Bull Street (21 page)

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“M
AN, OH
man,” Milner said aloud, sitting alone in his office, looking at his computer screen. All of the press reports—CNBC, Bloomberg, CNNMoney, Fortune, even those yahoos at Yahoo Finance—were universally negative on his Tentron bid. Tentron’s stock was trading at $41.50, well above his offer. That spoke volumes more than the press: market expects higher bid.

Sandy called him and said he was coming over. “You seen the press?” Milner said to him when he arrived.

“Like flies on dog shit.”

Milner sat back, hooked his hands behind his head. He said, “It’s odd, intentionally shooting myself in the foot. Against my instincts.”

“I agree. Why don’t you just get it over with and take out a full-page ad in the
Journal
that offers a $100 million reward to anybody that tops your bid.”

“Sanford F. Sharts, I’m surprised at you. Stooping to sarcasm.”

“You’re bringing out the worst in me, playing around with the public markets, risking both of our hides if the SEC finds out you’ve made a frivolous offer. That it’s to buy you time to figure out what to do about the shit you’ve stepped in.”

“It’s no different than bidding for something you don’t really want in a charity auction. Coaxing some jerk you can’t stand into the bidding, then running the price up on him so your favorite cause gets a higher price.”

“Since when is Walker your favorite cause?”

That stopped Milner. “Point taken.”

“Sitting around isn’t going to solve the core problem. Are you going to cop a plea or run?”

Well, that about summed it up. No hiding from Uncle Sandy. “I don’t know yet. I’m still trying to decide.”

“Just don’t get too cute. Remember you’ve got a fuse burning, and you don’t know how long it is.”

About ten minutes after Sandy left, Jack called and asked for a meeting. Milner said sure. It was like
A Christmas Carol.
He wondered when the next ghost would visit.

A half hour later when Jack got there, he didn’t even waste time grinning and preening himself before saying, “What’s going on with this half-assed bid?”

“Not much if you believe the press.”

“Quit screwing around. What’re you doing?”

“I’m trying to buy a company.”

“Doesn’t look that way to me.”

“No? I’ve spent a million bucks in fees and committed to six billion in financing. What does that look like to you?”

“At forty bucks a share? A wet fart. We’ve got a ton of capital at risk on this one. And not only that, we need the profits to shore up the firm, what with the losses we’re taking from this credit market meltdown.”

“So now I’m responsible for helping you address macroeconomics?”

“Don’t fuck with me. After you called him, Sir Reginald doubled down his position. Jeez, we own over 25% of the stock. If you pull out or blow it the stock will drop like a stone. It could bankrupt Walker. I’m not gonna let that happen.”

“You gonna dictate my deal tactics now?”

Jack just stared at him. Milner didn’t know if Jack was thinking of what to say next or was just trying to be intimidating.

Milner said, “Maybe you oughtta go back downtown and take care of your business, leave me alone up here to take care of mine.” Milner felt like he’d won a round when Jack left. But he hadn’t forgotten what Sandy said. And seeing Jack seething like that reminded him of what happened to Chuck.

Washington, D.C.
Croonquist was tired. Why wouldn’t he be? He’d been working his ass off on this presentation to Charlie Green for two straight weeks. Franklin Stone from Litigation would attend, now an ally whose support he could count on. Phil Johnson in Surveillance, his old boss would also be there, and was on board. Green was still pressing for a big bust, but lately Charlie’s mood depended on the direction the political winds were blowing on Capitol Hill that week. So Croonquist wasn’t sure how today would go.

At 8:59, Green entered the room, nodded and took his seat at the end of the table. Croonquist felt a flutter in his chest. He nodded to Starsky to dim the lights, cleared his throat and rose.

He clicked to the first PowerPoint slide. “As you can see here, we’re focusing on the stock of just one company, Tentron
Corporation, as a potential enforcement action, but there is a pattern that exists from at least one previous transaction we monitored involving Southwest Homes. The similarities in trading provide evidence that the individuals we’re targeting are functioning as a group.” He clicked to the next slide.

“What you see here are selections from a series of emails over a two-month period regarding the common stock and listed stock options of a group of six homebuilders just before the announcement of the Southwest Homes initial public offering. The emails are between Walker & Company’s New York office and GCG’s Paris office. As you see here, the initial buy orders went out from Walker’s New York office and the confirmations started coming in a day or two later.” He looked up to see if Green was with him. Green looked bored.

Croonquist clicked successively through four slides, moving it along. “What you can see here is that orders started getting handed out to various Swiss banks as well.”

“I never heard of any of these banks,” Green said.

“They aren’t majors like UBS and Swiss Bank, but they’re all substantial in size, none with less than five billion dollars in total assets,” Croonquist said. Green nodded.

“The same trading pattern shows up in Tentron’s stock.” Croonquist clicked through four slides showing the link between Walker & Company’s New York office and GCG Paris, then to London, Tokyo, Santiago and Hong Kong. Croonquist was now thinking it was too much information, too many slides.

Green shook his head. “Roman, we talked about these emails a while back. Can we use any of them?”

“Not the homebuilders stuff,” Stone said, “but we got wiretaps before we collected most of the Tentron stuff. That’s all usable.”

Green nodded. “Go on,” he said.

