Royal Digs (6 page)

“Does that surprise you?” Roman asked me.

“No, of course not. Although, I’d given The
Governor more credit than that. I can remember my mother saying how
careful my father and his associates always were when they were
outside of their Naples’ control zone. They handled their business
in ways it could not be easily tracked.”

“We tracked it down,” Roman said, in a tone
indicative of a hate-to-break-it-to-you, good-natured taunt.

“But it sure as hell wasn’t easy. And it’s
something no average person with limited resources could do,
right?”

“You got me there, my friend.”

Even as I scanned in the information, with
match after match staring back at me from the screen of my laptop,
I knew we were still missing something big. None of these guys were
dumb enough to keep everything in one place.

What was I missing
?

I took a break from building our case against
Crumley and my father and sat down next to the fire Roman had built
in our hotel suite.

All at once, a dark shimmer of recognition
began to squeeze my heart. No. It couldn’t be. But yet it had to
be. There was no other explanation. All these years, that’s the
only piece I’d never figured out.

We finally had the key that my mom had used
to bargain with the embassy to get us out of Naples and then to
America. And we knew that key belonged to Box 438.

But that wasn’t all she had in her possession
the night my understanding of the world changed forever.

What about the note she’d thrown into the
fire? The note the street urchin had delivered to her. What was it
that my father had revealed to her that night, besides the fact
that he knew I’d been born?

There was only one way to find out. And for
that, I needed my sister and brother’s help. They were the ones
who’d gone through mom’s house after she and Alonzo were
killed.

“I’ve got to go talk to Bunny and Clito,” I
said to Roman. “You stay here. Finish matching up all these names
and get them scanned in, okay?”

“Sure thing. But why don’t I go with
you?”

“No. I’ve got to do this alone. Well, with
just Bunny and Clito.”

“No problem,” Roman said, then stopped typing
and reached for my arm. “Be careful, R. I’m not liking this at
all.”

I nodded my head and hardened my resolve to
finish this once and for all.

I didn’t tell Roman, but I liked it even less
than he did, if that were even possible.

• • •

“Thank you, Ross, for arranging this meeting
spot,” I said, thankful for his support.

The entire Bellesconi family had always been
there for me. Here I was, their primary protector, but now, they’d
become mine. I’m not sure how I could ever repay them.

“I’ll be right outside the door. If you need
anything, you know what to do to get my attention.”

I smiled and nodded. Since I was wired, and
Roman had the receiver I’d designed out of an American flag pin,
all I had to do was push my pin and his would vibrate, signaling
his assistance was needed.

“Take your time. This room isn’t scheduled to
be used until later this evening.”

“Thank you. Thank you again so much.”

If everything worked as I hoped it would,
we’d be gone long before then.

While I waited on both Bunny and Clito to
arrive, I practiced in my mind how I would tell them, after all
these years, what I’d finally figured out. How do you tell your own
brother and sister the depth of your father’s evil?

If my suspicions proved accurate, our father
made Bernie Madoff look like the tiniest of evil maestros. And I
certainly never thought that was possible.

I wasn’t going to sugar coat anything. That
had never been my style. They needed the cold hard truth, as did
the American people and the world markets.

Before I could get the information fine-tuned
in my head, the story ready to be told and the primary question
phrased, Bunny entered the small, walk-in-closet-sized room Ross
had arranged for us to use for our secret meeting.

“Oh, Raulf. This can’t be about anything
good, can it?” My sweet, but tougher-than-nails sister asked.

I didn’t say anything, just shook my head and
then kissed each side of her face. The older she got, the more she
looked like our mother. A fact that saddened me, while at the same
time, made me happy that through her, mom was still here with
us.

I pulled up two additional metal folding
chairs, and she took the one on my right, leaving the other for
Clito.

Thankfully, I was spared from telling the
story twice as Clito joined us before Bunny had even settled in
next to me.

“I love you both, you know that, but I don’t
think I’m going to be glad we got together today, am I?” He asked
in his smoked-for-years, gravel-laden drawl.

“Not at all, dear brother. Although, the
longer we wait to have this meeting, the worse off we and our
beloved United States will be.”

At that, Clito reached for both mine and
Bunny’s hands, forming a very small circle of trust.

“I don’t understand what could be so bad, now
that we’ve finally got back that damn key,” Bunny said, breaking
our circle long enough to ruffle up Clito’s curly locks in a
congratulatory gesture.

“The key was indeed a vital piece of the
puzzle, and Clito was masterful in getting it back. But, there was
one other concern in all of this, remember?”

“I’m afraid I don’t,” Clito said, looking as
if he was frustrated to not yet be on the same track I was.

“I’m afraid I
do
remember,” Bunny
said, squeezing each of our hands inside hers. “This is about the
street urchin’s note, isn’t it?”

“Yes. Of course. How could I have forgotten?”
Clito said then gasped, which lead to a rough, painful-sounding
cough.

His smoke-filled lungs were unable to take
any quick intake of air.

“You have been a bit pre-occupied lately,”
Bunny offered.

Her smile warmed some of the tension I felt
closing in around me for having to bring up our dark past.

“I think I may have finally figured out what
was in that note,” I said, watching the color drain from both
Bunny’s suntanned skin and my brother’s well-bronzed face.

“O
f course,” I said,
although the shock I still felt made my response to my older
brother little more than a whisper. “Giotto Bernini ruled in a
pre-transparent world as opposed to the efforts now being made
because of Dodd-Frank and Volcker.”

“Okay...wait a minute here. Help me out. You
know I’ve always left the Harvard level stuff to you two geniuses,”
Clito said, his frown failing to hide his frustration at not being
able to follow our reasoning.

