Hostile Fortunes

By Jon Day

An athlete with a troubled past, schoolteacher Alexandra Dillon is accused of shooting her wealthy fianc. Tom Galvin is her pit-bull lawyer who has to prove that one of the most powerful bankers on Wall Street actually pulled the trigger.

As they search for evidence to exonerate her, the attorney and his client discover that the banker is a key member of a secret WASP society plotting to grab hold of the reins that control the nations finances. The society uses its extensive resources to insure that Alexandra and Tom do not expose its conspiracy. Even if that means eliminating them.

If John Grisham ever moved to New York from the South, this is the kind of suspense story he would tell. Terrence Moan, author of The Deadly Frost

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jan 18, 2002
• ISBN: 9781477174562

Book preview

Copyright © 2001 by Jon Day.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

CHAPTER 27

CHAPTER 28

CHAPTER 29

CHAPTER 30

CHAPTER 31

CHAPTER 32

CHAPTER 33

CHAPTER 34

CHAPTER 35

CHAPTER 36

For Nina

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

FRIENDS AND FAMILY members generously contributed their time and talent to the making of this story. To Pam, Peter B., Betsy, David, Anna, and Susan, Peter M., and Bill, my deepest thanks.

CHAPTER 1

THE CHAIRMAN OF the Federal Reserve System was worried. Harold Warburg sat at the vast boardroom table at the Federal Reserve Building in Washington and along with ten other members of the Open Market Committee, he listened to a briefing by a senior staff economist. What the Chairman heard disturbed him. The national economy was still expanding too rapidly. The wealth effect caused by dramatic increases in stock value infused consumers with a giddy confidence to keep on spending. Inflation was rearing its ugly head and Chairman Warburg fervently believed it was the Federal Reserve’s most sacred mission to prevent the corrosive effects of inflation. He had to raise interest rates yet again and the uncertainty that he had a majority of votes to push the increase through the Committee caused the pain in his chest to come back.

Outside of his doctors, only David Bucholtz and Jessica Skluth knew about his condition and he wanted to keep speculation about his health out of the media. The joke around Washington was that when Harold Warburg sneezed, Wall Streetcaught a cold and his heart problems were much more serious than a runny nose.

He had started to feel discomfort in his chest a year ago. At first, he thought it was just heartburn, but the sensation persisted. His doctor diagnosed angina and referred him to a heart specialist who told him to cut back on his twelve-hour-a-day work schedule and prescribed nitroglycerin tablets. When the Chairman’s condition worsened, his local specialist recommended an exploratory angioplasty to determine the extent of arterial blockage. Harold chose his high school classmate Norman Akner, who had become a nationally renowned heart surgeon, to perform the procedure at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital in New York City the following day.

When the briefing concluded, Chairman Warburg encouraged debate during which he attempted to build a consensus. Today, there was no substantive discussion. More and more of the Committee members had begun to sound like the growing chorus of critics of Federal Reserve rate increases from the Wall Street investment community. Like religious zealots, they stated their positions as articles of faith, not as rational conclusions developed by thorough analysis of the information at hand. Pronouncing that unemployment was at a thirty year low, gains in productivity off-set strong demand for consumer and industrial goods and that the appreciated stock market had a positive, not a negative, effect on the economy, they were certain that the Chairman was trying to fix something that wasn’t broken. He had lost his vaunted magical touch.

over the last few years, the Chairman had witnessed a recognizable decline in the quality of the Open Market Committee. The new members came from old money: Deere from Chicago, Comstock from Denver, Saltinstall from Boston and Lamont with his bow tie from New York. While most of them had graduated from elite colleges, Warburg was convinced that the only reason they gained admission was that their grandfathers or great grandfathers had donated the libraries and thegyms. They were, in Warburg’s estimation, pale intellectual shadows of their predecessors.

