Wolfman - Art Bourgeau (2 page)

Once during the weekend he picked up his Missal and
felt guilty because he had not been to church in so long. He opened
it at random. The thought for that Sunday advised that the days were
evil and that numberless sins cried for punishment. He had tried to
pray but had stopped himself. Best not to concern God. Right would
win out. Be careful what you ask for because you might get it. He
heeded the voices. Well, not really voices, he assured himself. Just
thoughts that sounded like voices . . .

From his jewelry box he selected a set of gold
cufflinks formal in design and slipped them through the cuffs of his
shirt. He was almost finished knotting his tie when the sound of the
phone startled him. Instinctively he looked at his watch. Not quite
seven-thirty. Who would be calling him now? The phone rang again. In
the quietness of the Wissahickon it sounded like a jackhammer.

He ignored the phone beside the bed and walked into
the living room to use the one at his desk. He hated the phone beside
the bed. The idea of chatting from even the edge of the bed made him
feel guilty, like a malingering invalid.

"Hello." From the other end he heard a
female voice say, "Loring, hi. How are you?" His sister's
voice. She still had that distinctive breathless quality, but today
her voice sounded different, metallic and faraway, as if they were
talking from parallel dimensions of different time and space with an
orange juice can and string between them.

"Karen, what's wrong? It's not even six-thirty
in Chicago."

She laughed, the sound like someone raking a thumb
down the teeth of a comb. He looked down at the phone and mentally
cursed it.

"Nothing’s wrong, silly. I'm just calling to
invite you to my wedding."

"Your wedding?"

"I was afraid of that, you didn't get my letter,
did you?"

"What letter?"

"I knew it, the goddamn mails. I won’t go into
how wonderful he is because mom and dad are on the extensions . . ."

Before he could ask who "he" was, as if on
cue he heard a second female voice and a male voice say nearly in
unison,

"Hi, son," and he heard himself say,
"Hello." This inspiring exchange was followed by a moment
of silence in which they waited for him to say something else.

When he didn't he heard Karen start again with
something about the world passing her by at age twenty-seven, and how
she'd met Charles, a broker like Loring, and they could play squash
together when he was out for the wedding, but he blocked out most of
it.

He was furious that she had called the man on the
line "dad."

He was their stepfather, not their father. Their
father was dead. Dead.

She was chattering on. "Anyway, as I said in the
letter you never got, the wedding is December 28th. Charles is like
you about remembering important dates. This way, right in the middle
between Christmas and New Year's, he won't have any excuse for not
remembering our anniversary. And, Loring, I want you to come to the
wedding."

"Charles?"

"Yes, I just told you, the man I’m going to
marry!"

"Everybody is going crazy with the plans,"
interrupted his mother. "It’s going to be a beautiful
wedding."

"That’s right," added Malcolm, his
stepfather. "While you're here we want you to stay with us.
It’ll be just like old times Loring was staring out the window as
he tried hard not to visualize their faces. Karen, because he missed
her; the others because he did not. What was he getting himself into?
Outside, the blackbird returned to the feeder. The sight of his
arrogance added to Loring feeling somehow put upon from all sides.
Even a damn bird . . .

"
When did you say?"

"The twenty-eighth. December 28th. Aren't you
listening to a word I’ve been saying?"

"Yes, of course. I’m just preoccupied. The
market crash, you know." He took a deep breath. "Karen, I’m
sorry, but I can’t be there. That week I’ve chartered a boat out
of Barbados, I’m taking three couples — my best clients —
sailing. But I'll be with you in spirit."

"
Son, can't you change your plans?" his
mother said. His stepfather was silent.

He would not be intimidated.

"
I’m sorry, I can't. I hate to do this but I
have to go, I have a meeting in town. The market crash . . ."

He left the house as quickly as possible, afraid the
phone would ring again, got into his maroon Mercedes and headed for
the office.

Traffic was light until he hit the river drive, then
slowed to a crawl as yet another facelift on the Schuylkill
Expressway poured thousands of extra commuters from outlying suburbs
like Conshohocken and King of Prussia onto the winding road. As he
finally inched his way past the Art Museum he was still thinking
about the phone call.

Other than Karen, who had come for a weekend visit
some five years ago, he had seen his family only twice since he’d
left home for prep school at St. Ignatius in Villanova at age
fourteen. Shortly after that his stepfather had moved the family and
business to Chicago. They had come east for his prep school
graduation and his graduation from the University of Pennsylvania,
and both times had been pure hell. Memories faded, feelings didn't.
He had not once been to Chicago, he had never seen their house, he
had never seen his room. And he was glad of it.

There was a line of cars at his garage on Fifteenth
Street, but the attendant saw him and waved him ahead. On the walk to
his office in the Penn Center complex he glanced at his watch and saw
it was a few minutes past eight. The partners' meeting would already
be underway. He started to walk faster, his Burberry open and blowing
slightly in the cool morning breeze.

In the conference room of Cartwright, Blanchard &
Haynes the air of the meeting was tense. Most of the eleven partners
were in shirtsleeves, their jackets thrown around the high backs of
the conference room chairs. The table was littered with styrofoam
coffee cups. Two of the partners were smoking cigars, several others
cigarettes.

William Blanchard, a stocky, powerfully built man in
his early sixties and the managing partner, was on his feet at the
head of the table. When he saw Loring enter he looked over the tops
of his reading glasses and said, "Good morning." The simple
greeting carried a note of disapproval that the youngest partner in
the firm was the last to arrive at so important a meeting.

