The Takeover Read online

  “Do you like my dress?” she asked.

  Falcon looked back at her but didn’t answer right away. He was lost in thought.

  “Andrew!” Jenny touched the back of his hand again.

  “Yes. Yes, I like it.”

  “Good. I know you don’t really like my wardrobe very much. I bought this one with you in mind.”

  “Madam, would you care for a cocktail?” the maître d’ interrupted Jenny rudely. He wanted to return to the front of the restaurant.

  Jenny glanced at Falcon. “What do I want?”

  She wanted him to order for hen. Somehow he found that appealing. “Want a drink? We’ll have that nice bottle of Bordeaux you pointed out to me earlier, René.”

  The man nodded and glided away quickly.

  As Falcon took a long drink from his water glass, Jenny leaned toward him. “Thanks for sending the limousine to New Brunswick. My father was very impressed, as was the rest of the neighborhood.”

  “Oh, sure, sure. I thought it would be fun. I didn’t have time to come down and get you, what with the new job, and we couldn’t have you coming up on a New Jersey Transit train, now could we?”

  “I would have come any way I had to.”

  “And did the driver bring the champagne as I asked?” He ignored her admission.

  Jenny nodded. “Please don’t ask how much I had. I’m embarrassed.”

  Falcon grinned. So she was already tipsy. She had seemed a little unsteady coming through the restaurant, but he had thought it just his imagination.

  “Don’t smile at me like that,” she said as she moved closer to him. “You look like the cat who ate the canary. That smile makes me nervous.”

  He glanced at her perfectly manicured fingernails. She was so different from the other women. Her attention was focused on him alone. She wasn’t trying to see who else in the place she had impressed. She was there to impress him, and only him. And she was so vulnerable, which somehow made her more alluring. “Don’t be nervous.” He smelled her perfume drifting through the air again. The scent was much stronger now. He had to be careful. He cared about her as a friend and that was all. A relationship with Jenny would take him in a direction he did not want to go.

  “Your wine, sir?”

  Falcon turned quickly. “Yes! Ah, yes. The wine.” He glanced at the label. “Lafite-Rothschild. Very nice.”

  Jenny moved slightly away from Falcon and smiled at the couple at the next table.

  After the steward had finished pouring the wine, Falcon returned his attention to Jenny. “You’re enjoying the evening, aren’t you?”

  “Very much. I hope you are too.” She raised one eyebrow seductively and lifted her wineglass. “Here’s to your new job.” Her voice became serious. “I’ll miss you very much. I already do.”

  Falcon broke the short silence. “Here’s to you, Jenny.” He lifted his wineglass to hers. “You were a wonderful executive assistant at MD Link. I’m just very sorry that you had to go through that awful scene with Reid. That the job ended that way.”

  Jenny waved her hand as she took another long sip of wine. “Don’t worry. I’m a big girl. I’m just sad about Reid.” She paused. “But I can take care of myself. I’ll find another job.”

  “Which is one of the reasons I asked you here tonight.”

  She looked at him curiously.

  “I want you to be my executive assistant at the bank I’m joining. The National Southern Bank. I’ve already cleared it with my senior people. I can offer you forty-five thousand dollars a year plus a commuting allowance.”

  Jenny stared at Falcon incredulously. “Are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Well, my answer is yes. I don’t even have to think about it. My God, you’re a wonderful man.” She leaned over and kissed him gently on the cheek. “Forty-five thousand. I can’t imagine what it’s like to earn that kind of money. That’s more than what my father makes, I think. Forty-five thousand dollars? Really?”

  Falcon smiled. “Really.” He stared into her eyes. She was so outgoing and full of life. So beautiful. Stay in control, Andrew, he told himself over and over. Stay in control.

  8

  Buford J. Warren, President of the United States of America, stared at Carter Filipelli sternly from behind the great desk of the Oval Office. For several moments he said nothing, and then he began to laugh. “Jesus, Carter. I knew you were a little hot-blooded, but for God’s sake, did you have to call him a son of a bitch in front of the entire FOMC? Couldn’t you have taken him in your office and delivered the tongue-lashing?”

