Black Fridays

by Michael Sears

  “Would you like to hold?”

  “As long as I don’t have to listen to canned music.”

  It wasn’t canned music—it was a continuous loop advertisement for a career in law enforcement. The two cops downstairs would have enjoyed it.

  “Brady here.”

  “Will you explain to me what the hell is going on? Right now I feel like the ‘I’ in team.”

  “Something came up.”

  “Something came up!? Are you shitting me? You duck out and leave me here with the Aryan Twins? You know what? I am going to set this shit on fire.”

  “Don’t bother. Maloney has it all. Those files are duplicates. We got the originals off the computer in the Arrowhead office.”

  “So you just leave me up here? I don’t get it.”

  “As I said, something came up. I can’t talk about it.”

  “Fucking brilliant! This is a murder investigation now and you don’t give a shit?”

  “Local and state police are capable of handling that.”

  “And I bet you can’t talk about that, either. Well, what can you talk about? How about . . . Where’s my son?”

  “I think the hearing is scheduled for late this morning. I’ll tell our people down there to call you as soon as they know anything.”

  “Can I talk to him? Have them call me now.”

  “Look, I’ve got to go. I’m sorry about this, but there’s nothing I could do.”

  “Tell me, Brady. You guys owe me. What the hell is going on?”

  He paused. “We got pulled. Not just us. Every white-collar agent east of St. Louis has been called in. Maloney’s pissed, but he’s got no choice. We’re on hold until this gets taken care of. I can’t say anything, but believe me, it is big.”

  “Are you kidding? We’ve got a couple of hundred traders involved. Two billion or more! What trumps this?”

  “I can’t say anything.” He paused. “Watch the news. There’s a press conference called for eleven-thirty. I gotta go.” He hung up.

  —

  AS IT WAS the police who had brought me up to Connecticut, I figured the system at least owed me a ride home. I stuffed my jacket pockets full with the flash drives and went back down to the Doberman twins.

  “The FBI says you two are supposed to see I get back to New York safe and sound. Are you ready for a ride into Manhattan?”

  If they’d had tails, they would have wagged them. More overtime.

  I let them drop me on the corner of Amsterdam, so they wouldn’t have to go all the way to West End to head back uptown. Then I gave them alternate sets of directions for how to get back to I-95 North, until I heard myself starting to get manic.

  “You’ll find it,” I finished.

  “You’ll be all right here, sir?”

  They may have been warriors, keepers of the peace, hyper-fit and ready for action, but they still had the suburban distrust of New York City.

  “I live right across the street.” I waved. The Ansonia was still there.

  So was P&G.

  I wavered. Then I went home.

  —

  THE DOOR WAS unlocked. I walked in, took one look, and called the front desk and told them to get the police. Then I called Brady again.

  “Somebody broke into my apartment. Totally trashed the place. They searched everything. Everything! They dumped the Kid’s cereal on the floor. They took the toilet apart!”

  My laptop was open—someone had gone through my files. The stack of autism books was now an archipelago reaching across the floor, surrounded by a sea of pasta, cereal, tea bags, and the solitary jar of peanut butter. At Ray Brook, the guards held periodic searches, working their way down one side of a cellblock, hitting some cells, skipping others in a seemingly random process, the main purpose of which seemed to be to remind us all that prisoners were powerless, unable to protect even their own minuscule space from violation.

  I felt dirty. And frightened. It occurred to me that that was exactly how someone wanted me to feel.

  “What’s missing?”

  “Nothing. I think.” I was flipping between bouts of overwhelming anxiety and crystal-cool vision, at one moment terrified, the next, unconcerned and able to focus on detail. “They left a laptop and a thousand dollars’ worth of brand-new Bose audio equipment. But they dumped a few thousand CDs out of their cases. They’re all over the floor.”

  “What’s on the laptop?”

  “My report to Stockman.”

  “Your notes? Any of the evidence?”

  “No.”

  “That’s why he left it. Listen, don’t stay there.”

  I remembered my last sight of Hochstadt, bloody eyes bulging at me.

  “You think they’ll come back?”

  “He didn’t find what he’s looking for. Last night, before Maloney got to the Arrowhead offices, somebody else tried to get in. The security guard told him to get lost. That’s why I left the two Greenwich cops with you.”

  “All right, I’m convinced. I’m out of here. There’s a place across the street where they know me.”

  “I’ll have the NYPD put a man on the floor. Until they find the killer. I wish I could do more.”

  “Any word on the Kid?”

  “Way too early. Call me later.”

  —

  I DIDN’T SEE anyone watching me as I crossed the park. No one was following me. No eyes darted away as I looked in their direction. It was a cool, fall day, with high, white wispy clouds and a pale blue sky. Two nannies with sleeping toddlers in strollers looked at me suspiciously as I passed. A handsome old man with a mane of swept-back silver hair was tossing bread crumbs for the pigeons and squirrels to fight over. The rats would show up after dark for what morsels remained.

  It was all so normal. I felt like I was walking through a movie set—something light where people might suddenly break out in song. And I could plod safely through, in dim-witted comfort, immune to danger. Exempt from feeling.

