Black Friday Page 19

  They all began to laugh, then. Clancy and Mary nearly fell off their chairs giggling. Mickey Kevin did topple off, like a drunken carnival kewpie doll.

  Carroll finally gave up. He broke into a sleepy smile. He winked over at Mary K., who was letting him run the familiar, four-ring circus this morning.

  He had been trying to tell them about his almost tragic trip to Europe. He’d been trying to be a reasonably good dad for the four of them…. He fuzzily remembered how his own father had done the same sort of thing: telling sanitized stories about the 91st Precinct, right in that very same breakfast nook on Sunday mornings.

  Finally, after putting it off at least thirty minutes, Carroll: came to the really difficult part of his story; the punchline so to speak; the core of his tale of adventure and foreign intrigue in England and Ireland…

  He was going to try and make this all sound very casual now…. No big deal, right? So begin.

  “Over in Europe, I was working with someone…. They had these special teams of police with financial people. Our best people. We worked in London, then in Belfast together. She was nearly killed there, in fact. Over in Ireland. Her name’s Caitlin. Her name is Caitlin Dillon.”

  Silence. The big chill comes to the Carroll house.

  Keep going. Don’t stop now.

  “Sometime, I’d like you guys to meet her. No big deal. She’s originally, uh, she’s from out in Ohio. She’s pretty funny, actually. Very nice. For a girl. Ha ha.”

  Absolute, stone-cold silence…

  Finally, a very tiny, muffled reply from Lizzie. “No thank you.”

  Carroll’s eyes slowly, ever so slowly, passed from face to small face.

  Mickey, who looked all soft and vulnerable in his Yankee pinstripe pj’s with slipper socks, was close to tears.

  Clancy, in an oversized robe that made him look like ET in the fantasy movie’s beer-drinking scene, was silent and more stoic. His small body was rigid with control.

  They were angry, and hurt—all at the same time. They knew exactly what was happening here.

  “Hey, come on, lighten up, okay?” Carroll tried to make it seem a little funny. Bill Murray on “Saturday Night Live,” which he did pretty well, despite the lack of any facial resemblance.

  “I talked to a woman who I happen to work with. Just talked. Hello, blah, blah, blah, goodbye.”

  They wouldn’t say a word to him. They stared at Carroll as if he had just said he was going to leave them. They made him feel so bad—so hollow and hopeless about everything, literally everything in his or their life.

  Come on, it’s been three years.

  I’m closing up inside. I’m dying.

  “Come on, kids.” Mary Katherine finally spoke up from her low-key spot at the kitchen table. “Be a little fair, huh. Doesn’t your father get to have some friends, too?”

  Silence.

  No, he doesn’t.

  Not women friends.

  Lizzie finally started to cry. She tried to muffle her sobs, choking back the breathless gasps with both little hands.

  Then they were all crying, except Mickey Kevin, who kept staring murderously at his father.

  It was Carroll’s worst moment with them since the night Nora had actually died on some high and mighty, antiseptic white floor in New York Hospital. His chest was beginning to heave now, too; his heart felt as if it was being cruelly, brutally ripped in half.

  They weren’t ready for someone else—maybe he wasn‘t ready, either.

  For the next several minutes, nothing he could say could make it any better. Nothing could make any of the kids laugh. Nothing could make them loosen up at all.

  They all hated Caitlin. They weren’t going to give her a chance. Period. End of nondiscussion.

  They were fiercely determined to hate anyone who wasn’t their dead mother.

  Chapter 57

  TWO HOURS LATE R in Manhattan, Carroll felt that he needed a stiff shot of Irish whiskey. He also felt like going back to the role of Crusader Rabbit, running away into the strangely comfortable fantasy of the bagman. For the first time, maybe, he thought he was beginning to understand the past three years of his life.

  Later that day, he would vaguely remember weaving a mostly aimless path inside No. 13 Wall Street at around nine o’clock. The fluorescent lights were too bright; the glaring overhead lamps were harsh, tearing at his eyes.

  It was all wrong, the place felt wrong. There was too much gloom and doom, frustration was evident everywhere Carroll walked. The police investigators, the Wall Street researchers bent over mountainous documents or hunched in paralysis in front of computer screens—they were like people who have been trapped indoors too long, men and women who haven’t seen the light of day for weeks.