  “I’m very sorry. There isn’t anything I can say. I completely lost my temper. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before. The guy is just so damn worried about himself and his Yankee buddies he gets to me. He really gets to me. I mean he’s worth millions, and all he cares about in the world is turning that into millions more. The greed factor is written all over him. And he doesn’t care about anyone who isn’t like him. Catholic, Jews, Italians, Blacks. He hates them all. If you’re not in the social register, he doesn’t want to talk to you. He’s a self-serving Establishment bigot! The kind of person you and I came to Washington to destroy.”

  “Why don’t you tell me how you really feel about him? Don’t sugarcoat it, Carter, just in case the Republicans are listening in.” The President winked.

  Filipelli’s eyes flashed around the room. “I know I’ve put you in a bad position. I’ll give you my resignation, if that’s what you called me in for.” Filipelli spoke in bursts, like a machine gun.

  “Nonsense. I need you to stay right where you are. I worked too hard to have you confirmed. I do understand your anger and frustration at a man like Wendell Smith. I did come to Washington to fight the power and influence of men such as him because you’re right, he is a self-serving Establishment bigot and this country can’t move forward until his kind have been pushed out of the way. Pushed is the word. Destroyed might be too harsh.” The President stared at the ceiling for a few moments. “Maybe destroyed is the right word. Anyway, I don’t want you to resign. But I do want you to apologize to him.”

  Filipelli glanced out the window at the White House Rose Garden. The bushes were in full bloom. It was an impressive spring display, but he could not appreciate it. His mind was on a million different things.

  “I know it will be difficult for you, Carter, but you’ve got to do it. I need you in your position, and I need you to be influential in your position. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, Mr. President.” There was no room for argument.

  “Unless you take immediate corrective action, Wendell will have a huge opportunity the next time he enters that boardroom. All of those FOMC members will be looking to give him the sympathy vote, and he may be able to influence them as he was not able to do before because of it. Don’t get me wrong, they’ll still be afraid of you. But he’ll have that opportunity unless you go all out to head him off.”

  Filipelli sighed. “Okay, I’ll publicly apologize to him.”

  The President pointed a long finger at Filipelli. “You won’t just apologize. You’ll take him to lunch for the assembled press corps. You’ll compliment him on everything from his cuff links to his nose hairs. You’ll never directly agree with any of his financial policy views, but you’ll laud his insights.”

  Filipelli smiled slightly.

  “See, Carter. Smiling isn’t so difficult.” The President beamed. The wayward son had come to the mountain and seen the light. “Come on, a little wider. Christ, I smile a thousand times a day if I smile once. I hate it, but I do it because people like to be around people who smile.”

  “You can’t trust financial people who smile a lot.”

  The President disregarded Filipelli’s comment. “Make nice, Carter. It’s time for your metamorphosis from a pit bull into a dip
lomat. There could be other jobs for you in my administration, but you’ve got to tone down your act. I don’t need an enforcer anymore—I need a politician. Do you understand?”

  Filipelli cringed at the thought of becoming a politician. “Yes, sir.”

  “And by the way, in the next six weeks you will be taking each and every other member of that committee to a special luncheon or dinner in his and her honor too. Individually.”

  Filipelli began to object, but the President held up his hand. There would be no further objections.

  “Is that all, Mr. President?” Filipelli rose.

  “No. I want your opinion on something.”

  Filipelli sank back into the captain’s chair in front of the great desk. “What?”

  “I’d like to think I’m a fairly modest man.” Both men grinned at the thought of the President having any measure of modesty. “As egomaniacs go.” They chuckled. “Pragmatically, I’d say I’m a pretty good bet to win another term this fall.”

  “With the kind of approval rating you’ve got, I’d say you’re a lock.”

