Black Fridays

by Michael Sears

  Brady stepped forward. “Let him go, Mr. Avery. You know the drill. Ex-cop. The only way this ends with you still standing is if you drop the weapon. Now. After that, we sort things out. Things are never as bad as they look right now.”

  Even I didn’t believe him.

  “Stop there!” Avery pulled me back until he was up against the railing. Some idiot on a mountain bike steered around the whole group of policemen and continued his morning exercise, oblivious to, or unconcerned by, the drama unfolding. Just another Sunday morning in the big city. He was probably running late for his brunch date.

  Brady stopped and let his gun point at the ground. “Come on, Avery. We’ve all got loved ones we want to see later today.” He sounded strong and sincere. In control. “Let’s just talk about this.”

  I could feel Avery wavering. The pressure of the gun eased just a touch. I let my knees drop and sagged forward against the arm around my neck. It almost worked.

  Iron Man was too strong. As I fell, he made a last snatch and caught my throat in a hand the size of a baseball glove. He lifted me off the ground and slammed the gun against my head again.

  “Back off!” he screamed. There was both fear and rage in his voice.

  Everyone froze. Control was back in Avery’s court.

  “No one is taking me,” he said.

  Brady began lifting his gun again. I was about to become collateral damage. I closed my eyes.

  Avery threw me. He tossed me, one-handed, like a sack of recycling. Brady threw up a hand to ward me off and I rolled to the side and landed on my back. I watched Avery place one hand on the railing and perform a perfect vault, landing on the edge of the jutting parapet, facing the river.

  The police rushed forward, reaching for him. “Stop! Don’t move!”

  I saw Avery’s pistol arch out over their heads and sink beneath the water. Then he launched himself into the river. He went in a flat racing dive, his body arched, his chin tucked, hands extended in a V to cut the water as he entered. Perfect form. For a flicker of a second, I thought he might make it.

  He landed with a horrible thud, not a splash. The ancient, broken piling, lying just below the surface, had speared him in the center of his chest, lancing through and out his back. His face and hands were hidden underwater, and if he screamed, no one heard it. The water around him turned red and dark. Torn flesh and bits of white bone gleamed around the spike of blackened wood sticking up from his back. The current took his arms and they waved a lethargic farewell. One of the cops vomited into a latticed trash container.

  “Holy Christ!” Brady said. “What the hell was he thinking?”

  I shook my head. “Iron Man. He thought he was going to swim to Jersey City.”

  ONCE AGAIN, I woke up much earlier than necessary. In that brief, twilight moment before I was fully awake, I imagined I heard the Kid’s gentle breathing from his bedroom and I did an automatic mental inventory of his clean clothes. Monday. Blue jeans. The dark blue long-sleeved shirt. Did he have clean socks?

  Full consciousness brought the return of depression. The Kid was still in Louisiana.

  One fucking step at a time, I thought. I got out of bed.

  The day was going to be a long one—long and painful. I was not looking forward to it. Careers would be destroyed by what I had to say—and not all of those who would fall would be guilty. And it was just as likely that not all of those who were guilty would fall.

  I put in a call to London for a final confirmation of what I already knew. Then I left for downtown.

  —

  GWENDOLYN SHOWED me right in.

  “I’m surprised to see you again so soon, Jason. I thought we agreed you were going to need another couple of weeks at least to finish things up.” Stockman looked both older and smaller—like Frodo after carrying the ring for too long.

  “I haven’t done a very good job of containing things for you. Events have a way of unfolding at their own pace.” I told him about Hochstadt’s murder, and the files that implicated a dozen or more traders at Weld and scores more all over the Street. Then I told him about Avery—and the FBI. “They’ll want to talk to you,” I said.

  “I wish you had come to me first with all of this. You have put me in a difficult position.”

  I had shown him the whitecaps forming on the waters the last time I had been in his office and now he was bitching I hadn’t told him about the hurricane. But I felt for him. When there had been any chance left for denial, he had maintained like a marine. Now, he was shrunken in upon himself—smaller. He looked like somebody you should be saying prayers for.

  “They kept it off the front page for today, but that’s not going to last. As soon as some reporter Googles Jack Avery, they’ll be all over this place. Meantime, though, you have a window—a week, maybe only a few days—before the FBI and the SEC come knocking. They’re tied up now with that other matter, but they’ll be back.”

  He stood up and turned to the window. The harbor was covered with low, gray clouds, the Verrazano Bridge nothing but a dim blur. A lone ferry plowed its way through the dark water to Staten Island.

  “Jack Avery was a worker, not a leader. Obviously a violent man, but essentially a plodder, not a thinker. Not a creator. Do you agree?”

  “Okay.” I thought I knew where he was taking this, but I let him do it at his own pace.

  “Nor did he have the requisite people skills to put together something like this.” He smiled sadly. “So who did, Jason? Do you know? You must.”

  I didn’t answer the question. “The Feds don’t know at this point.” That was the truth. “They’ll figure it out eventually.”

  He picked up a photo of his family and examined it closely. For a moment, I thought he might cry.

  “What would you recommend? How should I approach this? Any thoughts?”