  Around 9:30, Arch Carroll set to work again inside his monastic office.

  Green Band— why did he have the feeling that there was something important on the top of his mind, an obvious insight that had evaded him until now? It was infuriating and elusive, like soap that gets away from your hand in the tub. Like a forgotten name.

  Was it something to do with Green Band’s inside information? A spy at No. 13?

  But the half-formed thought, whatever it was, had already vanished.

  From a transcript taken in Room 312; No. 13 Wall Street; Monday, December 13.

  Present: Arch Carroll; Anthony Ferrano; Michael Caruso.

  CARROLL: Hello, Mr. Ferrano, I’m Mr. Carroll, antiterhorist division, State Department. This is my associate, Mr. Caruso. Mr. Ferrano’, to get right to the point, not to waste any of your time, or mine, I need some information…

  FERRANO: Figured that out already.

  CARROLL: Uh huh. Well, I read your earlier transcript. I just read over the conversation you had with Sergeant Caruso. I’m a little surprised you haven’t heard anything about the bombings on Wall Street.

  FERRANO: Why’s that? Why should I have?

  CARROLL: Well, for one thing, you being a heavy gun and explosives dealer, Mr. Ferrano. Doesn’t it strike you as odd, uh, peculiar, you wouldn’t have heard something? There must be rumors floating around on the street. I’m sorry, would you like a sip of whiskey?

  FERRANO: I want whiskey, I’ve got money in my pocket Listen, I told you, I told somebody, him, I don’t deal guns. I don’t know what you’re talking that shit for. I own Play-land Arcade Games, Inc., on Tenth Avenue and 49th Street. You got that straight now?

  CARROLL: Okay, that’s bullshit. Who do you think you’re talking to? Some punk off the street? Just some street punk here?

  FERRANO: Hey, all right, fuck you. I want my lawyer in here now!… Hey, you understand English, pal? Lawyer! Now!.… Hey! Hey!… Ohhh… Oh, shit!

  (Loud scuffling, fighting sounds. Furniture crashing; man groaning.)

  CARROLL (Breathing heavily): Mr. Ferrano, I think… I feel it’s important you understand something. Listen carefully to what I’m saying. Watch my lips… Ferrano, you’ve just entered the Twilight Zone. You don’t have the right to remain silent in the Twilight Zone. All your constitutional rights have been temporarily cancelled. You have no lawyer. All right? We set to continue our discussion, fuckhead?

  FERRANO: Shit, man. My tooth’s broken. Gimme a break for… awhh, shit, man.

  CARROLL: I’m trying to give you every break in the world. Don’t you understand anything yet? What this is here? What’s happening?… Somebody stole money from the man. Some very important people are severely pissed off. Big, big people. Why don’t you imagine that this is Viet Nam and you’re the Viet Cong? Would that help you?

  FERRANO: Wait a minute! I didn’t do anything!

  CARROLL: No? You sell pump-action shotguns, revolvers to fourteen, fifteen-year-old kids. Black, P.R., Chinese kids in gangs. I’m not gonna say any more than that… Your lawyer is a Mr. Joseph Rao of 24 Park Avenue. Mr. Rao doesn’t want any part of this … I think you better tell me everything you’ve heard on the street.

  FERRANO: Look. I’ll tell you what I k
now. I can’t tell you what I don’t know.

  CARROLL: That I can buy.

  FERRANO: All right, I heard there was some heavy artillery available. In the city. This was about, beginning, I guess, maybe middle of November. Yeah, five weeks ago.

  CARROLL: How heavy are we talking about?

  FERRANO: Like M-60s. Like M-79 rocket launchers. Soviet RPD light machine guns. SKS automatics. That kinda stuff. Heavy! I mean what the fuck they gonna do wim that kind of munitions? That’s basic ground assault equipment Like in Nam. What you’d use, take over a country. That’s all I heard… I’m telling the truth, Carroll… Hey that’s all anybody knows on the street…. Awhh, c’mon, don’tcha believe me? … Hey! Seriously?

  CARROLL: Tell me what you know about Francois Mon-serrat…

  FERRANO: He ain’t Italian.

  CARROLL: Mr Ferrano, thank you so much for your help. Now get out of my office, please. Mr. Caruso will show you to the nearest rathole out.

  From a transcript taken in Room 312; No. 13 Wall Street.

