The Gods of Greenwich Read online

  “I don’t understand much about them,” Siggi confessed.

  “Few people do,” Cy replied in his most disarming, empathetic voice. “In my opinion hedge funds have three things in common. We manage money. We usually charge twenty-percent fees on profits. And we’re less regulated than other financial institutions, because we each work with limited numbers of wealthy investors.”

  “But what do you mean by ‘hedge’?”

  “Fair question. ‘Hedge’ is a misleading word. It makes us sound like money managers who protect against downside risk—in the same way landlords insure buildings against fire. I do. But not everybody does. Like I said before, hedge funds manage money for wealthy investors.”

  “Well, that leaves me out,” Siggi noted, his voice wistful. “I have no head for stocks and bonds anyway.”

  Cy relaxed. And then he discovered a bonus. Siggi owned a small art gallery, two blocks away. The Icelander traveled extensively, spoke fluent Russian, and catered to an exclusive clientele of Eastern Europeans. This discovery thrilled Leeser, a true lover of art, a collector with eclectic tastes. Cy covered both his home and office walls with emerging masters from everywhere.

  “Would you like to see my gallery?” Siggi offered. “We can go when Hanna gets here.”

  “Not me,” Napoleon replied. “I’m going to bed.”

  “Me either,” agreed Tall. “Cy’s your guy. He wants to become Stevie Cohen.”

  Tall was referring to the founder of SAC Capital Partners. Cohen, a billionaire and king among hedge funds, owned the greats. His collection, worth $700 million by some estimates, included masterpieces by Edvard Munch, Pablo Picasso, and Andy Warhol.

  “I’m small time compared to Cohen,” Leeser added in a wistful, self-deprecating way. “Maybe one day.”

  Siggi and Cy could have yakked about art all night. But Leeser stayed on plan and forced himself to learn more about the Icelander, to ensure the art dealer was no threat.

  Cy knew Siggi was a happy drunk, incapable of holding his liquor. He knew the names of Siggi’s parents, not to mention his older brother and sister. He knew the Icelander felt a special affinity with his second cousin. There was only one detail Cy missed.

  Cousin Ólafur worked for Hafnarbanki. He was the managing director of strategic development, the senior executive charged with mapping out the bank’s competitive strategy. When hedge funds attacked, his job was to mow them down.

  CHAPTER THREE

  WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 19

  “You’re taking too long.”

  “Do your job, and let me do mine.” Rachel Whittier clicked off her cell phone, annoyed by his pressure. Who needed it? She had never failed her employer before. Two, maybe three more years of this aggravation, and she would tell him to take a hike. She would have enough cash and could stop moonlighting forever, or at least until she moved to Paris.

  “Get your boots,” a deejay advised over the radio. “There’s a blizzard coming.”

  Rachel gazed out the window of her Park Avenue clinic. All morning the squalls had threatened. Now avalanche-white nimbostratus clouds were dusting New York City with snowy powder. It was only a matter of time before they launched a full-scale assault.

  The storm would snarl traffic. The taxis would skid on rutted roads, windshield wipers slapping this way and that. The cabbies would swear and spit and smack each other’s fenders, while pedestrians slipped on unsalted sidewalks and scuttled from store to store. But Rachel’s green eyes blazed with gelid detachment, trancelike, in a nether zone.

  She was blasé about the holiday craze in New York City. She ignored Christmas decorations and the Salvation Army ringing their handbells on Fifth Avenue. Today was the day. It was time to go.

  Rachel charged out of the break room, down the marble-lined corridor, and found Doc in Reception among towering ferns and back issues of People magazine. New York’s foremost plastic surgeon, fiftyish and too Hollywood for her taste, was braving the elements to grab lunch.

  “I’m taking the afternoon off,” she announced. “See you tomorrow.”

  Rachel was not asking. She was telling. She owned Doc. He was the one who prepared collagen syringes for her treatments. He was the one who bought lunch whenever she asked. Doc was the boss, the big biscuit in the pan. But he said yes no matter what came out of her mouth. And she doubted her honey Texan accent was the reason.

  “Christmas shopping?” Doc inquired, ever the obedient dog with tongue hanging out.

