Pizza With Panache

PIZZA WITH PANACHE

by

Leo Wang

Smashwords Edition

© Copyright, Leonard W. Wang, 2017. All rights reserved. None of the contents of this book may be reproduced in any format, file, printed material, or other form whatsoever without the author’s written permission.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

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To my parents

and

To Lisa, Eddie, and, of course, Willie

This is a work of fiction. The story is imaginary. Any resemblance by the characters to real persons is unintended and coincidental.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter1

Chapter2

Chapter3

Chapter4

Chapter5

Chapter6

Chapter7

Chapter8

Chapter9

Chapter10

Chapter11

Chapter12

Chapter13

Chapter14

Chapter15

Chapter16

Chapter17

Chapter18

Chapter19

Chapter20

CHAPTER 1

Nick Papadakis got ready to sleep on the job. He jammed a used paper cup under the bottom edge of the door to his office. It wouldn’t stop anyone from opening the door. But it would slow them down. With a memo on his lap, he sat down in his swiveling desk chair and turned it to face away from the door. If someone opened the door, Nick would hear the cup scraping against the commercial grade carpeting on the floor and wake up before they could catch him napping on the federal payroll. Then, he’d swivel around, eyes open, memo in hand, appearing to be hard at work. If they asked about the cup, he’d say he accidentally dropped it on the floor.

Nick slept on the job early and often: a morning nap if the day looked unpromising, another nap after lunch, and a late afternoon nap if the day had been tiresome. Most days now were very unpromising and exceedingly tiresome.

As an Enforcement attorney at the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington, D.C., Nick investigated problems in the stock markets. He used to think he had a stimulating and fulfilling job. But after ten years at the agency, he wasn’t quite as bright-eyed and bushy-tailed as he had been when he started right after law school. The problem wasn’t that he had failed. It was that he had succeeded. That had been a mistake.

Nick’s 1950s vintage steel desk chair creaked in senescent annoyance as he sat back and opened up the Metro section of the newspaper. With the sureness of experience, he went directly to the bottom of the second page. The numbers were 2-4-19-30-44 and the Powerball number was 17. Then he glanced at his ticket. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit. He hadn’t hit even one number. His luck was going downhill. The last few drawings had been complete air balls. No matching numbers. Dammit, he’d never get out of this place.

He set down the paper and sighed. He had just finished lunch: a double cheeseburger, fries and a heavily caffeinated, overly sweetened soft drink. It was a bargain—a week’s worth of cholesterol, salt, sugar, saturated fat, and partially hydrogenated fat, all for less than five bucks. With just one meal, he had covered an entire corner of the FDA’s daily food triangle. Okay, so it was the protein corner, which he never missed. His aim at the other corners wasn’t so good. He told himself he’d do better tomorrow, even though he knew he wouldn’t. When it came to improving his nutrition, there would be no tomorrow.

Not that Nick cared. The food police could preach, but they couldn’t write him a ticket. He settled back in his chair and closed his eyes. They said that the human body’s internal clock slowed down a person’s metabolism in the afternoon, and that it was natural to take a nap when that happened. Nick was all in favor of being natural. It would be wrong to be unnatural. According to his supervisor’s caseload printout, he had several investigations to work on. But working when he needed a nap would be a crime against nature. So Nick settled his head at a comfortable angle. His feet went onto a box of documents behind the desk. The ventilation system whirred softly, producing a somnolent effect. Nick began to drift. His back and neck relaxed. His breathing slowed. The hell with the lottery, he thought. The hell with his job.

* * *

Feeling good. Freddie was feeling good. He had the best same store sales in the entire freaking Washington metropolitan district for the third month in a row; and the best in the Mid-Atlantic region for two of the last six months. He had outsold guys who had been operating for six or eight years, even though he had opened his first franchise just four years ago. Now he had three stores and was hoping for a fourth. He was looking at a six-figure income this year. And that was just the part he’d tell the IRS about. As for the rest, why pay taxes when you could dodge them?

