Death By Wall Street: Rampage Of The Bulls - Softcover

Cohen, Theodore Jerome

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1452079455 ISBN 13: 9781452079455

Publisher: AuthorHouse, 2010

Synopsis

Death by Wall Street: Rampage of the Bulls, a murder mystery, is based on real events. It is the story of how the oligarchs of Wall Street, doctors and others in the pharmaceutical research profession having significant conflicts of interest, and employees of two 'captured' US government agencies-the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-by design as well as by simply refusing to pursue the evidence of malfeasance provided to them, deny patients life saving treatments that are demonstrated safe and effective in FDA-approved drug trials. When the severed head of a Wall Street stock analyst turns up spiked on a horn of the Wall Street Bull, Detective Louis Martelli of the NYPD is assigned to track down the murderer. But why were this victim and the victims of two similar murders that followed singled out for execution? Martelli eventually learns the answer to this question and tracks down the killer, but not before uncovering some of Wall Street's and the US government's darkest secrets pertaining to the US financial markets and the nation's health care practices.

About this title

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Death by Wall Street

Rampage of the BullsBy Theodore Jerome Cohen

AuthorHouse

Copyright © 2010 Theodore Jerome Cohen
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4520-7945-5

Chapter One

Homicide Detective-Specialist Lou Martelli pulled his black, unmarked Ford 'Crown Vic' to the curb at the foot of the Bowling Green Bull, a 7,000 pound bronze sculpture that stands near Wall Street in New York City's Bowling Green Park. It was late winter, 2010. The weather was unusually warm for mid-March. It was difficult to miss the severed head of a man pinned to the left horn of the bull, blood dripping on the bricks below. The crimson pools of blood on the pavement pulsated with irritating regularity in the flashing light of the car's red, dash-mounted, rotating beacon.

"So, what do we have here, Michael?" Lou bellowed, using both hands to lift his left leg over the car's door jamb. Martelli had been the crew member aboard a Black Hawk helicopter that was shot down in the April, 2003, invasion of Baghdad during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Now, with the help of a prosthetic leg, he walked with a slight limp. He worked for NYPD under a special waiver issued by the mayor. "Hey," he always reminded those who asked about his injury, "at least I'm alive. That's more than I can say for the pilot and copilot, who never made it out of the chopper!" What he never talked about was the fact that he lost his leg attempting to save them. Lou worked hard to keep his weight down, primarily to ease the burden on his legs. But at 6-foot, 2-inches and 190 pounds, walking still was difficult. He was a big, muscular guy, the result of working out at the Dominant Fitness & Health Club in Brooklyn early every morning. But with a big workout came a big appetite, so it was a constant fight to stay away from the junk food that beckoned from the vending machine outside his office door.

"What do we have here? What do we have here? What the hell does it look like we have here, Sarge?" It was Michael Antonetti, a Deputy Coroner. "The Running of the fookin' Bulls in Pamplona, that's what we have here!" Antonetti was standing on a short step ladder. He had just finished taking pictures of the top of the human head. Now, he was preparing to examine it more closely before preparing to remove and bag it for evidence. A lone crime scene investigator (CSI) from NYPD's Crime Scene Unit (CSU) was busy snapping photographs of the blood-drenched bricks under the bull's head.

Martelli crossed his arms, looked at the head, and nodded. "This confirms what I've always said, Michael, if you live long enough, you'll see it all."

Lou looked at his watch. "Damn. It's 4 AM." He yawned. "I'd rather be back in bed with my wife ... while the kids are still asleep, if you catch my drift.

"So, what can you tell me?"

"Well, what you see is what we got," Antonetti deadpanned. "Cut nice and clean, through and through, just like whoever did it was cutting up a cow or a hog. We're not that far from where some of the meatpackers are located, ya know."

Great! thought Martelli. The last thing I need at the end of winter is having to spend time questioning people in the Meatpacking District who work in the walk-in coolers and freezers!

"And before you ask," Antonetti continued, "no, we don't have the body. God knows where the rest of this guy is. I suspect, but of course don't know, that it has been sliced and diced by now, with the pieces thrown into either the East or Hudson River ... maybe both. Whoever did this knew how to handle a professional butcher's knife, that's for sure!

"One thing I can tell you, though ... the head hasn't been here long—no more than an hour. The surveillance cameras overseeing this area should give you a whole hellava lot more information, including the time the head was stuck here and maybe, even, a look at who created this bit of modern art."

Martelli looked at the dead man's head. The eyes were wide open, staring down on the Financial District, once America's Mecca of optimism for the future of the country and the engine of its aggressive growth. Now, the 'Street', as it was known, was the despised source of the country's ruin ... home to the oligarchs who raped and pillaged Main Street while awarding themselves outrageous salaries and stock options, their 'rewards' for having cheated, swindled, and defrauded the Middle Class of its savings and retirement funds.

"Any clue who it is, Michael?"