The meeting lasted another half-hour in which the
more senior partners took turns bandying phrases like trade deficit,
economic reports, computer problems, echoing the industry party line
begun on Friday about what had caused the crash.

"
Loring, are we boring you?" William
Blanchard said.

Several of the partners were looking at him now.
Financial wizards, one and all. This morning he saw them for what
they were. No wizards. No Merlins, Beelzebubs or Asmodeuses. Gray,
gray cattle.

"No," he said.

"Then perhaps you'd share some of your thoughts
on the market with us."

He waited. One beat, two, three. He was no longer
part of the hurricane, he was past the winds, he was the eye.

"
Each of you seems afraid to confront the truth.
The market is pure. It is nature. It is jungle. A struggle of good
against evil. What it boils down to is — you can't take losing."

"If we're the losers, who are the winners?"
asked Paul Shelby, the next youngest partner and Loring’s only real
friend in the firm.

"
The people who made all the money that everyone
else lost last week." He paused to savor the crystal clarity of
his thoughts. "We all know it's out there. It's up to us to go
out there and bring it back."

The puzzled looks did not surprise him. They were
weak on concept, they needed specifics to act.

"Toward this purpose, I think communications
stocks will be the first to turn around. They were hit hard on
Thursday, but those stocks are now more undervalued than much of the
rest of the market. They will rebound quickly."

He stood. "If you'll
excuse me, I’ll get to work. I want to get on the phone to my
people and let them know what’s happening. This is like a Christmas
sale, and I don’t want to miss out on the bargains."

* * *

The market opened stable. For the first hour of
trading it held its own. Then around ten o’clock it started to move
up slightly, and everyone in the office began to breathe a bit
easier.

Loring's phone was quiet. He had executed all his
trades for the moment, and used the lull to catch up on some
financial reports. He opened one of the lower drawers of his desk.
There, resting on top of the financial reports, was his sister
Karen's letter.

He picked it up and looked at it carefully. How did
it get there? He turned it over. It had been opened. Not by him, he
was sure. If he had he would remember it. Then by someone else, but
why? He took the letter out of the envelope and began to read it. It
was written on blue notepaper with a small spray of gold flowers in
the corner, and it covered some six or eight pages. It was a typical
happy letter from a young woman about to be married. Why would anyone
here want to tamper with it, he thought as he slipped the letter back
into the envelope. Then he noticed the address. It had not been sent
to the office. The envelope bore his home address.

Fear fluttered inside him. Something was wrong here.
Suddenly the office no longer seemed friendly. He left his desk and
went to the men’s room. It was empty but he made a pretense of
washing his hands in case anyone should come in . . . If the letter
had come to the office it could have gone to the wrong mailbox.
Simple as that. And whoever opened it would have realized the mistake
and slipped it in his desk without calling undue attention to
himself. But the home address put it in a very different light. Was
someone at the office having his mail intercepted? Someone curious
about how he developed his stock ideas?

He shook his head. "You give your ideas to
whoever needs them. Nobody’s tampering with your mail. You just
blocked it out of your mind after you read it because you didn't want
to go, and you knew there would be hard feelings over it. That’s
all."

He chuckled softly like a
man who had just told a funny story on himself, and turned the water
off. As he dried his hands he felt better. Today was going to be
fine. Walking down the hall to the office he thought about the
Caribbean. He could hardly wait. If he had ever needed a vacation it
was now.

* * *

At 10:48 the market rally ended. Prices began to
fall. Not at the rate of the previous Thursday and Friday, but by
11:15, not quite thirty minutes later, it was down over twenty-five
points. If it kept on at that rate by closing it could be down as
much as two or three hundred more points. The office began to hum
with the tension.

Loring forgot about the letter. His phone began to
ring almost continually. He reassured, cajoled, begged, wheedled and
pleaded with client after client. Anything that would keep them from
panicking and making the worst decisions of their lives.

Between calls he recognized what had happened. The
money managers who he knew had precipitated the crisis in the first
place were in a strong cash position, having gotten out early and
high, and the short rally was due to them doing a little bargain
hunting. Now they were finished for the day, and without them the
market was collapsing again.

He closely watched the ups and downs of his morning
picks. A little rally after breakfast, then it was over in time for
lunch. Against the eroding market his communications stocks were
performing well. Just before noon an announcement came over the wire
hinting that the federal government was considering the licensing of
several giant communication companies into the cable television
business, and that they would be allowed to use the fiber optic
capabilities of their existing telephone lines as the medium for
bringing their product to market.

Loring laughed when he saw it. He knew there was no
truth in it. It was just the government's way of warning the
television networks that they should steer any blame for this crisis
away from the administration, unless they wanted hell to pay, but the
market responded positively to it as the one good piece of news of
the hour.

Now was the crucial time. For the next few minutes —
maybe a half-hour, maybe an hour — his stocks would start to move
up, but he knew they wouldn't hold, probably not even past two
o’clock. Like surfing, the trick was to get the most out of the
wave and get off.

He punched in the symbol for Federal Telephone &
Telegraph. It was up a quarter on bid, a half on asked. Which was two
on the day for a stock selling in the nineties. The symbol for
Armstrong Communications, a conglomerate that owned a number of
independent southern telephone companies, was slightly behind,
selling up three-quarters on the day, but the bid was up
three-eighths and the asked was up three-quarters. If he went in now
and split the bid and asked, settling on a half, he could likely get
out at one and a quarter up on stock selling in the forties. A
handsome profit.