Black Friday Page 11

  “It’s fairly simple, really. As I said in the beginning, these kinds of stories are rarely told outside of Wall Street.”

  “I’m honored.”

  “You should be …. The Wall Street banks, the brokerage houses, investment bankers, even the computer companies—they know that the success of their market place depends on confidence and trust. If they prose cuted all the embezzlers, if they ever admitted how easy it was, how many stock certificates are actually stolen each year, they’d all be out of business. The point is, Wall Street is more afraid of bad publicity than of the actual thefts.”

  Suddenly, Caitlin was silent.

  “Caitlin, will you forgive me? I’m so very sorry.”

  Freddie Hotchkiss had finally arrived. It was one o’clock. He was forty-five minutes late for their lunch.

  Carroll looked up and saw a sparsely blond-haired man with a ridiculously innocent grin on his face. He had the palest, watery-blue eyes, bleached of almost all color, and a face as round and expressionless as a pie tin.

  What did they do down on Wall Street? Carroll wondered. Were there genetic laboratories dedicated to the preservation of the pure-blooded, uncontaminated WASP strain? All of them turning out plump little Freddie Hotchkisses?

  Caitlin had told Carroll that Hotchkiss was becoming legendary. He was a hot partner at his firm, a frequent emissary to both the West Coast and Europe—where he had extensive dealings with European bankers.

  ‘Truly sorry about the time.” Hotchkiss looked anything but sorry. “I completely lost track. Roughing it out of the pied-a-terre on Park since the trouble on Friday. Kim and the kids are staying down in Boca Raton, her mom and dad’s place. Ah, what exquisite timing you have, sir.”

  A waiter had spotted Hotchkiss arriving and had scurried to the table for the all-important drink order. Carroll stared at Hotchkiss. This was a type he wasn’t comfortable with and didn’t particularly like. Poor bastard had to rough it on Park Avenue.

  “I’d like a Kir. Anyone for seconds?” Hotchkiss asked.

  “I’ll have another John Smith.” Carroll was trying to be good: no hard liquor, no neat shots of Irish. He was also trying not to say something impulsive, something that might lose him the advantage of surprise with Freddie Hotchkiss.

  “No, thank you, nothing for me,” Caitlin said. “Freddie, this is Arch Carroll. Mr. Carroll is the head of the United States Antiterrorist Division. Out of the DIA.”

  Hotchkiss beamed enthusiastically. “Oh, yes, I’ve read about you specialized police folks. The sooner someone can bring a little order to this whole unfortunate affair, the better. I heard yesterday, or maybe I read it somewhere, that there is a Libyan hit team right here in New York. Actually residing in Manhattan.”

  “I doubt it’s the Libyans we’re looking for,” Carroll remarked.

  He leaned forward, softly nudging a finger into Freddie’s pale blue shirt, seeing a faint expression of surprise float across the man’s puffy face. It amazed Carroll that such a face was capable of expression.

  “I’d like to cut out the chitchat, okay? You’re an hour late, and we’re pressed. I have absolutely no personal interest in you, Freddie, you understand that? I don’t think I like you, but that doesn’t matter. I’m only interested in a man named Michel Chevron.”

  “He’s not one for small talk, Freddie.” Caitlin smiled and nursed her drink.

  Freddie Hotchkiss, meanwhile, seemed to have stopped breathing. He looked down at Carroll’s finger sticking in the center of his chest. “I’m not sure … I don’t think I understand. I mean, I’ve heard of Michel Chevron, of course.”

  “Of course you have,” Carroll said.

  “Tall, austere-looking French gentleman,” Caitlin intervened. “Plush Louis Quatorze offices on rue du Faubourg in Paris. Very affluent digs in the heart of Beverly Hills.”

  Caitlin flipped open a leatherbound notebook on the dining table.

  “Let me see if I can jog your memory. Mm, oh yes … on February nineteenth of last year, you visited Michel Chevron’s Beverly Hills office. You stayed for approximately two hours. On March third, you visited the LA. offices again. Also on July ninth, July eleventh, July twelfth. In October, you visited Chevron’s Paris Office. You had dinner with Chevron that night at Lasserre. Remember? Can you place him yet?”

