Ella Kaspersky Character Analysis

Ella Kaspersky is a Chicago businesswoman who frequents the Hotel Caiette. It’s there that Kaspersky meets Jonathan Alkaitis, who tries (unsuccessfully) to convince her to invest in his fund. Kaspersky does some investigating, becomes suspicious that Alkaitis’s firm is operating a fraudulent scheme, and makes it her mission to bring this to the attention of the public. She alerts the SEC, which opens an investigation into Alkaitis, though they don’t try very hard and fail to produce any incriminating evidence. Adding to Kaspersky’s personal vendetta against Alkaitis is her discovery that a research fund her family established in the aftermath of Kaspersky’s mother’s death from colon cancer had unwittingly been investing in Alkaitis’s fund for years. This infuriates Kaspersky, who speaks disparagingly to Alkaitis and Suzanne when she later runs into them at a restaurant. At the restaurant that night, Suzanne instructs Kaspersky to “swallow broken glass,” an allusion to the wine glass a waiter accidentally dropped into Ella’s breadbasket earlier in the evening. Years later, after Suzanne’s death from cancer, Kaspersky bribes Paul to scrawl this same grisly message onto the Hotel Caiette’s glass lobby wall, though Alkaitis arrives too late to see the message. Kaspersky appears on the news after Alkaitis is eventually arrested for fraud, and it’s clear she takes personal pleasure in Alkaitis’s downfall, rather than wanting him to be brought to justice for the greater good of his investors and the public.