Corporate loved Freddie’s ass. He had to hand it to himself, he was a goddamn marketing genius. Was there anyone who didn’t like his pizzas? A couple more months like this and he’d win the prize Corporate was offering to the best franchisee this year, an all expenses paid week for two in Acapulco. Or was it Bermuda? It didn’t matter where, as long as he won.

Freddie floored his Mustang and felt a surge in his body as it bolted past a Camry driven by a middle-aged guy with a weak chin, short sleeve buttoned shirt, and a salt and pepper receding hairline that only accentuated the graying of the remaining wisps. Probably some bureaucrat with a masters in public administration or a law degree, who lived in Silver Spring or Kensington, and had spent his entire life burning holes in his stomach over memos someone had written about his memos. Or wondering why his boss hadn’t smiled at him in the elevator. While trying to ignore his whiny wife’s talk of buying a more upscale house and getting his daughter into a private college that didn’t want to accept the children of piss ant bureaucrats because they couldn’t sufficiently enhance the school’s endowment.

But Freddie gave the guy a big grin and waved as he roared by. Never miss a marketing opportunity. Freddie had the name of his franchises painted on the sides of the Mustang. Old Country Pizza, Pizza with Panache it said in gold letters that contrasted sharply with the bright blue paint on the door. Whatever he might think of the piss ant office slave, Freddie wanted him to buy pizzas—Freddie’s pizzas.

He pulled into the parking lot of the Clarendon store. It was 2:30 in the afternoon, and things were slowing down after the lunch rush. He didn’t really need to stop here today. This had been his first store, and things now ran smoothly. He needed only to spot check it three or four times a week, and he had already been there yesterday. But Janine was working the lunch shift today.

Hi, Janine, he yelled as he bounced through the door.

Oh, hi, Fred. Janine, a tall, slender brunette, was a student at George Washington University. She was studying psychology, or some kind of head science like that. She had a model’s slender figure, which Freddie liked to leer at. Her face was rather long and narrow, and more patrician than pretty. Janine intimidated Freddie. Intellectually speaking, she was about 8,000 miles ahead of him. But that was part of her allure.

How was the lunch run? he asked.

Okay. We took in a little over fifteen hundred. Janine was wearing horn-rimmed glasses, which made her look like a shrink—a sexy shrink. The intellectual look fit in with the image of Old Country Pizza—sophisticated, urbane, continental. Freddie had hired her mostly for her looks, and he made her assistant manager after just three months. Janine was a quick study when it came to understanding how to run the store. Then again, so, too, were most of the other college-age people Freddie hired. He promoted Janine because he wanted to get inside her pants. Even though she wasn’t knockout gorgeous, he didn’t meet many girls like her and wondered what she’d be like in bed.

Fifteen hundred is good. How does the inventory look? Do we need to order anything? Freddie stood a little too close to Janine, so he could smell whatever scent she was wearing.

I think we’re doing pretty well on most things. Maybe we need some more Portobello mushrooms and some prosciutto. And eight-inch boxes. We have only enough for tonight. Janine moved to wipe down the counter a couple of steps away so she could create some distance between herself and Freddie.

How is that new guy working out—Grant or whatever his name is? he asked, sliding over to close the gap.

Gray. His name is Gray. He did okay, but he didn’t want to wear a hair net around his beard. Janine took three steps further away to the napkin and straw dispensers to make sure they were full, even though she had checked them just ten minutes ago.

He’s got to wear it. Regulations. Hair needs to be covered by a hair restraint, said Freddie, following along to help Janine with the napkin dispensers, even though she didn’t need any help.

That’s what I told him, said Janine, in her matter-of-fact, competent professional’s voice.

Hey, those are nice glasses you’re wearing, said Freddie. He wasn’t going to get inside her pants talking about sanitation regulations.

Oh, thank you. By the way, there’s an e-mail from Corporate for you.