  Present: Arch Carroll; Muhammed Saalam.

  CARROLL: Hello there, Mr. Saalam. Haven’t seen you since you had Percy Ellis killed on 103rd Street Very nicej djellaba. Sip of Irish whiskey?

  SAALAM: Liquor is against my religious beliefs.

  CARROLL: This is Irish whiskey. It’s blessed. Well, we’ll get right down to official police business then…. Tell me, uh, are you a hunter, Mr. Saalam?

  SAALAM (Laughs): No, not really. A hunter?… Actually, if you stop to think about it, I’m a huntee. Ever since I fought for you whites in Southeast Asia. My name is Sah-lahm by the way.

  CARROLL:Sah-lahm. I’m sorry…. No, you see, I thought you must be a hunter. Something like that. You see, we found all of these hunting guns, these hunting bombs in your apartment up in Yonkers, M-23 squirrel-huateag guns. Opossum-hunting sniper rifles, the ones with star nightscopes. Chipmunk-hunting fragmentation grenades. B-40 duck-hunting rockets.

  SAALAM: You bust into my place?

  CARROLL: Had to. What do you know about a Mister Francois Monserrat?

  SAALAM: YOU had a warrant from a judge?

  CARROLL: Well, we couldn’t get an official bench warrant. We did talk to a judge off the record. He said, don’t get caught. We took it from there.

  SAALAM: NO search warrant or nothing?

  CARROLL: YOU know, this is really shocking. Didn’t anybody read the June 16, Tone magazine? Story on me? Little squared-off red box thing? Doesn’t anybody understand who I am? I’m a terrorist! Just like you guys … I don’t play by international Red Cross of Switzerland agreements. Mr. Saalam, you sold some M-23 squirrel-hunting guns, also some quail-hunting sniper rifles to a couple of fellas. About six weeks ago. Who… are…they?…

  (Long pause)… Uh, oh. Uh, oh… Mr. Saalam, please let me explain something else to you. Explain this as clearly as I can….You’re a bright, U.S. college-educated terrorist. You went to Howard University for a year; you did a little time in Attica. You’re one of the Mark Rudd-El-dridge Cleaver-Kathy Boudin school…. Me, on the other hand, I’m a terrorist of the PLO-Red Brigade—Blow-away-anything-that-moves school Now then. You sold a full case of stolen M-23s on or about November first. That’s a fact we both know about. You say—”Yes, I did” or I’ll break your right hand. Just say “Yes, I did” …

  SAALAM: Yeah, I did.

  CARROLL: Good. Thank you for your forthrightness. Now, who did you sell the M-23s to? Wait. Before you answer. Remember that I’m the PLO. Don’t say anything you’d be afraid to say to a PLO investigator in Beirut.

  SAALAM: I don’t know who they are.

  CARROLL: Oh, Jesus Christ.

  SAALAM: NO, wait a minute. They knew who I was. They; knew everything about me. I never saw nobody, I swear it. I felt like they had set me up.

  CARROLL: I love former inmate sincerity. Unfortunately, I happen to believe you Because that’s what your current roommate, Mr. Rashad, said, too. Please get the hell out of here now…. Oh, by the way, Mr. Saalam. We had to rent your apartment up in Yonkers. We rented it to a very nice Welfare lady, with these three little kids.

  SAALAM: You did what?

  CARROLL: We rented the apartment you were selling guns out of. We rented it to a nice lady with a batch of kids, Skoal, brother.

  Chapter 58

  “IT’S ALL SO incredibly methodical. That’s what is mystifying. They keep evading all contact with this huge police dragnet How?”

  Caitlin and eighty-three-year-old Anton Birnbaum, both red-eyed and exhausted, sat together on stiff leather Harvard chairs in Birnbaum’s lower Wall Street office. Caitlin was six inches taller than the birdlike, deceptively frail Financier. Earlier in her career, when she had worked for Birnbaum, he wouldn’t walk anywhere on Wall Street with her for that reason.

  Now, Anton Birnbaum rubbed the small of his back as he talked. “Something so very methodical, so carefully orchestrated…. Something absolutely systematic is happening throughout Western Europe right now.”

  Caitlin watched Birnbaum’s face. She waited for more to come. It usually did with Anton, who thought much faster than he could speak.

