If only Jane had checked the ownership of her brand-new red 1989 Jeep Laredo, a present from her one and only, sort of. He'd found it and set it up so her father could buy it, but it was an amazing deal. After MPSC and the kung fu movies went away, Cary and Jane took a little well-deserved ski vacation to Aspen, paid for by Jane. While they were there, she learned that the Laredo she was driving was in fact a stolen vehicle. The bank owned it, not Cary's good friend Jeffrey Pokross.

She was furious. Her father agreed to buy the Jeep for her from the bank, but it was incredibly embarra.s.sing. Cary suddenly remembered he had a business meeting he had to attend. He flew back to New York, leaving Jane in Aspen.

While Jane was still in Aspen, Cary quickly moved all his belongings out of her apartment and into his own. He was making enough money from his many stock promotion deals. He obviously felt he didn't need Not So Plain Jane anymore. He moved out without telling her he was going to do it. When she returned from Aspen, he was gone.

"I destroyed her emotionally, being careless with my relationship with her. By leaving her," he said. "This was my methodology of repaying a woman back who was nothing but kind and considerate to me."

Not long after he ditched Jane and left her family absorbing the trail of debt he'd created while pa.s.sing through, Cary walked out to the private garage where he kept his prize 1989 Mercedes 580SL. The s.p.a.ce was empty.

The repo man had cometh.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

June 7, 1989

Bobby Lino Senior was dead. The wake took place at Cu somano and Russo's in Brooklyn. Because Bobby Senior was a made man, the scene attracted a parade of wiseguys from most of the families. There were guys from the Genovese family and guys from the Lucchese family. John Gotti showed up with a crew. At the time, he was still the Dapper Don, the Teflon Don, the boss of the most powerful mob family in America, the Gambinos. He became boss by arranging to kill his boss and had beaten prosecutions again and again. He was riding high, talking to his underlings about how his "public" needed him and wallowing in his brief status as a national celebrity. It was all very strange, considering that the American Mafia was supposed to be a secret society that existed below the radar screen of law enforcement. This guy was running around with a target on his back, shouting, "I'm a gangster! Come and get me!" And here he was, strutting around Bobby Lino's funeral like a rock star, all the sycophants lined up to kiss his ring.

Outside, across from the parking lot, the FBI had brought along plenty of film.

The family of Bobby Senior-what was left of it-was a.s.sembled in grief. His wife was gone, and so was his eldest son, Vincent. All that was left was Grace Ann and Robert-a drug addict and a wannabe gangster. There were many ways to view this. Some might say Bobby Senior was a lousy father, maybe even the worst ever. He was a drug dealer whose eldest son died of a drug overdose and whose daughter was now deeply involved in destroying herself with the substance he'd sold to make money. He had shot Sonny Black and helped bury Bobby C and Gabriel Infanti. He had cheated and lied and made these choices while raising a family. But sometimes, when you thought about him, it was tough to suppress a smile.

Robert Lino believed his father had tried-in his own way-to be a father. Sitting here at Cusomano's Funeral Home, with the organ music and the flowers and the silk-suit parade pa.s.sing by, it was easy to look back and smile at just how crazy his father could be. It was way back in 1979, Robert remembered, that the incident with his sister and the guy everybody knew as Mikey Bear occurred.

Back then heroin was king in certain neighborhoods of Brooklyn, thanks in part to Bobby Lino. Some of that heroin wound up with a guy a.s.sociated with the Colombo family everybody called Mikey Bear. Mikey had been selling drugs all over Brooklyn, and one of his customers wound up being Grace Ann, Bobby Senior's little girl. Sometimes they would use drugs together. It was an ugly time, and the two would spend days inside Mikey's run-down apartment near Avenue C off Ocean Parkway in Flatbush. They'd cook it up and shoot it up and go off into that Alice in Wonderland Alice in Wonderland world, unaware of anything or anyone around them. Bobby Senior got wind of Mikey Bear and didn't see the connection between the fact that he personally smuggled kilos of this stuff into his own neighborhood and the fact that his daughter had wound up hooked on it, spiraling into a self-destructive, claustrophobic state of permanent pain. The issue wasn't heroin. The issue was Mikey Bear. As Bobby Senior saw it, if Mikey were removed from the equation, there wouldn't be a problem anymore. The solution was that simple. world, unaware of anything or anyone around them. Bobby Senior got wind of Mikey Bear and didn't see the connection between the fact that he personally smuggled kilos of this stuff into his own neighborhood and the fact that his daughter had wound up hooked on it, spiraling into a self-destructive, claustrophobic state of permanent pain. The issue wasn't heroin. The issue was Mikey Bear. As Bobby Senior saw it, if Mikey were removed from the equation, there wouldn't be a problem anymore. The solution was that simple.