Shit. How clever of her to get rid of him with an e-mail from Boston. But he couldn’t ignore Corporate. Freddie went into the back office and sat down at the desk. He logged onto the store’s computer and went to the e-mails. Sure enough, there was an e-mail, which Janine probably hadn’t told him about at first because she wanted to save it for use as a defensive measure. Corporate said that all pizzas should have ten percent less dough, effective in two weeks. Nothing else was to change, but the company’s surveys had shown that customers wanted fewer calories. Never mind that real Italian pizza was doughy and chewy. This was America and the customer was always right. There would be an ad push on the local TV stations to coincide with the new lighter pizza, so all stores had to be ready to go on time.

Freddie immediately began punching away at the keyboard with his stubby forefingers. He had to get the message out to all of his stores right away. Ten percent less dough so the customers wouldn’t have those love handles. Then he’d have to print new recipes and tell all the cooks twenty times that they had to lighten up, because you couldn’t be sure everyone got the message unless you repeated it twenty times.

Freddie got the e-mail out within ten minutes. He started to stand up, but saw that Janine was talking to a couple of customers—young guys. He sat down again. Maneuvering her into bed was one thing. But it always helped business if the male customers got to talk with a good-looking female employee. Business came first. He decided to check his stock account.

Freddie looked around to see if anyone was nearby before logging into his account at Galbraith & Hastings. He wasn’t supposed to deal with personal investments from a company computer. Even though he was boss, he was expected to set a good example. That’s what Corporate said and Corporate was the real boss. He drummed his fingers impatiently as the website came up. The computers Corporate made them use were so fucking slow, a turtle wouldn’t buy one. Finally, the website came up, featuring an attractive brunette in her late 30’s, standing in a concrete canyon in downtown Manhattan, wearing a business suit and carrying a portfolio. There was a hint of crow’s feet on the sides of her eyes, and her neck was getting a little puffy. Her tummy bulged ever so slightly below her waist, but just enough to make her curvy in a sexy way. She had a confident smile, like she was on her way up the corporate ladder and knew it. Freddie wondered what it would be like to screw a girl like that. Would she be frigid, so absorbed in her career that sex was a distraction? Or would she be a wild animal, bursting out of her corporate cage at the end of each day to become a nocturnal huntress of men?

Then Freddie shook his head to clear away the daydream. He had to see if anything was going on. He entered the account number and then his password: Panache4U! His account came up after agonizing seconds of hesitation. Just like the month before, the balance was about $24,000, mostly in mutual funds. Freddie was just beginning to invest, and didn’t really have enough money for an account at a big time Wall Street brokerage firm like Galbraith & Hastings. But he had gotten a special invitation from his broker, Adam. He scrolled down the page, until he saw the message in red letters.

Investor Alert today: contact your broker for information.

Freddie looked at his watch. Holy shit, it was past 3:00 p.m. The stock market closed at 4:00 p.m. He logged out of the account as fast as he could, and ran out the store.

Keep up the good work, he shouted to Janine. You’re fantastic.

She gave him a wave that the patrons in the store would have described as dismissive. But Freddie was too busy getting on the road to notice her indifference. Time was tight. He burned rubber turning out of the parking lot. And then hit the brakes hard. Some asshole in a Geo Metro was puttering along in front of Freddie, at least five miles an hour below the speed limit. Feeling like he would burst from frustration, Freddie smacked his horn. Five times. As far as he was concerned, anyone who drove a pathetic little Geo Metro deserved to die, especially when they were blocking his fucking way.

Mr. Metro, a skinny guy who looked barely old enough to shave, and the kind of person you’d expect at a computer helpdesk, pull over a bit to let Freddie pass, and then gave him the finger as he roared by. It was the passive-aggressive gesture of a guy who knew he couldn’t hit back. Eat a bucket of shit and die in poverty, thought Freddie.

But he had totally forgotten about Mr. Metro five minutes later when he pulled into the parking lot of a convenience store. He stopped the Mustang next to the pickup trucks and delivery vans parked closest to the entrance. Then he got out and ran into the store.

