Nothing But Money

The day Cary Cimino learned that all the charges were going to be dropped he made sure to reach out to Jeffrey. It had gone just as Jeffrey had predicted. Jeffrey had told him to stick it out, that the case was weak, and then he’d proved it. He may have been arrested, a criminal complaint with his name on it had been drafted, but now it was as if nothing had ever occurred. It was tabula rasa. Clean slate. If he was filling out some job form and they asked him if he’d ever been convicted of a crime, he could say no.

Jeffrey had gone right back to work at DMN, the day after his arrest, and he hadn’t stopped since. Cary couldn’t do that. He’d truly been spooked by the entire procedure with the FBI agents and the court appearances and the long conversations with his criminal defense lawyer. He was just a little gun shy. He decided to stay away from DMN and only communicate by phone. No more hanging out hearing the stories of Jimmy Labate. Now it was strictly business. If Jeffrey needed people to push a stock, he could help. No matter how optimistic Jeffrey was about the whole thing, Cary’s plan was to ease his way out of DMN within a year.

Besides, Jeffrey was swimming in deals. On most days at DMN, Jimmy Labate and his Mafia pals might stop in once or twice a week. Robert Lino would drop by weekly for his envelope. Brokers Jeffrey worked with would stop by to complain or demand more money. But everybody who stopped in to DMN was just passing through. The only one who was there each and every day from before seven in the morning until after eight at night was Jeffrey Pokross, the hardest working guy in the place.

Usually he worked two phones at once. Routinely he screamed at his sister, his partners, anybody who walked into his office. That was how he did business. Never talking, always screaming. Nothing was ever going right for him. The amount of time to execute a sale, the spreadsheet information handed to him by an assistant, the presence of too much cream in his coffee—all of this made him irritable, even more so than before he was arrested.

Sure he’d walked away from the ordeal with nothing on his record. He’d told Sal and Jimmy that even if he’d been forced to plead guilty, the amount of money was low enough that the rules governing prison sentences would have allowed him to receive a sentence of probation only. He wouldn’t have had to do a day in jail no matter what. But he felt the charges were bogus and demanded that they be dismissed. He’d advised Cary Cimino to do the same. Surprising nearly everyone, they prevailed. All the charges against both Jeffrey and Cary were dropped by prosecutors in the Manhattan U.S. Attorney’s white collar crime unit.

The Wall Street Journal reporter was a young girl named Peggy something, probably straight out of journalism school. The idea she was pitching to Cary was this: there were a lot of single guys working on the Street with money to burn, and she was interested in how they were burning it.

Cary took her on a tour of his new 2,100-square-foot Upper East Side condo, the one he was renovating. He claimed he planned to spend $700,000 to fix the place up. In the living room, he pointed out that the wall fixtures were candelabra that had been wired and fitted with lights. In the dining room, he showed her his Christofle china and silver for formal settings and his Wedgwood china for informal affairs. He made sure to let her know he had a separate set for his deck, which offered a stunning view of the island of Manhattan stretching all the way to the source of his wealth, Wall Street.

In his bedroom, he pointed out the antique box that held his TV set bolted into the ceiling. He mentioned that his girlfriend “loves everything,” which gave him an opportunity to drop in that he owned Pratesi sheets. He showed off the rack of Brooks Brothers suits, the drawers of crisp white shirts, the wall of silk ties with designer names easily recognized by readers of the Wall Street Journal. The Boston University biology major presented a tour of his art collection. Cary was comfortable with conspicuous consumption, though it was likely a phrase he did not remember from economics 101.

“No one wants to live like they did in college. We are finding ourselves in our thirties and forties, single, with the means to live well,” he said as the reporter scribbled furiously. “Everything in the den is Louis the Eighteenth and Charles the Tenth.”