One of Bobby Lino's partners in Pizza Park was a guy named Nicky Black. Nicky was a Colombo soldier and professed to disapprove of drugs, although he was in favor of extortion, loan-sharking and, on occasion, murder. Bobby told Nicky all about Mikey Bear and his daughter and the drugs, and Nicky, too, agreed that the solution was simple. From that moment, Mikey Bear was no longer an a.s.sociate of the Colombo organized crime family of Brooklyn. Bobby and Frank Lino had permission and so they set to work.

The lesson of Mikey Bear was this: clipping someone you don't really know is much more difficult than clipping someone you do know. The Lino cousins had to figure out Mikey Bear's schedule, which often consisted of scoring drugs and then spending weeks at a time holed up in his rancid apartment. They watched him to learn his patterns and discovered he had none. The only way to get him was to lure him outside. Two of Mikey's friends, the guy Kojak with the bald head and another guy named Vito, made some calls and a meeting was arranged. Mikey would emerge from his h.e.l.lish little hole and hook up with Kojak and Vito on the corner of Avenue C and Ocean Parkway. It would be safe because it was a well-trafficked area with working people coming and going.

The day of the job there were three cars filled with guys and guns cruising along Ocean Parkway. Bobby Senior was in the crash car, the car that pulls in front of the cops if they show up. Cousin Frank was a backup shooter in the car a few parking spots away from the sidewalk meeting locale. The third car contained the two shooters, the Ronnie who shot Sonny Black, and Tommy Karate, at the time both wannabe gangsters who were itching to become made men. Kojak and Vito stood on the corner of Avenue C and Ocean Parkway, waiting for Mikey Bear.

Soon Mikey emerged from his apartment and could be seen shuffling up Ocean Parkway. This was a major street in Brooklyn, with lots of cars and numerous bus routes and shops and people all over. Lots of people. Here comes Mikey Bear toward Kojak and Vito and here comes Ronnie and Tommy Karate with guns drawn and they pull up next to him and shout out, "Hey Mikey!" He looks over and it's too late. Tommy shoots at the Bear's ma.s.sive body, but his gun jams. Ronnie pumps several bullets into Mikey. He slumps to the pavement. An older couple, a man and woman who just happened to be walking by, observe the entire proceeding from about ten feet away. The shooters screech away. Mikey Bear lies on a crowded sidewalk in Brooklyn.

Mike Bear is alive.

For days the Lino cousins and all the rest of the hit team are unhappy fellows. Mikey Bear is lying in his hospital bed, still breathing, and Bobby Senior wants to get somebody in there to finish up what was started on Ocean Parkway. He had done this for his daughter, and he had to make sure his daughter never again saw this Mikey Bear. One day pa.s.sed and then a second, and Mikey Bear still lived. Word was out that one of the cars had been identified and confiscated by the police. Perhaps all of this helping your own wasn't really worth the trouble. Then Mikey Bear decided to die, and everything was all right again. The job was done. The problem was solved. Bobby Senior had accomplished what any loving father would seek to accomplish-coming to the rescue of the beautiful daughter he'd raised from a baby.

Of course, Robert Lino knew better. His sister, sitting next to him now in the funeral parlor, still had problems with drugs, long after Mikey Bear had gone to that great rehab clinic down below. Grace Ann just seemed to deteriorate more and more. A few months before, Robert, the dutiful son, had signed a form that gave him power of attorney over Grace Ann's affairs. She was a grown woman who could no longer take care of herself. Robert was now, in effect, her father.