There was a pay telephone in a corner. It was one of the few coin-operated telephones left in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. Since everyone and his uncle had cell phones, there was almost no need for pay phones any more. Except if you were Freddie, who always carried a pocket full of change just so he could use pay phones.

He put in fifty cents to get a dial tone. Then he dialed a number in New York, the general switchboard number for his brokerage firm, Galbraith & Hastings. An automated voice on the phone told him to deposit a couple dollars more. He pumped quarters into the phone until he had paid the requested amount.

Galbraith and Hastings, said the operator.

Adam Gallozzi, please, said Freddie.

Let’s see. Adam Gallozzi, said the operator deliberately.

G-a-l-l-o-z-z-i, said Freddie impatiently.

There was a pause. Then, oh, yes. I found him. One moment please, while I connect you.

There was some clicking on the line, and then a ring.

Adam Gallozzi.

Hey, it’s me. Fred.

Hey, Fred. You saw the alert.

Yeah, what’s up?

General Metals.

General Metals? That’s the company’s name?

Yeah, General Metals. You got it? The market closes in a half hour.

I know. Is it a good one?

I told you not to ask for details on the phone.

Come on, Adam. I gotta know how much to commit. I’ve got a margin account. I gotta keep track of my borrowing power.

Jesus, Fred, I told you to keep it short on the phone.

Adam. It’s my risk, for Christ’s sake.

Mine, too, you dumb ass, for talking to you. Yeah, yeah, it’s a good one.

Like there’s going to be a merger?

Shit, Fred, just buy the stock. General Metals. Got it? Later.

Freddie heard a loud click on the other end of the line and hung up. He quickly retrieved some more coins. Fifty cents went in for another dial tone. Then he dialed a second, longer number, and got a request for $5.50 more. More time was devoted to pumping in coins and Freddie cursed a blue streak as he dropped and retrieved one coin after another. But he finally finished paying, and the call went through. One ring. Another ring. And a third ring. Freddie almost screamed with impatience.

Banque Paradiso, said a female voice with a lilting accent.

This is Mr. Washington, said Freddie. I’d like to speak with Enrico.

Yes, hello, Mr. Washington. Please hold the line.

There was some clicking, and a pause. Then a tenor voice, also with a lilting accent, came on the line.

Mr. Washington? asked the tenor voice warmly, and, indeed, obsequiously.

Yes, said Freddie. Enrico?

Yes. This is Enrico. What did you have for dinner last night?

Jerk chicken.

Thank you, sir. And what may I do for you, Mr. Washington?

I want to buy General Metals.

General Metals. Please give me a moment to find the stock symbol.

Freddie could hear the clicking of a keyboard over the telephone.

Do you have it? he asked impatiently.

"Yes, Mr. Washington, I have General Metals now. And you would like to buy this stock?

Yeah. How much borrowing power do I have in my account?

Let me see. There was a pause.

Please, Enrico, the market closes in 20 minutes.

Yes, sir. I am working on it right now. I have to take the share price of General Metals and do some calculating. Another pause.

Freddie practically punched out one of the display windows of the convenience store as he waited. Fucking Enrico could be exasperating. God damn that Caribbean lifestyle; the guy never seemed to understand that, in the stock market, you had to haul ass every second.

I calculate that, if I advance you margin credit on our normal terms, you could afford 8,000 shares, said the lilting tenor voice.

That’s it? Can’t you help me out with some more? That’s not enough.

Your account is relatively small for our bank. And you still have two other holdings. We could liquidate those, I suppose . . .

No. Don’t liquidate anything. I want to hold the other stocks. Can’t you front me some more money? I’m a real good customer, said Fred desperately.

Yes, sir, Mr. Washington, you are a very good customer. We value your patronage greatly. Enrico paused, and then said, May I suggest you buy options? If you do, your effective leverage is much greater than any margin credit I could advance, so they can be considerably more profitable.