  “You’re on my list.” Rachel flipped her golden-blond hair and spun around to retrieve a purse and winter coat. She could feel Doc ogling her from behind, his eyes tracing the starched white blouse and cup of her white skirt. He appreciated her sway. She appreciated her power, the ability to milk desire for control.

  Inside a private consultation room, which housed the staff’s closet, Rachel appraised her figure in a full-length mirror. She approved the fullness of her breasts. She cocked her head slightly to the right, unconsciously rubbing a raised, puffy, round scar on the back of her right hand. For a moment she scrutinized her thin hips, wondering if she had put on weight.

  The moment passed. It was time to get started. She was starved, already savoring the hunt.

  * * *

  Harold Van Nest resembled, if such a thing can exist, the poster child for grandfathers. He was seventy-two and balding, all belly and no butt, bright and boisterous with an ever-present smile. Behind horn-rimmed glasses that made him look scholarly, his soft brown eyes danced with infectious good humor.

  The women at the neighborhood dry cleaners remarked, “What an adorable old man,” whenever he left their shop.

  Van Nest was a creature of habit. For twenty years, he had worn a red bow tie and tweedy suit—inhaler in his coat pocket—every Wednesday evening regardless of the season. He sat on the same stool inside the Harvard Club bar and sipped the same drink, always a Beefeater martini with two olives and instructions to “shake extra hard.” He recycled the same stories with friends from their glory days at college, and he insisted his punch lines improved with each and every telling.

  At precisely 6:45 P.M. Van Nest said good-bye to Franklin Sanborn II and William Wirt III, who was known as “Three Sticks.” He patted Hayward Levitt V on the back and reminded him that poker started at 7:15 P.M. tomorrow night. They had shared the same game for the last forty years with Frederick Sterling Jr. and Samuel Harkness VI, both Yale graduates of similar vintage. Harold marched outside the club’s hoary wooden halls and into a New York blizzard on loan from Siberia.

  He hated the cold. It stirred up his asthma. Gave him fits.

  The red awning, white number twenty-seven, was losing its fierce battle against the driving snow. Monstrous flakes pelted Harold and buried his lenses. The drifts soaked his trouser cuffs within seconds and made Harold grateful for the rubbers covering his wingtips.

  The club’s doorman asked, “May I get you a cab, sir?”

  “Think we’ll have any luck, Robert?”

  “Never failed yet,” the doorman replied, whistling between teeth and pursed lips. Almost at once, a lone yellow cab appeared from nowhere in front of the red canopy.

  Van Nest scrambled for the taxi, the snow coating him from all directions. Robert opened the yellow door, and the older man felt a hand touch his elbow. He whirled around, sinking into the seat all in one motion, not sure what to expect. A woman with brilliant green eyes and a Paddington Bear mariner’s hat was standing over him.

  “Get in and scoot over,” she ordered, her voice a compelling mix of sex, siren, and sergeant.

  Ever the gentleman, Van Nest slipped across the black vinyl seat as instructed. He said nothing. He was dumbfounded by the sudden intrusion into seventy-two years of routine.

  “Where are you going?” she asked, her voice softer and more inviting now.

  “Upper East Side,” he replied, stumbling over his words.

  “Me, too.”

  “May I drop you somewhere?” />
  “I’m cold. I’m wet. And I could use a drink,” she said.

  Van Nest eyed the woman. She was in her late twenties or early thirties. He could not tell for sure. Her bold lipstick, a shade named Crimson Kiss, mesmerized him. Made him regret his standing reservation, a table for one every Wednesday at Il Riccio.

  He decided his life could use a little adventure. So what if he missed the seven P.M. seating. The decision was a no-brainer. He would rather spend time with a cute young thing than eat dinner alone.

  * * *

  “Can you pass my inhaler?”

  Van Nest pointed to the tiny canister resting on his bedside table. It was sandwiched between his alarm clock and the television remote. He had placed an inhaler in roughly the same spot for the last thirty years.

  “Is there a problem?” asked Rachel, alarm registering in her voice.

  There was no issue. Quite the contrary. Van Nest was savoring his good fortune. Inside the vast bedroom of his Fifth Avenue apartment, there were more important things to consider than his temperamental lungs. Chances like this were few and far between.

