San Francisco, California
April 17
Holding firm to a nearly-full glass of straight bourbon, Roman Block sat in one of the exorbitantly priced, remarkably uncomfortable teak patio chairs on the rooftop deck of his Pacific Heights home. The sun was threatening to peek over the horizon. It was too early for a drink, or too late. He checked to make sure the ringer on his phone was on and the volume up…for the third time. He had a number of qualities that had contributed to his success over the years; patience wasn’t one of them.
There was nothing Roman could do but wait for confirmation that the specialist he’d hired had acquired the information from Gentrify Capital Partners. Roman mentally chastised himself for the hundredth time. Sloth, Lust, Envy, Pride, Greed…most of the deadly sins had gotten the better of him the day he crossed paths with Phipps Van Gent.
Roman had spent his entire life in the city of San Francisco. His single mother worked as a waitress, a shampoo girl at a salon, and a receptionist at a dental practice, and even then there were periods of homelessness in Roman’s childhood. Nevertheless, he had stayed in school and managed to get a degree from a local college. The best education Roman had received, however, was on the streets. Roman and his mother had squatted, rented, lived in shelters and in parks. He had lurked around strip malls and construction sites and watched the way the city expanded and shifted through the years.
In 2008, Roman capitalized on his street smarts. The housing market had collapsed, and where most saw disaster, Roman saw opportunity. The one lesson from his childhood that had stuck with him was that real estate was a valuable and limited resource. He begged, borrowed, and stole to come up with the money to buy six foreclosed apartment buildings in San Francisco’s infamous Tenderloin District. Roman’s mother had been proud. He was providing affordable housing for people who had few options in an expensive city. Roman had, in turn, shielded her from his slumlord tactics including the group of thugs he had employed to handle complaints and evictions. Turned out, that group of thugs had other employers with other income streams. Within a year, Roman was buying up more buildings and using the rental income to launder money for The Circle.
Gangwas really the wrong word to describe his business associates. The Circle had built a small drug and prostitution empire. With their limitless manpower of displaced urban youth, a flare for the vicious, and Roman’s creative accounting, he and his colleagues had become very rich men. But Roman quickly learned that there was no such thing as rich enough.
By 2010, he was a multi-millionaire, by 2013, a fifty millionaire. He had begun to glimpse a cross-section of society he had never seen, the elite. Roman began to crave something new, something more unattainable than cash. He had married and divorced twice in an effort to gain the one thing that continued to elude him, respectability. His first wife was the daughter of a Stanford professor, but her family wasn’t from the area, and Roman quickly learned they had no interest in ingratiating themselves with the well-to-do. His second wife was the wildly unattractive daughter of a well-connected local, but when her father was arrested for embezzlement, the marriage, too, had gone up the river.
Roman did everything right. He created a charitable trust in his mother’s name to combat homelessness. He purchased a home in the heart of the old-money enclave of Pacific Heights. It wasn’t the grandest on his quiet street; he wasn’t trying to make an obtrusive splash but rather slip into the pool unnoticed, like a crocodile. His landscaping was impeccable, his seasonal decorations tasteful, his windows pristine. He was the model neighbor, the exemplary businessman, and the compassionate philanthropist. Still, he couldn’t gain admittance to the right clubs or penetrate the inner-circle of white-shoe, lock-jawed, Ivy League and Stanford-educated blue-bloods. Sure, he had killed people, sent pregnant women and children to live on the streets; he’d even deliberately set fire to a block of dilapidated row houses—after planting evidence of a meth lab—in order to clear the way for a new development, but still…
Roman had been on the brink of a breakthrough; he felt it. He had been approached about joining the board of a highly respected charity that serviced the homeless community, and enticing invitations had increased in frequency. Unfortunately, the timing was terrible. His business had hit a downturn, and Roman had been dipping his fingers into pots he ought not. He had myopically stayed the course, living in denial while the company flailed. Then he did something stupid, well, something else stupid. He began siphoning funds from his mother’s charitable trust. His company was taking a hit, he had borrowed money from men who killed people for rooting for the Seahawks, and there was a void in the philanthropic trust that would have to be explained to the IRS. Enter Phipps Van Gent.
