Black Fridays

by Michael Sears

  “You call me in the middle of the night and want my help, but you still think you can hold out on me. Like I’m your mark. Your chump. It doesn’t work like that.”

  I couldn’t afford to squirm, so I just kept my mouth shut.

  He didn’t wait for me. “Every time I have asked you what else you took out of Sanders’ apartment, you’ve given me the same con. You don’t know what I’m talking about. You go all cold on me. But see, Jason, that’s your tell. You’re a pretty icy son of a bitch to start with, so most people probably don’t notice, but when you’re bluffing, you turn just a degree or two even more so. Now, if you want the full authority of the FBI to treat your pissant domestic dispute like interstate kidnapping, you better be prepared to give up everything you’ve got.”

  When it came down to it, the decision was one of the easiest I have ever made.

  “I have what you need. The hard evidence for a warrant. There were chips in the gym bag. Poker chips. From a half-dozen or more casinos. That’s how Hochstadt made his payoffs to all the junior traders. When you match up all the trades with Sanders’ calendar, you’ll see. It’s all there.”

  “How much money are we talking?”

  “It looks like Sanders milked the firm for four hundred sixty-six thousand. Based on what’s there, I’d say his cut was fifty percent.”

  “Two hundred thirty thousand dollars?”

  “Thirty-three,” I said.

  “Christ almighty, you are one ballsy prick, you know that? Let’s put aside grand theft for the moment. Do you know what ‘obstruction’ means? It means three more years’ room and board care of my employer.”

  “Screw that, Maloney. No threats. You’ve got it all. Just go get my son.” I had played my last card.

  “All right,” he said. “Welcome to the team. We’ll pick you up at eight. Meanwhile, you’ve got your Amber Alert.”

  MORNING WASN’T far off, but it took a long time to arrive. I lay on the Kid’s bed, smelling his pillow and staring at the shadows flickering across the ceiling. My first night in prison, with the cries and evil whispers of predators and prey echoing along the concrete corridor, had been a day at the beach compared to this. I wrapped myself in a sheet and counted the minutes until first light. Eventually, it was easier to just get up and start the day.

  I ignored the doctor’s list of instructions and stood under the shower until long after the water stopped running red. There were aches and bruises from my knees to the top of my head. My feet didn’t hurt. My stomach and ribs, which had taken the brunt of TeePaul’s kicks, were covered with a magnificent, ugly blossom of color—reds, blues, and deep purples. Every breath ended in a short gasp as the pain hit. But the bruise under my eye was barely noticeable and by the time I had shaved, carefully combed my hair over the staples, and dressed in my loosest-fitting suit, I looked like I could pass for a member of the living.

  It was only 6:30—an hour and a half to go. An hour and a half to think. To worry.

  The Kid’s schedule would be all turned around. The novelty of being with his mother would have sustained him for the first hour or two, but human contact meant much less to him than whether he was wearing red on a beige day. Routine. “A predictable routine will soothe many of his anxieties.” That is what they had said. All the experts.

  Sorry, Kid.

  I called the school and braved another session with Mrs. Carter. She might have been more understanding if I had told her the truth, but I didn’t chance it. Then I rang Heather and left a message. “Don’t pick up the Kid from school until you hear from me again. He’s staying with his mother for a few days.”

  Once Angie got him to Louisiana, there was no telling what she would do. She might want to play house for a while, with her little five-year-old doll, or she might just dump him on her mother again. Her unpredictability had once been part of her charm.

  I went back into his room. His cars—minus the half-dozen or so he had taken to dinner—were lined up on the shelf over his bed. The spacing between the vehicles was identical. There seemed no pattern to their order—colors, makes, models were all mixed together—but I was sure the Kid would have immediately noticed any change. One car out of place could bring on one of his tantrums. A screaming fit.

  A great gasp of a sob forced its way up and out of me, leaving a great void in its wake. I needed my weird little boy.

  I gathered the necessary documents—his birth certificate, the acceptance letter from the school, copies of his doctors’ bills—and told myself, again, that my best shot at getting him back was to cooperate with the Feds and let them work their magic. I didn’t like it, but what I wanted wasn’t all that important.

  Brady met me in the lobby and walked me out to the car.

  “Any word on my son?” I said.

  “Not yet,” he said. “We should know more soon. All the East Coast offices have been told to report in by eight.”

  I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. “That sounds like a brush-off.” I was tired, angry, and worried—I was also paranoid and feeling aggressive. “Are you sure your people are holding up their end of this?”

  Brady looked me over, as though I were a necessary evil. “Actually, Mr. Stafford, the search for your son is a full Amber Alert. That means that not only is the FBI on the lookout, but every state and local police department, every news agency, every airport, train or bus station, and every single highway toll taker between here and Atlanta has been notified. Let’s see you hold up your end as well. Do you have the chips?”

  “They’re safe. When my son is safe, you get your proof.”

  He tried staring me down. I shrugged and walked past him to the car.

  Maloney waved me into the backseat. “Where’s the chips?”

  “Where’s my son?”

  Impasse. Brady drove. Traffic was terrible.

