The Wall Street Ex-Wives Club

Ms. Slaine is insistent. “I remember the day like it was yesterday,” she says. “David was afraid they were doing

Ms. Slaine is insistent. “I remember the day like it was yesterday,” she says. “David was afraid they were doing things they would get in trouble for.” Mr. Rosenbach, who was ranked in 2008 as one of the 100 highest-paid people on Wall Street, a list with a $75 million threshold, wouldn’t comment on her account: “She wasn’t in the steam room at the time. I don’t know how she would know what was said.”

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After the 2001 fight, Mr. Slaine left Galleon to start a hedge fund with two traders from SAC Capital. “I want to tell you about them because they are so extraordinary and have so much intellectual firepower, rigor and skill,” Jim Cramer wrote about the new venture. “Slaine’s firm is at 914-933-3800, if you want to kick the tires or wish them well as I do.” By August, one of the partners had left to rejoin SAC, which happens to be the firm run by Mr. Cohen, the billionaire facing his ex-wife’s racketeering charges. The next year, Mr. Slaine left for a health care hedge fund.

His marriage began to end four years ago. “My interests became a little more diverse. I like to travel,” Ms. Slaine said. “I enjoy theater. David, the one time we went, fell asleep. It was Bring in ’da Noise, Bring in ’da Funk.” Still, her takedowns of the Journal article lovingly parse nearly every detail, like the Vertical Club gym being called a nightclub.

They’ve stayed close, she explained, and she was there the morning the F.B.I. came to the door in 2007: “I didn’t think anything so horrible was going to come of it.”

 

THERE ARE TWO things, beyond the obvious quaintness of an upper-crust New Yorker standing up publicly for an exposed ex-husband, that make Ms. Slaine’s crusade particularly delicious. The first is that he hasn’t endorsed it. “I’m defending him because he’s a good guy,” she said. “He doesn’t want me to.” Mr. Slaine, who, The Journal said, has pleaded guilty to conspiracy and securities-fraud charges, and cooperated with the government to gain favor, did not return calls.

The second is what she’s actually arguing. “It is not possible for him to be CS-1,” she wrote in both Web posts, using the F.B.I.’s code for the cooperating source. He’d been long gone from Galleon, she pointed out. But on Friday, at the end of the coffee, she conceded that he did indeed cooperate—though only, she said, with an investigation of a former friend, weight-lifting partner and colleague named Craig Drimal. “I encouraged him to cooperate, as far as Drimal goes.”

Mr. Drimal was reportedly working as a nightclub bouncer when he was brought to Galleon as an assistant. “He borrowed money from David,” she said. “I got very angry about it, because he didn’t ask me. I saw the check stub.” Neither Mr. Drimal, who has pleaded not guilty, nor his attorney returned phone calls.

As she tells it, the trouble started with the debt’s repayment, which is where her story gets particularly cinematic. “Craig said a company was going to be taken over, but, ‘I don’t have the money.’ So he had David do the trade in his account.” The trade went well, and Mr. Drimal kept the profits, minus what he’d owed his friend. She wouldn’t say anything more about the trade, except that the F.B.I. is interested in it. “Drimal was backing away from it, and David wasn’t going to take the fall for him. That’s why David said he’d cooperate.”

The problem with that, though, is that it’s the same thing as admitting that her ex-husband is CS-1. He’s described in the government’s court filings as mostly helping with the investigation of Mr. Drimal. Indeed, the Journal article takes pains to clarify that Mr. Slaine was involved in the investigation of a group that’s linked to, but separate from, Mr. Rajaratnam’s central ring. Not that his group is minor: It includes the trader known as Octopussy because his arms grabbed at so much good inside information, but not the former teenage beauty queen known for publicly bragging about her excellent contacts.

Ms. Slaine is on to other things. She said at coffee that she was headed to China, where she wants to produce a charm for women’s purses that turns into a hook. She took out a prototype and hung her handbag from the Pierre cafe’s table: “Patent pending,” she explained.

After a separate trip earlier this month, she returned to her Park Avenue apartment, the co-op she used to share with Mr. Slaine, to find massive flooding. A bathroom pipe had burst. “My own personal tsunami,” she sighed.

The Wall Street Ex-Wives Club