Bobby Senior was dead. Robert now officially took up the role as head of the family. He would turn twenty-four in two months. It's hard to say how many choices he had about the journey he was about to embark upon. His bearings were determined by locale. His context was organized criminals. He'd done poorly in school; he could barely read. He had not graduated high school, never mind college. He was not really Robert Lino, anyway. He was Robert from Avenue U. His cousin Eddie was a gangster. His cousin Frank was a gangster. His father died a gangster and told anybody who'd listen that his dying wish was for Robert to embrace the life he'd led. Robert was like a boat on a strong current, headed for the cataract. Most who knew him felt he was basically a decent guy. He had his own set of rules within the rules. He was quite aware that plenty of gangsters, including his late father, rest his soul, were involved in selling drugs, but he would have nothing to do with that. He saw shylocking as a necessary evil. People needed money and somebody had to provide it. It was just capitalism at work. He could see nothing wrong with gambling. Taking sports bets was a way of life where he grew up, like getting married or hating the Red Sox. And when a piece of work had to get done, it was always for a reason. Usually it was a rat, an informant, some guy who was betraying his friends and denying his colleagues the ability to provide for their wives and children. That, anyway, was the thinking.

His father's wake came to an end. John Gotti and his entourage were long gone, even the FBI agents had packed it in. Robert Lino and his sister stepped out onto West 6th Street deep in the heart of Brooklyn. He wore an uncomfortable suit in the summer swelter. It was June. The summer of 1989 lay ahead like the bejeweled blue Atlantic twinkling off of Coney Island. It was the end of the eighties. The stock market boom had crashed. The country was heading for a recession and was being led by a country club Republican who talked about "a thousand points of light" and then raised your taxes. America was marching toward the millennium, and the Brooklyn that Robert Lino had grown up in was changing dramatically. Indians and the Chinese were beginning to move into Italian Bensonhurst. Who knew where it was all headed? Robert Lino had a lifetime ahead of him and no father to lead the way. Now it was just Robert Lino against the rest of the world.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

The Nineties

Cary Cimino was back. The eighties were so over, the ski slopes of Aspen beckoned. He was now driving a Ferrari, flying first cla.s.s, spending as fast as he earned. He was enjoying yet another long weekend on the slopes, playing hard and ordering only the best of everything. Everything he bought he laid off on his clients anyway, so what the h.e.l.l? His partner, Jeffrey, did the same thing. And jetting away from New York for a weekend in the winter was always a good idea. Especially this year. This had not been the best of years for Wall Street or for the city itself.

The 1990s already looked like the kind of decade in New York that would never be regarded in the sentimental glow of nostalgia. The forties had the abstract expressionists, the fifties had the Dodgers, the sixties had the World's Fair. The nineties were beginning to look like the seven-ties, with "Ford to New York: Drop Dead," Son of Sam and the garbage piling up in the streets. Just like those sordid days, the 1990s were all about chaos and anarchy in the streets. Murders were way up, surpa.s.sing two thousand in one year for the first time since the New York City Police Department bothered counting. Crack cocaine was killing certain poverty-wracked neighborhoods, turning ordinary people into raging sociopaths. The more out of control the city appeared, the more out of control it became. A tourist from Utah was stabbed in Midtown on the way to a tennis tournament in Queens. A new street name had sprung up for the innocent people shot while walking down the street: "mushrooms." The squeegee man reigned, shaking down motorists at stoplights all over. Hundreds of homeless people took over Penn Station every night. Activists were distributing free sanitized needles to drug addicts to halt the spread of AIDS. Time Time magazine ran a front page proclaiming New York City the "Rotten Apple." magazine ran a front page proclaiming New York City the "Rotten Apple."

The glory days of New York seemed distant and remote, like a great baseball pennant race that would never happen again.

Down on Wall Street, the 1980s were definitely over, but a new economy was emerging. Perhaps it was the general atmosphere of criminality pervading the city or a creeping belief that New York was no longer governable, but as the Dow recovered and the pace of trading again began to increase, a new white collar underworld began to emerge. As the Dow began to rise again, people like Jeffrey Pokross abandoned their car lease scams and check kiting operations and Ponzi schemes and set up shop on Wall Street. If money was to be made, they were going to be part of the party.

For Cary Cimino, the return of the Dow meant a second chance. This time, however, he was going to do things differently.

Considering the circ.u.mstances, Cary was doing pretty well. The end of the eighties had turned into a head-on collision for his career. He'd exhausted any currency he'd acc.u.mulated in the industry, jumping from firm to firm, swallowing up-front bonus after up-front bonus, failing to produce while ama.s.sing mountains of debt. Job offers had stopped coming in. Headhunters no longer called. A legitimate firm was simply no longer an option for Cary Cimino. He had gone from being a partner at one of the most prestigious brokerage houses in America to an unemployed stockbroker n.o.body wanted to touch.