  “What’s in the envelopes?” Maloney asked.

  I handed him the first. “Documents for the Kid. Birth certificate. Letters from doctors, from his school.”

  He grunted. “Good. That’ll help.” He took the envelope. “And that one?”

  “My report to Stockman.” I passed it to him.

  Three pages of facts, projections, and suppositions.

  Maloney scanned it quickly. “I don’t want him to see all this.”

  “Why not? If he’s guilty, he knows it all already. And if he’s innocent, what do you care if he reads it? Besides, that’s what he paid me for. It’s my job.”

  He handed me back the report.

  “Working with you is going to be a pain in the ass.”

  We finally agreed on something.

  —

  WELD SECURITIES looked no different—they may have merged, but they hadn’t yet changed the name over the door. I asked Gwendolyn to get a message to Spud.

  “Nothing pressing. Just have him call me. I heard he was let go. I just want to know he’s okay.”

  She said she would get right on it. Then she showed me in, which threw me. I had expected to sit on the couch for at least half an hour.

  I walked in with Sanders’ computer in one hand and a file folder full of trade reports in the other. Stockman needed convincing.

  He stood up and stepped smoothly down off the small platform around his desk. “Jay, thank you for coming in.”

  We sat on the couch. He poured coffee for both of us with as much formality as a Japanese tea ceremony. It was red carpet treatment.

  While he fiddled with cream and sugar, I checked the transmitter in my pocket. A cute little item disguised as a pre-BlackBerry cell phone. Maloney had assured me it would pick up every sound in the room and broadcast it directly to his monitoring equipment out in the car.

  The coffee was good. And strong. I needed it.

  “How’s the coffee?”
/>   “Excellent,” I said.

  The computer monitor on his desk began an insistent beeping.

  “One moment,” he said. He went over, tapped a few keys, and then gave me a poker-faced stare. He tapped again and returned to the couch.

  “So, what do you have for me?”

  I handed him the report and tried to order my thoughts. My mind wasn’t blank, just muddy.

  “Most of it is in here,” I began. “This is Brian Sanders’ laptop. When you’re done going over the report, I’ll give you the show-and-tell version.”

  He held up a hand to silence me—it was an order, not blatantly rude, but quite definite—and took the three typed pages out of the manila envelope. He read quickly. He grimaced twice and looked pained as he scanned the last few paragraphs, where I had speculated on the likelihood that there were more senior traders involved in the scam. His face paled. He was in shock.

  He stared out the window. It was a gray day, with a strong wind throwing up whitecaps all across the harbor. Lady Liberty looked cold.

  “Has anyone else seen this?” His voice was flat. Numb.

  The man was hurting—I couldn’t lie to him.

  “The Feds know about it,” I said. I could feel Maloney listening to every word.

  Stockman nodded. “I understand.” He stood up and crossed the room, where he fed the report into a document shredder. Paper snowflakes fell into the trash can.

  “Jason,” he said, turning to me. “I appreciate what you have done. Do you have any idea on timing?”

  I shook my head.

  “The whole world economic system is threatened, Jason. This merger is important. A demonstration of confidence, not just in this firm, but in the capitalist system itself. Billions in equity will be saved. It is imperative that nothing derail, or even hinder, this. We are on the brink of the abyss, Jason, and we must all do our part to hold off catastrophe.”

  It may have been the most self-serving, self-aggrandizing pile of horseshit I had ever witnessed. And what did I know? Maybe he was right.

  “I want you to continue your investigation. Would another two weeks be sufficient? In the meantime, I would prefer the record show we never had this meeting.”

  He thought he was buying me. The cell phone in my pocket felt suddenly very heavy.

  “I don’t know that I can do this,” I said.

  He shook his head stiffly. “Please, do not misunderstand. I am not asking you to bury anything. I want a full inquiry. I welcome it. I encourage you to take any necessary steps to uncover the full extent of this . . .” He paused, searching for the precise word.

  “It’s embezzlement,” I said.

  “. . . situation.” He ignored my interruption. “And when you have explored this from every angle, come back to me. Say, later this month?” He walked to the door and opened it. The meeting was over. “I’ll have Gwendolyn take care of getting you a check.”

  Stockman was a master. His survival skills would have made a cockroach proud. He was a mediocre accountant, without honor or balls, but he possessed a breathtaking talent for finding, in the midst of chaos, the sole path that served him best.

  “Meantime, I’ll try and stay out of your hair,” I said. I stood up, taking the laptop and trade blotters.

  I stopped at the door.

  “Good luck, Bill.” I meant it.

  —

  “HE’S INNOCENT.”

  Stockman had surprised me. He was a shape-shifting little gnome, good for not much more than self-promotion, but he was innocent. He really hadn’t known what had been going on right in front of him. But there had to be a conspiracy of senior executives running the scam—giving cover, and sharing the take. Avery was a likely candidate—as senior compliance officer he had the power to investigate and sign off on every trade the firm did. But the fact that I would have been ecstatic to find that Iron Man Jack was one of the big bad guys was reason enough to be skeptical. Barilla was another possibility. His self-righteousness could be nothing but cover. Who else? Carmine’s boss? The Armani-clad peacock? A couple of years upstate without manicures and hair dye and he’d come out looking like his own grandfather.