  “Right. So, why in the hell are the Republicans serving up one of their rising young stars for me to slaughter in November? This guy Bob Whitman is the best thing to happen to the Republican party in quite some time. He was governor of Connecticut at thirty-four and has served one term in the House and one in the Senate. He served in the military. He comes from a self-made family. He has a truly magnetic personality. He is wise beyond his years, and he’s squeaky clean. There’s nothing in his closet. No women, no drugs, no payoffs, nothing. My people have been all over him for months. They can’t find a thing. I’ve met him a couple of times. Try as I might, I couldn’t dislike him. He’s going to win the GOP nomination in a cakewalk. Hands down.” The President paused. “But he doesn’t have a chance against me. Why would the Republicans allow him to run and be defeated? They’re not stupid over there.”

  “They want him to gain experience.” Filipelli lamely attempted to solve the riddle.

  “That’s why you aren’t my campaign manager, Carter.” The President laughed quickly at his own joke and then continued. “If I’m a Republican guru, I keep Whitman in the Senate for another few years. I keep him in Triple-A ball, where he’s striking out everybody he faces, building confidence, and making a bigger and bigger name for himself each day. I don’t bring him in to face Babe Ruth in the ninth with the team already way behind and Babe swinging for the fences just to pad his statistics for next spring’s contract negotiations. I don’t let him run in 1996. I wait to see what’s happening in 2000. Whitman certainly isn’t going to have a problem winning another Senate term in 1998. The long and short of it is that running against me this year is political suicide. He doesn’t have a chance. The only thing people will remember about him, if they remember anything at all, is that he’s a loser.”

  Filipelli shrugged. “All I know is that we’ve stuck it to the Establishment where it hurts them the most—in the brokerage account. And we’re going to do it again when we win in November. I can’t wait to see Wendell’s face the day after the election. I’ve already scheduled a meeting for that morning.”

  The President beamed. “We have pissed them off, haven’t we?”

  “Yes, Mr. President, and I love it. I grew up poor, and I don’t mind admitting that I enjoy seeing how worried Wendell and his cronies are about their money. He sees that we’re going to win again, and he knows we’re going to take a serious amount of his net worth away from him when he dies.”

  A silence hung over the room.

  Finally the President spoke. “So, Carter, you are going on vacation next week.”

  “Yes. I’m going fishing. Fly-fishing in Montana.”

  “How did a guy like you learn to fly-fish?”

  “I’m a well-rounded sophisticate, Mr. President.” Filipelli smiled again.

  The President chuckled. “That’s a good one. You’ve got more rough edges than a sheet of sandpaper. Of course that’s why I need you.” He bit his lip. “Well, leave a number. And make certain you take Wendell to lunch before you go.”

  9

  As was his custom, Falcon arrived promptly at 7:15. It was ridiculous to come to his office at NASO this early because there wasn’t even enough work to keep him busy from nine to five. Corporate banking was even easier than he had imagined. But he couldn’t sleep past six o’clock in the morning. He never had been able to do that.

  As he draped his suit coat over the back of one of the visitors’ chairs in front of his desk, Falcon glanced out the window of his fortieth-floor office. Humidity hung over the buildings of midtown Manhattan like a circus tent. It was going to be a long, hot summer in New York City. The subways were already stifling. And it was only May.

  Jenny moved into the office carrying several papers. She too arrived early, not to impress Andrew Falcon anymore, but other people at the bank. The fling with Andrew was over, she kept telling herself. She shook her head. She should have been smarter, because she wasn’t the type of girl who had flings. She should have known the tryst at the Four Seasons after dinner that evening would mean nothing to him. She should have been more suspicious of why they hadn’t gone to his apartment.

  Falcon glanced at the copy of the résumé he had been putting together and covered it quickly with a folder as Jenny walked into the office. He did not want her to see that he was still trying to get back into investment banking and out of this boring corporate banking career. And at this point she would probably be only too happy to mention it to the human-resources department.

  “Hello, Miss Cagle!” His voice boomed through the office unnaturally as he tried to be overtly friendly. “How are you this morning?”

