“Jeez, Anson went to Harvard? Really? I never knew.” That got a good laugh from Goering. He had been the first to notice that Anson somehow made certain that everyone found out his alma mater within five minutes of making his acquaintance—a not-uncommon trait among Harvard alums. As Goering had put it, a conversation about sheep mating habits in the Australian outback could somehow include the interjection “It’s funny… when I was at Harvard, I had a professor who did his master’s thesis on bovine…” and so on.
“Well, at least you won’t have old Anson sticking his nose into your business anymore.” Warren sighed.
“Me or you, pal,” Goering said. “Man, it’s hard to believe that fuckin’ broad of yours actually knocked two guys off. God, if I’d only known, there were a few fuckin’ people she could’ve taken care of for me. I mean, what’d she have against them?”
“Well, technically, it was four people. She pushed a girl off a cliff in B-school and killed another shoving her down the stairs. And she may have pushed a girl in front of a car in high school. But she didn’t have anything against them. It was nothing personal.” Warren shrugged. What could be more personal than murder? “But, hey, I’ve gotta ask you something. And you’ve gotta tell me the truth.”
Goering’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh? Depends. What’s the question?”
“Did you nail Larisa while I was with her?”
Goering laughed, his even, white teeth showing. Tears almost began to roll out of the corners of his eyes, and he slapped his thighs. “Whoooeee! I’ve finally got your butt just where I want it, don’t I, poopsie pie?”
“God, if I’da known you were going to get such a big kick out of it, I never would have asked.” Warren waved his hand dismissively at Goering.
“Hey, no problem, son. I tried. Lord knows, I tried, but I could never get anywhere with her. She only liked the big hitters, not the fuckin’ peons like me.”
“Well, it’s nice to know even a vicious killer has some standards. Thanks for trying to seduce my girlfriend, though. I appreciate it.”
“Touchy, touchy. What about that old school pal you nailed after she got engaged?” Warren had forgotten he’d told Goering about Eliza. Despite his show of being crude and his reputation with the ladies, he had to admit that Goering was actually a loyal friend and had a moral compass when it came to business and his family. And knew how to make a buck.
“You’re right. There’s no honor among thieves.”
“Never was. That’s a fuckin’ myth.”
“Hey, Dutchie boy, I’ve got some news—so are you.”
fifty-seven
The streets of Vaduz didn’t seem as narrow as he remembered them. Sam looked relaxed and happy in the passenger seat, and the big Mercedes sedan slid around the corners quietly. The wedding had been small, simple, and pleasant. Cornelia Harper had invited them to hold it at the beautiful party space in her apartment house on Fifth Avenue and held the reception in her apartment. The honeymoon was a trip to Europe. They had spent a couple of days in London, followed by a quick trip to Stuttgart to buy the car for shipping home—after all, he was a successful young bond salesman with a seven-figure income, and she had an import license for used cars for her rental lot.
In the months since Larisa’s arrest, it became clear that the money Warren and Sam had found in Anson’s accounts was not the subject of any sort of search or investigation. The two West Coast banks had taken the markdowns exactly as Warren had surmised, and in a seemingly innocent conversation Warren had with Scholdice, the broker had announced his retirement and relocation to a ranch in Australia: “Warren, this business has been good to me, but times are changin’. My accounts are all headed for a big bust, and the days of easy money are over. Me and my pals made hay while the sun shone.” Beker and Largeman had left Warner as well and set up a money management firm.
Warner had been audited twice by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, and nothing had come of it, except that the bank was clearly in trouble, like all the S&Ls that had overleveraged in the mortgage markets once the effects of the new tax laws passed by Reagan hit home on real estate. Warren could see that all the “missing” money had properly been accounted for as write-offs that were balanced by other profits on their new investments and income each year, and the last thing the regulators wanted, it seemed, was to find any kind of scandal. Of course, if those profits proved ephemeral over time, the focus would be on those bad investments, not on what had happened years before. Warren could only wonder how many other schemes to milk money out of the savings-and-loan industry there were. It looked as if Mike Milken at Drexel was in some serious trouble for many such schemes on a much grander scale. The one at Warner had clearly been good for at least a half a billion or more and was essentially untraceable.
Meanwhile, Reagan’s second term was producing big gains in the markets, and the Street was prospering. If anyone looked, the couple’s side trip to Liechtenstein looked like just a shortcut to Geneva, where they were going to visit Warren’s brother, who was doing a research fellowship, and spend a day with Frank and Karen, who were engaged and to be married in June. Warren and Sam spent a day reviewing the procedures that they had gone over with the lawyers Schiff had referred them to. Warren had told him the funds were part of an inheritance from Sam’s family in Germany and England. She did have extremely wealthy distant cousins in Frankfurt, so it seemed plausible if anyone questioned it, and the paper trail would lead nowhere. They had spent hours agonizing over the money. It hadn’t really been stolen, they rationalized. Warner had written down loans and sold them and bought high-income products to cover the losses. It had been possible it would all work out, until the tax law change clobbered real estate values, and interest rates dropped. If Warner failed, the main losers would be the Mexican family that owned 90 percent of the stock, but the run-up in its value had largely been based on false earnings anyway. Warren chose to believe the rumors that the Sanchez family was laundering money for Mexican drug cartels—it made what they had done seem almost victimless.
Sam had handled the transfer transactions perfectly. About half of the money was repatriated through the Caymans, necessary taxes were paid, and the other half had been transferred into the Faaringsbank account of a new firm, Flickflack AG, named after a horse she had owned as a kid, that was listed on the Luxembourg stock exchange with ownership through an anonymous Liechtenstein trust. Sam became the chairwoman and owned all the shares.
The company also endowed an academy in Jupiter, Florida, where Warren’s father offered scholarships for full room, board, schooling, and tennis and athletic training to two hundred underprivileged children from all over the United States. The operating budget consumed only a fraction of the income that the company was earning through the decisions being made by its chief investment adviser, David Schiff. Through a combination of good luck and Schiff’s excellent timing, he had moved the Trust into bonds as they rose, and then into stocks. Lately, Schiff had been enamored with discount retailing and computer-software companies for the long-term. They looked like good growth areas for the late eighties and early nineties, he’d explained, because they offered real products that everyone would need. By mid-1989 the Flickflack trust had assets of almost $300 million, even after paying some $50 million in federal taxes.
“Look,” Sam had told Schiff, “take all the risk you want. We want to be aggressive. We won’t cry if we lose money. Warren says you have a nose for underappreciated assets. We’ll trust it. You get five percent of everything you make, and you can still run your company.” Schiff agreed, but insisted he simply match all the investments he made for Emerson so there would be no conflict. He saw trouble coming, in 1990, and believed the early nineties would be a buying opportunity for depressed assets. The riskier purchases would be handled separately. He also donated most of his share to the environmental causes he favored and used some of the balance to fund activist shareholder lawsuits against abusive corporate practices, particularly in the insurance business.