  “Go public.” I handed him a handwritten list. “Fire every trader here. Put a hold on their in-house accounts. Tell them you’re going after all their other assets. Announce to the press that an ongoing internal investigation revealed a Street-wide problem and Weld has provided information to the authorities that will identify all those involved. The regulators will have to play along. The press will love it.”

  Stockman’s basic survival skills would see him through. He would come out the far end looking like a leader. He already looked taller.

  And I could upgrade my reputation from a criminal to a whistleblower.

  “You’ll have to sacrifice a couple of other people. The salesman? The Brit, Jones? If he didn’t know what was going on, he’s an idiot. Either way, he’s history.”

  Stockman nodded. “And I’m afraid the sales manager will have to go as well.”

  “Right,” I said. “The SEC will expect some heads to roll, you may as well do the choosing. Give them all hefty severance packages, so they don’t sue, and promise them legal support if the regulators try to go after them.”

  He straightened his perfectly straight tie. “I can bury the costs in the merger packages.”

  He was already thinking like an accountant again. He’d be fine.

  “There are one or two other people I want to talk with before you go public. Can you give me, say, an hour?”

  He was back on top. He granted the hour magnanimously.

  Stockman’s secretary, Gwen, was waiting to come in as I walked out. An odd bit of flotsam surfaced in my mind.

  “Just one last thing, Bill,” I said, turning back. “Avery mentioned a secretary yesterday. But I’ve been to his office. He had to be the only lawyer on the floor who didn’t have a secretary.”

  Gwen looked away. Stockman looked uncomfortable.

  “Yes,” he said. “Very tragic. A troubled woman. It happened some time ago. She jumped off the roof garden. We have had to restrict access to it after that.”


  “Out of respect?” I said, making my voice as neutral as possible.

  He cleared his throat. “Liability.”

  “Ah.”

  “It was ruled a suicide.”

  “Really? I don’t think so.”

  —

  I DIDN’T HAVE to meet with Eugene Barilla. Stockman would quickly realize that the head of global trading couldn’t outlive a scandal covering twenty-some of his traders. It would have been easier to let Stockman deliver his own bad news, but I liked Barilla. I admired him. I even liked the fact that he didn’t like me.

  “What have you got?” He didn’t ask me to sit.

  “This may take a minute,” I said. We were practically face-to-face across his desk.

  “You looked like bad news the first time you walked in here.”

  “I’m just the messenger,” I said.

  He backed off. “All right. Sit down.”

  We sat.

  He didn’t interrupt, but halfway through he picked up a pencil and began bouncing the eraser on the desk blotter.

  I described the scam and Sanders’ role. I listed the traders involved, and told him how the money had been funneled back. I told him about Avery. And I told him about the murders.

  “People died over this.” His face had gone pale.

  “Three—at least.” I thought someone should also take a hard look at Lowell Barrington’s suicide-by-train and Avery’s secretary’s swan dive off the building. Avery looked good for both in my book. It might be too late for justice, but their families would care.

  Barilla took the pencil in both hands as though about to break it in two. Then he stopped, slid open the drawer, and carefully put the pencil away.

  “What will Stockman do?” he asked.

  “He’s sharpening his axe.”

  He pushed back from the desk. “You must be enjoying this, Stafford. The chance to bring down some of the people you missed first time around.”

  “No. People make their own mistakes.” There was no thrill in it, other than the feeling of a job well done.

  “Failure to supervise. That’s what the regulators will say about me.”

  “No argument,” I said.

  He made a growling noise that could have been a laugh. “And they’re right. I trusted the compliance guy instead of doing my own looking. Complacent. Lazy. Stupid!”

  He wouldn’t go to jail. He wouldn’t even be forced to pay a fine. He would just be barred from ever again working in the securities industry.

  “What’ll you do?” I said.

  “You ever miss the biz?”

  “Every day.”

  He laughed out loud. “I won’t. I promise you that. I will never again play a round of golf with someone I don’t like. How’s that for a fresh start? God almighty, I can’t tell you the number of perfect days in my life that have been ruined because I had to listen to some hotshot whine at me about an eighth of a thirty-second on some two-year-note trade while I have to pretend not to notice every time he kicks his ball back out of the rough or clears his throat while somebody else is trying to putt.”

  He looked happier than I had ever known him.

  “First thing I do, I go upstairs and twist that little prick’s nuts until he promises me a severance package big enough to choke an anaconda.”

  “There you go.”

  “Little fucker will give it to me, too, as long as I promise to go quietly. He can be a mean little backstabbing cunt, but he’s never been afraid to spend someone else’s money to solve a problem.”

  If it was all a front, it was a really good one.

  “What’s next?”

  “Christ, Stafford, get the fuck out of here before I start thinking I have something to thank you for.”

  —

  THE TRADING FLOOR had lost whatever shreds of community it had ever possessed. Merger mania had set in. Whole departments would be saved—others swept away. It was no longer a team of highly paid athletes working together to make it to their version of the Super Bowl; it was a mob comprised of passengers and crew from the Titanic, some huddled in their life vests waiting for orders, others already elbowing their way onto the lifeboats. No one was sailing the ship.

