Clawback

by Mike Cooper

  “That’s not legal.”

  “Not realtime, for Christ’s sake.” I paused, realizing Johnny had not actually answered the question. “Wait a minute.”

  “What?”

  “Are you telling me you do have someone inside?”

  “Of course not.” He looked at me, innocent. “If I did, I’d be retired. Motoring out to my private island on a three-hundred-foot yacht.”

  True—or in jail. That was one kind of insider trading the SEC had a genuine zero tolerance toward.

  “So ask around. See what you can find out. I need something to take to the authorities when I give myself up.”

  “When’s that going to be?”

  “Why, you want to be there?”

  “Just wondering. You know.”

  I watched him vacuum up the last of his grits. “You see a position, don’t you?”

  “Well…”

  “Why don’t you hire a band to dance on my grave, too?”

  “No, listen.” He wiped his face with a paper napkin. “Suppose the DA announces they have a suspect in custody? In about ten seconds, everyone’s going to realize that means Terry’s out of danger. Plank Industrials will rebound, big time.”

  “By ‘suspect,’ you mean me.”

  “In fact, we might see a serious short squeeze.” His eyes got a distant look. “I told you—one-fourth of the entire float has been sold short. If the stock price began to go up unexpectedly…”

  He didn’t have to finish. Short investors had, in effect, sold shares in Plank that they didn’t actually own. If the price dropped further—as everyone expected would happen when Terry caught the Jackal’s bullet—these guys would simply buy some of the newly cheaper shares to close their positions, and pocket the difference as profit.

  But if the share price rose, the value of the short position would decline, and then go negative. Brokers hate it when their clients are suffering losses, even only on paper, and they generally insist that the traders post additional collateral to cover the potential deficits. If the investor didn’t have cash lying around, however, he’d have to close out his position, by buying the now more expensive shares to cover his short sale. See what happens? The rising price forces more buying, which pushes the price higher, which squeezes more shorts to close—and so on, in a vicious cycle that can cause share prices to skyrocket. The greater the short interest, the nastier the squeeze, and the higher the price might go. Fundamentals become irrelevant.

  The shorts get killed, always a big crowd pleaser. The stock price shoots upward, which delights management and regular shareholders. Trading volume is huge, making the exchanges happy. Win-win, except for the losers who’d gone short in the first place.

  Johnny wanted in on the “win” part.

  “I’ll think about it,” I said.

  “I’ll cut you in for ten percent beneficial interest.”

  I had to laugh. “That’s too cheap. Fifty-fifty.”

  “You’re not putting up a penny!”

  “No, but I’ll be the one getting Mirandized.”

  “Twenty-five.”

  A minute later we’d agreed on thirty, and I still wasn’t sure if Johnny was serious.

  “In a perfect world,” I said, “this won’t be necessary. The proper authorities will find the real killers first, and I’ll never be part of the story.”

  “A perfect world?”

  “I know.” I closed my eyes, tired. “That’s not the one I live in, either.”

  Johnny mopped up the last of his food. “I might get dessert. Lime pie?”

  “No thanks.”

  He flipped through the plastic menu, then called an order to the counterman. Turning back to the table, he said, “You need a place to stay tonight? I’m going home, but you could use the apartment the company keeps downtown. I don’t think any of my guys are using it tonight.”

  “A trader’s crash pad?” Visualize the wildest frat party imaginable, followed by an earthquake. “No thanks.”

  The pie came, a slab of nuclear-waste green under fake whipped cream. Johnny slid it in front of him.

  “The narrative is getting all twisty,” he said. “First it’s dead bankers. Then we hear that other bankers—the ones still standing, that is—have paid a hired gun to hunt down the outlaw gang. Now a trading firm gets blown up. Everyone seems to believe the bad guys did that, too, but when you think about it, it doesn’t really make sense.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “What’s funny is that you’re at the center of all of it.”

  “Funny—” I stopped.