Until recently, the best and the brightest economic thinkers made up the Open Market Committee. Some were from academia, some were home grown within the Federal Reserve System. They had been, by and large, from modest or even humble circumstances, like Warburg, who grew up in a rundown neighborhood of Baltimore. A brilliant student, he had pulled himself up by his own intellectual bootstraps to become what some of his detractors called The most powerful man in America. As the terms of service of these bright economists and bankers ended, the new breed had replaced them. Listening to them, Warburg had an uncharitable thought. The discipline of economics involved complicated mathematical formulas and sophisticated statistics. Maybe the new members just didn’t get it.

The vote was close-six were for the increase, five were opposed. Warburg became increasingly tense during the process and the disquieting pain got even worse.

* * *

The Chairman was the sole passenger on the Gulfstream V as it descended into Westchester County Airport. When his long-time friend David Bucholtz offered his corporate jet for the flight from Washington to New York City, Warburg had gladly accepted. It was dark by the time the business jet landed and taxied to a remote hanger. Harold exited the plane and climbed into a limousine where David Bucholtz was waiting for him. Stiffly formal with most people, Warburg put his arm on the younger man’s shoulder as they exchanged warm greetings.

The President asked for you on Thursday, Harold said. You ‘re invited back to the game any time.

Of course. He and the Treasury Secretary would neverhave made three no-trump if I hadn’t misplayed the eight of diamonds.

He was impressed by your ideas on free trade.

Your ideas, actually.

You got him to understand something I’ve been telling him about for three years. I befuddle him. You made it clear.

They rode without speaking for a while. The silence was not uncomfortable. They had known each other for years, meeting when David was a Ph.D. candidate in economics at MIT and took Harold’s course on monetary policy. Then the economist for a huge Wall Street bank, Warburg flew up from New York once a week to teach his class and he and David became devoted friends. Bucholtz now ran his own very successful investment bank and money management firm. out of respect for Harold’s legal responsibilities regulating the banking industry and for the sensitivity of the information the chairman possessed, David never initiated a conversation about the economy or anything financial that could be construed as creating a conflict of interest.

The car stopped at the entrance to the elegant and discreet Plaza Athénée Hotel in the east Sixties where Harold had registered using an alias.

I can have the car take you to the hospital tomorrow morning, David offered.

I already have one booked.

Harold took David’s hand and shook it, not letting go.

Thank you for your help.

David could feel Harold’s anxiety almost as if it were an electrical current surging through his hand into David’s body.

It’s really a routine procedure, Harry. Only a few people were close enough to the Chairman to use this nickname.

You were my best student. Harold wanted to get the record straight in case complications arose during the procedure.

Then why did you give me an A minus instead of an A on my balance of payments term paper?

You were my best student, not my smartest. Warburg masked his sly sense of humor with an undecipherable deadpan expression. He got out of the car and went into the hotel carrying a small overnight bag and his briefcase, filled as usual with reports and economic data. David noticed that the Chairman did not walk with the usual spring in his step. Harold Warburg was worried.

CHAPTER 2

SINCE THAT COLD April night three months ago, Zana Dillon became jumpy when she was alone in Central Park after dark. David Bucholtz was supposed to meet her at the Road Runners’ kiosk near the 90th Street entrance on Fifth Avenue at nine o’clock and he was late. As she waited for him, her stomach tightened anxiously whenever a jogger emerged out of the darkness towards her. She was not annoyed or angry with David-she understood that he had enormous responsibility at his bank; even though he had the best intentions to keep business and social appointments, occasionally he just had to put work first.

Zana turned quickly to see if someone was coming up behind her, but it was only wind rustling in the leaves. The wind had been blowing on that April night, swirling the pure white blossoms on the flowering cherry trees that lined the track into ghostly chimeras. That had not spooked her. She had been oblivious as she ran. The shrieks of the children in her class at the Kensington School still echoed in her ears; the fumes from the toxic cleaner she had used to scour the oven at the bitchy woman’s apartment on Park Avenue still contaminated hersense of smell. But Zana had learned from her rigorous training for the Olympic volleyball squad that running far and fast would silence the sound and eradicate the stench. She willed herself to keep up a strenuous pace. Soon her breathing would fall into a comfortable rhythm and the soothing endorphins would start to flow in her brain. Then she would enter the zone where gravity tugged less insistently on her spirit.