No problem.

It was time to adjust the methodology. After he was fired from Prudential Bache for lack of production, Cary decided to remake himself entirely. His days as a partner or even as senior vice president were over, and that was just fine. He told himself the opportunities for brokers working for big or even little firms were too restricted. You always had to kick up a percentage to the boss, and he had come to believe that was not his style. He decided the only way to go was to be independent. He decided to transform himself overnight into a stock promoter.

In the 1980s, stock promoters were considered a kind of second-tier player on Wall Street. They were kind of public relations pimps who plugged small companies headed for public offerings in the over-the-counter market. Now in the 1990s, Cary decided stock promotion was the only way to go. Only suckers stayed with the big brokerage houses. Stock promoters were basically guys without broker's licenses who would promote the stock of a specific company. They essentially hyped specific stocks, for a fee. This was different than the supposedly objective world of the stockbroker, who wasn't supposed to have an allegiance to one particular company or another. Always a master of jargon to make something sound greater than the sum of its parts, Cary put it this way: "I would do financial PR. I would try to get retail buying or establish retail interest in their company."

Cary was well aware that his newfound vocation had the potential to drift from the purely legal into the clearly questionable, but he was willing to take his chances. He had come to believe that truly successful people did not get where they were by following every little rule and regulation. Sometimes you had to push the envelope, take risks. There were too many rules, anyway. n.o.body followed every one. Just watch people driving. People ease through stop signs without coming to a complete stop every day, and rarely does that cause problems. People switch lanes without using their blinkers every minute of every day. Probably once in a while that causes an accident, but the numbers aren't overwhelming. You're already signing up for risk when you get behind the wheel of a car. The same holds true for Wall Street.

The biggest problem was all those disclosure requirements.

Stock promoters were really children of the night. Rarely did they stand in the sunlight of full disclosure and tell the trusting investor that they were being paid a fee by a particular company to promote that company's stock. Brokers were never supposed to be wedded to a company financially, and if they had any such ties they were obligated-required-to make that known to their clients. Stock promoters had no such requirement because they were never supposed to be in direct contact with the clients. They worked behind the scenes, and were useful in facilitating any number of transactions. Mostly they were about making a company appear to be the next McDonald's. They were capitalist weathermen, using charts and graphs and most importantly numbers to prove their case. They implied exclusivity. They made the investor feel like he was getting something the other poor loser was not. They made the investor feel the superiority of the insider, the guy who gets past the velvet rope. They used the euphemisms of business to rea.s.sure nervous investors that they, and only they, held the key to ma.s.sive and easy affluence.

And 1991 was a good time for stock promoters. Hardly anyone in the world of government regulation paid much attention to them at all. As far as Cary was concerned, that was okay. And he'd convinced himself that promotion was a legitimate way to make lots of money. He would tell friends the big firms like Bear Stearns did almost the same thing when they bought blocks of stock in a specific company they had an investment banking relationship with. The firms would designate the client's stock as the stock its brokers would now push as "stock of the week." In return, the brokers pocketed commissions. Sometimes the clients were aware of the fiduciary relationship between the brokerage house and the company. Sometimes they weren't.

"The stock would then be in my partnership account and that stock would then become the stock of the week. Then our four hundred and sixty retail brokers would get on the phone and use any other words you want, pump the stock, hype the stock, and we had, at one point in time, we had five hundred brokers. When I say 'we,' I speak of the partnership at Bear Stearns. We had five hundred retail brokers, which were the highest producing brokers on the Street. And this wonderful retail sales force would go out, all right, and recommend the stock that we had in our account. And there would be whatever sales credit, there would be whatever extra commission the firm would give."

He described the "stock of the week" companies feting brokers at the Four Seasons, pumping them up about selling the stock that the brokers owned themselves. It was called a "dog and pony show," and, Cary was quick to add, it was all legal financial PR.

That was the way Cary saw being a stock promoter. He was still working with Lowenthal Financial Group, but it didn't really matter who he was working for. If there were any problems, he was a stock promoter. Lowenthal, for instance, had been caught by the NASD "forgetting" to make payments in arbitrated disputes. They'd been fined and reprimanded, but Cary's fingerprints were nowhere in sight. He was under the radar; he was living on the edge.