  Johnny looked up, utensils suddenly still in his hands as he stared at me. “What?”

  It was like a door slamming open, hitting me right in the face.

  Akelman and Sills happened before I was paying attention. But Marlett?—I was about five minutes from being there when he was shot. Faust?—on the scene. Blacktail, Hayden, they happened because of me. Even Plank, who wasn’t dead yet, but it was for his sake that Ganderson had outed me, to draw fire away.

  And Clara.

  I’d put her square in the line of fire. She was a target because she’d published leaks that I’d given her, despite knowing how dangerous they were.

  “I have to go.” I was already sliding out of the booth, grabbing the first cellphone I found in my jacket.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Collateral damage.” Dialing.

  “I told you, I’m getting the tab, no need to—”

  “I’ll see you, Johnny.”

  I pushed through the crowded booths, mumbling excuse-me’s, phone jammed to my ear. Outside, as the diner’s glass door swung shut, voices and clatter faded into Soho traffic noise and the city’s constant background hum.

  “Hello?” A male voice.

  “This is—who are you?”

  “Rondo. Who’s calling?”

  It sounded like him. “Silas. Is Clara there?”

  “In the shower. She got home twenty minutes ago.”

  “She’s—” I stopped . A hunter-killer team has her in their gunsights. They could show up any second with breaching charges and fully auto assault weapons. They want to kill her, you, me and everyone in the vicinity.

  Lunatic talk. Rondo would think I was nuts.

  “She’s in danger,” I said. “Put her on.”

  “In the shower, I said. Look, she told me a little about it. We’re fine.”

  “No.” My jaw was so taut I could barely talk. “You are not fine.”

  “We’re on the third floor.” His voice was calm. “Kimmie’s out, probably for the night. You’ve seen our entrance—the foyer doors are as old as this building, two and a half inches of solid mahogany. Ten minutes ago I pulled the electric cable at the junction box, so the intercom works but it’s impossible to buzz the door open. Right now I’m sitting at the window, and I can see the entire block.”

  “Well…”

  “We’re secure.”

  “I’m still coming over.”

  “Yeah, fine. But you don’t have to rush.”

  Another minute and I actually believed him. Even if Saxon’s cowboys showed up, they wouldn’t get in easily, and Rondo had the phone in his hand, 911 on speed dial.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “It’s covered.” And I think what convinced me, in the end, is that he didn’t sound excited. Most people, situation like this, they’re going to be amped up, thrilled to be part of something big, feeling the adrenaline—and consequently even less useful, if not downright dangerous to their own side. Rondo was in control of himself, and therefore in control of the situation.

  All that time in the dojo, maybe.

  “I’ll be there soon as I can,” I said again, and we hung up.

  Through the diner’s glass I could see Johnny, across the booths, joking with the waitress as he paid the bill. A group of women came out, laughing. A taxi rattled over asphalt patches in the street, headlight beams juddering.

  Cl
ara was safe, for the moment. But she wasn’t the only person connected to me, and thus now in the crosshairs.

  I stepped around the corner and dialed Walter’s number. It rang. Five times…six. And then it stopped.

  No message, no click. Just an abrupt nothingness on the line. I looked at the phone, a bad feeling starting in my chest.

  “Call ended,” the screen said. But I hadn’t heard an answer.

  I tried again.

  “I’m sorry, the voicemail box is full. Please call again later.”

  Not good.

  Walter and I had some characteristics in common—and not just shady résumés, dubious jobs and paranoia. We both depended on clients. For reasons I’ve already been tedious about, a single, anonymous phone number was more or less our only connection to these clients. Which meant keeping it in good order—taking messages, answering promptly. I would never, ever let a line get crammed up like that.

  And neither would Walter.

  My phone’s display read 8:07. Walter’s place wasn’t far, over in the Lower East Side. I hesitated.

  Saxon couldn’t be in two places at once. If something was going on at Walter’s, Clara was probably okay for now.