“What we have here,” Croonquist said, clicking to another slide, “is data produced by our new MarketWatch system and our Cray. It shows documentation of virtually all of the trades in Tentron listed in the preceding emails.” He turned back to look at Green, waved his hand in a circle. “Close to 25% of Tentron’s stock has been acquired in activities that appear to be part of a coordinated group.”

“Let’s cut to the punch line,” Green said.

“Okay,” Croonquist said, seeing he was getting to the end of Green’s attention span, “the Tentron trading appears to be the same group as the homebuilders. Harold Milner launched an unsolicited tender offer for Tentron earlier this week. We think Milner and Walker & Company formed an illegal group operating in concert to acquire Tentron without disclosing their mutual intent and acquired close to 25% of Tentron’s shares without filing a 13D.” He paused and waited to see Green’s reaction. Green understood.

“What’s the relationship to the homebuilders?” Green asked.

Croonquist turned back to look at the screen. “Maybe this will help. The telephone conversations listed here are between the M&A Department in Walker & Company’s New York office and GCG Paris. I’m going to play you a tape from one of those conversations,” he said and clicked the tape machine on. The sound wasn’t great, but he hoped Green could follow.

“Are they on the way?” the first kid’s voice said.

“You should have them by 6:00 tomorrow evening your time,” the second kid’s voice said.

First kid: “Anything unusual?”

Second kid: “Yes. Prolific today. Lots of instructions—trading like crazy.”

First kid: “Are you sure it was all from him?”

Second kid: “No, as you know, on any given day he accounts for about 90% of the volume of the trades.”

First kid: “So if today was a heavy day, chances are he had a heavy day.”

Second kid: “Right. I was very tempted tonight to review them all at my end to see what they said.”

First kid: “Too risky.”

Second kid: “Yeah, you’re right. No sense in pressing our luck.”

Croonquist turned the tape machine off. He turned back to look at Green. He couldn’t read him.

“One of the voices you heard and one of the telephone numbers you see on the screen was Richard Blum, an Associate in the M&A Department at Walker & Company. We think he and one of his colleagues in Paris are part of this group dating back from the Southwest transaction. We have a number of other similar calls between Blum and his colleague, Kathy Cella, who’s assigned to GCG in Paris. We don’t know if they’re couriers or they’re privy to the identity of all the other group members.”

“So we’re recommending we bring in Blum first, sweat him and then see where it leads us,” Stone said.

Green said, “You have my blessing. But how do you know that this kid Blum won’t tip off the rest of the network?”

“We scare the shit out of him and convince him he can plea bargain for turning everybody else in. That’s not a big concern,” Stone said.

“Sounds good to me, just keep me posted,” Green said. He looked at his watch, nodded at Croonquist, said, “Good job,” and left. Croonquist turned the projector off and felt the rush he
always did before a big case. This one was on the way, and it had him tingling all the way down to his toes.

New York City.
Kathy got out of the taxi at 62
^nd
and Broadway. She knew Richard would be home at his apartment, because she’d seen him getting into the car service Town Car in front of the office. She heard him decline a drink with Tim Bolton, saying he was heading straight home. She wanted this over with.

Her emotions had been twisting in her stomach for two days, since he kissed her on the sidewalk outside Teavana and asked her what she felt. What was it with this guy? Guys didn’t ask her what she felt, they just hit on her. But Richard just kept coming at her. Smiling, gentle, confident, he didn’t give up. But he’d said things on Fire Island she had to square with him.

When she got off the elevator, she could see he was waiting for her at the door. His suit jacket was off, tie loosened, hair a little tousled, but still just so. “Hi,” he said.

Kathy walked past him without saying anything, got a few steps inside and turned. When he closed the door, he said, “Before you say anything, I need to talk about the mole. I know what I said on Fire Island was ridiculous.”

“That can wait. You hurt me on the island.”

“I’m sorry, but you pissed me off.”

“What was that crap about my family’s South Hampton place?”

“You call me farm boy, razz me for my background all the time. You can’t take a poke in the ribs?”

“You call ‘stuck in your hard-armored shell’ a poke? ‘Glib, tough, and cool’? And don’t ever talk about my father.”

“You pissed me off. What did you call me? Lovelorn?”

“Pissed off or not, I think you meant it. Most times, people don’t really say what they mean until they’re angry.”

He moved toward her. For some reason she started to feel like she was going to cry. She clenched her teeth. She’d be damned if she’d let herself.

He said, “I didn’t say everything I meant. I love you.”

It hit her like a wave of warmth washing over her chest, then down her entire body. She felt like laughing with relief, knowing now it was what she needed to hear, then feeling the tears come. Her eyes were closed when he took her in his arms.

“Oh, God, why are you saying that to me
now?”

“What do you mean
now?
Why’s this any worse or better time than any other?”

He was holding her and she had her hands on his chest, looking up into his face. Why did he have to keep coming at her? “Stop pushing me, please.” He kissed her; she didn’t respond for a moment, then she let herself kiss him back. She pulled her lips from his and looked into his eyes, smiling. She put her hands in his hair, drew his face to hers and kissed him. She felt him moving her toward the sofa. Now she couldn’t wait even that long and pulled him to the floor. “The rug is fine,” she whispered, and scrambled to undo the buttons on his shirt.