"Can't tell from what I have here, Lou. The officer behind me spotted the head when he drove by on patrol, and he called Dispatch. But the guy over there on the curb—the one who's puking his guts out—may know the vic. He drove up a few minutes ago in that white BMW. Got out, took one look at the head, threw up, and staggered to the curb. I suspect he has a very good idea who the vic is."

"Thanks." Martelli turned, pulled his notebook from the inside pocket of his suit pocket, and limped towards the man hunched over the curb. The guy was still spilling his breakfast onto the pavement, though from the looks of it, he didn't have much more to heave. Lou placed him in his late twenties, perhaps of medium height, with brown hair and brown eyes ... no different from a thousand other men who plied the streets of the Financial District. Whoever he is, thought Martelli, he's got expensive taste in clothes. The man was dressed in a tailored Italian charcoal wool two-button suit (Alberto Triassi: $1450) while his shoes were of the highest quality as well (House of Rinaldi: $780). Man, I'll never be able to afford clothes like that, not on a detective's salary. Martelli knew, just from the man's appearance, that whoever he was, he certainly was no low-level brokerage house backroom clerk. "So," he began, "do you always make it a practice of being down here this early?"

The man on the curb looked up through bloodshot eyes. He did not respond.

"Look, I know this isn't a good time, sir, but it would appear that you know the person on the bull back there. I'm detective Lou Martelli, Manhattan Homicide. Whatever happened to your friend—I'm assuming he was a friend of yours—occurred within the last few hours. And the best thing that you can do to help us catch whoever was responsible for this heinous crime is to tell me as much as you can, and as quickly as you can. In cases like this, every minute counts. And based on what the coroner just told me, we're already at least an hour behind the perp."

The man on the curb looked up, and nodded. He put his right hand on the curb to steady himself, and slowly rose to his feet. Taking a handkerchief out of his pants pocket, he wiped his mouth with it and composed himself. "You're right, of course. I'm sorry. My name's Steve Jacobs. I worked with John ... John Williamson." The man pointed to the head on the statue. "He's ... he was ... my co-worker at Bartlett, Cline, and Stephenson, the investment banking and securities firm down the street. We worked as financial analysts covering the biotech universe. I had decided to come in very early this morning to catch up on my work. There simply aren't enough hours in the day to do what my boss wants done!"

"Tell me about it, Mr. Jacobs. So, about this Williamson fellow, when did you see him last?"

"We had dinner late last night at Capricious."

"You mean the restaurant and bar down the street?" "Yeah. John and I had just released an analyst's report on one of the companies we follow—Polymorphic Biotechnology—and decided to catch a few drinks and dinner before heading home. We left the restaurant, I think, around 11 PM. I used valet parking. John had parked his car down the street somewhere, so we said good-bye at the entrance of the restaurant, and he took off on foot. That's the last I saw of him."

"Do you recall what was he driving?"

"Oh, yes, it's not easy to forget. He had a Ferrari 599 GTB Fiorana. Red. Hot! I really liked that car, but it wasn't practical for me, what with me having a wife and child, and living in the City. John, on the other hand, didn't have to worry about that. He was footloose and fancy-free, as they say. The man had more women—and money—than you would believe."

"You wouldn't happen to remember the license plate of his car, would you, sir?"

"Actually, yes. It is one of those New York State vanity plates ... very easy to remember. It says 'SAVE'. He told me it was meant as a joke on the 'little people' ... the ones who no matter how hard they save, will never even come close to 'making it' big."

"Sounds like he was the salt of the earth, sir."

Jacobs looked down at his feet, suddenly realizing that he had painted himself with the same brush.

"Excuse me for a minute, sir, while I call the car and the plate in to headquarters."

Lou Martelli grabbed the Motorola MTX8000 police-fire two-way radio from his waist, keyed up the transmitter, and conveyed the necessary information over the NYPD secure radio network to Central. A few seconds later he heard the APB broadcast for the murdered victim's automobile on the same portable radio.

"So, you had dinner, said good-bye, and that's the last you saw of him."

"Yeah, that's pretty much it. Sorry, I wish I could tell you more. I really do. John was an arrogant sonofabitch, that's for sure, but he didn't deserve this."

"Well, someone thought he did. Let me ask you this. What did you talk about at dinner?"

"Oh, the usual. I'm a Mid-Level Stock Analyst. I worked with John covering 15 biotechs ... some of the big ones like Genentech, Amgen, companies like that, as well as companies such as Polymorphic Biotechnology and Berranger Biotechnology Systems that have drugs in various stages of clinical trials mandated by the Food and Drug Administration. John was the Senior Analyst. I supported him. He was the one who told me the 'tone' we would take on any specific report we developed—positive, neutral, negative—leading, of course, to a recommendation on the company we were analyzing ... Buy, Hold, or Sell. We could make or break a company with those reports. One of the companies we follow is Berranger. They have a small molecule for breast cancer in Phase III testing—"

"Whoa, stop there, Mr. Jacobs! I don't have a clue as to what you're talking about."