Cary had reason to believe the edge would soon be mainstream. In the middle of 1991, with the city spinning out of control and the mayor of New York insisting that his city was not Dodge City, there were whispers of a Wall Street revolution in the wings. The word was the financial markets would never be the same because of a little known ent.i.ty that was growing year by year. It was called the Internet, and Cary believed it was going to be huge.

In 1991, the Internet was still used mostly by university professors and scientists and Department of Defense employees, but it was growing every day. The first microprocessor had been around for twenty years. Apple Computer had been around for thirteen years. IBM had produced its first PC a decade earlier, and Microsoft was now its operating system of choice. By now, Microsoft had split twice and was trading just under $5, up from the pennies it started with. The web had been in existence for two years, and already people were talking about using it to let investors know about investments. The over-the-counter market, which had been powerful during the 1980s, would soon be the over-the-web market and the opportunities would be endless.

Or so Cary hoped. Anyway, he couldn't complain. In his new role as stock promoter, he was making a killing, which was why he could afford to be spending a long weekend in Aspen. His new gig also allowed for more flexibility. He wasn't working for a brokerage house anymore, so he was his own boss. If he wanted to spend a four-day weekend in Aspen, he could just buy the first-cla.s.s tickets and disappear for a bit. His clients could leave messages with his phone service, and he'd get back to them quickly. They usually didn't need him on an emergency basis anyway, so when the phone rang at the hotel where he was spending his well-deserved cash, he figured it was not about work.

His sister Andrea was on the line. She kept it simple.

"Mom is dead."

CHAPTER NINE.

July 1, 1997

The fourteenth-floor apartment on Central Park South was the kind of art deco address Rodgers and Hart dreamed about. Right at the southern edge of the park, between Seventh and Eighth Avenues in the heart of the island of Manhattan, it faced Frederick Law Olmsted's masterpiece in all its splendor. In the daylight the park presented an ever-changing seasonal panorama: a forest of pale green in the spring; a glorious wonderland in winter; a carnival of maroon, yellow and orange come fall. In the summer it was an emerald carpet, the castles of Manhattan peeking out at the edges. And at nightfall, the view from the fourteenth floor really came into its own. The park became a great black sea ringed by the jewelry boxes of Central Park West, a twinkling armada headed uptown to the northern tip of Manhattan. This was the view Francis Warrington Gillet III had purchased for himself and his new family. An address to envy. A castle in the sky. Far below, yellow taxis competed for tourists, their horns and screeching brakes a distant symphony. Up here on the fourteenth floor, Francis Warrington Gillet III lived above it all.

As he stood in the dark alone at midnight, gazing down upon the park, his his park, Warrington remembered his birthday. It was something he usually tried to forget. In October he would turn thirty-nine. In some ways, thirty-nine seemed worse than forty. Any year with a nine in it meant you were looking back and trying not to look ahead. Thirty-nine meant this was the last year he could say he was in his thirties. After that he'd be middle-aged. You might even say halfway done. Halfway done meant you had to take stock of what you had accomplished. You had to make comparisons, reflect on certain choices. You had to add things up and see whether you were greater or lesser than the sum of your parts. In the summer of 1997, Francis Warrington Gillet III believed he was destined to beat that equation. He had found his calling, and it was money. park, Warrington remembered his birthday. It was something he usually tried to forget. In October he would turn thirty-nine. In some ways, thirty-nine seemed worse than forty. Any year with a nine in it meant you were looking back and trying not to look ahead. Thirty-nine meant this was the last year he could say he was in his thirties. After that he'd be middle-aged. You might even say halfway done. Halfway done meant you had to take stock of what you had accomplished. You had to make comparisons, reflect on certain choices. You had to add things up and see whether you were greater or lesser than the sum of your parts. In the summer of 1997, Francis Warrington Gillet III believed he was destined to beat that equation. He had found his calling, and it was money.

