Mallomar was picked up at Avjet and taken straight to a late night conference in Manhattan with his lawyers. He used three separate firms, so no one knew the complete profile of his holdings, his business methods, or his personal life. The downside was Mallomar’s legal triangulation created jealousy and suspicion. For example, the decision as to which firm would host this meeting took five days of haggling. It was only when they received a call from Mallomar informing them that he was “wheels down” that they quickly decided to have the meeting on neutral ground at the Sherry Netherlands. They rented a suite, brought in some vintage wine, and passed around Cuban cigars.
“Marvin, everybody in this room knows the insider trading allegation is absurd.” This was coming from his friend, Sidney of Glasker, O’Reilly, Ng, and Erlichmann.
“I’m sure it will be resolved in two seconds tomorrow when you meet with the SEC.”
“Have you been thinking about what I should tell them?”
“You simply say that your decision to sell drlivingstonipresume.com was based upon a unique trading method that you’ve been using throughout your entire trading career.”
“I sold drlivingston at the time I did to raise capital for another idea.”
“And what was that?”
He lit a cigar and took a sip of whiskey. Mallomar had always been a man of mystery when it came to business, and everyone at the table leaned in expectantly to hear the secrets of the organism.
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
“But…we’re your lawyers.”
“Sorry.”
Mallomar saw the looks on their faces and took a large swallow of whiskey. “So, obviously, I have to come up with something else, right?”
“What’s so wrong with just telling the truth?” a young attorney’s assistant seated against the wall was bold enough to ask.
Mallomar smiled.
“What’s his name?” Mallomar inquired of his boss and not him.
“Jeremy Greenberg.”
“He’s fired.”
Jeremy looked to his boss, who remained silent. He swallowed, closed his attaché case and left the room without saying another word. Mallomar addressed the crowd.
“Gentlemen, here’s what we know so far. One: everyone in this room is on an exorbitant retainer. Two: I’m not going to jail. Three: you better fucking think of something!”
Outside the Sherry Netherlands, the callow Jeremy Greenberg was waiting in line for a cab. Under the hotel’s marquee lights, he looked like a wax version of himself—as if he were about to faint.
“Hey, Greenberg…”
Greenberg turned in shock to see Mallomar. He held out a business card for him.
“This is the number for Albert Kohner of Kohner, Walsh and Anastasia. I called him on my way down the elevator. I told him you’re a bright kid and to hire you. You start tomorrow.” Before the dumbfounded Greenberg could say anything, Mallomar held up his hand to hail his car and walked out into the street.
His driver wheeled the car to the front curb. It was a bullet-proofed, black Mercedes S65 AMG that was capable of doing over a 205 mph. Mallomar climbed into the back seat and collected himself for a moment as a pulse of adrenaline coursed through his veins. When he was wired like this, there were only two things, besides medication, that could cool him off: food and/or sex.
“Where to, Mr. M?”
“Let’s go to Brooklyn and grab something.”
The driver turned the car into traffic and headed downtown for the Brooklyn Bridge. On the way there, Mallomar made him stop several times, first at a hot dog stand, then for a gyro truck, and once again for a taco. He could see the driver in the rear view mirror watching him eat.
“Why don’t you get something?” Mallomar said.
“I’ll eat after I drop you off.”
“Get a taco for the ride. I’m in no hurry.”
The second the driver got out of the car, Mallomar lunged over the seat to grab his cell phone—which he could see resting in the console. Quickly, he clicked menu>recent calls>received. Up came Dana’s private phone number under the code name, WRANGLER. This was just what Mallomar had suspected. Dana had been paying his driver to spy on him. He could have fired him on the spot, but didn’t. It was better to know what was going on and then tailor the information that got back to Colorado. Mallomar returned the phone to its original position just before he got back in the car.
“Should I call Peter Luger’s and tell them you’re comin’?”
“Naw, I changed my mind. I feel like fish. Let’s go to Lure.”
The driver called in the reservation and made sure they knew who Mallomar was. He looked up in the rear view mirror to tell Mallomar that he was booked, but Mallomar was on his phone using exasperated gesticulations—indicating it must be a business call he was on. Mallomar knew that he was being watched, and of course, was not on a business call at all. A few minutes later he was delivered to the front door of the restaurant.
“I got you a private booth in the back, Mr. M.”
“I’ll call you when I’m finished.” The driver watched Mallomar go inside and was promptly yelled at by a cop to keep moving. The moment Mallomar saw his driver pull away, he came right back out the door and crossed the street to the Mercer Hotel. There, a room was already waiting for him. He took the key from the front desk with greased efficiency and went upstairs where dinner from Nobu had been cabbed over from Hudson Street—along with two young Asian girls. One of them had been instructed to wear a USC cheerleader’s outfit, the other, UCLA. Mallomar, a City College boy himself, had always taken a keen interest in the California schools’ rivalry. When he had finished his order of sea urchin tempura, squid pasta, and chi ra shi, he slipped back across the street and called his driver. They stopped at Rice to Riches on Spring Street for some chocolate hazelnut rice pudding and then drove home—Mrs. Mallomar none the wiser.
Mrs. Mallomar called the driver the next day while he waited for Mr. M outside the Securities and Exchange Commission. From a small spiral notebook, he recited the boring details of Mallomar’s previous night. The driver’s per diem for this kind of work was a thousand dollars. The next call she made was to the doorman of their Fifth Avenue apartment building. The doorman received a $2,500 bounty for any information regarding her husband’s misbehavior with guests who looked like hookers. She had the same arrangement with a young female maitre’d at Balthazar where Mallomar was known to have dinner on the way back from the financial district. But Mrs. Mallomar’s most important contact in New York was his long-suffering secretary. Mrs. Mallomar had “turned” her many years ago by planting in the secretary’s mind the nagging fear that Mallomar could not be relied upon to provide her pension or medical care. Mrs. Mallomar offered her a form of “Co-Pay” in return for clandestine HUMINT. Satisfied from her morning briefing that her husband was too busy trying to save his ass than getting any, she shut down WRANGLER INTEL for the day and decided to take her first sober look around her husband’s dream house.
Mallomar, no slouch in the black arts of surveillance himself, had the best security firm in DC make the house “video and audio ready” before it was sheet-rocked. Cameras were integrated into the lighting fixtures in every room, every hallway, the exterior of the house and the outbuildings. Mallomar had his own secret website, and from anywhere in the country—anywhere in the world for that matter—he could, in real time, peer into his house from the privacy of his own laptop. That was exactly what he did the previous night when he came home with his rice pudding. The cameras, positioned on the house’s exterior, showed another beautiful Colorado sunset with high cumulus nimbus clouds moving slowly west to east. Mrs. Mallomar was in her room reading the label of, what looked to be, a bottle of furniture polish. Loyal Buster was sleeping on a bed roll on the living room floor. Mallomar switched to a porno site for a few minutes, then called it a night.
The first stop on Mrs. Mallomar’s tour of the house was the six-car garage where she hit the first clinker note. The phone box contained eight separate telephone lines. There was a dedicated circuit to the home security system. But it was neither of these that raised her eyebrows as much as did the unlabeled line that was connected to its own auxiliary power source. This could only mean one thing. Off she went to hunt for the video cameras which she was now sure her husband had installed to surveille her. Half an hour later, she was able to locate thirty-five in the interior of the house. To the lens of each, she applied a thin coat of clear nail polish. The thought of her husband spending half his day yelling himself red-in-the-face at his security company, didn’t quite bring a smile to Mrs. Mallomar’s face, but it did help take her mind off having a drink for the moment.