Clawback

by Mike Cooper

  A little odd that they’d hire someone like Saxon, perhaps. Blacktail was probably no more than a few dozen employees, and “security” at an organization like that usually meant IT—keeping competitors and viruses out of the computers. It’s not like they needed an armed perimeter and active-measure counterintelligence.

  Unless they were dabbling in their own form of direct action, of course.

  In which case it all made sense. Saxon’s personality would fit right in at a firm like Blacktail. The partners, raking in hundreds of millions for themselves every year, would have long ago left behind law, morality and the social compact generally. I should know, because men like that—always men, of course—were nine-tenths of my client base. It was no stretch at all to imagine them realizing how a few convenient deaths could ramp up returns even further. I wondered how cheaply Saxon’s overtime services had been bought—a percent or two of the net?

  I erased, emptied, deleted and cleared the phone’s browser memory, then shut it down. No need for records—Saxon’s and Blacktail’s details were burned into my brain.

  Maybe the vast wrecking of the entire world’s economy, by plutocrat financiers as venal and greedy as Blacktail’s, had finally caught up with me. Maybe it was the utterly amoral calculus of their strategy. Maybe it was the direct nature of the killings—for all the suffering they caused, bankers usually didn’t contract actual hits themselves. Or maybe the tattered shreds of my conscience had finally had enough. Whatever, I was surprised to find myself angry. What Blacktail had done was evil, plain and simple.

  And here I was—hired to make them stop. Again: I was getting paid to do the right thing.

  The situation was so novel that I dozed off still grinning.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  One end of City Hall Park had been taken over by the farmers’ market, parallel rows of sawhorse tables under white tented awnings. At one-thirty, lunch-hour office workers still flocked around, picking over heaps of greens and fall raspberries and the season’s last corn. The bakery was busiest; a line stretched out past the Laotian co-op’s table with its bitter melon and tatsoi. Sunlight streamed through the trees, their leaves golden and red.

  The location was Ganderson’s suggestion when I’d called him at dawn. I’ve yet to meet a hard-driving Wall Streeter who doesn’t boast of rising at five a.m. to run ten miles and catch up on the European markets, and lazy Today-show-watching slugabeds would never admit otherwise. Sure enough, Ganderson had rather groggily said he was “just getting out of the pool,” and suggested he might slot me in midday.

  But I had to join him for an errand.

  “He’s so damned picky,” Ganderson said now, at the stand of an upstate organic co-op. “Has to be exactly the right kind of burdock.”

  “They all look the same to me.” Who’d want to distinguish one long, dirt-encrusted root from another—let alone eat them?

  “I got the wrong eggplant once.” Ganderson shook his head.

  “Why not just have your driver stop at Whole Foods on the way home?”

  “Brandon would know. Somehow. Not worth chancing it.”

  It was a side of Ganderson I hadn’t expected. The guy probably hadn’t been inside a grocery store for twenty years, but here he was, hands dirty, sorting through organic vegetables in wooden bins.

  For his son, who liked to cook. Apparently Fairfield County roadside stands didn’t have the range and quality Brandon required.

  “One less thing to fight about,” said Ganderson. “That’s all.” He settled on a handful of the roots and paid the weather-beaten woman behind the table. “Thanks, hon.”

  We walked through the market. I had Dunkin’ Donuts coffee from the Fulton Street stop, where I’d gotten off the subway, and I admit I tried to obscure the logo on the styrofoam cup. Embarrassing.

  “You were right,” I said. “A serial killer is stalking the mean streets of Greenwich. I found the son of a bitch.”

  “Run it down again.”

  “Ruthless, amoral, outside the law and willing to do anything to make money…and those are his employers.”

  “Haw.”

  I worked through the evidentiary chain, starting with Saxon’s fingerprint and connecting the dots, all the way to Blacktail—minimizing mention of Clara, though.

  This wasn’t a court of law.