The great-stepgrandson of the cereal heiress Marjorie Merriweather Post and the scion of the Gillet family, a family of United States senators and old horse country money, had arrived at his destiny. He was a stockbroker. A maker of big money. He was clearing $300,000 net, and he'd set his sights on much more. Looking over at the lights of Central Park West, he could remember what it was like when he first arrived in May of 1996, still a bachelor stockbroker living large in the all-night party that was Manhattan. At the time, he was swimming in opportunity. A chart of the Dow from the Crash of '29 to 1996 looked something like a ski slope that no towrope could climb. Starting in about 1995, the trading volume had begun to rocket skyward, and the increase was reflected in Warrington's rising commissions. The Dow, which had traded under 5,000 for sixty-five years since the crash, was headed for 10,000 and n.o.body was going to stop it. The fabulous flop of the 1980s now seemed like a speed b.u.mp. There was no way to go but up, and Warrington had managed to w.a.n.gle himself a front-row ticket to ride.

Life was good. He'd worked his way up from a rookie at Smith Barney in 1989, when the market was in the toilet. He bounced to a small shop called Global American, which went out of business. He suffered fits of unemployment, but that was the way it was on Wall Street. He jumped to Lad enburg Thalmann & Co., then Grunthal & Co., then Baird Patrick & Co. in 1995, just as the market began to take off. Most of his clients were wealthy overseas customers he found through his connections from private school and steeplechase and growing up around extremely wealthy Maryland horse country people. He bought and sold stocks for large inst.i.tutional investors like the Bank of Monaco. He earned a mention in a New York Times New York Times gossip column as a "prince of the moment," right alongside John F. Kennedy Jr. and David Lauren. gossip column as a "prince of the moment," right alongside John F. Kennedy Jr. and David Lauren.

And 1996 was looking even better. He'd hooked up with a small-sized outfit called Monitor Investment and was practically the top producer at the place in no time. His contacts were golden. He bought a Lamborghini. He hung out at Harry Cipriani's on Forty-second Street. He was on top of the world. That very night he'd gone out drinking with friends and it reminded him of those days when he was still single. The giddiness you got hanging around models, the freedom you acquired with your corporate expense account, the belief that you were invulnerable. Then he remembered-1996 also included the arrival of Warry the Fourth.

Warry the Fourth had shown up in May and changed everything. For his entire adult life, Warrington III had done pretty much what he wanted when he wanted. His childhood was kind of a dream. He'd grown up around money in a house with its own name-Tally Ho Farms. His kingdom consisted of rolling green hills, miles of clean white fence, Thoroughbreds prancing in the morning sunlight. He never had to think about attending public school. His sports were steeplechase and polo. He knew people who wore cravats without irony. There were yachts and servants and winters in Monaco. It was a perfect little world, far removed from mundane middle-cla.s.s existence or the scary world of the poor. It was the world of the Gillets of Worthington County.

Staring out at the darkened park in the heart of the big city, Worthington County seemed pretty far away. It surely had been one surreal trip. He'd b.u.mmed around Europe endlessly until he was bored out of his mind. He'd tried competing professionally at steeplechase until he failed but told himself he was bored out of his mind. He'd immersed himself in acting school and, for the first time, was not bored out of his mind. He truly loved it. He had a vague sense that if he put his mind to it, he would succeed. It would just happen because it always did. People in his world were simply bound to succeed. They were blessed with so many advantages; the idea of failure was not to be considered. At least, that's what he'd been told.

It wasn't that simple, of course. He'd only made it through two years at Villanova, bored by his chosen subject, economics, so he was wandering through the world without a college degree. And when he went to acting school, it was his father who paid his rent on Sutton Place. And he wasn't a very good actor. He wound up doing mostly TV commercials. His best role was a nonspeaking part as Jason in one of the Friday the 13th Friday the 13th horror series. He got the part because he didn't make the cut for a speaking role. horror series. He got the part because he didn't make the cut for a speaking role.

And now he was a father and husband.

He had met Martina at the Coffee Shop in Union Square. At the time, back in 1995, this was a happening place. It was one of those spots that become hot for a year and then are as empty as the Canadian wilderness when someone-no one knows precisely who-declares the place dead. The Coffee Shop was, in 1995, the kind of place Warrington could relate to. Young people-mostly younger than Warrington-trying to talk on cell phones over the cheerful din. Everyone always on their way to something else. And lots of models. In 1995, Warrington spent lots of quality time in places like that. In 1995, if you were an up-and-coming Wall Street guy trolling for rich clients and aggressively pursuing a certain image, you were expected to be out pretty much every night of the week talking to beautiful women.

