They got two and narrowly missed the third.
But knowing how much thought and effort were involved here, knowing how much planning and commitment there was, knowing Lizzie… Frank can’t help thinking that this narrow miss must have preyed on her mind, and that as the siege progressed it must have assumed an ever greater significance for her. Because however she felt about their list of demands-which had surely been improvised, and could only ever have been aspirational anyway-their plan, their statement, their grand gesture… was incomplete.
Did that rankle with Lizzie?
He bets it did.
It’s funny, but when he thinks of her now, he sees a different person. It’s as if she has changed, morphed into someone else. It’s as if she has grown in stature.
He reaches for the bottle of Stoli on the bedside unit and takes another hit from it.
Then he looks at the screen again, at this Craig Howley guy, CEO and chairman of… what are they called? The Oberon Capital Group?
“… the spreads are pretty high and the base rates are low, so you’re picking up a lot of return, basically, for a lack of liquidity.”
It cuts to the host of the show, a handsome, chiseled little prick in his early thirties. “And how about real estate, Craig? Tell us about the opportunities you’re seeing in the sector right now.”
“Oh, this is just an incredible time to be in real estate, Rob.”
“Why?”
“Well, you’ve got all these CMOs that aren’t going to roll over, you’ve got overpriced properties and distressed sellers…”
Frank squeezes the neck of the bottle. He doesn’t understand what Craig Howley is talking about here, not exactly, but he’s picking up a tone, a hint of contained glee, of dog-eat-dog exuberance. Distressed sellers? Cool. Let’s kick these motherfuckers while they’re down.
“… and then you’re streaming into that attractive investment-grade credit market we mentioned earlier.”
“So share with us, Craig, how much has Oberon put into real estate so far this year?”
“I don’t have an exact figure, Rob, but it’s probably several billion, four perhaps, four-point-five.”
“Wow!”
Fuck.
Frank raises the bottle to his lips again.
“Look, it’s a large part of our business. We’re known as a private equity company, but really, we’re a bit more diversified than that.”
“Sure, private equity, real estate, debt and asset management, financial advisory, credit, it’s a long list.”
“It is, and people often think that investment by a company like Oberon means focusing only on short-term returns-”
“The classic strip and flip.”
“Yeah, well,” Howley laughs here, but there’s an edge to the laugh, “again I’d use different language, not that it’s even true anyway… but no, I mean, take an example…” He pauses. “Take any company in our portfolio.”
He stops to think for a moment.
Frank breathes in deeply, his head spinning ever so slightly. Half a bottle of Stoli? Straight up? If it weren’t for his accelerated adrenaline flow, his extra nervous energy, he’d be unconscious by this stage, or in a pool of his own vomit. He glances down at the bottle in his hand and feels his stomach lurch.
Oh, Jesus.
No self-fulfilling prophecies, please.
“Yes,” Howley says, nodding, ready to continue. “I mean, consider a company like Paloma Electronics, for instance-”
Frank looks up.
“Great company,” the host says, “consumer electronics, but a lot more besides, am I right? Military and defense contracting, IT, consulting, security.”
Frank is stunned.
“Absolutely, and don’t forget biotech, and robotics-”
“Of course.”
“So yeah, they’re just a super, super company, and we at Oberon are committed to helping them develop and grow, but here’s the thing, Rob, that’s over the long term.”
Frank leans forward on the bed and gulps, reflux vomit coming up into his mouth. He manages to swallow it back.
“Right. Though there have been job losses at Paloma recently, if I’m not mistaken, and a lot of cost cutting?”
“Oh sure, but with any effort to drive stronger performance you’re going to get some element of rationalization.”
It happens again, but this time Frank just lets it out, splats of clear liquid-he hasn’t eaten today-landing all over the bed, on the books and the magazines. In a sort of daze he lets go of the bottle, the remainder of its contents glugging out over his bare leg and making a deep stain on the polyester bedspread.
Fuuuck.
He wipes his mouth and looks back at the TV screen.
He’s focused now, though.
And the first thing he notices is that, okay, Howley’s suit is fine, expensive-looking and all, but at the same time… who chose that fucking shirt? And the tie? The second thing is that this is Ellen’s-Lizzie’s?-Ellen’s… this is the guy that got away.
This is the private equity guy.
The third pillar.
He’s not the guy, okay, he’s not Scott Lebrecht. But that doesn’t matter anymore. He’s actually a better pick-a point that Frank would like nothing better than to be able to hammer out with Lizzie…
He clears his throat and coughs up some grainy, charcoaly phlegm.
Spits it out.
“… in point of fact turmoil is good for private equity…”
And the supreme irony of the situation is that until a few days ago, until a week ago, maybe a bit more-he can’t remember exactly, until whenever-but it turns out that this bland, calculating, vicious, badly-dressed bastard on the screen was his boss…
“… but ultimately, I think, to solve the deficit problem, governments in Europe, and here, governments everywhere-”
All Frank wants to do now is tell Lizzie that, discuss it with her, dissect the irony.
That’s all he wants to do.
“-are going to have to move to the printing presses…”
But what he does instead is pick the empty Stoli bottle up, raise it high, and fling it hard at the flickering TV screen.
FIVE
It was while working in 1878 as an ill-paid scrivener at a dingy law office on Wall Street that Charles A. Vaughan first encountered the fabulously successful financier and speculator Gilbert Morley.
– House of Vaughan (p. 212)
13
THE REFERENCE TO PALOMA ELECTRONICS IS WHAT GETS HER.
It’s weird, she thinks, how all of this stuff seems connected. The only reason she’s watching an overcaffeinated cable news channel like Bloomberg in the first place is because she received an e-mail out of the blue yesterday from Jimmy Gilroy in which he mentioned that Craig Howley was taking over as the new CEO of the Oberon Capital Group.
Not really out of the blue, then.
Which is her point.
Jimmy Gilroy has been researching James Vaughan and Oberon for the last eighteen months, ever since he and Ellen covered the Rundle brothers story together. That was big enough in itself-one of the most spectacular cases of a presidential candidate falling from grace in U.S. history-but Jimmy Gilroy knew that Rundle’s withdrawal from the race was only the outermost ripple of a much darker and more complex set of circumstances. The Rundles’ business in the Congo, for instance, involved the setting up of an illegal supply chain of thanaxite that led all the way to a robotics plant in Connecticut. But when it became apparent to Jimmy that behind that story was a large and very active private equity firm, the Oberon Capital Group, the focus of his interest shifted. It shifted again when he became aware of Oberon’s founder, James Vaughan-of his wide-ranging influence in Washington and of his long, serpentine family history.