The Warning (19 page)
“I'm on it.”
“You'd better be. This had better dominate your every waking thought and shape your nightmares.” A moment's heavy breathing, and then, “I can't understand what is taking you so long.”
“Middle of next week,” Fleiss promised. “Soon as we figure out which way the Fed is gonna jump, I'll have a better handle on how toâ”
“Do you know, are you the least bit aware, that I have to make the second
cash payment
for the hotels at the
end
of next week? And if I
don't
make the payment, I lose the
fifty percent deposit
I've already made! Of course you're not aware! How could you be? If you knew, you wouldn't be hanging about! Because if you
did
know, you'd also know that
I don't have the cash
!”
“Middle of the week,” Fleiss repeated, and decided now was the time to strike. “Listen, about the
Journal
article.”
“What?” The anger switched to confusion. Turner was not a man used to having the conversation's direction dictated by anyone else. It threw him off balance. “I don'tâ”
“The article about one of the bank's employees. That Korda guy. There's been a follow-up. And some of the other news services are taking notice.”
“I fail to see how you can be so fixated on this worm when we are faced with a total fiasco!”
“Like I said,” Fleiss persisted. “There's a risk here. What if one of the pension funds decides they don't like how we're managing our people and we can't be trusted to manage their money.”
“You're talking nonsense.” But the old man's tone held a trace of uncertainty.
“Any move of a fund would expose our illegal borrowings,” Fleiss pointed out.
“All the more reason for you to get moving,” Turner snarled.
“You told me to handle it,” Fleiss reminded him. “I've found a guy at the Aiden branch. He's one of the traders slated for top management who is putting in his time as a branch manager. He's sharp, and he doesn't like this Korda guy any more than I do.”
“Doesn't like who?” Clearly Turner's mind was only partly held by this conversation.
“The assistant manager, the one who's causing all the ruckus. This manager, he has a plan to take care of Korda. But he wants out. He's going crazy there in the branch. He wants to move back into trading.” Fleiss kept it casual, making it sound as though it was no big thing. “Wants his own portfolio, the works.”
“Well, if he can handle this problem, do it.” Turner was still too distracted to pay much attention. “But I want you to concentrate on what's important here.”
“Will do.”
“I want
answers
. I want
results
. Find me a way out of this mess. And find it
now
.”
Fleiss hung up the direct line, thoroughly satisfied. He then picked up another phone and prepared to make urgent arrangements for Thaddeus Dorsett to travel up to the Big Apple.
Twenty-Six Days . . .
Thursday morning, Nathan Jones Turner's personal helicopter attendant met Thaddeus Dorsett as he came off the private jet at Kennedy. Thad accepted the attention as though he had known it all his life.
The amenities were exactly what he had always thought a private chopper should haveâsoundproofing so thick the rotors' noise was cut to a barely audible whine, newspapers and magazines still in their wrappers held in a chrome-and-wood stand, crystal decanters and a refrigerator in one corner, a smiling hostess to keep him company, two pilots, three color-television sets, and big windows through which he could look down as the Big Apple swept into view, ripe for the plucking.
He had never before been to New York. It was not a confession Thad would have made to anyone. But early in his career, he had promised himself that there was only one way he would arrive in New York City, and that was in style. A winner. A big-time guy. A name.
He had made his mark in the Chicago dealing rooms, always hearing the extra edge that the New York guys held in their voices. They were top of the heap, and made sure that everyone understood this. The saying went, a trader never made it anywhere until he made it in New York. Thad accepted the saying as fact. But he also knew that landing at the bottom in New York meant hitting hard and fighting mean. He had always figured he would battle his way out of the trenches where the competition was a little easier and the scars quicker to heal. Then he would arrive in New York with power and experience behind him and burn his emblem into the Street.
The pilot's voice sparked over the intercom. “That's the Turner Building to your right.”
“I know.”
“Oh,” the stewardess said brightly. “Have you come in by air before?”
