From Antigua to Morocco

My latest White Collar Crime Thriller, Spin Move, is about a guy named John Rudiger who’s a fugitive financier living under an alias in Antigua. How Rudiger wound up in that position is a long story, which I laid out in a series of short stories and novellas called Rudiger Stories.

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The 60-second summary is that Rudiger is basically a good guy who was a money manager in New York named Walter Conklin with a $1 billion hedge fund around the time of the Internet boom. He specialized in technology stocks, so as you might guess, he was considered a wunderkind there for a while. The guy puffed himself up, in more ways than one, along with the markets. He married a sassy, big-busted social climber from Long Island, developed a taste for high-priced wines, bought a Park Avenue coop, opened a Park Avenue office with a personal Cordon Bleu-trained French chef, and even got pretty puffed up physically—ballooning from his All-American college football weight to over 300 pounds.

When the Internet bubble popped and the NASDAQ crashed, things fell apart for Conklin. It turns out his wife, Angela, was screwing one of his best friends and his CFO and partner at his hedge fund was screwing him even worse: he cooked the books to pump up Conklin’s already phantasmagorical returns in order to suck in more investors, and then when the market tanked he panicked, turned state's evidence and blamed it all on Conklin. That's what put Conklin on the run to South America for plastic surgery, a gastric bypass, and his John Rudiger alias in the Caribbean.

So now you’re caught up with how Rudiger wound up in Antigua.

Enter Katie Dolan.

Katie, a petite strawberry blonde with a lithe body and washboard abs, was raised tough-as-nails in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, and had worked her way up from the streets to become a lawyer, first for the Manhattan DA’s office and then for Assistant U.S. Attorney Charlie Holden in Manhattan. Holden was the guy who arrested Conklin's CFO, and the reason Conklin skipped the country when he realized Holden was hot on his trail.

Katie landed in Antigua at Holden’s behest to try and get the goods on Rudiger, prove he was really Conklin and extradite him back to the U.S. for trial and jail. Pheromones flew when she saw his 6’2’’ tanned and muscled body and ski-slope nose. His hormones responded in kind.

Rudiger did Holden one better and co-opted Katie to go with him back to New York to pose as his ex-wife Angela to help him recover $50 million in bearer bonds he’d stashed in a safe deposit box.

Katie did Rudiger still one better, screwing him out of $30 million of the bonds, and thus begins our story, Spin Move.

It’s a year after Rudiger and Katie’s tryst in New York, and now the Antiguan officials are demanding ever more exorbitant payouts to maintain his cover. He’s running out of money.  Katie is holed up with her ailing father in Cape Verde, an Island paradise off the coast of Africa that conveniently lacks an extradition treaty with the U.S., an idea she took right out of Rudiger’s playbook. Despite her double cross, Rudiger is still hot for Katie, and he knows just where to find her when he leaves Antigua. But U.S. Attorney Charlie Holden is still hovering in the background, dead set on catching them both. Even worse, Katie’s been sucked in by a dashing, disreputable Swiss banker and he’s conned her out of Rudiger’s $30 million. Can they get it back and escape before it’s too late?

I gave Spin Move the elements of a classic thriller, with pace and jump cuts from Antigua to Morocco to Geneva to the UK, some secondary characters I had a lot of fun with, ongoing fireworks between Rudiger and Katie, a sneaky villain in a murderous Swiss banker, and some action that will hopefully stand up the hairs on the back of your neck.

Readers seem to agree; the reviews have been very positive.

I hope you’ll give Spin Move a try.

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The Theft of the Mona Lisa

In 1911, an Argentinian con man, the Marques Eduardo de Valifierno, came up with the idea for the signature scam of his life: the theft of the Mona Lisa.

But that was only half of it.  The other half was that, before the theft, he commissioned a famous French art forger named Yves Chaudron to paint six perfect copies of the Mona Lisa and had them shipped to different cities around the world.

Next, de Valifierno hired an Italian carpenter working in the Lourve Museum named Vincenzo Peruggia to steal the Mona Lisa.  On the day of the theft, Peruggia hid in a broom closet until closing, then stepped out of his closet and lifted the Mona Lisa off the wall.  He hid it under his smock and simply walked out of the museum.

After the sensational publicity about the theft, de Valifierno lined up six wealthy art buyers who fell all over themselves to buy his copies for millions, each thinking they’d bought the genuine article.

Peruggia hid the original in the false bottom of a chest in his spartan Paris apartment for two years until the Paris police dragnet ran its course.  Then he took it back to Italy with him.  Once there, he contacted a Florentine art dealer, Alfredo Geri, saying he had the Mona Lisa and wanted to sell it. Geri agreed to meet Peruggia, bringing the director of the Uffizi Gallery with him to authenticate the painting.  Once Geri knew he was looking at the real thing, he phoned the police and Peruggia was arrested.  By the time the world learned that the Mona Lisa had been recovered, de Valifierno had disappeared and it was too late for the buyers of his forgeries to do anything about it.

