The Prince of Risk A Novel(70)

Shank didn’t budge. “That isn’t good enough. There are people you can call. Chips you can cash in.”

“I’ll see what I can do if and when the time comes. Now come on, out of the way.”

Still Shank didn’t move. “What about your father’s estate?”

The pounding in Astor’s head intensified. “Excuse me?”

“Your old man was loaded. He sold his company for a billion ten years back, and that’s not counting how much he earned before. You’re his only heir, right? I mean, your mom’s dead. You don’t have any brothers or sisters. Who else was he going to leave it to? Call his attorneys. Ask them to read the will immediately. They can pledge something. I know a banker who’ll front you the dough.”

Calm down, Astor told himself. He’s just scared. He has no idea what he’s saying. “You do?”

“Yeah.”

Astor looked away, hoping his anger would recede. When he spoke, it was in a whisper. “Don’t ever tell me what I can or can’t do. I’m leaving now. And Marv…don’t ever bring up my father again.”





47




Michael Grillo did not like to be kept waiting. The time was ten past nine. He stood beneath the awning of a deli at the corner of 61st and Third Avenue, enjoying the shade. He had a rule about this kind of thing: never smoke more than three cigarettes while waiting for a contact. Staying in one place too long put you in jeopardy of being spotted. Just as dangerous, it signaled desperation to your contact. Grillo dropped cigarette number two and ground it beneath his heel.

He gazed up the block to the corner of 62nd Street, his eyes focusing on the entry to a steel pier and glass office building. His contact worked on the tenth floor of the building, behind a door bearing the words Johnson, Higby, and Mather, Attorneys at Law. His contact was not a lawyer. The names on the door were a front. His contact was a twenty-five-year man with the Central Intelligence Agency’s Directorate of Operations, and the offices of Johnson, Higby, and Mather housed an Agency collections office engaged in the analysis of foreign intelligence.

Grillo checked his watch for the third time in ten minutes. He felt for his Shermans. Instead, he took out his phone and looked at his e-mail. Nothing new had arrived since his contact at the credit bureau had put him onto Edward Astor’s scent an hour before.

“Astor has a credit score of seven sixty-one,” the contact had reported.

“Won’t do him much good now,” said Grillo. “Just tell me what cards he carried.”

“Visa, MasterCard, American Express, the usual. Pays off his balance every month.”

“His salary is listed at five million a year. He can afford it. Just forward me the card numbers.”

After receiving the information, Grillo phoned the credit card companies, specifically the individuals who headed the companies’ antifraud departments. As with the nation’s phone carriers, he had spent considerable time and effort cultivating contacts. Unauthorized sharing of customer records was a felonious offense punishable by hefty fines and prison time. His approaches were made in person and with discretion. On occasion he’d been forced to call on a person’s patriotism, meaning that he’d misrepresented himself as an agent for a United States government law enforcement agency. If his requests were denied he had alternate means at his disposal, namely a crafty, cunning, and completely amoral band of hackers based in Shanghai. But they were a last resort, and not to be trusted.



Copies of Edward Astor’s charges began landing in Grillo’s secure servers soon afterward. By noon he would possess a comprehensive record of all charges the late CEO of the New York Stock Exchange had made over the past ninety days. Grillo was interested not in what he had purchased but in studying the location of his charges to track Astor’s movements.

Grillo’s phone rumbled in his pocket. He looked at the caller ID and answered. “That was quick.”

“You told me to impress you,” said the female executive at the nation’s largest phone carrier. “Check your mail. Just sent over his last three months of calls, including correspondents’ names and addresses.”

“I’m impressed.”

“Prove it.”

Grillo brought up the message on his screen as they spoke. It was apparent that Edward Astor had spent an enormous amount of time on the phone. Page after page was filled with numbers and the names of the individuals or corporations to whom the numbers were registered. He scrolled to the last entries, detailing calls made to and from Edward Astor’s phone on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. He recognized a few names as belonging to well-known corporate supremos. His eye fixed immediately on a call placed to Edward Astor on Friday morning at 9:18. Duration, seventeen seconds. The caller had no name and no address. To Grillo’s eye, that meant the call had probably been made from a throwaway, a cell phone purchased from any corner vendor with a prepaid number of minutes. It might even be from Palantir.