Phipps was one of those guys who always knew someone who knew someone. Oh, you play squash with so-and-so? I used to summer in the same town as his college roommate. Oh, you’re married to what’s-her-name? I dated a sorority sister of hers. And so it went. Roman was introduced to Phipps by chance at the bar at Spruce, a trendy Bay Area restaurant, and Roman’s greed overshadowed his due diligence. No, the first sin wasn’t actually greed; it was envy. Phipps had a local politician and a society heiress in tow, both of whom had pulled Roman aside and declared Phipps nothing less than a magician. Words like savant and guru were bandied about like hello and goodbye.
Phipps put his arm around Roman’s shoulders and, for the first time, Roman felt like a member of the club. Did you go to Dartmouth? You look like a Dartmouth man. Less than a week later, Roman had shifted a substantial percentage of his assets, and the assets of his colleagues, The Circle, to Gentrify Capital Partners. When the haze of Phipps’s dazzle and shine lifted, Roman did a little Monday morning quarterbacking and smelled a rat.
After exhaustive research, Roman concluded that Phipps Van Gent might not be what he appeared. The owner of Phipps’s rented Greenwich, Connecticut estate and the leasing company for his private jets were both taking action for overdue funds. Maybe Phipps simply had a glitch in his personal finances, but Roman suspected something much more nefarious. Roman also knew if he waited for the feds to crack down, he would be one in a long line of victims who would never see their money again. Roman couldn’t let that happen. So he did what he did best.
In the course of his business dealings, Roman had crossed paths with a brilliant sociopath: hacker name, Cataclysm, for whom nothing was off-limits if the price was right. So, with the promise of a percentage of the recovery, he gave Cataclysm the green light for a virtual hunting expedition.
The hacker had predicted it would take weeks to track the funds if they even still existed. One of the trademark qualities of a Ponzi scheme was that money was constantly flowing in and out of accounts, the sheer volume of activity diverting closer scrutiny. Nevertheless, Cataclysm had been confident a large amount of money was being skimmed and hidden. So his hacker went to work tracking both Roman’s initial investment and Phipps Van Gent’s little cookie jar. First, they had to find the money. Then they had to steal the money. For now, he waited.
He wanted to kill Phipps Van Gent. Hell, he’d enjoy it, but he couldn’t act yet. This situation mandated a subtlety that was unfamiliar to Roman. With money and power came an obligation: not to be law-abiding, but to be tidy. He would have to learn to look upon violence with distaste. The rich got their way without splitting their knuckles. Pity.
Roman finished his drink and poured another. He needed an update from his hacker. Then, as if the universe had heard his desperation, his phone rang.
“Hello.”
“I’ve got good news and bad news.” Cataclysm didn’t bother with a greeting.
Roman sighed and downed the drink in his hand. “Give me the bad news first.”
“It’s one piece of news. It’s both good and bad.”
“What?” Roman was already impatient.
“Someone triggered a failsafe in the Gentrify system. That means someone tried to download certain unauthorized files from a private server and triggered a virtual percussion grenade in the system.”
“What does that mean exactly?”
Cataclysm chuckled, and Roman’s hackles rose.
“It means someone either tried to install a tracking program on the Gentrify server or tried to download specific information that initiated the system shutdown. I’m guessing the latter based on the activity leading up to it.”
“How is this in any way good news?”
“Actually, it could be great news. Someone destroyed the Feds’ access to any hidden or suspicious accounts.”
“Wouldn’t he have a backup?”
“Yes, but not electronically. He most likely wrote vital information down manually and hid it somewhere. I mean the whole point of the failsafe is to eradicate digital data.”