He claimed he would soon be hiring a design consultant to give him direction on how to decorate his bachelor pad. The consultant would be given a budget and instructed to fill his apartment with even more important works of art and only top-of-the-line home furnishings. Not that this was a home. Cary hardly spent any time there. He was always out wining and dining, shepherding this model and that model from Cipriani’s to Lutece to Café Des Artistes.

In the kitchen, he told the reporter, “When I do get married, I will need a full formal kitchen. Now the caterer is really the only one who uses the kitchen. I have Cap’n Crunch and coffee in there.”

He mentioned he knew people in the movie business, and that he was semiretired. He was not, he emphasized, a stockbroker. He was a “private investor.”

She scribbled away. He felt he looked particularly good that morning because once he’d known that the Journal was interested in his story, he’d timed his weekly session in the tanning booth for the day before, plus he’d just returned from a week in Aspen. He kept waiting for her to ask about the arrests.

As they walked about the apartment, it appeared she didn’t know about the arrests. He would have been happy to tell her all about it, but why disturb calm waters? If she had asked, he would have admitted that in fact he had been charged with certain felonies. But he could also have said that his lawyer quickly got a commitment from the United States attorney to drop all the charges, and within thirty days of the morning he was arrested, all the charges filed against him had been completely dismissed.

By now, Cary was aware that the whole business of Thorcon Capital had been a disaster for the federal government. When it was first announced, it was a big deal. All these government lawyers and agents had stood in front of cameras and expanded on the nefarious nature of this major conspiracy. The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement unit even talked about honor.

“Billions of dollars change hands in our markets every day. They change hands on the honor of a broker’s word and the trust that is placed not only in the broker, but also in the integrity of our market systems. The people who were arrested today have abused that trust. The consequences for abusing that trust must be severe.”

Now all charges had been dropped against almost all of the forty-five defendants in what the FBI had called Operation Uptick—at least those who didn’t plead out immediately and decided to stand and fight. Jeffrey Pokross and Cary had made a point of calling up everybody they knew to announce that their cases had been thrown out. They’d said the whole thing was nonsense and shouldn’t prevent them from coming back to DMN. When Jeffrey started talking about a new deal, however, Cary wasn’t listening.

The Wall Street Journal reporter seemed happy with the answers Cary provided. He answered all her questions and then took her business card. She said good-bye and Cary felt confident about the whole affair. He was, of course, taking a chance. If she knew all about the arrests and was just using this bachelor pad nonsense to get an interview, he’d be screwed. So far hardly anybody he knew was even aware of his arrest. His name hadn’t made it into any of the stories written in the papers.

A few days later the article appeared on page B12 in the “Home Front” section under the headline “Bachelor Pads: Men Behaving Grandly.” The author was listed as “Special to the Wall Street Journal,” whatever that meant. It began, “Cary Cimino didn’t see any reason to wait to get married to set up his dream home.”

Cary had hit a home run. The article described his apartment, leaning heavily on the brand names. It described Cary as a “personal investor who has spent 15 years working on Wall Street.” It was better than Cary could have hoped. There were several financial advisers and brokers mentioned, but he was the lead example. There was mention of the fact that the consultant he’d hired charged people $30 to $60 a week to have their plants watered. There was no mention whatsoever of Cary Cimino’s arrest. Apparently the “special” reporter really didn’t know a thing about it.

What a remarkable world. In his years on Wall Street, Cary Cimino had gone from being a Bear Stearns partner to a vice president at Oppenheimer to struggling in boiler rooms to making millions—more than he’d ever imagined—with DMN and Jeffrey Pokross and his Mafia pals. He’d even been arrested and cleared. Now here he was, in the pages of the Wall Street Journal, portrayed as one of New York’s most eligible bachelors.

The phrase “crime doesn’t pay” was all wrong. “Stupid crime doesn’t pay” was more like it. Only stupid criminals got caught. If you were smart enough, you could walk away from anything. Now Cary Cimino was sure he could do anything he set his mind to, and nothing would stand in his way.