  “I may need a puff,” he replied with as much bravado as an asthmatic septuagenarian can muster. “Just in case.”

  “Forget it,” the nurse purred. Her eyes shone the emerald hue of a Bermuda lawn. “This calls for mouth-to-mouth.”

  Rachel had long since shed her black woolen dress with the deep neckline and empire waist. It lay puddled at the foot of the bed. She perched on Van Nest’s groin, taking great care not to rest all her weight lest she bruise the old man. He was lying on his back with no shirt but still wearing blue pin-striped boxers and black knee-length socks.

  “You’re quite the picture, Harold.” She giggled, not in an unkind way, but with provocative, come-hither inflection.

  The young nurse studied her reflection in Van Nest’s cheval mirror. At twenty-seven, Rachel Whittier was beauty in bloom. Athletic, milk-pure complexion, and five foot eleven—she turned heads everywhere. She was perfect by all measures except her own. For the slightest, most imperceptible moment, she frowned at her reflection.

  If Van Nest spotted the furrows in Rachel’s brow, he ignored them. For that matter he ignored his white oxford, red tie, and tweedy suit spooning with Rachel’s heap. Fastidious to a fault on most days, he could care less that his brown wingtips were still sheathed in waterproof rubbers somewhere in the foyer. He was wallowing in blond hair and lingerie and the sweetest perfume he had known for years.

  Rachel leaned down and kissed the patient. Her touch was tender at first. Slowly, playfully, she coaxed his growing desire. With each brush of their lips she grew more fervent. She fondled his ears. She stroked his eyebrows and nuzzled his chin.

  Van Nest forgot their age difference, the forty-plus years. He stopped worrying about his looks. Growing younger every second, he was lost in the moment. He was savoring the goddess on top.

  “I’ve died and gone to heaven,” he said.

  “Don’t rush me, Harold.”

  The tryst had evolved quickly—the cab, an invitation, and Van Nest’s favorite bottle of burgundy. The sweet taste of wine lingered between their lips still. He remembered how it all began.

  Harold: “Would you join me for dinner?”

  Rachel: “Just drinks.”

  Harold: “They keep a table for me at Il Riccio.”

  Rachel: “What’s wrong with your place?”

  Harold: “Do you like wine?”

  Rachel: “Only if you impress me.”

  Harold: “How about a 1996 Chambolle Musigny Les Amoreuses by George Roumier?” He doubted any woman could resist a premier cru burgundy from a vineyard named “the lovers.”

  Rachel: “I’m impressed.”

  Bottle spent and clothes more shed than not, she pulled back and sat upright on his soft stomach. Her knees were bent and feet splayed to either side. Van Nest, lying on his back, savored the sight. Her nipples strained against black lingerie, rose areolae peeking over delicate lace. He could not believe his good fortune. It was like being young again.

  The drought in his bedroom had lasted three long years, a purgatory of desire even at his age. Others defined “sixty-nine” as a sex act. Not Harold Van Nest. He recalled sixty-nine as the age he last got laid. At least that was what he thought. These days he could not be certain. His mind was forever playing tricks.

  No mistake this evening. There was just the here and glorious now of lace garters and black hose. A woman, young enough to be his granddaughter, was straddling him. Van Nest had discovered she was a nurse, and clearly she knew things, erogenous things, but he had no idea what would follow. The uncertainty titillated him. The more Van Nest ogled her breasts, the more he fantasized, and the more he craved his inhaler. The guys at the Harvard Club would never believe him.

  Rachel caressed his stomach, pushed down hard until he tingled. She kneaded his chest, first the left side, then the right, and worked her way along his narrow shoulders. Van Nest had never been an Adonis. Under the soothing touch of powerful hands, though, he felt like Superman.

  “Too hard?” asked Rachel, the gentle and caring nurse, the deft masseuse seeking feedback.

  “I’m in seventh heaven,” he sighed.

  “Don’t rush me,” she repeated.

  “Why do you keep saying that?”

  “You’re in for a surprise.” She tweaked him playfully between the thighs and asked, “Do you trust me?”

  “More and more every minute.” Van Nest found her question odd but played the game anyway.

  “Close your eyes, Harold.”

  “Huh?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Okay,” he complied.

