Missing in Flight

CHAPTER NINETEEN TINA

CHAPTER NINETEEN

T INA

Light floods the penthouse condominium when Tina and Agent Pratt step off the elevator onto the black marble floors of Lionel Rothman’s grand entryway. The white-streaked marble continues up a spiral staircase to their left. Lionel appears on the far side of the immaculate living room, cinching a robe around his waist as he strides toward them. He also wears slippers, Tina notes, and pajama pants despite it being August, although you wouldn’t know it’s the hottest day of the year from the condo’s temperature. It’s a few degrees cooler than the building’s lobby, a welcome reprieve from the sticky night air outside.

As they wait for him to cross the large space, Tina’s eyes drift to the black-and-white painting hanging to the right of the entryway. She’s always been interested in art, despite having no talent of her own, and recognizes the piece immediately as Picasso’s “Le Taureau noir.” A small light hangs directly above the canvas, and Tina guesses the painting is illuminated even when the rest of the lights are off.

“I’m Agent Mike Pratt, and this is my colleague, Analyst Tina Farrar.”

Tina turns from the art piece, realizing it is an original, when Rothman reaches them.

Pratt extends his hand. “Thank you for your cooperation in allowing us up. We’re sorry to wake you.”

Tina detects a slight tremor in Pratt’s voice. Is he nervous being in the presence of Lionel Rothman? She watches the two shake hands, wondering if Pratt would’ve apologized if Rothman weren’t the most well-known financier in the country.

“That’s all right. But you’re lucky my wife is in the Hamptons escaping the summer heat. There’s nothing she hates more than having her sleep interrupted.” After dropping his hand to his side, Rothman looks between Tina and Agent Pratt. “What’s this about?”

If he’s alarmed by the FBI’s presence in his home in the middle of the night, he doesn’t show it.

Pratt withdraws the warrant from his suit jacket pocket and unfolds it for Rothman to read. “We have a warrant for every account managed by Jack Rossi at your firm. And any other accounts he may have access to.”

The color drains from the Rothman Securities founder’s face as his eyes fall to the warrant. “So, it’s true?”

Tina recalls Lionel’s quote from the Forbes article. Jack is like a son to me. Maybe Jack called him. Or it’s possible Liam’s disappearance got leaked to the media. Once the story gets out, it will likely be everywhere.

“You’ve already heard?” Pratt asks.

Rothman looks between Tina and Pratt. “Heard what? Has Jack been arrested?”

Pratt glances at Tina in confusion. “For what?”

Rothman frowns. “Well, I assume my suspicions are correct that Jack’s been committing fraud.” He attempts to smooth the back of his thinning gray hair. “Why else would you be serving this warrant?”

Tina works to hide her surprise as she mentally replays Rossi’s reaction when Pratt asked if anything suspicious had happened at his work.

“Jack Rossi’s infant son has gone missing aboard his flight home to New York with his mother.”

Rothman’s eyes widen briefly before he narrows them at Pratt. “What?”

“We’re investigating the possibility that Jack’s son was kidnapped due to the amount of money Jack has access to at your firm. His being on a recent cover of Forbes may have made him a target. We need to see if any large sums have gone out for a ransom.”

“My God.” Rothman sways slightly on his feet.

For a moment, Tina worries he might faint.

“I think I need to sit down.”

“Of course,” Tina says as they follow Rothman past the ten-foot French doors leading to an expansive lit-up terrace.

When they reach the living area, Lionel moves around a glass coffee table and slowly lowers himself onto a Chesterfield sofa. Beside it, two bronze sculptures sit atop rectangular white marble plinths. Tina sinks into an art deco armchair beside Pratt. The penthouse has to be worth upward of $20 million. Being the only unit on the forty-third floor, the condo is dead quiet.

The investment manager blows a breath out of his mouth before locking his eyes with Pratt’s. “So, Liam’s been kidnapped?”

“We don’t know for sure. We’re considering all possibilities. Are you aware of Jack Rossi receiving any threats since being on the cover of Forbes ?”

Rothman shakes his head. “No. Jack’s been flooded with new clients and interviews from other media outlets. But no threats. At least not that I know of.”

“What makes you suspect Jack was committing fraud?” Tina asks. She feels Pratt’s head snap in her direction but keeps her gaze trained on Lionel’s.

The financier grips both knees with his hands. “Last month, I noticed a discrepancy between Jack’s client’s statement and the account balance. When I questioned Jack, he blamed it on a printing error. At the time, I believed him.” Rothman peers at the night beyond the large window on the far wall, flanked by forest-green silk curtains. “I’ve known Jack since he was a boy. He’s like a son to me, and I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt.” The older man clears his throat, running his thumb and index finger down the sides of his chin. “But recently, Jack reported major client losses to me after a venture capital investment of his went under.”

He averts his eyes from the window to meet Tina’s. “We’re talking about one hundred million dollars in losses. So, I looked into it. Jack did lose money in that investment, but not that much.” Rothman swallows, as if struggling with what he’s about to say. “I’m afraid Jack siphoned half of this investment to himself and is still hiding it—somewhere. Maybe an offshore account or in one disguised as an investment. And I believe he’s been doing this for a while.”

Tina’s phone vibrates inside her purse on the floor beside her feet. Both men turn to the sound of the noise. Pratt frowns.