  Freddie Hotchkiss had begun slowly clasping and unclasping his plump, hairless hands.

  “We’ve known for over two years that Chevron is the largest stolen securities and bond dealer in Europe and the Middle East. We also know he has a personal relationship with Francois Monserrat,” Caitlin continued.

  “We know a great deal about your own security trading abilities, as well. Right now, we need to know exactly who else Chevron deals with, and we need a rough idea of the nature of these deals, a general feel for the Euro-Asian black market. That’s why I thought we all should have lunch.” She smiled.

  Right men Freddie Hotchkiss found the strength inside himself to frown derisively. He began to snap back, to rally.

  “Really. You don’t expect me to talk about private and absolutely legal business dealings here in this restaurant? You had better have all your subpoenas and your Justice Department lawyers ready, if you believe that will happen. I can assure you, it won’t be done over lunch…. Good afternoon, Caitlin, Mr., uh, Carroll.”

  Carroll suddenly sat up very straight at the dining table. He leaned all the way forward and did the oddest, most unexpected thing.

  Carroll placed his forefinger behind his thumb and then flicked it three times very hard against Freddie Hotchkiss’s starched white shirt collar.

  Thwack.

  Thwack.

  Thwack.

  “Just sit tight now. Just put your nice soft ass back down on the chair. Try to relax. Okay?”

  Hotchkiss was so astonished, he obeyed.

  In a soft voice, which to Carroll’s ears sounded mildly seductive, Caitlin said, “February twenty-first—you deposited one hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars in Geneva, Switzerland. February twenty-sixth—you deposited another one hundred and fourteen thousand. April seventeenth—you deposited… is this a typo? … four hundred and sixty-two thousand? April twenty-fourth—another thirty-one thousand…. Small potatoes, that one…”

  “What Caitlin has been politely trying to point out to you, Freddie, is that you are a second-rate thief!” Carroll leaned back and smiled at Hotchkiss, who now sat as expressionless as a ventriloquist’s dummy.

  Carroll raised his voice above the restaurant’s usual buzz. “Poor Kim, the kiddos wintering down in Boca Raton. They have no idea, I’ll bet. Tennis pals at the club. The boys at the yacht club. They don’t know either…. You ought to be in jail You shouldn’t be allowed to eat here, you’re such a sad piece of shit.”

  Other diners in the expensive Midtown restaurant were beginning to place their knives and forks on their plates. In a state that resembled a communal hypnotic trance, they stared across the upstairs room.

  Carroll finally lowered his voice. He pointed toward a corner table where two men in dull gray suits were seated.

  ‘Those two guys? See them? They can’t even afford to eat the nibbles here. See, they’re sharing a three-dollar ginger ale. That’s the FBI for you…. Anyway, they’re either going to arrest you, right here and now … or, Fred, you’re going to tell us a long, very convincing story about Michel Chevron. It’s absolutely your move. And yes, it’s going to happen right here in the restaurant.

  “Then, in that second case I mentioned, you get to go home absolutely scot free to the pied-À-terre on Park Avenue. No problems, ‘cause then you’re my main man, see.”

  Arch Carroll dramatically crossed his two fingers. “We’re tight, like that. Except, of course, you’re the finger on the bottom.”

  Freddie Hotchkiss slumped forward at the restaurant table. He hesitated, then he slowly began to tell yet another Wall Street horror story.

  This one was about Monsieur Michel Chevron
. It was a fascinating story of the most exclusive rat pack of thieves in the world. All of them respected bankers, high-priced lawyers, successful stockbrokers. Every single one of them was in a position of absolute trust.

  Was this Green Band? Carroll couldn’t help wondering.

  Was Green Band a powerful cartel of the richest investment bankers and businessmen in the world? What would be their motivation?

  Carroll finally signaled to the two FBI guys waiting at the corner table.

  “You can arrest this guy now…. Oh, and Freddie? I told a white lie about letting you go free…. Have your lawyer call my lawyer in the morning. Ciao.”

  Mike Caruso was outside the restaurant when Carroll finally appeared. Carroll’s lieutenant was wearing a garish beach shirt beneath his overcoat, a devoté of summer who never embraced the winter season.