  “No peeking.”

  With a goose-down pillow cradling his head and a woman rubbing his torso, Van Nest was happy. He dared not look. At seventy-two he could not risk a sure thing, and now was no time to take chances. He allowed himself to relax, succumbing to the wine’s afterglow and Rachel’s steamy banter. Gone were the qualms about saggy nakedness in front of a woman half his age.

  Rachel moved with a black widow’s fragile grace. The mattress eased under her weight. It sprang back as she shifted positions. Two clicks to his left, two clicks to his right, and four clicks behind—she was done almost at once.

  “You can open your eyes, Harold.”

  Her sultry voice, the timbre of innuendo, kindled his quiescent loins. It was aural sex, the way she purred and whispered into his ear. Van Nest opened his eyes and spied his inhaler. Like a turtle emerging from its shell, Adam’s apple barely visible under the folds of sagging skin, he craned his neck and appraised the situation.

  The sight, the sensation drained his breath. He was handcuffed to the headboard of his iron sleigh bed. He pulled with his arms toward the bars. Ankle cuffs held him fast. He lay spread-eagled, incarcerated by Rachel’s carnal web, one word surging through his thoughts: kinky.

  For the first time in all his seventy-two years, Van Nest would experience bondage. It felt dirty. It felt nice. It weirded him out. He had no idea what to say, but he was bound and determined to make the best of it.

  “Hey, I’ll cut my wrists, Rachel.”

  “Don’t worry. The cuffs are padded,” she explained, working his inner thighs. “And I know what I’m doing.”

  Van Nest agreed 100 percent, until Rachel stopped kneading and began rustling with a package. “What’s that?”

  “A girl can’t be too careful,” she replied, and showed him a condom, now out of the packet.

  “You’re kidding, right? I haven’t worn one of those in fifty years.”

  “It’s like riding a bike,” she purred, unrolling the latex.

  “You’re supposed to do that on me,” Van Nest objected.

  “I got your size,” she replied, not responding to his protests. “It’s extra large.”

  “Nobody’s ever accused me of that before.”

  “Trust me. I know what I’m talking about.” Rac
hel touched her forefinger to the tip of his nose, the gesture a cross between impish and provocative.

  “Hey, what happened to your hand?” he asked, noticing a raised white scar. It looked like a childhood accident, one of those puffy burns that make people gawk.

  Rachel recoiled abruptly. Her face clouded. She hated when people asked about Daddy’s little gift, the hazard that never appeared on cigarette warning labels.

  Van Nest saw her flinch and backtracked away from the blemish. “I still don’t get what you’re doing.”

  His confusion—whether real or polite diversion—proved short-lived. Half naked, Rachel scooted up the septuagenarian’s stomach and onto his chest. “Are you ready?”

  “All yours.”

  She relaxed for a moment and allowed her weight to crush his asthmatic lungs. Then she wiggled from side to side, using her bottom like a rolling pin to mash out his air.

  “Get up,” he gasped, the words wheezing from his mouth. “I can’t breathe.”

  Rachel moved lightning fast. A cyclone of twists and grunts, a few hellacious tugs, she yanked and jerked the condom down over his balding pate, down past his ears, over his nose, and finally down over his mouth. She cut off the asthmatic’s air intake.

  He could not breathe or comprehend why his good luck had soured. Hands bound, feet cuffed, lungs drained of all oxygen—he could not rip off the latex. He could barely see his inhaler through the .09 millimeters of a murky red Trojan.

  “Harold, condoms increase up to eight times their normal size,” Rachel explained. Bored and indifferent to his struggles, she examined her fingernails as the old man writhed.

  Van Nest’s panic soon gave way to a full-fledged asthma attack. His bronchi contracted. Natural spasms and man-made latex closed the oxygen from his lungs. Inflammation followed and grew progressively acute. Mucus filled his narrow airways. The padded cuffs that left no marks, pleasure toys of bondage, made escape impossible.

  “Just relax, honey. It goes easier.” There was a heavy Texas twang in her voice.

  Rachel waited for Van Nest to stop bucking. She checked her makeup with a flip mirror and fussed her blond hair back into shape. She admired the fullness of her lips. Doc did good work.