  “There is a book…. The Real War, it’s called. The book’s central thesis—that Germany, Japan, have found an eminently reasonable road to further world conquest. Through commerce. That’s the real war. As a country, we’re losing that war spectacularly, don’t you think, Caitlin?”

  The former chairman of the venerable investment house Birnbaum, Levitt was something of a prig, Caitlin knew. He could be savagely impatient with people he didn’t like or respect, but he was also brilliant.

  “What do you think is happening in Western Europe? We’re having an impossible time piecing it together, Anton. Some important data is missing. One essential thread of logic that might explain who they are.” Caitlin wandered around the old man’s office as she talked.

  She stopped with her back to the window, and looked at the photographs on the walls. There was Anton snapped in the company of statesmen, controversial industrialists, people from the entertainment industry…

  Birnbaum scratched the bridge of his nose as he con-templated his choice of the next few words. He was reminded once again that Caitlin was one of the few people on Wall Street he could talk to. Explanations of his theories and insights were unnecessary when speaking with her.

  “The Europeans simply don’t trust us,” he finally began again, hunching forward in his seat “Which is precisely why they don’t talk to us anymore. They believe we have different attitudes, different priorities.”

  Anton Birnbaum stared directly into Caitlin’s brown-eyes. His own eyes were watering hopelessly behind thick lenses. He reminded Caitlin of a character in Wind in the Willows, Mr. Mole.

  “I sound like an alarmist, no? But I feel the intrinsic truth of what I’m saying. Almost prima facie, I feel it. There will be a crash now. I believe there will be a serious crash, possibly another Black Friday. Very, very soon.”

  Anton Birnbaum spoke again. “I think we could be in the middle of a war. The money wars. The great Third World War we have so long feared—it may already be upon us.”

  Chapter 59

  “GODDAMN IT! Look at this!” The speaker was Walter Trentkamp, and his voice was harsh with disbelief. “Gentlemen, it’s happening everywhere!”

  Philip Berger, Director of the CIA, Trentkamp, and General Frederick House were gathered around the computer terminals when Caitlin and Carroll arrived. Several display screens were working simultaneously, flashing words as well as graphics.

  Berger glanced up as Caitlin Dillon and Carroll hurried across the Crisis Room floor. He frowned.

  “Emergency reports have been coming in for about fifteen, twenty minutes,” he said to the others. “Since three-thirty our time. They’ve got something hopping. Something’s happening all over the world this time.”

  At one o’clock,Paris time, La Compagnie des Agents was suddenly closed by official order of the Preside
nt of France.

  All stock trading was immediately halted on the Bourse.

  Bourse officials reluctantly admitted that the Market’s CAC index had fallen over 3 percent in a single morning.

  The afternoon newspapers in Paris carried the most shocking headline in four decades:

  MARKET CLOSE TO PANIC!

  BOURSE CRASH!

  PARIS MARKET IN SHAMBLES.

  FINANCIAL DISASTER!

  For once, the tabloids were being written with some understatement, however.

  The Frankfurt Stock Exchange was in chaos, but still managed to stay open for the entire session.

  The Commerzbank Index had fallen under a thousand for the first time since back in 1982.

  The largest losers for the day included Westdeutsche Landesbank, Bayer, Volkswagen, and Philip Holzmann.

  As yet, none of the economists in West Germany understood why prices were dropping; or how far they might plummet in the near future.

  The Toronto Stock Exchange was one of the worst hit anywhere.

  The exchange’s composite index of 300 stocks fell 155 points to under 2000.

  Trading volumes set new records, until the major Canadian Exchange was officially closed at 1:00 P.M.

  In Tokyo, the Nikkei-Dow Jones index was shaky all day, finally closing at 9200. This was a full 2½ percent decline in a single day.

  Hardest hit were all companies trading heavily with the Middle East. These included Mitsui Petrochemical, Sumitomo Chemical, Oki Electric.

  Heavy European and American deposits made the Johannesburg Stock Exchange the only apparent winner anywhere around the world. Bullion was suddenly trading at $1,000 an ounce. The rand instantly appreciated to $1.50.

  Hundreds of millions of dollars were made in South Africa. Suspicions rose, but still no satisfactory answers came.

  London dramatically shut down at 12:00 noon, three and a half hours shy of regular closing.

  The Financial Times Index of 750 companies had fallen nearly 90 points; it was down almost 200 since the initial Green Band bombings in New York.