  “All right.” Ganderson stopped, set the plastic bag of burdock on a park bench and rebuttoned the cuffs of his white-on-blue pinpoint. I noticed veined muscles in his forearms. Maybe he had been in the gym at first light. “We’ll take care of it.”

  “How?”

  “I’m not the only principal here.” He flicked his jacket over his shoulder. “We’ll talk it over, decide what to do.”

  True, he had used the plural pronoun in our first discussion, but I hadn’t figured on getting hired by a committee.

  “The guy’s a menace,” I said. “Dangerous.”

  “A little more proof would help.”

  “Proof?” I snorted. “Hire Kroll if you want a lawyer’s report. I don’t do proof.”

  “I get you.” We started walking again, under the dappled shade of the trees. “Believe me, if Blacktail’s involved, we’ll call in a Predator drone strike. Just don’t go setting fires before we’ve got the extinguishers lined up, okay?”

  Metaphor central, but I started to see what he was worried about.

  “I’m not talking about calling the cops,” I said. To say the least. I couldn’t call them. If I tried to explain what I knew about Saxon, and how, they’d end up just as interested in me. “But I could handle this in other ways. Suppose Saxon just disappears? Completely and forever?”

  “Nothing’s that simple.”

  “Or I could just put Blacktail out of business for a few weeks. One of their prospectuses mentioned the provider they use to mirror their server farm.” Yes, the internet has made some parts of my job easier. “A few explosives would take them down, hard.”

  Ganderson took a moment to respond. Either he was considering the idea seriously, or his eye had been caught by some NYU girls kicking a hacky sack on the grass.

  “Not now,” he said. “Draw attention to Blacktail and we all suffer. Every time some hedge fund cuts corners, the entire industry goes in the doghouse.” He shook his head. “People are stupid, you know that?”

  I did know that, in fact. It’s why I could make a living. But I could see Ganderson’s point. “I guess you don’t want to risk inspiring imitators, either.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Keeping it quiet…you’re going to talk to them, aren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  I considered. “Can I be there?”

  “What?”

  “That’s going to be a really fun conversation.”

  “No.” Ganderson laughed. “No you can’t, and no it won’t be.”

  We reached the edge of the park, back in the direct sun. A warm smell of grease and potato drifted from the knish vendor parked at the corner.

  “Maybe you could lay the groundwork, though,” Ganderson said.

  “Groundwork?” Set up his meeting? I wasn’t following.

  “I don’t know. Reconnaissance, supplies, like that. In case we decide to green-light a more, ah, direct response.”

  “To Blacktail.”

  “Yes.”

  That was more like it. “Sure.”

  “Just precautionary.” He gave me a sharp look. “Don’t do anything without an authorization. From me.”

  “Of course.”

  We were in familiar territory now—or so it felt. Ganderson wanted to control what happened, but also when, and orchestrating press releases probably wasn’t the only reason. He was looking for angles, and in his world that meant looking for ways to make money.

  Just like Johnny, he wanted to trade against Blacktail.

  “Good.” He reached out to shake hands, a clear dismissal.

  “By the way,” I said, “how about a progress payment?”
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br />   The ATM tapped out at three grand, at least until tomorrow. Unless the police found me out, got the Feds involved and closed down my bank accounts. I did have go-bags stashed in a couple of locations—a safe deposit box in Chinatown, or if I was completely blown, one buried in the wall of an abandoned building in Brownsville. But they were for extreme circumstances, and I didn’t want to show my face at any of the institutions that held my invested savings. For now, I’d try to live out of pocket: Ganderson had only laughed and promised a bonus, and I was going to have to wait.

  This meant a problem with Hendrick, however, because I couldn’t guarantee a cash payment—or, indeed, give him anything up front.

  “How long have I known you, Silas?” His accent was almost gone today. Maybe it was the hangover. We were in Grand Central Station, amid the noise and bustle and flow, watching midday commuters clatter through the main hall.

  “Ten years? But that’s my question. In all that time, have I ever welshed? Even once?”