Some of that story is true, at least the part about Peruggia stealing the Mona Lisa in 1911, his means of accomplishing it, the fact he tried to resell it two years later and his arrest for it.  The stuff about de Valifierno, the forgeries and his wealthy art buyers are legend, and no one is sure whether or not any of that is real.  But it’s a story often retold, and probably embellished upon with each retelling.

That story inspired my new novel, Mickey Outside, about an art scam featuring Mickey Steinberg, one of the characters in my third novel, Bull Street.  And since novels are made-up stories, why shouldn't I use de Valifierno's apocryphal scam as the basis for Mickey Steinberg's story?

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In Mickey Outside, Mickey Steinberg, the financier of his generation and the mastermind behind a $2 billion insider trading ring, is getting ready to get out of Yankton, the cushy minimum-security Federal Prison Camp where he's been serving a reduced three-year sentence for cooperating with the Feds.  He's broke, banned from the securities industry for life, divorced by his wife, and none of his old hoity-toity friends from the world of high society and finance in New York will take his calls.

So he needs to come up with a creative way to get back on top.  He's always been a behind-the-scenes genius, but he's not much of a face man, so he recruits another Yankton con, Paul Reece, a good-looking, smooth-talking car-salesman type to help him put together his new con.  He knocks off de Valifierno's idea, researches famous art thefts and settles on Vincent van Gogh's View of the Sea at Scheveningen, a stolen masterpiece that’s never been recovered.  He hires an expert forger to copy it and he's off to the races.

After his release from Yankton and his return to New York, he contacts wealthy buyers in the shadowy underground art market for stolen masterpieces and embarks upon an auction process to sell the painting to the highest bidder.

Then things begin to come unraveled, and the real story begins.

Mickey Outside is caper steeped in the art world, the glamor of New York, mega-rich luminaries, and some good fun.  I hope you'll give it a try.

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Rudiger Stories

About two years ago I wrote a short story, Rudiger, and a blog about it, Mark Knopfler, Rüdiger and Me (read it here), that introduced the character of John Rudiger, fugitive financier. I titled the story and created John Rudiger based on emotions evoked by a song called "Rüdiger" by Mark Knopfler (See Knopfler perform it here.) In Rudiger, John Rudiger is living under an alias in Antigua.  He ran off with close to $100 million from his hedge fund and is now down to his last $2 million. Katie Dolan, a lawyer with the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York, is sent to Antigua to try to get enough evidence to extradite Rudiger back to the U.S. to stand trial. Rudiger recruits her to help him retrieve $50 million of bearer bonds from a safe deposit box in New York.

Since then I’ve gotten to know Rudiger better, including writing a novel about Rudiger’s exploits after the Rudiger short story, Spin Move (see below).

I’ve also released two short stories and two novellas that are prequels to the Rudiger short story. The short stories are Rudiger Comes Alive and Rudiger in the Islands.  The novellas are Rudiger in Peril and Rudiger on the Streets.

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All five Rudiger stories are available in the collection, Rudiger Stories, or individually.  The collection is priced at $3.99 and the individual stories are $0.99 each. I hope you'll give them a try. I had great fun writing them, including enjoying some oddball secondary characters in Rudiger's new home in Antigua.

The five Rudiger stories are a total of 95,000 words, comparable to a full-length novel.

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In Rudiger Comes Alive, hotshot Wall Streeter Walter Conklin is a wunderkind hedge fund manager who runs a $1 billion technology fund. He’s on a roll until his CFO cooks the books to overstate their results to raise more money. The only way out for Conklin is to insist his CFO keep cooking them until he can equal those returns. But the Feds are on to him, so Conklin needs to act fast before they can throw him in jail—just as the NASDAQ crashes from its historic highs. In the end, Conklin needs to come to terms with the markets, his smart-mouthed wife, and Charlie Holden, Assistant U.S. Attorney in New York.

Rudiger Comes Alive is a 13,000 word short story, chronologically the first of the Rudiger stories.

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In Rudiger in the Islands, Rudiger adopts Antigua as his new home: he’s building a house and settling in to the islands way of life.  Then Charlie Holden, Assistant U.S. Attorney in New York, gets a tip and sends one of his staff lawyers down to get the goods on Rudiger and extradite him to stand trial.  In order to outwit Holden and his man, Rudiger needs to establish his credentials as an Antiguan national, so he enlists the help of the double-dealing local police—who will sell their allegiance to the highest bidder.  Rudiger is forced to think on the fly to adapt to the machinations of both parties as he improvises to try to stay out of jail.

Rudiger in the Islands is a 20,000 word short story, chronologically the second of the Rudiger stories.

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In Rudiger in Peril, Rudiger has settled into Antigua as his new home. He gets a surprising phone call from Charlie Holden, Assistant U.S. Attorney in New York, who’s been trying to extradite Rudiger back to the U.S. to stand trial.  Holden tells Rudiger his former partner and CFO has been murdered in the U.S. by one of Rudiger’s hedge fund investors who lost millions and is out for revenge.  And the investor’s hired killer is now in Antigua stalking Rudiger.  Rudiger is forced to align himself with Holden as an unlikely ally as he tries to figure out which of his investors could be after him and help Holden stop him—before the hitman catches up with Rudiger.

