Money to Burn

“He got a message you were cheating?”

“Yeah, but I deleted it. He never saw it.”

“What did it say?”

“Something like ‘Mallory is cheating on you,’ and then ‘beware the naked bears.’” She drank more wine, then continued. “I’ve never heard anyone call someone’s lover a ‘naked bear,’ have you?”

“No,” said Andrea. “Definitely not.”

“I Googled it, and all I found were old gay men with hairy bodies. Gross.”

Andrea’s glass was empty, so she took a sip from Mallory’s. “Focus, Mal: How does any of that make you think Ivy is alive?”

Mallory walked around the bar, hanging on to the rail as she came to Andrea’s side.

“Because it was signed ‘Just Between Us.’ And I happen to know that the song ‘Just Between Us’ had special meaning to Michael and Ivy.”

“You know what their song was?”

The way Andrea had said it made Mallory feel pathetic. People just didn’t understand. “You think I’m sick, don’t you?”

“No, not at all,” said Andrea.

“You’ve never seen Ivy’s picture. She was beautiful. Smart, too.”

“So are you, Mallory.”

“But I didn’t use my brain to build a successful career in Michael’s world. I quit teaching dance and spent all my energy on something much more difficult: trying to make him want me.” She shook her head. “What a mistake.”

“Don’t go there,” said Andrea. “You sound jealous of Ivy.”

“I wasn’t jealous. I just needed to understand. So I snooped through Michael’s stuff. I read every card and every letter Ivy ever sent him. That’s how I discovered the special meaning of ‘Just Between Us.’”

“So the message was signed ‘Just Between Us,’ and you knew it was from Ivy.”

“Mmm…no. At the time, I figured it was someone Michael was friends with when he and Ivy were together. Someone who didn’t want to get involved but who was trying to tell him that his new wife was no Ivy Layton. It just set me off.”

“What did you do?”

“I could have kept it to myself, bottled it up like I always do. But this time I was so pissed that I used it in a special birthday e-mail I sent him.”

“Used it how?”

Mallory did her best in her state to effect the posture of a vintage-1960s sex symbol. “Nathaniel filmed me singing like Marilyn Monroe.”

“How fu

“It wasn’t just a joke. In the subject line of the e-mail I wrote ‘Just Between Us.’”

The doorbell rang.

“I’ll get it,” said Mallory, but she had trouble rising from her bar stool. Andrea told her to stay put and answered it.

“Hey, Mallory?” Andrea called out from the foyer.

“Yeah?”

“It’s the police,” said Andrea, sounding worried. “They have a search warrant.”

42

JASON WALD WAS DIPPING INTO PLOUTUS INVESTMENTS’ PETTY CASH. The thick envelope atop the small, round cocktail table contained ten thousand dollars in hundred-dollar bills.

Boy toys like Nathaniel didn’t take credit cards.

The two men were in the lobby of the Plaza Hotel, seated at a table near the plate-glass window overlooking Grand Army Plaza, away from the marble stairway that led to a noisy nightclub on the second floor. For Wald’s money, the Plaza just wasn’t the same since the condo conversion, and he had agreed to meet there only because Nathaniel had “other business” upstairs: cheering up a new resident who had a slightly less-than-perfect view of Central Park from the multimillion-dollar suite that her Russian husband had foolishly bought for her, sight unseen.

Such punks Wald had to deal with-important work, to be sure, all of it totally underappreciated by his uncle Kyle. No nephew could fill the void of a lost son, especially when the old man had elevated him to sainthood in death. His uncle seemed to forget that he’d never even set foot in Marcus’ lower schools when the boy lived at home, never visited him at Andover when he went away in ninth grade, never took his son on a family vacation that wasn’t for all practical purposes a summer office for Ploutus in the Hamptons or the south of France.

“Does this payday come with a Wall Street bonus?” asked Nathaniel.

Wald knew he wasn’t joking. Nathaniel was cockier than a porn star with a foot-long tool-his previous job description-and more trouble than he was worth. Wald could have hired any number of handsome men to fool a rich, lonely Wall Street wife into thinking that her pleasure was this young stud’s reason for living. But there was no denying that Nathaniel had delivered the goods. He filmed Mallory’s “happy birthday” video, and it was Nathaniel who-without Mallory’s knowledge-embedded the spyware in the video before Mallory e-mailed it to her husband. The spyware monitored Michael’s keystrokes and yielded the passwords to his investment accounts. There were other ways to plant spyware, of course, but the beauty of this plan was that it hid the identity of the true spy and made the whole thing look like just another symptom of a failing marriage.

“No bonus,” said Jason. “Especially for soldiers who hold out on me.”

“What do you mean? I haven’t held anything back.”

Jason glanced around the lobby to make sure no one was within earshot. He waited for two rich Kuwaitis with their six blond girlfriends to cruise upstairs to the nightclub, then continued.

“I just found out that Michael Cantella got a message two weeks ago telling him that his wife was cheating on him. And that he should beware the naked bears.”

“Right, the text message,” said Nathaniel.

“You knew about that?”

“Sure. Mallory intercepted it. She was paranoid about him finding out about me. She started checking Michael’s text messages, e-mails, and voice mail for about three weeks to see if anyone ratted her out.”

“Did she show the text to you?”

“No, but she told me about it. It was like you just said-a warning to Michael that his wife was cheating and that he should ‘beware naked bears.’”

“Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

“Didn’t think it was important. Mallory and I even laughed about it.”

“Laughed?”

Nathaniel smiled and said, “I’ve never been called a naked bear before.”

Wald smiled back. It was understandable that a guy like Nathaniel wouldn’t know that a “naked bear” was a special kind of short seller. What amazed him, however, was the number of women he knew like Mallory: a graduate of an elite school like Juilliard who was married to a high roller on Wall Street-and who knew absolutely nothing about industry terms. Neither she nor pretty boy had any idea that the warning was about a bear raid on Saxton Silvers-a short-selling scheme that was orchestrated in such a clever way that the world thought Michael Cantella was behind it.

Wald pushed the envelope toward Nathaniel, who peeked inside. He knew better than to count money in a public place, but he didn’t have to do any math to see that it wasn’t enough.

“How much is this?” said Nathaniel.

“Ten grand,” said Wald.

Nathaniel frowned. “You’re five thousand short.”

Wald wrote a name and a phone number on a cocktail napkin and passed it to Nathaniel. “Call him for the balance.”

“Ian Burn?” said Nathaniel, reading it. “Who’s he?”

“Someone I can count on to get the job done. He’ll take real good care of you.”

Nathaniel shrugged, then rose and tucked the envelope into his coat pocket. The men shook hands. “Pleasure doing business with you.”

“Likewise,” said Wald.

Wald sank back into his chair, watching Nathaniel walk to the exit. He smiled thinly, confident that Burn wouldn’t simply make Nathaniel forget about the five grand he was owed.

Soon enough, Nathaniel would beg Wald to take back the ten thousand he’d already been paid.