  I threaded my way through aisles full of traders and salespeople—some angry, some confused, some happy, others just smug—until I got to the arbitrage group. Rich Wheeler and Neil Wilkinson were on the phones. Kirsten Miller noticed me first. She stood up and put out a hand.

  “Good working with you again, Jason. I suppose you’ve heard all the news?”

  “You’re leaving?” I said.

  “The new management team is not comfortable with the levels of risk we are accustomed to taking. So, we have agreed to part ways. Amicably.” She laughed. Amicably must have meant a very large severance package.

  “I’m sure you’ll land somewhere.”

  She winked. “Already in the works. But I can’t say a word.”

  “Understood.”

  Rich gave a short wave, but his attention was on his phone conversation. He was going over the details of a big trade.

  “We’re winding down,” Kirsten explained.

  Neil hadn’t yet looked up at me. I tried staring at him. It didn’t work.

  Kirsten couldn’t help but notice. “I guess Neil’s a little backed up. I’m sure he’ll want to say good-bye. Can I have him look you up a little later?”

  “Please. When he gets off the phone. I’ll be in the little conference room I’ve been using. You might mention to him that I’ve had a long conversation with Jack Avery.”

  I knew it sounded cryptic. It would get his attention.

  Kirsten covered her confusion well. “Will do. Thanks for stopping by.”

  I waited in the small, cold conference room. Someone had “fixed” the AC vent, reversing whatever Spud had done to it. This time it didn’t bother me. The gray walls didn’t frighten me anymore either—they kept their distance. Two weeks ago, the room had felt like a cell. Now it was just a small, shabby room with a scuffed round table and four cheap swivel chairs.

  I didn’t have to wait long.

  Cornelius Wilkinson had the brains and the experience to set up the whole trading scam. He was familiar with a wide range of securities; he would have known just how much a trader was able to skim without setting off alarm bells. He had been in London during the years Hochstadt had first begun working for Arrowhead. And he was possessed of enough tact, charm, and nerve to sell the idea to scores of other traders.

  And he had the motive.

  Anyone on Wall Street who had seen traders, less bright, less diligent, less ethical, make millions through dumb luck, superior ass-kissing, market manipulation, lying, cheating, or outright theft might have had the motive. Few of them would have been able to carry it off so successfully, for so long, or to such an extent. But even fewer would have attempted it, either out of innate honesty or fear of being caught.

  The markets survive on trust. That trust is assailed every day. Opportunities for violating that trust are rampant. But how do you find and train a trader to be a cutthroat, loot-gathering pirate, willing to take gut-wrenching risks that 99.9 percent of humanity would shy from, and still expect him to be the kind of guy who, when he finds a wallet on the sidewalk, returns it to its owner without even counting the cash? Suppose it’s a grand in the wallet? Suppose it’s a mil?

  Neil knocked on the open door and came in. He never showed stress—if he even felt it. His bow tie and suspenders matched, complementing the pale-striped shirt. His hair, probably worn in the exact same cut since he went off to prep school, was perfectly parted, every strand a testament to order, discipline, good breeding, and the constant attention to the details of living well.

  “I received your me
ssage,” he said. His movements were casual, but practiced. Grace and style almost hid the fact that he was as taut as a bowstring. He spun the seat on the chair facing me until it reached the height he desired. Then he lowered himself, elegantly.

  I waited until he finished his entrance.

  “Jack Avery and I had a long talk yesterday.”

  “Oh?” The eyebrows went up. Innocent. Oblivious.

  “There’s not much I don’t know at this point.”

  He nodded politely.

  I needed to rattle him.

  “Did you know he was going to kill Hochstadt? He implied it was an executive decision.”

  “Why are you asking me?” He meant, “What do you know?”

  “I knew Hochstadt was in a panic when I left him. But why would he run to Avery? Avery scared him. Shit, Iron Man Jack scared everybody. So, he must have been going to meet someone else. Someone he trusted. That would be you, Neil.”

  He pursed his lips. “Jack is not a manager. Geoffrey could have been managed. He’d had episodes before, driven by guilt or fear of discovery. He did not need to be killed. I sent Jack to deliver a message. That was my mistake. He can be impulsive.”

  “It sounds like he doesn’t like your style, Neil. Why bring him in on the scam anyway? Besides muscle, what does he bring to the table?”

  “Jack was not invited. He insinuated himself. After his secretary ran an audit on all of the firm’s trades with Arrowhead, she went to Jack with her suspicions. Jack saw an opportunity. He came to me with a set of demands. They seemed reasonable. I would have agreed to much more.”

  “And the secretary?” Avery would have had to get her out of the way.

  His eyes flicked up to the ceiling. “I understand she had personal issues.”

  “Is that what Jack said?”

  He locked eyes with me. “The subject never came up.”

  Avery had killed her, I was sure of it. But had Neil known? Or had he willed himself not to know? I decided to let the woman rest in peace.

  “Jack’s dead,” I said.

  For a moment, his mannered reserve almost abandoned him. But he recovered.