  I crossed the street and headed up Houston.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Too many sirens.

  A blue-and-white had screamed past me, going the same direction. I jogged south to Stanton, then turned east again. The night was cool but pleasant, people out and about on the sidewalks.

  At the corner of Kent, a narrow, older street, a group of girls in skirts and boots were talking and staring and holding up their phones to take pictures. As I approached, I thought I smelled smoke, and apprehension bloomed into fear.

  Walter’s place was on Kent.

  Fire engines blocked the street. Two ladders were up, pairs of firefighters on each pounding the building with water cannons. Flames had engulfed the top floor, flaring through rents in the brick walls. Smoke and spray and gusting ash filled the air, obscuring detail.

  I stood with the girls, twenty feet from a uniformed police officer holding the perimeter, his back to us.

  I’d seen Walter’s sanctum once—an airy, modestly sized, top-floor loft. Now it was nothing but wreckage.

  My phone rang, the same one I’d just tried to call Walter on. The caller ID meant nothing. I raised it to my ear and stepped away from the gawkers, moving back around the corner, back to the relative quiet of Stanton.

  “What?” The voice on the other end was hoarse, unrecognizable.

  I frowned. “Who’s this?”

  “Silas?”

  “Walter! You’re—” Alive, I almost said, but cut it off. “What happened?”

  “Forced retirement.” He coughed. “They came in the front, some bullshit about neighborhood watch, but nobody visits me. Ever. I was already on my way out the back when the shooting started.”

  “It looks like they used incendiaries.”

  “Are you there?” Another cough. “No, that was me. I had to hit the burn switch.”

  Walter was too careful to leave evidence lying around. Unlike mine, though, his work was tangible—papers, documents, computer records, card blanks, passports, all sorts of material to make a prosecutor’s day. He’d clearly prepared for a potential raid by rigging a self-destruct button.

  But that meant that everything he used in his job was gone.

  Forced retirement, indeed.

  “I’m sorry, Walter. I’m really sorry.”

  A taxi dropped someone off at the corner, a young woman with a real camera and a laptop bag. She ran toward the fire. A reporter, probably, some kind of stringer or freelance blogger or just someone trying to break in.

  “This life,” he said. “It catches up to you.”

  “I know.” More than Walter realized, perhaps. “Are you—when are you coming back?”

  “Never.”

  “Aw, come on.”

  “I told you, bonefishing. I’m tired of this shit up here.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Linden.”

  It took me a moment. Linden was a small, private airport in New Jersey, more exclusive and much less well-known than Teterboro. Walter was flying under the radar, almost literally.

  “One thing,” he said. “You got any idea who it was?”

  “It’s tied to Hayden.” I explained how the Blacktail bomber’s Fusion had been rented with Hayden’s ID. “I don’t know how they got on to you.”

  Walter paused. “Doesn’t have to mean it was him. I’ve been doing other work, too.”

  “You keep your clients happy, I thought.”

  “It’s not your normal type of business, and they’re not your normal type of client.” That seemed to strike him as funny. “As you know. Anyway, there’ve been a lot of them lately. All rush-rush. Yesterday I was here seventeen hours straight. Could be someone didn’t trust me—thought he had to clear the tracks on his own.”

  “The Street has gone all Wild West this week. Snipers, assaults, killings.” With me at the middle of too many, but no need to go into that. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “One thing for sure, everybody’s worried. Most of them are carrying guns now.”

  “I’ve noticed that.”

  “I wonder what a negotiation is like when you’ve got a squad’s worth of small arms in the room?”

  “I hope I never find out.”

  “Makes me all the more happy I’m leaving.”

  Another fire truck came down Stanton, siren whooping, and I had to cover the phone’s mouthpiece for a moment. It was a hazmat unit, with a department Blazer right behind, carrying more crew.

