The Warning

by Davis Bunn

  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 there—a 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.”

  –|| TWENTY–SEVEN ||–

  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. Ea
ch 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 hands—”

  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?”

  She gave him an uncertain glance, checked the page, and said dully, “Try one forty-two.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Hey!” This time without the edge. “You got a name?”

  “Indeed I do,” Thad said, moving away.

  He found the desk without asking, which was good. He had no intention of talking with anybody. Let them come to him, and in their own good time. He dropped the file, managed to scout the room without seeming to, and spotted the table used as a dumping ground for the financial forecasts and business dailies. He walked over, scooped up a double-handful, and moved back to his desk. His desk. Just thinking the words gave him a rush.

  Eyes tracked his every move. Totally normal. Anybody new was a threat. Thad opened the first forecast bulletin and scanned the crowd with overt glances. Even without looking directly, Thad could spot all the typical characters. Over there was the girl who brushed her hair continuously and stared at her reflection in the compact mirror taped beside her central screen, as she chattered on two phones. Farther down the aisle was the guy who chewed his way through three combs a day. Next to him was the cigar chomper, not allowed to light up, so he mangled a stogie or two per session. The man who used his tie like a noose, tightening and loosening it in constant jerks. The woman who balanced a tennis racket, or bounced it from knee to knee, pretending she could still run through six sets. The woman who scooted continually back and forth across the aisle on her wheeled office chair. The guy who chanted the news as it flashed along the overhead screen, not even hearing it himself. The pair who compared lies about women and big nights between trades. All the frayed nerves of veteran Street people.

  By the time the lunch hour ended and the tension heightened into a full-throated roar, Thad was moving smoothly into the pattern and the patter. He sat like a stone idol before his own bank of screens, tracing the market’s movements and listening as the other traders scurried.

  He knew he was being inspected; he knew his first move would be watched by four hundred sets of eyes and tracked on screens here and in every other office of Valenti right around the globe. The mystery guy. New to the scene, vetted by Larry Fleiss himself. Not even a hello to the floor manager. Not even a nod to the other traders. The size of his first trade would inform the others of his authority. Thad was determined to make it a whopper. He sat and felt the rusty adrenaline faucets squeak slowly open again.

  He perused the file of the last trade by Larry’s former top trader and whistled at the size. Almost eight hundred million dollars in yen options spread over a ten-day period. He did not need to check the screens to know the bank took a hit on that one. A big hit. The yen had been dropping steadily, contrary to every pundit the length and breadth of the Street.

  He then browsed the financial newsletters and the business dailies. Thad was not looking for answers. If these news sheets contained surefire wins there would be no losers. As it was, the Street was littered with the corpses of traders who had followed sage pundits down to their last bitter nickel. No. Thad was looking for questions. Where was the market’s attention? What was hot? The biggest action would be focused on the fad of the moment.

  Yen. The Japanese currency seemed to be on everybody’s mind. Why did it keep falling? Some of the experts claimed it was interest rates, others the Tokyo market, still others the rising U.S. economic forecasts, more still the instability of the Japanese government. Taken together, the sages sounded like a group of New York taxi drivers discussing football.

  Thad turned his attention back to the trading file to study the positions the bank had taken more closely. He was still at it when the red light at the top of his phone began blinking. Traditionally, this was the link between every trader and the floor manager or chief trader. Thad grabbed the handset and gave an overloud bark. “Dorsett.”

  “Hey, sport, tone it down.” The rasp could belong to only one man. “What looks good?”

  “Not a lot. Franc and mark Euros are bouncing all over the chart.”

  “Yeah, the market’s had a bad case of the heebie-jeebies for weeks. How about the yen, it moving?”

  Thad knew the overly casual question was a test, but he was ready; he had watched it ever since reading the file from Larry’s former number one and the trade that ended her run. “There’s some big money pushing yen all day. In and out. Two big players at least. Could be central bankers on the sly, trying to turn it around.”

  “What’s your feeling?”

  “It’s too low,” he said, knowing he was going out on a limb, especially since that was exactly the basis upon which the last fatal trade had been made. “Way too low.”

  “Come up with anything yet?”

  In four hours? Who was Fleiss kidding? “Working on it.”