“No worries, little brother,” I said ready to
give him a quick overview in layman’s terms. “Dodd-Frank was a bill
signed by President Ruvama in July 2010 to rein in highly
fraudulent lending practices and high-risk trades on very complex
derivatives and other securities.”

“These are the infamous trades like those
that should have nailed the balls of big-time banks like JP Morgan
Chase and ruined empires like Goldman Sachs and many others we
haven’t uncovered yet. Basically, these bad trades are the reasons
why Wall Street and our banking system were just about driven over
a cliff in 2008,” Raulf added.

“But I still don’t get what that has to do
with your father and his for-hire street urchin.”

“Part of the Dodd-Frank bill is the Volcker
rule, named after the former Federal Reserve Chairman who proposed
it. This rule sought to prevent banks, whose deposits are federally
insured, from conducting trades using those funds for their own
benefit,” I said, filling in more of Raulf’s story, having figured
out where he was going with this.

“So, you mean the money that I put into my
bank isn’t really mine anymore after I deposit it?” Clito asked,
his red eyes damn near bulging out of their sockets.

“Something like that,” Raulf confirmed.

“Again, where does Giotto figure into
this?”

“Have you heard of the London Whale?” Raulf
asked.

“He’s some big trader based in London, right?
He took huge positions in the derivative markets for JPMorgan
Chase. He’s the reason they have bad trades worth around something
like six billion dollars plus?” Clito asked, taking a deep breath
and looking very proud of himself for his quick answer.

“Exactly. Well done, little brother,” I said,
and then looked around again as if to make sure no one could hear
what I was about to say next. “Uncle Bernini makes the London Whale
look like a tadpole.”

“If legislation like President Ruvama’s
Vocker Rule becomes reality, he stands to lose not just future
deals with the banks he trades for, but faces huge claw-backs.”

“What do you mean by a claw-back?” Clito
asked, his eyes ready to glaze over as we took him deeper into the
financial circus with Uncle Bernini as ringmaster.

“Well...not only will he lose future deals,
but he’ll also have to payback what he’s already made from these
trades,” Raulf said, smiling for the first time during our
conversation.

“Oh my God! That’s it!” Clito exclaimed,
again with such force that he ended up coughing until enough air
could make it down to his lungs.

“That’s what?” Raulf and I asked in
unison.

“That’s why he chose Star Fish as his drag
persona!”

“I’m not sure I’m following you,” Raulf said,
and for the first time, he looked like the confused member of what
was left of our family.

“If he’s bigger than the London Whale, then
he’s the “Star” Fish!”

“Very good! But, in that case, he’s about to
be harpooned or washed ashore. Take your pick,” I said.

O
ur next stop to foil
Crumley’s presidential campaign was to meet with the various
agencies and international regulators who, in the wake of the
JPMorgan Chase London Whale discovery, were now probing trading
practices worldwide.

To unravel obscure activities that will
continue to have devastating effects on the pensions and bank
accounts of all Americans, we had to show these agencies and
regulators the truth. ‘Cause they certainly weren’t getting it from
the balance sheets handed to them by the financial industry
itself.

With Ross’s help, we were about to meet with
an emergency taskforce made up of representatives from the U.S.
Securities and Exchange Commission, the UK’s Financial Services
Authority, the FBI, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., the U.S.
Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the U.S. Treasury’s Office
for the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Federal Reserve Board
and Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

We’d reveal purses my father and his kind
play with that are valued at over $350 billion in cash, and that’s
just the value of the trades they regularly conduct with London
Whale-sized chief investment offices.

With investment banking big wigs like Chase’s
CEO admitting that rules like the Volcker Rule could have banned
the trades that led to our financial crisis, I finally understood
just how much my father had to lose.

And thanks to the countries he’d listed on
the note he’d sent by street urchin all those years ago just to
brag to my mother that he would be able to control her from
anywhere, I had an idea where to help the regulators focus their
searches even after they’d followed up on every lead Box 438 had
given us.

Before she destroyed the note that fateful
night, my mother had been smart enough to memorize the list of
countries. Then, she brilliantly made sure Bunny had a doll from
each of the countries on that note. My mom had been a huge
collector. But not until Bunny, Clito and I had met the other day
did we come up with the one collection she had left for Bunny that
seemingly had no meaning till we thought it through together and
realized how it related to everything we’d found in Box 438.

“The problem is, fellas, we might reach that
fiscal cliff we’re climbing towards like that damn Price Is Right
game before this election is decided. We’ve got anxious markets,
banks, fund managers and traders that may take action sooner rather
than later,” I said to anyone in the room who would listen.

“Is that a threat?” A gentleman asked who was
wearing a lanyard identifying him as property of the US Treasury
Office.

“Could be a promise, right?” The Chairman of
the Federal Reserve asked next.

“We know that your father has been taking
meetings with all of the agencies and regulators involved through
his associates,” said one of the FBI Analysts leading this
emergency coalition.

“How do you know that?” I asked, surprised
that my father would be so careless.

“One result of Dodd-Frank is that, in the
interest of transparency, all such meetings are listed on each
agency’s website.”

My father had never been good about keeping
up with technology unless it had to do with money transfers.

“And thanks to the documentation you
discovered in Box 438, we’ve been able to match up those
associations and partnerships who called for those meetings with
your father’s people.”

So, apparently, the FBI was finally finding
more than a bunch of dead ends. Good for them. Bad for my father
and The Governor.

“Okay then. This is where we can actually use
the fact that this year’s DNC Convention is going to be so open,”
my sister popped in.

“I don’t understand,” several of the talking
heads in the room simultaneously said.

Many leaned sideways in their chairs,
starting private conversations with other members of the emergency
taskforce.

“If I may continue,” my sister said, waiting
for the intensifying roar to dim, “Most everyone attending the
functions associated with the convention will have smartphones.
Many will also have tablets, right?”