  Vinny was studying the Racing Form and making notes. Rollie was busy restocking the back bar. I slid onto a stool and asked for a beer.

  “You don’t look so good,” Vinny said. “Maybe you want to start with a cuppa coffee.”

  “I’ve felt better,” I said.

  “Give him a coffee.”

  The coffee was hot and black. It had no taste. My body kept humming with too much energy, while my brain sputtered and gapped.

  “I think I’m in shock,” I said.

  “Bad day?” Vinny said.

  “Bad week.” Couple of years. Bad decade. The surface of the coffee was covered with tiny ripples. My hand was shaking. I wanted to explain—I wanted someone to understand—but I couldn’t decide what event of the past few days to start with. “My ex took the Kid.” That hurt the most, but compared to getting attacked, or having my apartment ransacked by a murderer, it sounded weak. “I’ve had some other problems,” I finished.

  “Better give him a cognac with that,” Vinny said.

  The cognac burned and soothed, but I couldn’t taste it either.

  I checked my watch. It was almost 11:30.

  “Would it be all right if we watched the news for a bit?”

  Rollie raised a questioning eyebrow and Vinny gave a nod. Everyone was being nice to me. He put on CNN.

  “You know that investigation I was working on?” I said.

  Vinny nodded.

  “Well, it has snowballed. And somebody is killing people to protect it. Last night I had my own private security force and today I’ve got zip. Not quite zip. Brady’s taking my calls.”

  Vinny nodded like he knew what I was talking about.

  A red banner replaced the ticker tape running across the bottom of the television screens. B
reaking news. Stay tuned. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  The talking heads were replaced by a street scene somewhere downtown. A group of gray-suited men stood in front of the glass doors of a gray building. One of them stepped forward and spoke to the cameras.

  “Turn it up, Rollie.”

  It was still hard to hear every word, but the story was simple. A combined task force of the FBI and the SEC had just arrested the renowned, but reclusive, head of a major hedge fund, who had owned up to running a $50 billion Ponzi scheme over the past twenty years. One of the largest in history. I saw Brady and other lower-level agents carry box after box of files out of the building. Maloney was among the senior agents who stood and watched, all with serious, concerned frowns plastered in place. The U.S. Attorney spoke as though someone had just given him the briefing two minutes before the cameras rolled. He looked like he wasn’t having as much fun as he had anticipated.

  They gave the perp his walk of shame, but he refused to play the part. He came out the glass doors smiling, looking relieved rather than guilty. He didn’t quite wave to the cameras, but he made sure they shot his good side. For him, it was over. The fear of being discovered a fraud always outweighs the guilt.

  I had felt that relief once.

  I didn’t want to identify with him. This guy, the pundits told us, had destroyed the lives of hundreds of investors. People he had looked in the eye, taken their money in exchange for his trust, and never invested a penny of it. He was a predator. A vampire.

  But a part of me cringed. The world saw us as the same. I knew why people like Barilla hated me. I knew why friends had not returned my calls, and I wondered if those who did harbored some pathetic sympathy for me because of some weakness of their own.

  “Rollie,” I said, pushing away the coffee cup and the empty snifter. “Could you fix me a cocktail? Vodka on the rocks. Ketel One. With a twist.”

  It didn’t matter if I couldn’t taste it.

  BOTH NEW YORK baseball teams were lame ducks for the playoffs and Vinny was content to watch horse racing on only two television screens, so Rollie kept the third tuned to the news. The collapse of the big Ponzi scheme was the day’s story. The networks were milking it like it was the fall of Baghdad.

  “This that thing you was working on?” Vinny said.

  “No. This is some other thing.”

  I kept reaching into my jacket pocket and feeling through the dozen or so flash drives I had taken from Hochstadt’s apartment, searching for the one wrapped in duct tape. Each time I found it, I rewarded myself with another soothing sip of vodka. I was getting hammered, but I still didn’t want to go home and wait alone.

  I dialed the FBI’s number again.

  Robert Duvall’s voice answered again. “Senior Agent Maloney’s line.”

  “I thought you were amazing in The Apostle.”

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  “This is Jason Stafford calling. Agents Maloney and Brady know me. Please ask one of them to come to the phone.” If I spoke very carefully the words all came out in the right order.

  “Senior Agent Maloney is in conference, sir.”

  No, he wasn’t. He was on television again. Standing to the right of the DA with a handful of other serious-looking men. No. I had seen this earlier. It was a replay from the morning’s press briefing outside the office building downtown. Maloney must be cold, I thought. They all looked cold.

  “Sir?”

  “Never mind. Let me talk to Brady.”

  “One moment.”

  He put me on hold. This time there was no message exhorting me to join the most elite police force in the world. They didn’t really want me anyway.

  “Stafford? You there?” It was Brady. “NYPD went through your place. They left two men. One in the lobby. One on your floor.”

  So I could go home again.

  “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this,” he continued.

  I was instantly sober. He couldn’t be that upset about a break-in.

  “What are you sorry about, Brady?”

  “Maloney hasn’t called you?”

  “No.”

  “That son of a bitch.”