Options? What are they? How much money can I make off of them? yelled Freddie.

Options are investments that give you the right, but not the obligation, to purchase shares at a prescribed price. For example, you could pay just $300 for options that would give you the right to purchase 1,000 shares at a predetermined price. If the common stock price increases by just $1, then you will have a $1,000 profit on a $300 investment. That would give you a return of more than three hundred percent in rather short order.

Three hundred percent? That sounds great. How many options can I buy?

The three hundred is merely hypothetical, sir. I cannot guarantee a return like that. But the example illustrates the potential profitability of options.

Enrico, I wanna do the options. How many can I buy?

There was another pause.

It became a long pause.

Please, Enrico, the market is going to close in 15 minutes. How many options?

Depending on market conditions, perhaps we could purchase enough contracts to control 100,000 shares. Of course, there are risks in buying options. They have a limited duration and . . .

One hundred thousand shares with options? Versus eight thousand shares with margin? Shit, buy the options. Buy as many as you can, shouted Freddie, drawing curious glances from the unsmiling, silent men in work clothes who were taking beer and malt liquor from the refrigerated compartment next to the pay phone.

Yes, of course. I would be delighted. As many options as we can purchase up to one hundred thousand. Please call me after the market closes and I will give you a report, said Enrico unctuously.

Okay. Good. Great. Do it. Now.

* * *

Nick was shifting into REM sleep when a knock on the door sounded. Waking up was painful, like he was being pulled from a soft, warm bed into a heavy, cold rain. He stiffened his back and brought his head up.

Yeah. Come in, he said. He heard the door open and scrape the paper cup against the carpet. He took the next few seconds to shake the cobwebs out of his head. Then he turned his chair around and said, Sorry about the mess. Just push the cup aside.

A fresh-faced guy who looked like he was seventeen stuck his head around the side of the door, a confused expression on his face as he glanced down at the cup. Then he stepped in.

Hi. My name is Ethan Holt, he said, stepping up to Nick’s desk and holding out his hand. I don’t think we’ve met.

Yeah, hi. Nick Papadakis, said Nick. He had heard of Ethan, one of the new attorneys who had started this year right after graduating from law school. He leaned forward, took Ethan’s hand, and gave it a perfunctory squeeze. Then he sat back and looked quizzically at the new guy.

I guess you’re wondering why I’m here, said Ethan nervously.

I don’t know why I’m here, said Nick. So you don’t need to have a reason.

Uhmm, said Ethan, too new and uncertain of himself to laugh at the joke. I’ve been told that we’re going to work together on an investigation.

Oh, yeah? What case is that? asked Nick, a little surprised that a junior attorney was telling him, a more senior guy, that he had been assigned to a case.

It’s a new one. Trading by a bank in the Bahamas.

What kind of trading? asked Nick. He didn’t like what he was hearing. Investigating a Bahamian bank meant all kinds of international complications. He’d waste a lot of time dancing through treaty requirements and other protocol, and then most of the information from overseas would be useless. To make things worse, he had a new guy to work with. He’d end up doing the investigation himself while also training the new guy. Ethan would be unsure of himself and Nick would have to bolster his confidence. Ethan would make mistakes and the supervisors would hold Nick responsible because he was more senior. Working with a new guy could really suck.

Potential insider trading. The bank bought a lot of options of a company called General Metals just before another company announced that it was going to merge with General Metals, said Ethan, whose voice was rising with excitement. He seemed to Nick to be getting younger and younger as they talked.

How much money did they make?

I think it’s a couple of million, total.

Nick allowed his professional curiosity to be piqued ever so slightly.

That’s more than I make in a week. What do you know about the trading?

There’s this, said Ethan, handing over a sheaf of faxes. Pat gave them to me.

