The magnate’s hair was parted seemingly with a laser’s precision. His teeth gleamed so white and straight that Devine found himself running his tongue over his own in an attempt to remove the grime of his breakfast. The shoes were unlike any he had ever seen, the softest of probably Italian leather, triple-strapped, polished to a sheen that was possible only by a practiced human hand. Cowl’s gray shirt seemed grafted to him like a second skin of liquid chrome.
“I came from nothing,” Cowl began in his address to the class of newbies. “And built everything you see here entirely on my own.”
And it was true, or so the official business press had always dutifully reported. A string of Cowl’s ancestors had inherited great wealth, but his grandfather apparently had been a lousy businessman and lost half the fortune. Cowl’s worthless father had sponged off his inheritance, and what he didn’t lose in gambling, he squandered in bad investments. When Brad Cowl had come along, there was little if anything left. But he had worked hard and graduated summa cum laude from his Ivy League college. After that the man had, in around two decades, built his eponymous firm up into the same league as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch.
No one spoke much of the other name partner, Anne Comely. She was reportedly in her seventies and lived primarily in Palm Beach, or was it Palm Springs? No one that Devine knew had ever seen the woman. She had never come to the office, at least that Devine was aware. It was rumored that she was a reclusive heiress who had provided Cowl with the initial stake he needed to build his empire, and one of her rewards had been her name on the firm, and even more money in her already deep pocket.
However one kept score, Cowl was one of the hottest commodities in the most important financial center in the world.
“There are forty-five of you here now,” Cowl had said, looking around the room and lingering on just a few. Devine had a feeling this was all scripted and that these minions had already been preordained to be passed on up the chain. He hadn’t been one of them.
“Only ten percent of you will make it to the next round. They will have a shot at getting to the next level, which will come with ample financial and professional reward. The losers, well . . . ” He didn’t have to finish this part. Everyone in the room knew what happened to losers. They got flushed down the toilet and went to work at places that didn’t have arrogant billionaires at the helm.
Cowl stared them all down. “I would wish you all luck.” The smirk came back. “But luck, I can assure you, will have nothing to do with it.”
Then he had made an impressive leap and landed upright on the table, causing one already tightly wound young woman he had flown past on this maneuver to cry out and nearly fall out of her chair. Devine guessed she would not be one of the ten percent to move on to a financial mecca.
Cowl glowered at them all from his now-high perch. “This place, this space, this world, isn’t about luck. It’s about brains and talent and belly fire. You have to want it more than the next guy.”
He eyed the seven women in the group—one Black, one brown, two Asian, three white, strictly adhering to the firm’s diversity program—along with the thirty-eight men, thirty-seven of whom were white and the other Latino.
That summed up diversity in the ranks of the high finance world, Devine mused.
“Excuse me, the next person.”
The suit platoon clapped, and Cowl cried out, “So, what are you waiting for? Get your asses to work. And may the best people win.”
Prompted by this voice command, they had all stood like obedient dogs and filed from the room, while Cowl watched them from his intimidating perch.
The guy just seemed to bask in this shit, Devine had thought at the time. His opinion had not changed.
The Bugatti kept blasting south, through Midtown and next Downtown and then straight to the Financial District. There it turned onto Exchange Place, one block south of Wall Street, to the building where Sara Ewes had died. It turned into the parking garage at Cowl and Comely.
The Bugatti’s window came down, Cowl held up his phone to the reader, and the garage door cranked up. The $3,000,000 muscle car pulled in and the door closed behind it. The man had not only his own parking space but also his own private elevator, right to the penthouse. Devine knew this, because Wanda Simms had told him.
Devine imagined the man going up in his silver tube. As he continued to watch, lights came on, but on the fifty-second floor, because Devine took a minute to count down from the top.
The penthouse was four floors higher.