  “No, which reveals my point. In ten years, we have always agreed on certain mechanistics. The first of which is that I receive sixty percent in advance, in clean currency.” He glanced at the schedule board. “My train is in twenty minutes.”

  “You’ll make it.”

  “I am looking forward to a comfortable night in my own bed.”

  He looked it too—badly shaved, red eyes, rumpled clothes. He’d won the locksport open, apparently, and cleaned up in off-venue wagers as well. Only after all that had the serious drinking begun.

  “How about free access to everything except the single file I need?” I said. “Anything at all you find in the office, it’s yours.”

  This was not, in fact, a serious proposal. I needed to be in and out without anyone ever discovering, and letting Hendrick rifle the safe would clearly ruin the game. Still, I wanted to convince him of the offer’s sincerity.

  “If this firm is as shady as I suspect,” I continued, “they’ll be running significant business off the books. Odds are strong that pleasing volumes of untraceable instruments are stashed in there.”

  “I don’t do percentages.” Hendrick was grumpy, his breath stale and acid. “I let you in, then I leave. As always.”

  “All right.” I shrugged. “I simply don’t have access to adequate working capital right now. If you can’t work on spec—for once, the only time in our entire, heretofore perfectly satisfactory, relationship—then there’s nothing to be done.”

  “Tell me this,” he said. “Why don’t you have the cash?”

  “That’s a reasonable question.” Yes, it was. “Truth is, I met a girl…”

  And I let my imagination take over. Not Clara—well, only as inspiration—but after a minute of improvisation, Hendrick was just shaking his head and muttering.

  “No, no, no,” he said. “That is all bull crap you are telling me.”

  I sighed. Deep. “Yeah, you’re right. You got me, Hendrick. Look, I took a job I shouldn’t have. Now lives are at stake, and you’re the only person I know who can jump the locks in the way.”

  And that was all true.

  It still took fifteen more minutes, and Hendrick probably agreed only to prevent me from physically detaining him past his train’s departure. But in the end we had not just a handshake, but a plan and a time, too.

  “Who’s going to be downstairs?” Hendrick asked, before he ran for Track 26. Meaning someone watching out, prepared to call an alert or defend our backs if something unexpected appeared.

  “I’ll let you know,” I said. “I hope he’s not as hard to convince as you were.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “Fuck you,” Zeke said. “And the horse you rode.”

  Walter had been wrong—it was one pitcher in front of him, not three. Beer signs glowed in the window, their colored light barely penetrating the murk. At eight p.m., Volchak’s was moderately busy, the bar area filled with young professionals who’d gotten off the Lex and stopped in for drinks. But in the booths, on ancient wood carved over with decades of graffiti, it could have been twenty years pre-gentrification.

  If you squinted hard.

  “Rode in on,” I said. “You got it wrong.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  Zeke had never been much to look at: barely five-eight, a hundred-forty maybe, thinning hair badly cut. If you looked closer, you might notice how callused his hands were or the faded scars poking out of his collar or the taut, banded muscles. If you were smart, you’d then move very carefully.

  Unlike in video games, elite soldiers—Seal Team Six, Delta, whatever—tend to be small runty bastards. Forty-mile runs in full kit are tough if you’re carrying twice as much muscle mass. Not to mention the bigger a target you are, the more likely you’ll attract hostile fire. Combat isn’t about trading haymakers or wielding a SAW machine gun in each hand. Not in real life.

  Zeke’s battle decorations would fill an army rucksack, if he hadn’t thrown them into a four-star’s face after his court-martial—acquitted, but kicked out all the same. He and I had been on operations together a few times, here and there. We got along okay, and it’s fair to say we’d each probably be dead more than once except for some action by the other.

  Some of those occasions had been after we’d both returned to civilian life, in fact.

  “Keeping busy?” I sat down with the cranberry juice I’d gotten at the bar before coming over. Lemon twist and crushed ice. Zeke kind of sneered, then realized that was exactly why I’d chosen it.

  “This and that.”

  “Walter said he ran into you here.”