He did not respond. He did not want to share this moment with anyone. No, he had never come in by air, by road, or by any other way. But he had seen this picture before. Seen it and studied it so often it was burned into his heart, branded like all the desires that fueled his drive to get here.
The Turner Building was world famous. It was the area's second highest building and occupied the Street's most prestigious location. To its left was the Federal Building, where George Washington had been sworn in as president. The Stock Exchange was a half block down Broad Street. The Federal Reserve Bank was a block in the other direction, just beyond the Chase Manhattan Plaza. The Turner Building stood proud and imperious at the heart of financial power, surrounded by the biggest players in the world, fighting and scrapping for profit and position.
They used the chopper platform atop the Irving Trust Building, since the Turner's was crowned by an art-deco tower. Thad bid the chopper crew a distracted farewell and allowed himself to be led away by some Valenti lackey. He gave no response to the guy's oblique questions, knowing rumors would start flying as soon as the guy was back. How some young man from a branch in the middle of nowhere had been brought in on the old man's chopper and taken straight into Larry Fleiss's inner sanctum. Thad sighed with pleasure at the glances thrown his way as they entered the foyer, now dominated by Valenti Bank headquarters. This was better than he had ever imagined.
The Valenti Bank's trading operations, he knew, were spread over four floors, a total of 130,000 square feet. From this arena the bank generated almost 50 percent of its total operating profit.
Larry Fleiss's office was on the top trading floor, the sixtieth. Thad nodded as the guy held open the door to Fleiss's outer office. He smiled in response to the secretary's greeting and took a good look around.
The anteroom positively pulsed with luxury. Items scattered decorously about the room vied for his attention. The walls held two Degas watercolors and what appeared to be a Rembrandt sketch. The floor was rosewood, the carpet silk Esfaha- n. Side tables groaned under crowded burdens of crystal and silver. Thad found himself salivating over the thought of moving in.
Fleiss's interior office was refrigerated to within a degree or two of freezing. But Thad's involuntary shudder had little to do with the cold and everything to do with the man behind the desk. Larry Fleiss looked like a human slug wearing a blond mustache and toupee. His skin was so white it looked blue, matching the milky paleness of his eyes.
Thad realized Fleiss was watching him, observing his reaction. So he kept hold of his poker face and said, “Great desk.”
Fleiss gave a tiny lift to the edges of his mouth. His hand raised far enough to wave Thad into the seat. “Had it custom-made. I call it my powerboard.” In person, the man's voice was even more eerie than on the phone, a metallic monotone barely above a whisper. “Forty-seven thou including all the toys. Even got a built-in sink.”
“I want one.” And he did. Thad wanted it all.
A single flicker of approval. Wanting another person's toys was definitely something Fleiss could identify with. And handle. “How are you doing in your branch, what's the name of that town?”
“Aiden.” He did not need to think that one through. “Dying a slow death.”
“I can imagine.” The voice was utterly toneless, a single rasping note so emotionless that it sounded machine made. “I suppose you want out.”
There it was. Finally. His ticket out of slumber land. But he was nothing if not a trader. And a trader never accepted the first offer. “No thanks.”
Fleiss blinked his surprise. “What?”
“I want it all.” Forcing his voice to remain bland. “The gold ring. A job in HQ. A book all my own.” A book was a trader's personal trading capacity. The larger his book, the greater his clout in the market. “Two-fifty ceiling. Euromarkets and currencies included. Bonus linked directly to my own profits, not the bank's.”
“Two hundred and fifty million ceiling. Interesting.” Fleiss turned away. He ran a quick glance over the screens, automatically checking the market's frantic pulse.
Thad felt a sudden terror over the thought that he might be turned down. He fought down the desire to backpedal and accept less. Fleiss reached for his mug and glanced at him over the lip. He lowered the cup and hit a button with its edge. A lid on the desk's left-hand ledge slid back, and a gleaming coffee system rose into view. It was all thereâa stainless steel sink and spigot, matching coffeemaker and grinder and utensils.