Suddenly, that face had been right beside her, eerily silent, malevolence glistening in his anthracite eyes. Wrapped in a puffy down parka, he looked huge, a boy with a man’s body. Scared, but not panicky, Zana was confident she could outrun the punk. She had worked hard to regain her strength after her accident and she was in great physical shape. She slowed her pace, lulling him into thinking that she was about to stop, and then sprinted ahead calling upon every ounce of her strength. Zana figured correctly that he couldn’t get his large body moving quickly on his small bike and she left him behind. She was flying, long legs striding. Only three hundred yards more and she could run off the track to get to the Central Park police precinct at the southern end of the reservoir. Although she sensed she was ahead of the punk, she turned back to check and never saw the second figure step out of the bushes at the edge of the running track. He tripped her and she lunged forward, falling hard on her stomach, banging the wind out of her. Hardly able to breathe, she couldn’t yell for help or fight back as the two attackers grabbed her wrists.

They were pulling her into the uncaring darkness at the side of the track when David Bucholtz violently smashed into them with the ferociousness of a rookie linebacker trying to earn a place on the kick-off team. On his nightly run around the reservoir, Bucholtz had happened upon the attack and had the decency and courage to get involved. He assaulted the boys with such savagery that he dislocated the largest one’s arm; they retreated whimpering into the darkness.

Zana was almost as afraid of David as she was of the boysbecause his rage seemed uncontrolled. However, he calmed down as soon as the fight was over. Zana did not. She was still having trouble breathing and felt like she was trapped underwater. David had an athlete’s understanding of what the problem was and how to fix it. With firm, gentle hands he elevated her hips off the ground, allowing her diaphragm to expand so air rushed into her lungs, abating her panic.

You ready? David’s voice jolted Zana back into the present. David was right beside her, wearing his Harvard crew T-shirt as usual.

Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.

Zana’s blond hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was wearing the white spandex one-piece running suit that more than once had made him lose his concentration. Even though he could see that anxiety had distorted her smile, David thought she gleamed with the beauty and power of a sensuous warrior princess he had admired on an ancient Roman coin in the Metropolitan Museum.

I just didn’t hear you come up. Zana hated that she had become so jumpy and she made every effort to hide it. She didn’t fool David. He knew she was still haunted by the memories of the attack.

Twice around? A partner halves the distance. It was one of her phrases that he had adopted as his own.

It’s a done deal. Before she met David, she had never used deal and done in the same sentence.

They headed up the stone stairs to the running track that circled the reservoir. It was a glorious July night with the air so clear that the stars, usually overwhelmed by the city’s ambient light, shone brightly. David and Zana started out at an easy jog. Soon, she increased the pace, then David notched it up a little more. While this alternating acceleration was now a game they played, it had started out as a polite accommodation the first time they ran together. David had called a few days after she was attacked to ask her go running-an exercise date. On the track, they performed an awkward dance trying to figure out the other’s natural pace. Tonight, they hit cruising speed quickly and forged silently ahead, passing all other joggers.

Zana could see that David was concerned about something. He didn’t tell her what it was and she didn’t ask; they didn’t bring their work-related troubles to the track. Neither of them were reticent by nature but they had discovered that they communicated best about non-work concerns-books, plays, music, his passion for the Yankees and her love for the Dodgers. As usual, they ended their run with a sprint. As they left the park at 90th Street and Fifth Avenue, they turned to the right to walk south.

North of 96th Street on Manhattan’s East Side, the buildings were five-flight walk-ups with broken intercoms, walls too thin to shut out the sometimes indistinguishable sounds of lovemaking and quarreling, and heating that seemed to work only in the incandescent New York summer. Zana had an apartment in one of these tenements.

Below 96th Street, the buildings and townhouses had commodious, sunlit rooms with intricately patterned parquet floors and sleekly remodeled kitchens. The monthly rents could be more than the Zana’s annual income and the purchase prices were some of the highest in the world. David owned one of these townhouses in the park block of East 82nd Street.