Let’s see, said Nick. He quickly scanned the documents, which were trading reports from several of the options exchanges. Something called Banque Paradiso in the Bahamas had bought up every option in sight just before the market closed a few days ago. It had spread the trading out among seven or eight brokerage firms, which had then bought options in several exchanges. The announcement of the acquisition for General Metals had popped the stock price up by $10 per share. The options had increased exponentially in value. Some of the really cheap options—the ones they called out of the money—had increased twenty fold in value. Not a bad return on a twenty-four hour investment. Then the bank had sold the options and made off with a couple million.

So what do we do? asked Ethan. Pat said maybe we’d go to court to freeze assets. But she didn’t really explain what that is.

It’s a lot of work, said Nick tiredly. Sometimes, if we learn of something that looks like insider trading, we get a court order freezing the profits where they are, usually at the brokerage firm that handled the trade. That means the brokerage firm can’t transfer the profits. In this case, the Bahamian bank spread out its purchases among a number of brokerage firms, which executed the orders on several different markets. Since they spread the trading out, it was harder to detect. The Bahamian bank then sold the options when they jumped in value after the deal was announced. That was four business days ago. The Bahamian bank probably would have gotten the profits by now, and we can’t freeze money that’s left the country. We can call the brokerage firms and ask them what happened to the funds. But I think the profits probably are gone.

So what’s next? asked Ethan.

Investigate, I guess. I’m going to talk to Pat and see what she wants to do. Do you know anyone in Market Surveillance? asked Nick.

Drew Nicholson. He gave me this stuff, said Ethan.

Okay, ask Drew if he can help you call the brokerage firms to find out if the profits are still in the U.S. If they are, we may go for a freeze order. But don’t count on it.

Okay. I’ll let you know what we find out.

I’ll probably be in Pat’s office.

After Ethan had left, Nick got up and twisted around a bit to get the stiffness out of his back and legs. Then he walked down the hall to Pat McQuade’s office. Pat, a branch chief, was his immediate supervisor. She was considerate, even tempered, and hard working. Her judgment about legal matters and people was sound, and she had a great sense of humor. Nick wondered how the hell she had gotten promoted. People as nice and likeable as Pat usually didn’t last long around this place, and almost never got promoted. Somehow, against all odds, she had been made a branch chief, the first level supervisor. But that didn’t mean she’d survive for very long. They’d put all the blame on her for anything that went wrong, take credit themselves for anything she did well, make her crazy and then drive her out, probably sooner rather than later. Nick could only hope that she would remain his supervisor as long as he was around, which he hoped wouldn’t be long. But he had nothing going in terms of a new job. Every job he might qualify for would just be more legal drudgery. He tried desperately not to think about that. When he got to Pat’s office, he knocked on the open door.

Hi, Nick. Come on in. Pat’s wide face and high forehead were framed by light brown hair, and she had a creamy complexion complemented by orange freckles. Her smile was bright and cheery, something Nick considered a near impossibility in the craziness of their workplace.

Hi, Pat. This guy named Ethan something or other just came into my office and said I’m supposed to help him on a trading case. General Metals, I think he said. I don’t even know this Ethan guy and . . .

Sorry, Nick. I should have told you about the General Metals investigation myself. I’ve just been so busy on this new accounting case . . .

The two-year monster they want done in three months?

That’s the one. You can ask me to roast a turkey in 15 minutes, but it won’t taste very good.

Maybe they’ll die eating it.

I don’t think we’ll get that lucky. Anyway, I asked Ethan to fill you in.