“Add a desk like yours to the list,” Thad said approvingly.
A flicker of humor came and went. “Good to know we think alike.”
The thrill was electric. “Does that mean yes?”
“I'm looking for a new number two. Are you interested in the job?”
“Answer directly to you?” Thad could scarcely believe his ears. “Are you kidding?”
“I never kid about trades.”
“Then the answer is yes.”
“Okay, but first you've got to pass the test.” Fleiss spooned beans into the grinder, waited until the whine had ceased, and poured the black dust into the maker. The room was flooded with the perfume of fresh-ground coffee. “Find me three sure things.”
That was a no-brainer. “Buy the next three Treasury issues.”
“No can do. I want a minimum twenty-five percent instant return.”
Thad laughed out loud. “There's no such animal.”
“There'd better be, or you go back to hibernating in Aiden.”
Thad watched the man rinse out the pot and fill the machine with water. “You're actually serious.”
“I told you, I never joke about the market. Three sure things, Thaddeus Dorsett. Find them and the job is yours.” He waved a hand toward the unseen trading floor. “Have somebody out there find you a desk. You've got forty-eight hours.”
“Great.” Unexpectedly, he did not feel dejected. Impossible simply meant it had not been done before.
“Wait a sec.” Another button was hit, and another panel slid back. An upright filing tray rose into view. Fleiss flipped through the headers, pulled out a red-flagged file, and tossed it across the desk. “Have a look at this.”
“What is it?”
“The last trade of the lady who had the job before you.” Fleiss turned back to his screens. “I gave her the same assignment. She failed. Learn from her mistakes.”
Wall Street was all concrete and bustle and noise. Even on the brightest day, sunlight remained as out of place as a stranded tourist. Sunglasses were used in all weather, however, especially by traders. After sixteen hours spent in front of flickering trading screens, with fluorescent lamps spaced out over acres of trading floors, eyes found even the cloudiest of days to be outrageously bright.
The mountains of Wall Street were home to their own brand of trolls. Only here they were dressed by Valentino, driven by Porsche, fueled by liters of caffeine. They hoarded their gold and guarded it with bloodthirsty vengeance. They substituted handheld faxes and satellite links for broadaxes, but they were trolls just the same. They even had their own language. Sunlight scared them. Fresh air was as alien as a moral code.
Thad waited in the window table of a deli across the street from the Turner Building until the lunchtime flood began. He closed the file he had been studying and crossed the street. He fought his way through the careless throng and rode an empty elevator back to the sixtieth floor. Instead of going right and entering Fleiss's outer office, he turned left, pushed through the double doors, and entered the war zone.
Even with half the traders at lunch, the scene was one of barely controlled bedlam. The floor was eighty yards square and home to four hundred electronically wrapped trading desks.
Traders roared and shouted and jostled and wrote and signaled. Paper fluttered like confetti. Sweating runners raced from the desks to the communication booths rimming the war zone. Each desk had four video monitors and six phones. Overhead were triple banks of more monitors showing the latest trading positions from dealer floors around the world. Above that flashed news service bulletins on lighted tracks that swept around all four walls.
Eight bored bicycle messengers stood in line at the receptionist's desk, waiting their turn and staring out over the pandemonium. Thad walked straight up to the harried receptionist and declared, “Larry Fleiss told me to find a desk.”
“Yeah?” She did not even look up from signing the messenger's sheet. “Well, nobody's told me a thing.”
“Take it up with Larry. In the meantime, where's your duty roster?” He spotted the clipboard and pulled it up.
“Hey! Get your handsâ”
Thad stopped her with a look. The look where the frustration and the rage from six
months
imprisonment in Aiden all came through, leaving no need to raise his voice as he said, “I told you. Take it up with Larry.” He shoved the roster back at her, stopping just before it jammed into her stomach. “Now, one more time. Where is the closest free desk to Larry's door?”