, and my face was suddenly on fire with pepper spray.

  “It’s only gonna get worse,” he said in a voice that chilled me, and then he was gone.

  Ivy pulled me back into the car and yanked the door shut. The driver switched on the locks. I couldn’t see, and the sting was almost unbearable. Ivy had bottled water in her purse, which she poured on my face to wash away the spray.

  “Are you okay?” she asked.

  I blinked hard, but it would take a while to find relief.

  Ivy glanced out the car window. “There’s a medic tent over there,” she said, pointing toward the courthouse on the corner.

  “They actually set up medic tents?” I managed to say. Apparently Miami learned from former host cities to expect protests and injuries.

  “I see people getting treated for pepper spray,” she said. “Come on, let’s go.”

  She paid the cabdriver and told him to keep the change. He thanked her and handed her a business card.

  “My cell number is on there,” he said. “Call me if you know anyone. Maybe it’s you, your housekeeper, your doorman. Whoever.”

  “Anyone who what?” asked Ivy.

  “What we were talking about,” he said. “Anyone who wants to buy a condo. I get you a killer deal on a very good pay-option, negative-amortization loan, mon.”

  The expression on Ivy’s face was one of complete incredulity. “Let’s go,” she told me.

  I pushed open the door. We grabbed our bags, and together we zigzagged through the crowd and confusion, stopping only when we reached the Wellness Center beneath the giant flag of Che Guevara flapping in a breeze tinged with tear gas.

  2

  IVY LAYTON WAS ABOUT TO BLOW HER BRAINS OUT. NOT LITERALLY-but sudden and certain death did seem preferable to the conversation that surrounded her. Ivy stepped away from a circle of women she didn’t care to get to know and grabbed a frozen rum runner topped with a floater of 150-proof Trinidadian spirits.

  “Careful,” said the waiter holding the silver tray of cocktails. “Those be strong, love.”

  Ivy smiled and thanked him. Since stepping foot on the Saxton Silvers yacht, she’d been “darlin’,” “honey,” and “love,” all of them as harmless in the islands as “mon.”

  “Strong is good,” she said. And after a day like today, she really meant it. “Mon.”

  Ivy and Michael had ended up returning to Miami International Airport, flying to Nassau, and catching up with the private cruise there. As far as Ivy was concerned, though, one less day with the top young producers at Saxton Silvers was a blessing. There was only one she cared to be with: Michael Cantella, a veritable rock star among the firm’s fiercely competitive under-thirty-five-year-olds. Michael had an uncanny knack for making the rich richer, which earned him seven-figure performance bonuses and plenty of free trips-South African safaris, New Zealand wine and adventure tours, and other five-star destinations around the globe, none of which he could fit into his relentless schedule. But this time was different. He had made a point of planning their first trip out of New York together after dating for three months. Ivy had been excited about it-until tonight. Michael didn’t know it, but if she had to spend one more cocktail hour on deck with the spouses and significant others while t
he Wall Street wonders smoked Cohiba cigars with the captain on the bridge, either she or Michael was going over the ship’s rail.

  She hoped he wasn’t too drunk to swim.

  “Did you hear about Dwight Holden?” asked Shannon Ware, one of the wives.

  Here we go again, thought Ivy. Shannon was married to a high roller in the L.A. office who, according to Michael, owned more sports cars, more jewelry, more high-end toys than any human being should ever own-in short, the worst damn case of “affluenza” on record. Ivy had known Mr. Affluenza’s better half for only twenty minutes, and Shannon had already earned the title “World’s Biggest Gossip/World’s Smallest Brain.” The five other wives in the circle were riveted.

  “Do tell,” said the tall blonde.

  “Totally blew up,” said Shannon.

  “No!”

  “Yup,” said Shannon, snapping her fingers. “Just like that.”

  “I thought Dwight was set for life and on track to retire before his fortieth birthday.”

  “Was,” said Shannon. “Apparently the boy wonder wasn’t quite ready to cut the cord with the mother ship and manage his own hedge fund. Their house went on the market last week. Total fire sale. Only listing on the water under ten million.”

  “Poor Gwen. Where are they moving to?”

  Shannon lowered her voice, as if this part were particularly delicious. “I hear they’re moving in with her parents.”

  “NO!” said blondie.

  Ivy rolled her eyes. Somehow she knew it wasn’t true-worse, Ivy would have bet that even Shannon knew it was just a vicious rumor.

  “Where is it?” asked another.

  “It’s some little town…” Shannon cringed, as if it pained her not to have every juicy detail at her command. “Oh, hell, I know this. It’s-shit, how’s a left-coast girl supposed to know? It’s like…Gonorrheaville. But not Gonorrheaville.”