As soon as she and David entered, Zana experienced a palpable warmth she had never really felt in his home. She was walking past the living room entrance when it hit her. The room, furnished with museum quality American antiques, was immaculate as always-his housekeeper was even more meticulous than David-but now there was a pleasant empty space on the wall between the Chagall and the Picasso. David had removed the almost life-sized portrait of his late wife Victoria Manheim who had died four years ago of leukemia.

Zana had always felt like a country mouse impaled on an examination table by Victoria’s cool, urbane gaze staring down from the painting. Zana patted David affectionately on his butt as they went into the designer kitchen where they ate flawless pears and drank bottled water before heading up to the bedroom.

I have something for you, David said as they reached the top of the stairs and he led her into his study. The testosterone level here was distinctly higher than in the rest of the house. The complicated stereo looked as if you needed an electrical engineering degree to figure out how to run it. David pulled the top desk drawer and found it was locked. While he looked for the key, Zana casually researched David’s past by inspecting the photographs on the walls. There were a number of framed black-and-white shots of a younger David standing on a boathouse dock as a member of Harvard’s eight-man varsity crew. Several color photos showed David and other hunters standing or kneeling next to game they had shot: a bighorn sheep near a mountain top, a wild boar and a string of ducks. Zana wasn’t a fan of hunting but she liked the fact that David didn’t spend all his spare time shopping for antique furniture and French paintings. A photo of Victoria Manheim as a child, wearing a white dress and reading a book on a perfectly manicured lawn that sloped down to the ocean was hung next to Zana’s favorite picture. It was of a mountaintop drenched in the warmth of early morning sun. David had proposed to her here.

Z.

She turned and he handed her a black nylon fanny pack. Quick-release Velcro held the cover in place. She pulled it open and saw a small, short-barreled revolver.

What’s this?

For when you’re out running alone

She took out a Sturm, Ruger .32, turning it over in her hands like someone who had never held a pistol.

I can’t take this.

I’ve got the carry permit application already filled out to submit to the police.

I don’t like guns, David, and besides, if this is the model for joggers, then where’s the Nike swoosh?

CHAPTER 3

IN SUITE 1202 of the Plaza Anthénée, the telephone rang just before nine o’clock. It was Jessica Skluth and she needed to be with him. Harold Warburg did not recall telling her that he was going to be in New York and, for a fleeting moment, he wondered how she knew. While he could recite the precise figures for the Gross Domestic Product over the last fifty years, day-to-day details passed in and out of his mind like butterflies at a July picnic. Although tired and anxious about the upcoming angioplasty, he agreed to see her. It was almost impossible to say No to her. She had been there for him in his time of need.

While his wife Sylvia lay in New York’s Sloane-Kettering Hospital dying of cancer, he sat by her bed holding her hand for most of the day. Then he would eat dinner by himself at an unpretentious Italian restaurant on Second Avenue where he read staff reports and reviewed economic data. It was Jessica’s red hair that caught his eye and distracted him from his reading. The Chairman was famous in the high-powered Washington social circuit for being indifferent to all manifestations of feminine charms but the red hair of this girl eating alone in the

Italian restaurant captured light and ignited it into flame, just as Sylvia’s red hair had captured the light on their first date forty-two years ago. Harold Warburg watched the red-haired woman eating by herself night after night and, since she was young enough to be his daughter, that seemingly protective age difference allowed him to forgo his natural reticence. He exchanged pleasantries with her and one day he shyly asked if she would like to join him.

From their conversations, he discerned that she had a low-level position at some kind of research facility and this allowed him to relax with her. It would not matter if he let slip some privileged piece of information since she appeared to know next to nothing about economics and the Federal Reserve System. They always found something to talk about, sharing interests in Puccini operas and crossword puzzles. On several Sunday mornings over brunch, they worked on the Times puzzle together. With her easy wit and love of life, Jessica reminded Harold of Sylvia when she was young and brimming with robust health.