  He gestured Carroll to step aside from Caitlin. Both policemen huddled together at the far edge of the sidewalk.

  “I just got a report on our friend Isabella Marqueza,” Caruso said. “Somebody murdered her. She was shot four times.”

  Carroll glanced at Caitlin, who was standing several feet away, waiting for him. A lovely vision in a dull gray, wintry city. He tried to imagine Isabella Marqueza dead.

  “Shot at point-blank range,” Caruso said in the offhand manner of someone immunized against murders. “It freaked out all the Christmas shoppers.”

  “Yeah, I’m sure it would.” Carroll was silent a second. “Somebody thought she talked too much. Somebody was keeping close tabs on her.”

  Caruso nodded. “Somebody who knew her movements, Arch. Or yours.”

  A ragged wind blew down East 46th Street, dragging around discarded newspapers. Carroll plunged his hands inside the pockets of his coat and stared at the cold grim city surrounding him. He liked this investigation less and less.

  He finally pointed back at the doorway of Christ Cella. “Nice place to eat, Mickey. Next time you want to blow a couple hundred on lunch.”

  Caruso nodded. He tucked in a flap of his flowered shirt. “I already had a Sabrett’s.”

  Chapter 31

  THE FOLLOWING MORNING, Anton Birnbaum, appearing on a special edition of the PBS show “Wall Street Week,” explained why the destruction of Manhattan’s financial district did not exactly signal the end of the civilized world.

  “The major American market was indeed knocked out this past Friday. More markets exist out there, however— believe it or not—and they may just possibly become the beneficiaries of this disaster…. These markets are the Midwestern, the Pacific, and the Philadelphia exchanges. They handle local issues as well as certain board listings. If Joe Investor has to sell fifty shares of AT and T to meet the balloon payment on his mortgage, his local broker may well be able to make a deal for him outside of New York. Of course, he may not find a buyer at a price even close to what he’s asking.

  “Obviously,” Birnbaum went on, “Chicago is where the significant action is this week. Between the Midwest Exchange, and the two premier commodity exchanges, there are still plenty of opportunities for everyone to lose a lot of money.”

  Even as he gave this purposely calming and reassuring speech, Anton Birnhaum knew that the existing situation was more tragic that he dated admit. Like almost everyone intimately connected with the Market, Birnhaum expected a crash.

  In a way, somewhere deep in the inner recesses of his mind, he almost welcomed the purification rite, so very long overdue, As of Tuesday morning, the venerable Financier had not idea large a part he would play in Green Band himself.

  Chapter 32

  PARIS…. A MANnamed Michel Chevron… Green Band….

  The idea of the city filled Carroll with something akin to dread. Even as he sat inside a dark blue State Department limousine, sailing like a proud ship across Boulevard Haussman, Carroll didn’t want to look out at the streets. He didn’t want to acknowledge that he was back in the French capital.

  The street sounds he heard pressing against the limousine were like the rattling of old bones. For Carroll, Paris was a city of sharply painful memories. Paris was Nora and himself in another age and time. Paris was a fading decal on which was imprinted the spectral shapes of two young, carefree honeymooners, who wandered all the boulevards holding hands, who stopped to kiss every so often, who couldn’t keep from constantly touching each other.

  Carroll stared at the two American flags that flapped on either fender of the luxury car.

  Make believe you’re someplace else, he told himself.

  Christ, though, the memories kept coming back like a tide.

  Nora sipping cafÉ au lait on the crowded Boulevard St Germain.

  Nora smiling and laughing as they made all the tourist stops—the Eiffel Tower, Montparnasse, the banks of the Seine, le Quarto’ Etudiant.

  Carroll felt something grab tight around his heart. It was a sense of the injustice that had ended Nora’s life, and it uncomfortably crowded him now.

  Near the OpÉra Gamier, a crouching man with a reptilian face made as if to hurl a spoiled grapefruit at the smooth, cruising symbol of American wealth and power.

  Seated in the gray velvet rear seat of the car, Carroll flinched at the sight of the man. But when the prospect of the grapefruit assault had passed, he relaxed a little and tried to shake his head free of the fog of overseas jet lag and confused time zones.