Rudiger in Peril is a 28,000 word novella, chronologically the third of the Rudiger stories.

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In Rudiger on the Streets, Rudiger has finally settled into a peaceful existence in Antigua. No more Wall Street Journal articles revisiting his financial scandal. No more attempts by the U.S. Attorney to extradite him. No more local police hassles about his alias. But his repose is shattered when his housekeeper gets scammed out of her life savings by two cons. Rudiger’s plan to get even take him into the belly of Antigua’s underworld, where he enlists the help of a ghetto crime boss. There, he’s forced to rely on the dirty tricks he learned in his youth on the mean streets of New York’s Hell’s Kitchen. And once he plunges into this world of double-dealers, swindlers and murderers, he realizes there’s no turning back.

Rudiger on the Streets is a 24,000 word novella, chronologically the fourth of the Rudiger stories.

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In Rudiger, John Rudiger is now a long-term fugitive financier who's been living under his alias in Antigua for 10 years.  He's down to his last $2 million. Katie Dolan, a lawyer with the U.S. Attorney's Office in New York, is sent to Antigua to try to get enough evidence to extradite Rudiger back to the U.S. to stand trial. Rudiger recruits her to help him retrieve $50 million of bearer bonds from a safe deposit box in New York.  Katie is no dope, and neither is Rudiger, and each one has to figure out who's scamming who as they work their plan to sneak the bonds out from under the nose of Charlie Holden, Katie's boss, the Assistant U.S. Attorney in New York, who's wise to both of them.

Rudiger is a 10,000 word short story, chronologically the fifth of the Rudiger stories.

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It’s a year after Rudiger and Katie’s tryst in New York, and now the Antiguan officials are demanding ever more exorbitant payouts to maintain his cover. He’s running out of money, in part because Katie conned him out of millions. Katie is holed up with her ailing father in Cape Verde, an Island paradise off the coast of Africa that conveniently lacks an extradition treaty with the U.S., an idea she took right out of Rudiger’s playbook. Despite her double cross, Rudiger is still hot for Katie, and he knows just where to find her when he leaves Antigua. But U.S. Attorney Charlie Holden is still hovering in the background, dead set on catching them both.  Even worse, Katie’s been sucked in by a crooked Swiss banker and he’s conned her out of Rudiger’s money. Can they get it back and escape before it’s too late?

Read a sample of Spin Move

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Mark Knopfler, Rüdiger and Me

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I recently wrote a short story called Rudiger.  I titled it and created the main character, John Rudiger, based on emotions evoked by a song called "Rüdiger" by Mark Knopfler.   For those of you who don’t know him by name, Mark Knopfler is better recognized as the front man, guitarist and creative force behind the now disbanded rock group, Dire Straits.  "Rüdiger" is from Knopfler’s first solo album, Golden Heart.  "Rüdiger" has a haunting melody and soft backing instruments and vocals behind Knopfler’s trademark lead guitar and gravelly voice with lyrics that linger.

A link to Knopfler performing the song on YouTube in 1996, when it was released, is here: http://tinyurl.com/423d85w

The melody and pace of the song always called to mind the image of someone skulking around with something to hide.  For years I’ve thought of writing a story about a crook hiding out in the Caribbean from the authorities, and every time I thought about it the song, "Rüdiger," played in my head.  So, I wrote the story.

In it, John Rudiger is a fugitive financier living under an alias in the Caribbean, because he ran off with close to $100 million from his hedge fund ten years ago.  He's now down to his last $2 million.  Katie Dolan, a lawyer with the US Attorney's Office in New York, is sent to Antigua to try to get enough evidence to extradite Rudiger back to the US to stand trial.  Rudiger recruits her to help him retrieve $50 million of stolen bearer bonds he can’t get otherwise get out of a safe deposit box in New York.

Katie is no dope, and neither is Rudiger, and each one has to figure out who's scamming who as they work their plan to sneak the bonds out from under the nose of Charlie Holden, Katie's boss, the Assistant US Attorney in New York (a character reprised from my Wall Street novel, Bull Street), who's wise to both of them.

I enjoyed the characters and writing the story so much that I’m creating a series out of it, called the White Collar Crime Series.  Rudiger and Katie will be back, and other shady types will be introduced as well.  I hope you’ll give Rudiger a try.

Update: since I wrote this post I introduced a new short story about Rudiger, Rudiger Comes Alive. It's the prequel to Rudiger, about how Walter Conklin, wunderkind hedge fund manager who runs a $1 billion technology fund, gets stuck between his CFO cooking the books to draw in more investors, Charlie Holden on his trail to arrest him, and his wife Angela, who's never at a loss for (sharp) words. Leaving the country begins to seem like a viable option to him.

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Rudiger is a 10,000 word short story.

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Rudiger Comes Alive is a 13,000 word short story.

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Now Rudiger's subsequent adventures are available in the collection, Rudiger Stories.  And a Rudiger novel, Spin Move, takes Rudiger and Katie on a new jaunt from the Caribbean to Africa, Continental Europe and the UK.  I hope you'll give them a try as well.

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Read an excerpt of Spin Move



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