After Sylvia’s death, Jessica held Harold in her arms through the dark nights while he cried for another woman. She listened to his stories that always seemed to focus on Sylvia and she cooked him a pot-roast using Sylvia’s recipe. Jessica had saved him from going to pieces and they became lovers. Harold thought of himself as a decent man. If Jessica needed to see him tonight, he would not refuse.

When Jessica arrived at his hotel room, her eyes were red and puffy. She told him that her best friend had just been killed in a car accident in California. Now he consoled her. She nestled against his shoulder and hugged him.

He held her closely for over an hour. Her hugs slowly evolved into caresses. She wanted to make love to him but he demurred. His angina had been severe the last few days and he was worried that the excitement would not be good for him. But she was insistent in a gentle way. He let her fondle himuntil he became hard and his ardor subdued any apprehension. They moved to the bed and she undressed him. As Harold lay back, he placed his pills on the nightstand within easy reach. Jessica straddled him and guided him inside her with her hand. He looked up at her and was captivated by how beautiful she was. But the pain in his chest was becoming more intense and when his left arm started to ache, he got scared.

I have to stop, Jessica.

She was lost in her sensuality, eyes closed, head arched back.

Harold felt a vice contracting around his chest.

Please, Sweetie. He had always reserved that name for Sylvia.

I need my medication.

He reached for the pills but they were beyond his grasp. Jessica continued grinding her pelvis against him, almost pinning him to the bed. He arched his back to move close enough to grab the pills, but Jessica pushed the bottle out of his reach.

At first, Harold didn’t realize what was happening. The pain overwhelmed him and destroyed his ability to comprehend. There was nothing else in the world but the crushing weight he felt inside his chest. It was terrifying. All he could do was to grunt. Jessica thought the sounds were not so different from the moans he made when he ejaculated.

Harold looked into her eyes, pleading, but he saw no mercy and now he understood. She had deliberately put the pills out of reach. He had loved her and he had been so sure that she loved him. This most profound betrayal shattered the hard resolve of his will to live into pieces like pliers splitting a walnut shell.

Sylvia, he grunted as he shuddered and then lay absolutely still. For a long moment, she stayed on top of him, almost in a post-coital glow. Then, still naked, she got a washcloth from the bathroom and cleaned her fluids off him to remove any traces of DNA. She pushed the bottle of pills back within his reach. She wiped clean any hard surface she might have touched with her fingers or palms. She wrestled Harold into his pajamas and arranged him in the bed to look as if he had died in his sleep. Almost lovingly, she tucked the blankets and sheets around him.

In the bathroom, Jessica disguised herself with heavy pancake make-up and a wig of jet-black hair she had stashed in her purse. With horn-rimmed glasses, she had quickly transformed herself into someone who looked entirely different. She listened at the exit door for a long time until she was sure no one was in the corridor outside. For a moment, she felt the urge to go back and kiss Harold, but quickly realized that would only make it worse.

They had rented a room for her under an assumed name on the same floor and paid for it in cash. Jessica made it back there without anyone seeing her. The next morning she left the hotel at six thirty; still wearing the wig and glasses, she had on a tailored business suit and carried a Coach briefcase as if she were going to a business breakfast. On East 60th street, a black car waited. She got into the back seat and the car pulled quickly away from the curb. Ned Buick drove aggressively, swerving through traffic. He had the sloping shoulders of an ex-football player and his short blond hair defied any and all brushes; it was as unruly as windblown straw.

He die with a smile on his face?

This did not merit a response. In her mind’s eye, Jessica saw Harold’s pale gray eyes pleading with her.

Really, did he say anything before? Ned asked.

No.

Nothing?

Nothing.

None of the usual little gems about what industry sector is going to prosper after the interest rate hike?

No.

Come on. Don’t save all the good stuff for Jack.

To shut him up, Jessica said, He said ‘Sylvia.’

Sylvania?

Sylvia.

That a new dot com company?

She said nothing more to him.