“No,” he says with a feigned smile. “Not at all. We work together sometimes. I actually manage an equity fund for Chase and sometimes Bob will bring investors in.”
“So you’re introducing me as a professional courtesy,” I say.
“As a friend,” Debray says, sitting down across from me and crossing his legs with a smile.
“I appreciate it,” I say.
“The best business I’ve ever done was out here in the Hamptons,” he says. “You develop relationships out here, and that’s what business is all about, isn’t it?”
“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s about results,” I say.
Debray is looking over my shoulder. He bumps his smile up a notch and jumps to his feet.
“Seth,” he says, taking an auburn-haired middle-aged woman by the arm, “this is Bob’s wife, Katie Vanderhorn.”
I stand and take her hand before looking into her yellow eyes.
“My pleasure,” I say. “I’ve heard so much about you, Ms. Vanderhorn.”
“I know a Cole family,” she says, “from Boston. Are you a Boston Cole?”
She has the high cheekbones of a fashion model, but the skin has been pulled back tight on her face. It’s shiny and smooth, unlike the loose wrinkles in her neck. She keeps her pointed chin in the air and her back straight. Her auburn hair is full and long and she’s dressed in a robe that hangs open to expose a fancy gold one-piece bathing suit and an impressive chest that also looks like it’s been under the surgeon’s knife.
“You wouldn’t know my family,” I say. “They were originally from Belgium. My great-great-grandfather was a minor noble who found a way to put the family money aside for four generations.”
“An unusual way to maintain a family name,” she says.
“Yes,” I say, “but an interesting and effective way to produce incredible wealth.”
“Money, money,” she says. “You sound like Bob.”
“I think you’ll find I have manners too,” I say. “I hope so. People say even a sliver of reputation with you will leave me welcome anywhere in New York.”
She sniffs at this, splays her fingers, and looks down at her nails.
“Martin tells me you bought the Jets,” she says.
“Yes,” I say. “I thought that if I was going to live in New York, I should own a team.”
“I happen to like tennis,” she says with a limp smile. “I understand you and Bob are talking business? I’ll let you two go then.”
“I hope you’ll join me for dinner sometime with your husband?” I say.
“I’m old-fashioned that way,” she tells me. “If Bob says we’re having dinner, then we’re having dinner.”
Then with a quick glance at Debray, she slips away and out across their private boardwalk toward the beach where someone has already set up a towering blue-and-white-striped cabana.
Debray’s eyes linger on her bare legs and a perfectly tucked bottom before he turns to see me looking at him and goes red. A voice from the direction of the house makes us both turn.
“Ah, you met my wife.”
It is Rangle, his face sharper than ever. His big dark eyes, barely separated by that pointed nose; great wealth has made him complacent. He has a little mustache and his hair has been dyed as if he tried to match his wife’s, but instead of auburn, it’s a strange swirl of orange and black. The top of his head is covered with a flap of the stuff, combed over from his right ear. The long fingers of his left hand are clutched in the right. Next to him is a dish.
“Martin,” Rangle says, “introduce your new friend to Dani, will you?”
“Of course,” Debray says, then introduces me to the young college girl who I know is Rangle’s daughter from his first marriage. She is short with dark hair and a body that’s curvy and tight.
The girl looks me up and down as she takes my hand. There is a hungry flicker in her dark eyes and a smile that shows just the tips of the small pointy teeth she inherited from her father. She slips out of her robe, throws a little arch in her back, and struts over to a deck chair. There is a small black spider tattoo poised above the crack in her bottom. She sits and begins to oil her brown stomach.
“She’s a sophomore at Penn,” Rangle says, grinning so hard in his daughter’s direction that the corners of his eyes disappear into a web of wrinkles and his teeth gleam in the sunlight. “All A’s, and boys lining up like jets over La Guardia.”
“Oh,” I say. “I thought Martin said she was going with Allen Steffano.”
Rangle’s elation fades. He looks at me with half a smile and says, “You know young girls. Engaged to one man one day and marrying another man the next…”
I feel my face get tight and I tilt my head, studying Rangle hard. For a moment, I feel more like the mouse than the cat, but that can’t be.
“Don’t get me wrong, Allen’s a good kid. But I think I’ve raised a girl who knows the importance of reputation. Allen’s father has done well, but he’s a long way from Katie’s Christmas party list.”
His good girl looks over at me, smiles, and crushes her lower lip with her teeth.
“I understand the mother is a little odd,” I say.
“A painter,” he says with a nod. “Very pretty, though. But let’s sit down and have a drink before lunch.”
“Daddy,” says the girl, using her hand as a visor against the sun, “I want a drink. Would you?”
“Of course, kitten,” Rangle says.
He asks us to sit and he hurries behind the teak bar to mix her a screwdriver, then he hurries across the deck to deliver it into her hands. His pale thin legs protrude from his khaki shorts and move with the awkward gait of an insect. The daughter rewards him with a kiss on the cheek. Debray is smiling as if this is par for the course.
When Rangle returns with bottles of Chimay Belgian Ale for the men, I swallow a mouthful before saying, “I’m pretty direct, Bob. I know you make money, and I want to invest some with you or I wouldn’t be here. I have a hundred million I want to move, but… what do you think of the Russian stock market?”
“The Russian?” Rangle says, his bony fingers clenching the beer bottle. “Do you have people there?”
“If I didn’t,” I say, “I wouldn’t want to invest in it.”
Rangle’s beetle eyes dart to Debray and back.
“Why me?” he says, twisting his fingers.
“I need an American,” I say. “Someone with a big fund. Someone respected. Someone who isn’t afraid to use the information that’s available to him. I see you’ve done well in U.S. treasuries and I’m assuming that it’s no coincidence that Martin has an older brother who works closely with Alan Greenspan at the Fed.”
“I trade on instinct,” Rangle says with a smile, opening his arms, palms up.
“I prefer to trade on information,” I tell him without smiling back. “If you’re not interested, neither am I. Thanks for the beer.”
I take a sip and get up.
“Seth, Seth, Seth,” Rangle says, taking my arm. “Please. Sit. Don’t be so damn… Of course I’m interested. We just need to talk about it. I’m interested. We’re both interested, aren’t we, Martin?”
“Yes, we are,” says Debray.
At lunch, Katie and Dani join us and I tell them all about Andre Kaskarov, a Russian prince whose family escaped the revolution and survived by guile and ruthlessness in Belgium. The mention of royalty gets even Katie’s attention. Andre, I explain, was educated in the American embassy in Brussels from an early age. His father envisioned a new Russia where opportunity between East and West would create incredible wealth to go along with the Kaskarov family’s noble lineage, and he returned to Moscow with his family in 1991.
“A real prince?” Rangle asks, his eyes agleam.