Homeland Elegies(52)

I was in Medina on the afternoon I officially became a multimillionaire. As I stepped out into the blue dazzle, a chorus of muezzin calls filled the air. I felt a pleasure as subtle and complete as any I’ve ever known; I felt bright and safe and whole. What an extraordinary irony, I thought, to receive this news in the Prophet’s own city, of a fortune made through the purchase and sale of interest, so forbidden, so reviled in our faith. So perhaps it was fitting that when I got back to the hotel, the first thing I did was search online for a Manhattan liquor store that had Pappy Van Winkle twenty-three-year in stock and could have it delivered to Riaz before close of business that day. There were two. I put the $12,000 bill on my Amex as a token of the gratitude that—I wrote—I had no words to convey. The next morning I awoke to an email from him. It read: “As long as you keep writing, it’ll be thanks enough. And now you’ve got no excuse!”





7.


By that time, though I had no way of knowing it, Timur Capital was under investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission. A handful of small municipalities had invested in the company’s rent-backed securities and lost their proverbial shirts. The communities in question alleged they were steered toward higher-yield, higher-risk assets without a full disclosure of just how high-risk those assets actually were. This part of the complaint was hearsay, as the complainants had all signed on various dotted lines, and it was just as likely that the fine print warning them about the risks had gone willfully unread, busy as all these small-town big shots were being wined and dined by a big-city company sales staff. Where the SEC got involved was in how Timur managed its own relationship to these particular sales. They apparently took out insurance against the riskiest of their bonds—but not for the buyers’ sake. In market lingo, they “shorted” their own securities, which meant, in layman’s terms, they peddled wares they knew were worthless, bet against them, and when the wares in question lost their value, as expected—or so it was alleged—Timur Capital made a killing. “Betting against your clients” is what it’s also called, and it got regulators interested. Some of this I would learn when a rangy agent from the SEC showed up on my Harlem stoop one afternoon the summer after I sold my shares. She flashed a badge and a perfunctory smile. “Mr. Akhtar?” she asked.

“I’m sorry…Can I help you?”

“Agent Watkins, SEC.” I must have looked as confused as I felt. She clarified: “The Securities and Exchange Commission.”

“Okay, right…”

“I was hoping you would have some time to talk to me about Riaz Rind. Maybe tell me a little bit about your involvement with his foundation and Timur Capital, LLC. As I understand it, you sold a very large block of stock in Timur Capital just this past March.”

“So, um, is there a problem? Do I…need a lawyer?” On my lips, my questions sounded like lines badly delivered in a turgid potboiler.

Her reply was no less hackneyed: “Not unless you’ve done something you don’t want me to know about.” She shot me a reassuring smile. “Honestly? I’m just here to talk to you about Mr. Rind, and any time you can spare’d be appreciated. I mean, you can call a lawyer if you want, of course. I can’t stop you from doing that.” Tossing her cigarette to the step, she crushed it underfoot, then looked up at me with sudden worry: “I’m not supposed to do this—but do you mind if I use your restroom?”

“No, no, sure—Agent Watkins, is that right?”

“Zakeeya Watkins,” she said, showing her badge, grateful. “New York office.” How to process the flurry of mixed signals, now threatening, now conspiratorial, now solicitous, now vulnerable? I stepped aside and let her pass. Inside, she followed me up three flights and stopped, visibly winded, as we got to my apartment door. “Gotta quit those damn things,” she said, rubbing her palm across her forehead. Once we were inside, she disappeared into the bathroom. I waited nervously for the flush to sound, realizing her ruse of needing the toilet—rudimentary as it was—had worked. When she emerged, she sat down on one of the two folding chairs at the folding table that passed for my dining table. I asked if she wanted coffee. “Sure, if you’re making it—This it?” she said, looking around. “This is where you live?”

“As you can see…”

“There another room?”

“Well, just the bedroom,” I said, pointing at the room’s only door. “It used to be a studio. They put up a wall, but it still doesn’t feel like a one-bedroom. It’s big enough for me, though.”

“Not the place I expected for a person like you.”

“What kind of person is that?”

“The kind that sells one hundred and twenty-five thousand shares of a stock he got before the IPO.”

“It was a friends-and-family thing.”

“But you’re not family.”

“No, ma’am, I’m not”—I found myself “ma’am”-ing her—“but I’ve known him a few years now.”

“How’d you meet?”

As I made her coffee, I shared the outline of the story. The meeting at the theater; the gala events that led to a board appointment; my involvement with the foundation as an advocate and executive committee member; the money my mother left me; Riaz’s offer to invest it; the ups and downs of Timur stock; and finally, and most important, Riaz’s early prognostication of a $20 share price, which he said was likely, but not certain, and which had predated my sale by fourteen months. There was no way any of it could have been construed as insider trading, which was the only thing I thought she was wondering about.