Trump Tower (51 page)

“I don't think I care anymore.”

He dared, “I heard your daughter say that she does.”

Rebecca stood up. “My daughter has her own life. This is mine. I'm sorry.” She looked at Vela, “I will see that you get paid for this week . . . I'm sorry . . .”

And then she walked out.

“Señor?” Vela shrugged. “I must leave, too.”

He looked around at the mess.

All sorts of questions ran through his mind.

If Rebecca wants out, why shouldn't she walk away? If the police aren't going to bother, why should I? If Vela is afraid to stay in the building because Riordan is threatening to have him arrested, why shouldn't he leave? If Riordan is looking for a fight, why should I accommodate him?

“Señor?”

He turned to Vela. “Have you got a cell phone? Let me have the number.”

Vela gave it to him, and Belasco typed it into his BlackBerry.

“Stay here and start cleaning up. You will not be arrested. I give you my word. But lock the door. If Mrs. Battelli needs to come back, she has a key. If I need you, I'll call your cell. Take my number.” Belasco gave it to him. “If someone tries to get in, phone me immediately. If Mr. Riordan shows up, or if he contacts you, phone me.”

“Señor,” Vela was obviously afraid. “I have a wife and a baby. I need to find a job.”

“For the time being, you have one. Start putting this mess into order. When you get hungry, you know, lunchtime, call me, and I'll see that you get food. I'll check in on you later. But stay here and do what you can. I promise, you will be all right.”

Vela still wasn't sure. “If Mr. Riordan calls the police . . .”

“I will take care of the police, and I will take care of Mr. Riordan.”

Vela stared at Belasco. “I didn't steal that coat from that woman.”

“I know you didn't.”

“And this woman . . . Mrs. Battelli . . . she is a very nice woman.”

“I know she is,” Belasco nodded. “Go on, get to work. Lock the door behind me and don't worry.”

B
ELASCO GOT A NUMBER
for the main switchboard at Sarah Lawrence in Bronxville, New York, rang it, and asked how he could get in touch with a student named Gabriella Battelli.

The call was passed to a secretary in some office.

“My name is Pierre Belasco,” he said, “and I am the general manager of Trump Tower in New York. Miss Battelli's parents have a business in the building, and I need to speak to her, please, about a business matter, rather urgently.”

“I'm sure that you understand we don't give out any personal information about students or staff,” the woman said, “But if you leave me your number, I will pass along the message.”

He left the necessary information and hoped she'd phone back soon.

That's when Carlos Vela phoned. “The police are here.”

Racing back upstairs, he found two uniformed officers standing in the showroom with Bill Riordan. “What's going on?”

“This man will be escorted from the building,” Riordan said, pointing to Vela. “And if you get in the way . . .” he motioned toward the officers . . . “I will ask them to arrest you for obstruction.”

Belasco demanded to know, “What authority do you think you have?” He reached into his pocket and handed one of the officers his business card. “I am the general manager here, and Mr. Riordan reports to me. He has no authority whatsoever to overrule any decision I make. Mr. Vela is an employee of this company. He has his employer's permission to be here, and he has my permission to be here. If you like, I will have our company lawyer come here and spell it out for you.”

The two officers looked at each other, and one of them shrugged, “Sounds like a domestic dispute, gentlemen. You probably should work this out between yourselves.” He said to Riordan, “If you need us, call us. But . . . right now . . . this isn't any of our business.”

“Thank you,” Belasco said, and watched them leave. Then he warned Riordan, “Don't you ever try anything like that again.”

“It's not over Pierre.”

“Yes it is.”

And Riordan assured him, “No it is not.”

D
avid had phoned the Rojas brothers in Mexico, just the way Uncle RD had asked him to, and had done the deal with Gonzolo. He was the youngest of the three.

But in David's mind, Gonzolo was also the least trustworthy.

Hector, the middle brother, had phoned back to say they'd been in touch with RD and everything was great.

RD had also phoned to confirm the deal, adding that the Rojas brothers had agreed to a one percent facilitator's fee for David.

Late in the day, the third Rojas brother, Liberio, had phoned to ask for wiring instructions to David's account and, a few minutes later, Liberio had announced, $47,500 was on its way.

David said, “Thanks,” and Liberio promised, “If something else comes up, amigo, we will be in touch.”

Now, first thing in the morning, Liberio was back on the phone. “This is between my brothers and you. No Uncle RD this time.”

“What y'all got?”

“Heavy crude. Whole tanker full.”

“Where's it coming from?”

“Wherever.”

David knew that meant Iran. “What's the manifest say?”

“Manifest says Mina Al Bakr, Iraq.”

“How much?”

“Four hundred sixty thousand barrels.”

“Where's it going?”

“Trinidad.”

“How much you need?”

“The
hombres
we're talking to are looking for twenty. We're looking at spot minus fifteen percent. Call it, thirty plus. That's ten for us . . . we'll take two . . . you walk away with eight.”

David thought about it. “Send me what you've got, and I'll call y'all back.”

Almost immediately, an e-mail arrived from Liberio with the shipping and cargo information. Based on that, he started shopping it around. He hoped he could get it for less than $20 million, sell it on somewhere right away, and make a few extra points.

But everybody he spoke with was onto the manifest switch, and David knew better than to push his luck when it came to embargoed oil.

