Tangled Webs Read Online Free PDF Page A

Bacanovic concluded, and then hung up.
    Armstrong thought the message was “fishy.” She knew to a near certainty that Stewart would act on Bacanovic’s information, whatever it was. The stock market in general, and ImClone in particular, was a near obsession with Stewart, who had earlier worked as a stockbroker before quitting to launch her catering business. She had been furious with Bacanovic a few weeks earlier, after ImClone shares rose a few dollars shortly after she sold a large block, on Bacanovic’s recommendation. Armstrong’s father had been an active investor, and she knew a good deal about the market and its workings, and what kind of information drove stock prices. She wondered what Bacanovic knew.
    Stewart had the peculiar fixation with money that is common to many self-made entrepreneurs, no matter how wealthy they’ve become. Born in 1941 in Nutley, New Jersey, to working-class Polish Catholic parents and an alcoholic father, she had worked as a housekeeper on Park Avenue to help pay for college at Barnard. One employee recalled that after a photo shoot for the magazine in North Carolina, Stewart insisted that all the food be wrapped and flown home with her. Her personal expenses were often billed to the company; after one half-day photo shoot in her Westport home, Turkey Hill, the company paid for nine days of housekeeping expenses. One year, the company paid Stewart $2 million in “rental fees” for the use of her various homes as sites for photo shoots, the New York Times reported. After the 1999 public offering of shares in Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Stewart was indisputably wealthy, with a fortune estimated at $1 billion by Forbes magazine in August 2000.
    Little more than an hour after Bacanovic’s call, Stewart phoned from an airport in San Antonio, Texas, where the jet had stopped to refuel. Her companions on the flight and vacation–her close friend Mariana Pasternak and Kevin Sharkey, interior decorating editor at the magazine and a favorite decorator of Stewart’s–noticed that she grabbed a phone from a desk as soon as they arrived in the waiting area. Armstrong relayed several messages from magazine staff members as well as Bacanovic’s, which Armstrong read to her in its entirety. Stewart didn’t react. But after Armstrong patched her into her employees, she told Armstrong to call Bacanovic. “Merrill Lynch, Peter Bacanovic’s office,” Faneuil answered.
    There was a slight pause as Armstrong got off the phone. “Hi, this is Martha,” Stewart said.
    Given his prior experiences with her, Faneuil was nervous. All of their brief conversations–there had been three or four–had been unpleasant. Bacanovic didn’t want Faneuil to talk to Stewart if it could be avoided, and had given him strict instructions to get him ASAP when Stewart called. One time Faneuil put her on hold, and Bacanovic told him to pick up and make conversation while he gathered some information. Faneuil returned to Stewart’s line, but before he could say anything, Stewart had erupted. “Do you know what I’ve just had to listen to? I can’t believe people have to put up with this shit.”
    Merrill Lynch’s phone system played classical music whenever someone was put on hold.
    “You tell Peter that if I ever have to put up with this shit again I’m taking my money elsewhere.” She slammed down the phone without saying good-bye.
    On another occasion, Stewart’s call was transferred to the receptionist, who answered it and sent it back to Faneuil. The receptionist spoke with a mild speech impediment. When Faneuil picked up the phone, Stewart yelled at him, “Do you know who the hell is answering your phones? You call and you know what he sounds like? He says this . . .” Stewart, as Faneuil later wrote in an e-mail describing the incident, “made the most ridiculous sound I’ve heard coming from an adult in quite some time, kind of like a lion roaring underwater.”
    Faneuil laughed. He