“Sorry.” She reaches inside her bag, thinking it must be Special Agent Castillo. Seeing her neighbor’s name on the caller ID, her heart stills.

“Did you report it?” Pratt asks, refocusing his attention on Lionel.

Biting her lip, Tina debates whether to get up from their interview to answer it. With a flush of guilt, she ignores the call and slips her phone back into her purse, mentally conjuring the reasons why Felicity would be calling in the middle of the night. None of them are good. Occasionally, Isabel wakes and has trouble falling back asleep. Hopefully, that’s why Felicity is calling. She’ll call Felicity back as soon as they’re done.

Tina forces herself to focus on Rothman as the investment manager shakes his head.

“Not yet. I confronted him about it only this week. He denied it. Said he could prove where the deficit funds were. I wanted to believe him ... even though I knew in my gut he was lying. Anyway, I agreed to let him produce this supposed proof before I went to the authorities. But I guess my gut was right.”

Tina studies him. In his bathrobe, with tufts of hair sticking out at odd angles, the city’s most successful financier looks much more fallible than the powerful man pictured in the recent Forbes article with Jack Rossi.

Pratt shifts in his chair. “Do you have access to the accounts Jack manages? Or is there someone in your firm who can? We need access tonight—as soon as possible—to see if there’s any pending transactions for a ransom.”

Rothman smooths the front of his robe. “I should run your warrant through my legal team first.” His gaze travels out the window.

Tina glances at Pratt. Banks are notorious for roadblocking the FBI when being served warrants, dragging them through their legal team and not getting back to them for thirty to forty-five days. They don’t have time for that.

She studies the financier, wondering what his motivation would be to stall the investigation. Given the endangerment of his employee’s child and his suspicions of fraud, it seems Rothman should be more than willing to help.

Is he protecting Jack Rossi? Or something else? She thinks of Rothman’s beautiful daughter pictured in the Forbes article with Rossi and remembers Pratt asking if Rossi was alone in his apartment. The article stated they were childhood best friends. She wonders what they are now. From the looks of it, they are still very close.

Rothman lets out a sigh. “But I have access to everything. I still directly manage a percentage of Jack’s client accounts. It’s how I’ve been able to set him up with some top clients. When Jack started working for me, mine was the name everyone knew—the man the rich wanted managing their money. But I could only manage so much. Jack’s clients got the promise of me investing a portion of their assets, but now he’s made a name for himself , which was exactly what I hoped he would do.” Rothman pushes himself to his feet with the help of the armrest. “I’ll get my laptop.”

Tina and Pratt wait in silence as Lionel disappears down a dimly lit hallway. Tina casts a look at Agent Pratt, who avoids her eye contact. She guesses that, like her, Pratt is relieved Rothman is cooperating, given the time-sensitive nature of the situation.

She thinks about the Rossis’ financial records, his salary of a few hundred thousand after taxes, and their water-view Tribeca condo. Was he supplementing his income through fraud, like Lionel suspected?

Tina reaches inside her purse to see if Felicity left her a voicemail and sees that she did. Rothman reappears from the hallway, now wearing a pair of reading glasses and carrying a silver laptop in one hand. Tina drops her phone back into her bag. She’ll have to wait to call her back. Rothman perches on the edge of the sofa, opens the computer atop the coffee table, and begins to type.

After a moment, Rothman flips the laptop around. “Here are all of Jack’s accounts. You can see the end balances as of yesterday, but you’ll have to go through each fund to look for any pending transactions.”

Pratt leans forward.

“It’ll take a while,” Rothman continues. “And it’s possible any transactions made after the close of yesterday’s business day won’t show up until the start of business hours.”

Tina stares at the list of eight-figure balances on the laptop screen. If Rothman confronted Jack yesterday, staging his son’s kidnapping and ransom might’ve seemed the perfect way to cover his fraud. Which would also mean that Makayla is in on it. They could claim they had to take that money out to cover the ransom demand. They had no choice. Still, it wasn’t a foolproof plan. Faking a kidnapping and ransom wouldn’t do anything to fix Rossi’s account balances in a federal investigation, but, she surmises, it would provide Rossi an explanation to give to his clients for their missing money. She’s seen enough as an analyst to know that desperate people take desperate measures. And they don’t always think things through. It would also explain why they can’t find Liam on the flight.

Jack would have had to hire someone to stage this, or Makayla did it. But who would do such a thing? To their own child?

“You don’t think Jack embezzled from the wrong client, do you?” she asks.

“If my suspicions are correct, Jack’s in way over his head. We have a lot of very powerful clients who would undoubtedly go a long way to protect their assets. Most of our investors don’t get to where they are by being passive individuals. And I can’t speak to all of their moral codes.” A gasp escapes Rothman’s throat. “What if one of them enlisted some criminals to hit Jack where it hurts the most?”

“Anything is possible at this point,” Pratt says. “Can you give us administrative access to all these accounts? We need to live monitor everything. Analyst Farrar can give you our emails.” Pratt stands with his phone in hand, and Tina thinks Rothman’s fears surrounding a vengeful client make more sense than Rossi staging his son’s kidnapping. And apparently, Pratt has been thinking the same thing. He turns to Tina. “I’m going to get a warrant for the Anchorage office to go back and search Makayla’s father’s house.”