  “Reference check.”

  “Oh?” Was that an explanation or a non sequitur? One of the things I liked about Zeke was you could never be sure.

  “Someone gave him my name,” Zeke said. “Walter crosses his t’s.”

  You’d be stupid, albeit only for a very short time, if you used Zeke’s name without his permission.

  “So,” I said. “You like the Jets this year?”

  “You need something from me?”

  I drank some juice. Too sweet. “I know, I know,” I said. “Endless small talk and casual banter. Drives me nuts, too.”

  “I only got a few minutes. My show’s coming on.” He glanced at the television screen above the bottle rack, behind the bar. “GRITtv.”

  “Tivo on the blink?”

  “I do without electricity at home.”

  See? Almost believable, knowing Zeke…and yet.

  “Come on,” I said. “Let’s take a walk.” When he didn’t move, I added, “I paid you up already.”

  Outside I turned left, away from the brighter lights of Third Avenue. For a neighborhood that had paparazzi-worthy nightclubs and one-bedrooms selling well into seven figures, this edge of Gramercy was scruffier than outer-borough tourists might expect. The sidewalk dipped and sagged, patched roughly with asphalt. Heavy grates were pulled down over the darkened windows of shops like Huangpao Trading Ltd. and Deepwater Maritime Services. I felt right at home.

  I laid out the job. Unlike most guys, Zeke needed the backstory, too. A habit from his days in dusty third world villages, where understanding clan politics and local feuds was the only way to know who’d be shooting at you. A few times I’d tried to convince him it not only didn’t matter if he had my employer’s name, he’d probably be better off in the dark, but Zeke was adamant. A twenty-minute intel briefing or he wasn’t interested.

  “The whiz kid yesterday, he was number four. Faust.” Zeke wasn’t much on the news, usually, but apparently the inescapable, wall-of-noise coverage had seeped through.

  “That’s right. And he’d almost wiped out his investors, too. So far the targets have all been, ah, notable subperformers.”

  “It’s like Batman in reverse.”

  “What?”

  “Your killer isn’t avenging the poor, the helpless or the downtrodden. He’s taking out enemies of the superrich. They’re the only ones who could afford to
invest with these bozos.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Hey, don’t go all ideological on me.”

  “Just saying.”

  “Because it doesn’t pay. Little kids getting beat up for their lunch money can’t afford your rates.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe I should check in with the other team. Seems like they’re having more fun.”

  I glanced sideways. Zeke’s face was expressionless, as usual, shadowed in the street’s poor lighting. “If you happen to be implying you know who they are,” I said slowly, “we could avoid a great deal of tedious gumshoeing. I’ll even split my fee.”

  “No idea.”

  Good enough. Zeke could be a pain in the ass, but he never, ever lied.

  To me.

  Well, that I knew of.

  “Remember Akelman? The hit-and-run, not long after he bet his firm on cobalt.”

  “Commodities.” Zeke said it the way he might have said “dogshit” or “health insurance executive.”

  “Yeah. So when he died, his successors sold off the holdings, like, the next day. The dump drove prices into freefall.”

  “Tough.”

  “Not for everyone. In particular, not for the smart money that had bought up a boatload of deep puts about a week earlier.”

  “Shorts.” He brightened. “Who was it?”

  “That’s what we need to find out. This little company Riverton Commodities was the introducing broker, but that’s where the trail goes cold.”

  “Okay.”

  “Riverton was the cat’s-paw, buying and selling what he’d been told to. We need to find who was using him.”

  “I thought you said Riverton was an IB.”

  Zeke, autodidact. Ninety-nine point nine percent of the country—and most of the people on Wall Street, for that matter—wouldn’t know what that meant.

  I had to explain the most arcane trading intricacies to the guy I was hiring to stand around and watch for police cars.

  “You’re right. Riverton places the orders, but structurally he has to delegate floor operations to an arm’s-length entity. In this case, Whyte & Fairlee. They work so closely, though, they might as well be partners. How do you know this shit?”