The Insider (32 page)

“Among other things. What’s your point?”

“I don’t recall seeing anything on your résumé about trading gold.”

“Trading is trading,” Ramsey said calmly, “no matter the asset.”

The intercom buzzed again. “Off three bucks an ounce!” Fritz shouted.

“Enough.” Bo pulled the plug on the intercom. “Get out of here, Frank. Now.”

Ramsey stalked from the room.

Again Bo allowed his eyes to fall shut.

“Bo.”

“Jesus Christ!”

This time Fritz stood in the doorway, his shaggy hair tousled, tie-knot halfway to his belt buckle, white shirt wrinkled and stained with coffee, a lighted cigarette hanging from his mouth.

“We’ve got to sell, Bo. Please,” Fritz begged. “Teddy’s called me three times in the last five minutes. He was going ballistic. He thinks you’re trying to tank the family fortune with one deal.”

Bo smiled thinly. “Does he, now?”

“Yes.”

“After all I’ve done for him.”

“I suppose.”

“Why doesn’t he give you the order to sell?”

“You know he won’t do that, Bo. He doesn’t want to be held accountable.”

“Of course not.” Bo glared at Fritz for a full thirty seconds, then walked to the office doorway and pulled the cigarette from Fritz’s mouth. “No smoking at Warfield Capital.” He slammed the door in Fritz’s face and headed back to the desk, sucking on the cigarette. Smoke curling up into his eyes, he yanked open the bottom drawer of his credenza, grabbed a half-full bottle of scotch from between two files, and took a long swig.

It was three o’clock in the morning when Bo emerged from a taxi and stumbled into the small lobby of a three-story walk-up apartment building somewhere in Greenwich Village. He was no longer intoxicated, simply spent to the point of exhaustion. The woman he had met only an hour earlier at a SoHo nightclub and whose swaying hips he was following had promised him sex. He suspected she was well aware of who he was and how much his family was worth. But all he wanted was sleep.

He hadn’t been home in two nights, he realized as he watched her climb the narrow stairway. He kept extra shirts in his closet at the office, but tomorrow would be the third day in a row for this suit. How had a few drinks in a bar turned into this? he thought to himself.

The woman stopped and looked back over her shoulder, aware that he wasn’t following her. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

Bo gazed at her for several moments, then turned around and headed for the door.