He looked at the paperwork again.

This wasn't the megadeal he was hoping to do, like a supertanker with two million barrels. It wasn't even, technically, a distressed cargo. It was a bunch of cowboys trying to offload contraband. He didn't even know who the sellers were.

What's more, paying $20 million for $30 million worth of contraband was looking too steep. He reckoned if he could get it for pennies on the dollar, then that would make it really interesting. Otherwise . . .

He thought about the Colombians.

If he took it on as a straight oil deal and put it through the “Curaçao Trading One” account, then, at least in his mind, this wasn't actually costing him anything. Even at $20 million, taking the Colombians' profit out of this, David reassured himself,
this could be my first $10 million day
.

He phoned Liberio. “For twenty mil they can keep it. Too risky. Tell them I'm in for five.”

“No way.”

“It's contraband.”

“It's heavy crude.”

“It was born in the wrong place.”

“They're going to say no.”

“Then that's what they say. Let me know.” He hung up, sat back in his chair, and stared at his phone.

It wasn't long before Liberio came back to him. “They may go for eighteen.”

“Five,” David insisted.

Liberio hung up, and a few minutes later called back. “Seventeen, last offer.”

David said no, “But maybe seven.”

Liberio said no but added that his amigos might be willing to do sixteen.

David went to nine. Liberio's friends came down to fourteen. David went up to eleven. They settled at thirteen.

Putting the trade through a shell company he'd incorporated years ago in Antigua, Sivle-Sevil Trading Partners—backward it spells Elvis Lives—David did the deal.

He e-mailed Wayne Grannum at the New York office of Caymans Comtrad, a private offshore bank, and asked him to wire $13 million out of his newly opened Curaçao Trading One account.

That was the overdraft account backed by the Colombians.

“What's going on?” Tina came into the office and sat down at her trading desk.

“Nothing much,” he said. “How would you like to have a yacht?”

She gave him a strange look. “Yesterday it was coffee, a
croissant
and sex. Today it's a yacht?”

“There may be some crude looking for a home. I'm thinking, if I can get in low enough and move it fast enough . . . and you once said you wanted a boat . . .”

“I also once said I wanted to screw Robert De Niro, but I don't see you offering him up on a platter.”

“Why do you have to . . .” He shrugged her off, “Fuck it, Tina, I was looking at this cargo and saw that there was a lot of room and thought I'd buy you something nice.”

She logged on to her computer. “No problem. How about if I get on it?”

“It's only another crude cargo . . . y'all find something really good for you to work and I'll shop this around myself.”

“No, put it up on the screen. I want to see it.”

He showed her.

“So fucking suspicious of everything. Okay, it's there. Now, like I said, I'll take care of this one, and you find something else.”

She backed off and started checking the markets.

And he began putting out feelers to dump the cargo.

He contacted all the usual suspects, offering it up as Iraqi crude, figuring that whoever took it off his hands could work out the manifest switch in Trinidad.

There were no takers.

“You see any other crude moving anywhere?” he asked her.

She switched screens and looked. “Yeah. Cargoes all over the place. One. Two. Three.” She switched screens again and showed him. “There's four. I thought you said the market was flat.”

“It was.”

“It isn't now.”

“No, it isn't,” he conceded.

In fact, the more he looked, the more the market appeared to be pretty average. Nothing spectacular. But there were cargoes to be had, and there were players in the game.

He wasn't even getting a nibble on this. And that didn't make sense to him. His price was where it should be. Of course, he could always drop his price down to undercut the other sellers—owning this cargo outright meant he had plenty of room—but he worried that if no one was biting, potential buyers might be seeing something he wasn't.

Going back to the shipping information Liberio had forwarded, he put the tanker's name into the shipping database at Lloyd's of London. The
Moghul King Humayun
had been built in 1981 by some guys in Pakistan who still owned it, along with six other tankers. He checked them out, and they struck him as legit. At least, they'd been in business a long time.

The ship flew a Panamanian flag. So he got on the Panama ship register and that confirmed what the Lloyd's database had.

From what he could see, this cargo appeared to have been owned by a company operating out of Dubai. But the company turned out to be nothing more than a plaque on the wall of some registration office on the Caribbean islands of Saint Kitts and Nevis.

Hiding deals like this behind shell companies was par for the course.

Logging on to a global tracking website to obtain a live position—a map came up on one of his screens—he found the
Moghul King Humayun
half a day out of Trinidad.

Tina looked up at the screen. “What's that?”

“The crude cargo.”

“You got it?”

“Trying to figure it out,” he said, hoping to avoid a straight answer.

“You got it or not?”

He hesitated . . . “Yeah.”

She clicked on to the global tracking screen and hit the ship's link. When she saw the name come up, she put it into a bunch of chat rooms. “Let's see . . .”

One of their big trading screens now split into four with chat-room gossip scrolling through them until . . .

They both saw it at the same time.

“Fuck,” he shouted.

Tina enlarged that quarter screen to full screen.

A chat room billing itself “strictly need to know” was highlighting this particular cargo with a red “high danger” flag.

“Shit,” Tina yelled. “David . . .”

He immediately brought up the flagged comment. “Embargoed oil. Shadowed by US warships. Imminent arrest.”