Yeah, he did. Big options trades. Lot of profits. Looks like about two million. But we didn’t learn about it until after this bank in the Bahamas—the one that did the funny trading—sold the options. So the money’s probably gone. I asked Ethan to call the brokerage firms with Drew Nicholson and find out if any funds are left. If they are still there, we could think about going for a freeze order, said Nick, unenthusiastically. He didn’t really want to go for a freeze order. That would mean working all night to put court papers together, and then flying to New York on the first shuttle tomorrow morning and fighting with the cabbie about taking the shorter, rather than the longer, route into Manhattan, then getting caught in traffic, then fighting again with the cabbie about whether not he had the meter rigged to run faster than legal, then waiting in line at the Clerk of Court’s office with no breakfast and no coffee, then wrangling with the clerk over the filing requirements and the requisite number of copies of each document, and then waiting in court while the judge heard every motion, and then every motion for leave to make a motion, and only after that getting the freeze order, but next wrangling again with the Clerk’s office about getting certified copies of the freeze order, only to do the cabbie thing again while going all around Manhattan to serve brokerage firms with the freeze order and listen to them claim that they didn’t know who the customer was, or they had no customer account like that, and then reading them the riot act about the meaning of contempt of a court’s order and suggesting to them that they search their records more thoroughly this time until they found the goddamn customer . . .

Ethan popped into Pat’s office.

I called the brokers with Drew and they said the money was already wired out yesterday, he said breathlessly.

Nick breathed an audible sigh of relief. No need to be heroic.

Well, I guess that resolves the question of whether we need to get a freeze order, said Pat. Just do it regular way. You know, see if there’s a connection anywhere, although I don’t see any easy way to crack this one, not with the international issues.

Okay. Will do. I can take it from here, said Nick.

Thanks, Nick. I appreciate your help, especially when I have the accounting beast on my plate, said Pat. Keep me posted. You’ve got a big case, and the front office is interested in it.

That’s too bad. I wish they weren’t interested in it.

No such luck. Thanks.

Nick walked back to his office with Ethan in tow. Shit on a stick. A big case that the front office was interested in and a new guy he’d have to train as his co-counsel. All he really wanted to do was close the door of his office, turn his chair to face the back, and snooze. In this place, thirty percent of the people did seventy percent of the work, and the other seventy percent of the people tried to avoid doing the remaining thirty percent of the work. Nick had made the mistake early in his career of working hard and doing his job well, becoming one of the thirty/seventy people. His reward had been to have more work piled on top of him; and he never got the easy assignments. He was trying to ease his way into the seventy/thirty category, but no one was cooperating. They were onto him, and knew that he was neither incompetent nor lazy. Since Pat was so nice and likeable, he couldn’t bring himself to disappoint her. He knew that if he sloughed off, the burden would fall more heavily on her. She was way deep in the thirty/seventy category herself, and it would be unfair for her to have more work. So he was stuck. He hoped the youthful Ethan wouldn’t be too much of a pain in the ass.

Okay, he said. Here’s how we start. We get the brokerage firms to give us the monthly account statements for this bank—whatever the hell its name is.

Banque Paradiso.

Paradiso. Sounds like the name of a cheap motel with a half-busted neon sign and lots of daytime customers next to a hamburger joint that still cooks French fries in beef fat. Anyway, we get the order tickets for the options trades, and any records of communications with Banque Paradiso or whatever it’s called. Especially e-mails. Then we want records of the phone lines the brokerage firm personnel used to talk to Banque Paradiso, and also any tape recordings of those lines.

They tape their phone lines?

Yep, a lot of brokerage firms tape phone lines. To make sure the customer doesn’t pull a stunt on them. But the tapes can be useful evidence for us. And we want records of the flow of funds into and out of the Banque Paradiso accounts.

Flow of funds. Anything else?

We have to contact the people who were involved in this General Metals deal. Who’s buying them?

A company called Sandowsky Steel Fabricators.

Okay. Contact both companies and find out who knew about the deal in advance. Also ask the same thing of their investment banks, lawyers, public relations firms, accountants, and anyone else who knew the deal was coming. We want lists of the people who were involved in the deal, and other people who knew about the deal even if they weren’t involved. And we ask them if they have any connection with Banque Paradiso, or whatever it is, or if they know anyone who has an account there or who works there.

Are we going to have them testify?

Not all of them. There will be dozens of people who will be on these lists. We’ll have to pick and choose. We also want a chronology of the events leading up to the deal. We need to know when important developments in the deal happened, and when the deal was finalized.

"Will we go to the Bahamas? I’ve never