"Look. All drugs go through three FDA-mandated phases of testing that must be performed before they can be approved for use by humans. Phase I trials are intended to gauge safety, Phase II trials look at the effectiveness of the drug, and Phase III trials examine the overall benefit-risk relationship so that the FDA can develop labeling for use of the drug by physicians. The process can take up to ten years to complete. Given that timeline, you can see why it's not unusual for companies to spend billions of dollars on the development of just a single drug. Even more depressing is the fact that for every ten drugs that enter the development cycle, nine fail somewhere along the way. And people wonder why drugs are so expensive? Someone has to pay for all those failures just to get the one winner."

"I see what you mean. Okay, so, did anything unusual happen in the last month or so that caught your attention ... anything at all?"

"Well, there was something about four weeks ago involving Berranger, which as I mentioned, is one of the companies John and I cover." He paused. "Well, at least we used to cover Berranger together ... until he was murdered last night.

"Four weeks ago, at management's direction, we worked at a feverish pace to update our previous analyst report regarding the efficacy of Berranger's drug HerDeciMax for breast cancer. The report was released to the Street three weeks ago on Friday morning an hour before the market opened. Our preferred clients and subscribers were sent copies the night before, of course, just as we were leaving the office around 8 PM. The report didn't say anything new. Mostly it rehashed old data and information. We were told to ensure that the write-up had an overwhelmingly negative slant. The brokerage house never was positive on the drug, so I didn't give it much thought. Our specific instructions were to find fault with the Phase III data that already had been released. We were to take the position that the data simply did not support the conclusion that the drug, though safe, worked. Further, we were to imply that the final set of Phase III data, which were expected to be released within a few months, would not alter that conclusion.

"Now, I have a Master's degree in Biotechnology with a minor in Statistics. My independent analyses showed that the preliminary data were valid. Further, the results I developed agreed with those published in peer-reviewed journals by researchers working with the drug. Based on these results, I fully expected the final data set not only to confirm that the drug was safe, but also, that it was an effective treatment for breast cancer ... one, importantly, that had far fewer side effects than chemotherapy. Detective, the analyses I performed convinced me that Berranger's drug extended the median time of survival by a statistically significant margin over the current standard of care. I was sure of that.

"And here's the really important thing about their drug ... it's a 'game changer'."

"A what?"

"Berranger's drug is revolutionary. Being a small molecule, the drug can be delivered in a pill. Detective, we're talking about nothing less than treating cancer with a pill!

"I would have thought this to be some of the most exciting news in medicine since, well, the development of polio vaccines, especially since it appeared to me, at least, that the drug worked. And all our brokerage house did was tear down Berranger and HerDeciMax at every opportunity. It didn't make sense. Unless—"

"Unless, what?"

"Unless someone didn't want HerDeciMax approved."

"And who might that be?"

"Anyone with a competing drug for sale or with a new drug in the pipeline that was intended to compete with HerDeciMax. If HerDeciMax were to become the new standard of care for breast cancer, then any drug starting a new trial to seek FDA approval to treat breast cancer of the HER2-positive variety would have to demonstrate it was substantially more effective than HerDeciMax."

"Didn't you raise a red flag? Say something to anybody?"

"Are you kidding? I kept my mouth shut and my head down. In case you haven't noticed, this isn't the easiest market in which to find a new job! I'm not a fool. Not with the six-figure salary I'm making, the great benefits, and the unbelievable end-of-year bonus equal to ten times my salary.

"If the Street 'bought' our negative story on HerDeciMax, Berranger and its shareholders would take a tremendous beating, and any hope that the company could raise money to complete the Phase III trial for its new drug at all of the participating centers might end up going down the toilet."

"Sounds like death by Wall Street to me."

Jacobs looked down, embarrassed. "Yeah, I guess you could say that.

"But again," he protested, "that's not the position I, personally, would have taken. And I think my work was valid because there's another analyst at a very reputable firm down the street who came to the same conclusion I did—except he published it. Anyway, you can imagine how popular we are right now when it comes to Berranger's stock."

"So, what happened after the report on Berranger's drug was released in late February?"

"Well, the stock was hit hard. It had closed that Thursday night at $17.77 and held steady, within a few pennies of the closing price, in the after-hours market. On Friday morning, it gapped down on the opening to $11.99 before recovering later in the day to close at $14.94. Not a great day for the shareholders. Obviously, our report had a significant impact on the market capitalization of the company. A lot of people lost a lot of money in Berranger that day, Detective. And anyone who was 'short' the stock made a real killing. Whoops ... that wasn't the best choice of words, was it? I'm sorry."

"Well, whether or not they owned the stock, someone 'made a real killing', all right, Mr. Jacobs. Now the question is, who was angry enough about what happened to Berranger's stock price—if that was the event that triggered Mr. Williamson's murder—to kill him ... and in such a barbaric way?"

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Death by Wall Streetby Theodore Jerome Cohen Copyright © 2010 by Theodore Jerome Cohen. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Edition details

• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1452079455
• ISBN 13: 9781452079455
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 240