Martina was a Swedish model. She was gorgeous in a way that made people-both men and women-stop and stare when she strolled into a room. They were a beautiful couple. He was a handsome fellow, a good-natured guy who liked to have a good time and could charm people simply with the warmth of his ebullient self-confidence. When Martina got pregnant, Warrington hesitated. He wasn't sure if he had what it took to be a father. Look at his experience with fathers. His real father was a guy who sometimes confused philanthropy with philandering, and his stepfather wouldn't know if he was jailed, bailed or dead unless it was printed on the front page of the Racing Form Racing Form. Nevertheless, Warrington proposed; he and Martina were married in a matter of months. By May, little Warry the Fourth had joined the entourage, and Francis Warrington Gillet III became a new man.

Of course there was still time for discovering which bar made the best martinis on Thursday nights. On this night, Martina was on vacation in Europe with Warry the Fourth. His progeny and namesake was now about fourteen months in this world, and although Warrington loved him to the core of his soul, little Warry the Fourth could wear you down with his caterwauling all around the apartment. And the apartment didn't help. No, not at all.

Truth be told, Apartment 14N with the drop-dead views of Central Park was, in fact, tiny. Sure, when you mentioned the address-240 Central Park South-people stopped yammering on about themselves and actually listened. Central Park South was a big deal. Not just anybody could land there. Of course, rarely did he invite people up. In fact, never did he invite people up. And he certainly never told any of his good buddies down on Wall Street that he lived with wife and child in a studio apartment. Not two bedrooms, or one bedroom and a half, where the sophisticated Manhattanite pretends a closet is a bedroom. No, this was no no bedrooms. One room. A kitchen, living room, dining room, den, master bedroom, child's bedroom-all in one room. Only the bathroom had a separate s.p.a.ce with a real door and everything. His castle was a studio. It was a cold, hard fact. bedrooms. One room. A kitchen, living room, dining room, den, master bedroom, child's bedroom-all in one room. Only the bathroom had a separate s.p.a.ce with a real door and everything. His castle was a studio. It was a cold, hard fact.

Even though he was making a million dollars investing other people's fortunes, Warrington was quite aware that you never know what can happen. It was always a question of maintaining the net. Warrington had rented a studio because he was never sure if fortune would take her smile away from him. Sure he was making good money, but in a year, he could be on the street. He'd been unemployed twice in the last three years. He'd handled a couple of major deals, but that was it. Although the market was trending in the right direction, it all could change. You had to be a fool to think otherwise. That was why he got the studio.

And he wasn't going to be like his father. He was going to provide. He was going to succeed on his own terms. He hadn't married rich; he'd decided he would be the source of his own success. He figured with the market headed in the direction it was heading, he'd soon be clearing upper six figures and be able to buy a bigger place on Fifth Avenue or down in Soho. In fact, he expected this. He believed in this. He planned to send Warry off to prep school, just as he had been, and then on to the college of his choice. He would probably buy a second home in the Hamptons. Or maybe at Telluride. Who was to say where the horizon ended? That was the only way to look at things. You had to make yourself see unlimited opportunity.

As he stepped away from his glorious view of the wondrous toy and dumped himself into bed, Francis Warrington Gillet III knew in his heart that he would make it after all.

He couldn't remember his dream when he awoke suddenly to the sound of pounding at his front door. He looked at his watch-7 a.m. Who the h.e.l.l would bang on your door at this hour? He stumbled out of bed and toward the door, blinking and trying to understand what some guy was hollering out in the hall.

"FBI! Open the door! Now!"

Warrington hastily ran to the front door, all the while pleading, "I'm here! I'm coming!" He had seen so many TV shows he was sure they were about to bust down the door and charge into his tiny studio, guns drawn and breathing hard with adrenaline. He slid back the door and stood facing a man he recognized immediately.

The guy he was looking at was Nick Vito. He was a stockbroker working out of a small office in the World Trade Center with whom Warrington had tried to do a deal. They'd discussed ways to wire money into a Bahamas account so that both could reap the benefits of the 1996 bull market. Warrington still had his business card: Nick Vito, Thorcon Capital. It looked like a real business card presented by a real stockbroker who worked in a real office. Only none of it was real. Reality struck Warrington hard: Nick Vito was actually the FBI, standing in Warrington's doorway at an unG.o.dly hour holding up a different kind of business card-a gold badge that said "Special Agent D. True Brown." Nick Vito/True Brown was reciting TV banter about how Warrington had the right to remain silent and all that, but Warrington was mostly trying to remember as much as he could about Nick Vito and what he might have said that would give True Brown reason to put him in handcuffs.