  “Fine, Andrew.” She put the papers down onto his desk. “I need your signature on these.” Her voice was flat and indifferent.

  “Hey, let’s go to lunch today. Just you and me. I think we need to do that.”

  “Can’t, busy.” She flashed a quick, cool smile.

  “Tomorrow then.”

  “Busy tomorrow too.”

  “Jenny…”

  “Could you just sign the papers please?”

  “We need to talk.”

  “No, we don’t!” Her voice rose sharply.

  Falcon stared at her for a few moments. He wanted to tell her how bad he felt about taking her to the hotel after dinner. How he wished it hadn’t happened, because now, just as he had anticipated, their relationship was strained. He wanted to tell her that he truly cared about her. That he found her terribly attractive. And that in another situation perhaps they could have had a meaningful relationship. But he didn’t tell her. It wasn’t his nature to be so direct in personal relationships. In business, yes. But not with friends or lovers. Perhaps it was a good thing she had declined the lunch invitation.

  He removed the Cross pen from his shirt pocket and signed the papers. She scooped them up from the desk and stalked out. He watched her go until, without asking him, she closed the office door behind her. Jenny would have been able to see him from her workstation, and she didn’t want that.

  Falcon gazed at the closed door for a few minutes. They had been so good together at dinner—and in the hotel bed.

  He breathed deeply, then reached across his desk to switch on the Bloomberg terminal. Immediately the screen flickered to life, and as it did, he smiled. It was an amazing machine. It relayed every tidbit of information available to humankind in milliseconds—at least to an experienced user. It gave up-to-the-minute stock, bond, and currency quotes from exchanges around the world. It gave brokerage reports, general corporate information, airline schedules—hell, it could tell you the latest exhibit at the Louvre if you asked it nicely. It was his most reliable asset in the office. NASO personnel, at least the ones he had come into contact with so far, were morons compared to this machine.

  Falcon ea
sed into the comfortable leather chair he had brought with him from MD Link and spread out a copy of the Financial Chronicle on top of his desk. The Chronicle focused primarily on business news, as did the Wall Street Journal. However, it differed from the Journal in two important ways. First, the Chronicle also included an expanded sports section. This meant that businessmen did not have to purchase two papers from which to obtain their most critical news. Second, the newsstand price of the Chronicle was only two-thirds that of the Journal. These differences had enabled the Chronicle to grab a healthy portion of the Journal’s daily circulation in just two years of publication.

  Falcon knew a bit about publishing after working with several media companies at Winthrop, Hawkins, and he did not understand how the Chronicle could operate profitably at its current newsstand price, but somehow it had become tremendously successful. It didn’t make sense, but then you couldn’t analyze everything in life because if you did, you would end up in the mental ward at Bellevue. He had learned that early in his career.

  The phone buzzed, and he punched the speaker button.

  “Andrew Falcon.”

  “Mr. Falcon, this is Eddie Martinez in the Funds Transfer Group.” Eddie’s Brooklyn accent was thick so that every “er” sounded like an “uh.”

  “Hi, Eddie.” Funds Transfer was a back-office area of the bank, responsible for making certain that the billions of dollars a day that flowed through the institution ended up in the proper accounts. The back office was staffed by lower-middle-class stiffs from Brooklyn and Queens. The positions didn’t pay much, and there was little hope for significant advancement within the organization. Falcon felt somewhat sorry for Martinez, but there wasn’t much he could do. “Please don’t call me Mr. Falcon. Just Andrew.”

  “Oh, okay. Hey, I’m just calling to thank you for the case of beer.”

  Last week Falcon had delivered a case of beer to Martinez for being particularly helpful with a wire transfer of one of Falcon’s accounts. The wire had become lost in the system, and Martinez had quickly located it. The transfer amount was large, and the client’s chief financial officer had gone ballistic at the news that the money was unaccounted for. “My pleasure. You came through.” It was important to let people know they had done well.