  “You use chemicals in your work?” I asked. “Vats of acetone, like that?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Never mind.” I glanced around the corner. The fire still seemed out of control. “So you think it was one of your new customers did this.”

  “I don’t know.” He sounded frustrated. “Not that it would do much good. The smart ones don’t give me their names.”

  I decided I’d seen enough, and turned to leave. “Get many dumb ones?”

  “Well, I’ll say this—you got to have something upstairs to make a hundred million dollars.”

  “And something else to try and steal it. What are you telling me?”

  “A couple of the current buyers were smart. John Smiths. But I might have recognized one.”

  “Who was he?”

  “I don’t know.” He coughed again. Got some smoke before he left, maybe. “I’ve seen him somewhere. In the papers? On TV? I’m just not sure.”

  “No name?”

  “No.”

  That didn’t seem to help me any, but I said, “Thanks.”

  “I generally don’t pay much attention. I do my job, I do a little fishing, I don’t care much about the rest of the world.”

  “So—”

  Noise came over the phone for a moment. “So if I have seen the guy, he must be famous. Or he’s not, but I ran into him somewhere, and don’t remember.”

  “I get it.” Someone who thought Walter knew him might perceive a threat. “I hope you got paid up front.”

  “Always.” He almost chuckled. “You know that.”

  I let him go.

  Whoever torched Walter’s life, it didn’t have to be Saxon. Ruthless opportunism was always the essence of successful business dealings in our part of the economy; now that freewheeling violence had apparently been green-lighted, potential shooters were everywhere. Dogs eating dogs.

  I looked around for a cab. I needed to get to Clara’s as fast as I could.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “I don’t know,” said Clara. “Should you even be telling me this?”

  Nine-thirty, her apartment. Rondo had seen me in, then left. Kimmie was still out, not expected back until late.

  We sat at the kitchen table, finishing off some grapes Rondo had bought that morning. Tap water and stale crackers rounded out the
meal. I hadn’t eaten much at Dan’s, but I still wasn’t hungry enough to notice.

  The rush of relief I felt on finding her safe had been short-lived, and then it was right back to worrying and—though I didn’t much want to deal with it now—guilt. Clara was in this situation because of me.

  “Probably not,” I said.

  No, I shouldn’t be talking to Clara, implicating her, jeopardizing myself. If she was ever compelled to talk—or just decided to, voluntarily, for some reason—I was in big, big trouble. Stupid. Beyond stupid.

  I told her everything.

  “I don’t know what to think,” she said. “I mean—it’s like a movie. Action, corruption, criminal activity at the highest levels.” She looked at me. “A hero.”

  “Oh well, you know.”

  “And I can’t write about it. Any of it.”

  “Um…”

  “You’ve given me the story of a lifetime, and I can’t use it!”

  “Sorry.”

  She laughed. “Jesus, Silas.”

  Music drifted faintly through the window, thumping from another apartment down the alley. Only the light over the sink was on, leaving shadows at the kitchen’s ends.

  “You’re still wearing the same clothes,” Clara said. “From, like, days ago. Haven’t you been home at all?”

  “Not since the attack on Faust.”

  “Are you still checked into the hotel?”

  “Yeah, but I’m not sure I should go back.”

  The question hung in the air between us.

  “Maybe Rondo can lend you something to wear.” Clara punted.

  “Where did he go?” I’d had mixed feelings when Rondo left. He seemed more and more like someone useful to have around in…situations.

  She shrugged. “Meeting someone. He’s kind of private about his personal life.”

  I could hardly complain about that.

  But after a moment, Clara shook her head. “Actually, I asked if he could find something else to do for a few hours,” she said. “Kimmie, too.”

  That wasn’t a punt.

  She leaned back in her chair, stretching her legs out to one side, past my ankles. Her presence seemed to fill the tiny space, driving out all other claims on my attention.

  I reached out, brushed the hair back from her face and let my hand slide gently down her neck and shoulder.