  He opened his bulky Green Band file and looked over scribbled notes because he knew work would be a salvation from the memories of this town. If he dug into his material on Green Band, he could make himself a foxhole safe from the scenes that passed outside the windows of the car.

  How could Green Band have isolated itself so well from the terrorist underground? How could there be no rumor, no concrete leads anywhere out on the street? And what was the ultimate reason for the New York financial district bombings?

  Something else occurred to Carroll now: What if he was still looking in all the wrong places?

  “SociÉtÉ GÉnÉrale Bank, monsieur. Vous Êtes ici Yon have arrived safely, comfortably I hope…. This is le Quartier de la Bourse.”

  Arch Carroll climbed out of the official American limousine and slowly walked inside SociÉtÉ GÉnÉrale.

  The bank building itself, the cavernous lobby, the hand-operated elevators, were all carved stone and exquisitely gilded. Everything was regal and impressive, the kind of background against which American tourists would take pictures of their European tours to later paste in scrapbooks.

  The prestigious French financial institution reminded Carroll of another era. Compared with Wall Street, it was visually softer and more civilized. It was as if money were not the major game being played here. The aim was something less vulgar, something even spiritual, perhaps.

  In actuality le Quartier de la Bourse occupied the former site of a Dominican convent. On this same site another God had achieved divinity. No matter the history of the place, no matter the artistic appeal, it was the same religion you found on Wall Street. Gentility and manners, these were only illusions. It was the same old God.

  Michel Chevron, Carroll thought, remembering why he was there. Chevron and the secretive European black market.

  The question was whether Chevron really fit into the frustrating Green Band puzzle, and whether there was a bridge, even a frail one, linking Chevron with Monserrat.

  The French bank executive’s personal assistant was a thin man of perhaps twenty-eight. He had white-blond hair, closely cropped, almost suggestive of punk in style.

  He sat behind an antique desk, which in New York would have seemed inappropriate for anyone except a chief executive. He wore a double-breasted pin-striped suit, a funereal, mauve four-in-hand tie.

  Carroll tried to imagine applying for a loan from this chilly character, something for home repair, maybe, a room extension, an underground sprinkler system. He could see the bank assistant sniffling over the application papers with an expression of mild disgust.

  “My name is
Archer Carroll. I’m here from New York to see Monsieur Chevron. I spoke to someone yesterday on the telephone.”

  “Yes, to me.” The bank assistant addressed him as a country gentleman would address a stablehand on the subject of a gelding’s health. “Director Chevron has provided fifteen minutes … at eleven forty-five.”

  Observing the bank assistant’s manner and tone, Carroll had the impression that only a very few words could have been substituted for “Director Chevron” in the opening sentence—words like de Gaulle, or Napoleon. Maybe even the Lord God Almighty.

  “Director has an important lunch at twelve. You will please wait. The sofa for waiting is there, Monsieur Carroll.”

  Arch Carroll nodded his head very slowly. Reluctantly, he wandered over to a tight nest of Art Deco couches.

  He sat down and clenched his hands together. He was trying to fight back anger now. On the telephone, he and the bank assistant had set up a meeting firmly for eleven o’clock. He was right on time, and he’d traveled several thousand miles to be here.

  Michel Chevron was right behind those heavy oak doors, Carroll kept thinking.

  Chevron was probably laughing up his well-tailored sleeve at the ugly American outside in reception…

  He steadily drummed his fingers on his knee. His right loafer tapped against the elegant marble floor.

  At fifteen minutes to twelve, the bank assistant finally set down his slender silver fountain pen. He looked up from a thick sheaf of paperwork. He smacked his purplish lips before he spoke.

  “You may see Director Chevron now.”

  Chapter 33

  A MOMENT LATER, Michel Chevron, an unexpectedly small man with an equine face and shock of ink-black hair that stood up on his head like a fuzzy yarmulke, said, “Mr. Carroll, so good of you to come to Paris,” almost as if this transatlantic journey was something Carroll did every other day of the week.

  Carroll was led into an intimidating, Old World chief executive’s office. Tall, glass-enclosed bookcases filled with antiquarian books crowded one paneled wall. Along the other, there were crimson-draped casement windows looking out onto a narrow gray stone terrace.