It was tough to remember. Most of it seemed so innocuous. Warrington had been introduced to Nick by a colleague. The colleague said he knew of an aggressive young broker with plenty of big-money clients looking to take new companies public. He just needed a little encouragement, usually in cash. The guy's outfit, Thorcon, was small, but he would be happy to chat with Warrington. It all sounded like a win-win proposition, so Warrington had done what any hungry stockbroker would have done and tracked down Nick Vito to see if they could work something out.

First they talked by phone. Then they met face-to-face at Nick's office in the World Trade Center. Nick seemed like a decent guy, maybe a little stiff. He was certainly knowledgeable about the market, and they soon were able to work out the details. There would be discounted stock handed over to Nick as commission. There would be money wired to an account in the Bahamas. The arrangement was essentially a bribe, but Warrington felt it was, at that time, an extremely common practice among small brokerage houses that dealt with over-the-counter stock. You could even argue it was leaning toward legal, or at least hidden behind a facade clever enough to fool the average drone at the NASD.

But perhaps not the FBI. Here Warrington stood in his underwear in his fabulous studio apartment, unable to remember precisely what he'd said to Nick Vito or Special Agent D. True Brown or whoever was standing right there in front of him. It had been nearly a year since Warrington had last seen the guy, so remembering what he'd said wasn't so easy. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more confused he became.

Warrington alternated between anger at himself and a growing sense of dread. The anger came from the fact that the deal he'd discussed ad infinitum with Nick Vito, with the Bahamas bank accounts and free restricted shares, hadn't even gone through. Discovery Studios was a big bust. But it was difficult to escape the fact that the conversations about said deal had, in fact, taken place. And when Nick Vito, now Special Agent D. True Brown, began reading off a description of the charge filed against Warrington, the sense of dread began to overwhelm Francis Warrington Gillet III. The anger morphed into raw fear.

"Francis Warrington Gillet III did conspire, confederate and agree together with others to commit offenses against the United States," Special Agent True Brown intoned. "To wit, to commit wire fraud in violation of Sections 1343 and 1346 of t.i.tle 18 of the United States Code . . ."

And so on and so on.

The phrases floated by. "Commercial bribery." "Part and object of the conspiracy." "Unlawfully, willfully and knowingly." Each was like a shovelful of dirt on a coffin. Here he stood in his own apartment, a privileged son of affluence and influence now facing up to five years in prison for committing a crime. Several crimes. And the doc.u.ments Agent Brown was reading even made a point of alleging that his actions were "against the United States."

As far as he could tell, Francis Warrington Gillet III was still standing in his own apartment in his own country. He had always believed in the system of checks and balances. He'd always embraced the idea of a criminal justice system that protected those who worked hard and paid their taxes from the seething, blood-seeking criminal hordes. Until this very moment, the police, the judges, the prosecutors-they were all on his side. They were all his friends. Now here he stood, on the other side. He could think many things. Whose fault was it? What if he'd done things differently? Suppose he'd never met Cary or Jeffrey or James "Jimmy" Labate or Sal Piazza or any of the rest of them? He thought of these things but he kept coming back to another, darker, more impenetrable question that buzzed and whined inside his skull like a gnat. And that question was this: What would his family think when they learned the truth about Francis Warrington Gillet III?

CHAPTER TEN.

May 1976

Warrington awoke in a stranger's house, as he did every school day morning. It was not his house, and it was not his choice. Warrington was seventeen, in his junior year at the Gilman School, an exclusive all-boy prep school located on sixty-eight acres in an affluent corner of the city of Baltimore. It used to be called the Gilman Country School for Boys, but the trustees-in an effort to make the school seem a bit less pretentious-dropped the "Country." It was one of those schools that made a point of wearing its history on its sleeve, rhapsodizing about its founders and insisting that it catered to students "from all backgrounds and segments" when it really served only the sons of the affluent and influential. They were Warrington's cla.s.smates, and-truth be told-he fit right in.