  “Tell me what the hell is going on.” I wasn’t quite as sober as I had thought. Anger came too easily.

  “Christ! We heard from our people in Richmond. Two hours ago. Your son was released to his mother and stepfather. Maloney was supposed to have called to tell you.”

  It was the word “stepfather” that lit my fuse. I understood the other words and knew they mattered much more, but vodka has a way of twisting truth and shifting emotional priorities. It’s what makes Russia a nation of paranoids.

  Brady let me rage. Between my bouts of screaming curses, useless threats, and demands for instant action, he gave me the story. My lawyer had warned me, a Family Court judge has powers Idi Amin would have envied. This one had listened to Angie’s side of the story and made an instant, absolute, and irrevocable decision. The fact that the United States government had sent two FBI agents and a Justice Department lawyer to speak for me and my son only seemed to convince the tyrant he was in the right.

  “There are things we can do,” Brady continued.

  “I depended on you guys. I did everything you asked. I should have been there.”

  “Jason, from what they tell me, it wouldn’t have helped. But we can make this right. Not today. Everybody’s too backed up. But I promise you, Monday morning I will get our people on this.”

  “Monday? Fuck you, Brady. Fuck you and your promises.”

  “Please. Don’t do anything stupid. We’ll pull out all the stops for you. You have my word.”

  “Have a nice weekend,” I said, and hung up.

  —

  BY THE END of the day, I had already told Tommy that the Dead sucked without Garcia and that the rest of the band had morphed into a nostalgia act, working just enough to keep their loser roadies from going on welfare, and it was time for the band, the fans, the roadies, and the whole goddamn bunch of hangers-on to give it a rest. Fucking tie-dyed Trekkies! Move on!

  It was unforgivable.

  PaJohn had the bad luck to ask me where my son was. I told him both that the Kid was on his way to Louisiana with his drunken bitch of a mother and that it was none of his fucking business. The double s in “business” gave me a hard time.

  I looked around for my next victim.

  Roger came in the door with Skeli right behind—she held the door for him. For a brief moment, I felt a swelling of euphoria at the sight of her, dashed immediately by the realization that I had stood her up the night before and that I was now far too drunk to finesse the situation. Not that any of it mattered.

  She saw me, and relief, annoyance, and joy swept over her face in a hectic triple bill.

  “I haven’t been stood up since I was married,” she said, grinning enough to let me know that I still had a chance to pull a rabbit out of a hat, turn water to wine, and redeem myself in her eyes. All somehow miraculous, but attainable.

  I wasn’t up to the task.

  “I had some things I had to take care of,” I muttered, earning me a sidewise glance of incredulity from Roger as he sidled onto a stool.

  “So? What? You can’t call? Lost your charger?” Once mounted, he sagged over the chair back as though his spine had suddenly melted. “Rollie! Gasoline! And whatever for the broad.”

  “I’m buying,” I said—with a lot more vehemence than was warranted.

  “Well, fuck me for a frog. Your boyfriend’s pissed, Wanda. Never thought I’d see the day.”

  I threw a few twenties on the bar and tried to remember why I was so mad at Roger. Maybe I wasn’t.

  Skeli was looking at me as though I had grown a second head.

  “Are you okay? You do
n’t look so okay.”

  Where to begin? “I’m fine.”

  “The ex showed up,” Vinny explained. “She took the Kid.” The condensed version left a lot of room for misinterpretation.

  “Oh my God! And you just let her take him?”

  The injustice of this was not her fault—I recognized that. I just couldn’t do anything about it. It was like watching myself step off a cliff.

  I wanted to tell her how bad I felt. For the Kid. For standing her up. For myself. For Diane Havell, mourning a man, or at least a marriage. For Lowell and Sudhir. For all the “little shits” whose lives were ruined—or ended—because of greed. If I could just tell her the whole story, I was sure she would understand. She would forgive me and hold me and fix me. I wanted her to fix me. I wanted to feel something other than despair. But I did not want sympathy. Sympathy would just curdle whatever was left of my sanity. Sympathy meant somebody cared and wanted me to care as well, and right then, at that single moment in time, I was trying very hard to not care.

  “Can we talk about something else? Anything else.” I avoided her eyes.

  “Jason! Are you out of your mind? Get your ass out of here. You can’t just let this happen.”

  Every guy there looked someplace else, the way men do when a woman is telling one of them the truth.

  “Wanda, my life is very fucked up right now. Way too complicated. I’ve got a boatload of shit to deal with. You don’t know. Just trust me on this. You will be much better off without having to worry about my sorry ass. Do us both a favor and just walk away.”

  It got through. Part of the way.

  “You are drunk. And full of shit.”

  “Fuck this,” I said, pushing by her. “I gotta take a leak.”

  Somehow, I found the bathroom. My piss ran clear—not the barest tint of yellow. All the health guides say that’s a good thing. It shows you’re hydrated. I was beyond hydrated. I was liquefied.

  It was cool in the tiny bathroom. It smelled awful, but it was a nice place to be. No one wanted me to do anything. Or say anything. Or be anything. I could be nothing and get away with it.

  “Fuck!” I yelled. No one heard me.