  “Innocent, my ass.” Maloney, his anger, and me made a tight fit in the backseat of the Town Car. I would have been glad to be somewhere else. Anywhere else. “What in hell do you base that on?” he continued. “His honest smile? Stockman knew you were transmitting the minute you walked in.”

  “What are you talking about?” I said.

  “That beeping you heard? That was his computer telling him that the security system had picked up the transmitter in the phone.”

  “And how the hell do you know that?”

  “Because a few seconds later, the whole thing cut out. He turned on a blocker. I’ve got nothing but white noise on the recorder.”

  I played back the scene in my head. He was right.

  “Okay, he knew about the toy in my pocket. But you had to see him when he read that report. The guy was blown away.”

  “He played you, Stafford. What’d he say? Did he thank you for bringing all this to his attention? Keep up the good work? He was playing you, for Christ’s sake.”

  Maloney had some of it right, but not all.

  “No,” I said. “You weren’t there. You didn’t see the look on his face. Stockman may be a weasel, but he’s not a crook. The guy is too wrapped up in his own legend to have any part in this crap. He honestly believes he was sent down to this planet to complete this merger. And he’s not going to let anything—even a combined SEC-FBI operation—get in the way.”

  “What did he do with the report?”

  “Shredded it. As soon as the merger closes, he gets control of the information flow again. He’ll find a way to come out of this looking like the hero.”

  “So we got nothing out of this.” Maloney moping was even harder to take than Maloney angry. “A waste. Only now he’s tipped off. He won’t talk to you again.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t know anything.” I handed him the laptop. “This is what you need.”

  “I need those chips,” he said. It sounded like a threat.

  “Where’s my son?”

  “Goddamnit! We’re working on it.”

  Work harder, I thought.

  BY MIDAFTERNOON I FELT as useful as week-old French bread. Someone should have ground me into bread crumbs and fed me to the pigeons.

  We were sitting on a long bench outside the Federal District Attorney’s office, waiting for an assistant to make time for us. There was still no word on the Kid.

  My head hurt, my staples itched, my eyes were burning with stress and exhaustion, and I was too worried to eat. Coffee was my only friend.

  “You all right?” Brady said.

  My head whipped back. I had fallen asleep upright on the bench. “I’m okay.”

  Maloney leaned into me. “Listen to me, Stafford. I don’t think you understand. Without something tangible—like those chips—no ADA will put this in front of a judge. And once he hears that you are holding out, he will have you thrown in jail until you cooperate. Talk to me. I’m willing to work with you.”

  Maloney wanted us to be friends. He was only looking out for my best interests. And Attila was really only sightseeing.

  “Where’s my son, Maloney?” The chips were my only bargaining tool.

  “Ah, Christ!” He sat back.

  The SEC lawyers and forensic accountants had slavered over the trade records and the coded diary. For most of the day, I had walked them through trade after trade. They all saw the pattern. They all agreed it was great stuff. They just needed to see Arrowhead’s books and records to make their case. If only they had something to put in front of a judge to get the warrant.

  “Call again,” Maloney ordered
.

  Brady had been making calls to check on the Amber Alert all day. So far, the silver pickup was invisible. They’d been gone for eighteen hours. If they’d driven straight through, that would put them in Alabama or Mississippi. But Angie would have made them stop somewhere. She was a hothouse flower and too long on the road tended to make her wilt. If they were smart, they would have driven most of the night and holed up in a motel somewhere, sleeping through the day. The Kid’s schedule would be turned upside down. He’d be living on the edge of a meltdown every minute.

  “Wake up,” Maloney said.

  “I’m not asleep.”

  “Then take your chin off your chest and stop snoring.”

  I pulled my head up.

  “Where’s Brady?”

  “He went to find you some coffee.”

  A round-faced paralegal stuck her head out the door. “The meeting is just breaking up. Someone will be available to see you guys in just a few minutes.”

  Maloney practically jumped me. “Smarten up, will you? Once we are in there, I’m no longer in control. There is nothing I can do for you. Some thirty-year-old ADA trying to make his bones will walk all over you. He will crush you and go home and laugh about it over dinner. Give me those chips and I can protect you—I can keep up the search for your son.”

  He was starting to make sense to me, and I didn’t like it. Maloney had his own axe to grind. But maybe that didn’t matter.

  “Do you have kids?” I said.

  “Two boys and a girl.”

  “So, what would you do? In my shoes? Two crazy alcoholics took my child and are running around somewhere between New York and New Orleans. The mighty FBI can’t find any sign of them. And the only hold I have on you guys is those chips. So, what do I do, Agent Maloney?”

  I watched his eyes. If he heard me and understood, I might be able to trust him. But if the little wheels were whirring away, he’d just tell me what he thought I needed to hear.

  He looked away. “I’d figure I had to trust someone. And it might as well be proper authorities.”