  “Deadline’s been moved up. First thing tomorrow, in my office. Be ready.” Larry hung up.

  Thad Dorsett left the Turner Building in the breathless moment between evening and night. No need to stay any longer. He knew what he was going to tell Larry. Hanging around would only tempt him to give in to worries, which was death for a trader. Thad pushed through the outer doors and glanced up. The sun had set, light was fading, and the little strip of sky visible between the buildings was awash in rosy hues.

  As he started across the plaza fronting the bank, a voice behind him called, “Mr. Dorsett?”

  “Yes.” Warily he backed away from the slender man in the dark uniform. He could never be too careful. Not here in New York.

  “I’m Jimmy. Your driver.”

  “My what?”

  “I’ve been assigned to be your driver, Mr. Dorsett.” Taking no notice at Thad’s surprise, he pointed at the suit bag Thad was carrying. “Is that all your luggage?”

  “Yes.” Reluctantly, Thad allowed the stranger to take his grip. He had only brought one change of clothes, not expecting to be here longer than a day. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Wherever you want to go, Mr. Dorsett.” The man started down the broad marble stairs toward the dark stretch limo parked in front of the bank. “But you’ve got a suite reserved at the Plaza. Maybe you’d like to stop off there first.”

  “You don’t say.” Thad allowed the driver to open his door, and he slipped into the backseat and smiled at the leather-lined space. When Jimmy was behind the wheel, he said, “Go down Broadway, will you?”

  “Sure thing, Mr. Dorsett.”

  He sat back and enjoyed Broadway as it unwound about him. The garish carnival of night was gradually waking up. He felt as though it were all coming alive to welcome him.

  This was the way to live in New York. No jamming into subways filled with a solid wall of flesh. No cringing over the dictates of a boss frightened for his own job. No struggling to live with impossible city prices on an impossibly tight budget. None of that. Thad sighed and settled himself deeper into the luxury. He was made to see life from the backseat of a lim
o. It was his destiny.

  When he had just been starting out, he had heard somebody say that it was time to move to New York when one didn’t need to ask the price of anything. Thad slid his hand over the limo’s walnut paneling, and decided that the time had almost arrived.

  –|| TWENTY–EIGHT ||–

  Twenty-Five Days . . .

  The telephone’s red light was blinking when Thad Dorsett arrived at his trading desk Friday morning. He did not bother to pick up the receiver; he just walked back through the doors and into Larry’s office, feeling eyes follow him the whole way.

  Larry greeted him by waving a hand at the seat opposite his desk and saying, “Okay, let’s have it.”

  Though he had steeled himself for this moment, still his hands were suddenly slick with sweat. His chance to grab the ring and rise to the top depended on the gamble he was about to take. Larry had demanded three surefire trading deals. No limits, no defining boundaries. Just a guaranteed profit.

  Thad took a breath and then began with, “We could make a major trade and arrange to front ride it.” Then he stopped.

  Fleiss blinked slowly, his only reaction.

  Thad gave him enough time to object and then plowed on. “We’ve got control over large pension funds. Arrange for them to buy a block of stocks. Several stocks, because we couldn’t make more than a quarter-point off each buy without alerting the SEC’s watchdog group. We precede the fund’s purchases by acquiring these stocks ourselves through dummy corporations. Ones far removed from the bank. Then we sell the shares on to the portfolios after tacking on a hit.”

  Thad watched Fleiss retreat behind his mug. Only the tiniest flicker of his eyes gave any indication of the intense thought being given to his suggestion. This in itself was a good sign. Very good, in fact, as it meant the idea was being taken seriously. Despite the fact that front loading a trade was highly illegal, Larry was earnestly considering the possibility.

  Front loading a buy meant that the stocks bought for a customer actually were drawn from another account—an account controlled by the trader. This meant the trader could tack on an extra half-point or so per share and pocket the difference. On an actively traded stock, this much of a differential was found within every trading day. If questioned, the trader could simply claim to have caught the stock on the upswing. A 100-million-share purchase could result in a five million dollar instant profit. Front loading had been a favorite scam during the late twenties, when the market had heated up to the point where such frauds would rarely be detected. Pulling a trick from the history books might well work, at least once.