I had gone too far, and I regretted it, but there was nothing I could do to take my words back.
Finally it all came out in a torrent of words. ‘The stupid, stupid, stupid bitch. I loved her. She knew that. Why didn’t she say yes? If she had only said yes, she …’
He broke off and stared at me through watery eyes. He bit his lip, slammed down his beer on the table with such force that I was surprised the glass did not shatter, turned away from me and left the pub.
I sat there for several minutes, stunned by the heat of Rob’s outburst. I had never seen anyone so emotional. It had seemed to me to be a mixture of anger, regret, with a vicious undercurrent of pure misery. I felt terrible that I had been responsible for setting him off. I had never taken Rob’s passion for women seriously, I couldn’t quite believe that it was for real. I now knew it was. I should treat it with much more respect in future.
I drained my glass and left the pub. I was beginning to see what Claire had meant when she had said there was something strange about Rob. No normal person would behave as he did. His outburst had frightened me. I wondered what those phone calls to Debbie must have been like. No wonder she had been shaken by them.
And now, less than a month later, his attentions had turned to Cathy. Still, she looked like she could take care of herself. They probably deserved each other.
It was a nice warm evening, and the glow of the beer slowly restored my spirits. It had rained heavily earlier in the day, and the headlights of passing vehicles danced with the streetlamps in the puddles, occasionally joined by the darting orange of the indicator of a turning car. A group of youths were shouting incoherently outside a pub on the other side of the road. I turned to look at them as they began to make their unsteady way up the street. As I turned away from them, I caught something in the corner of my eye.
Joe.
He was there, sitting by the window of the pub, watching me.
Or was he?
I looked more closely, and saw a lean figure inside the pub stand up and move away from the window. It was his size, but I couldn’t be sure it was him. I had only caught a glimpse of him. Perhaps I was imagining it. Or perhaps…
I hurried down the road and suddenly turned right into a mews. It was dark. Too dark. My feet splashed through the newly formed puddles lurking against the side of the road.
I stopped for a second. I thought I could hear a rustle behind me. I felt as much as heard footsteps, but I couldn’t wait to check if anyone was there. There was an illuminated phone box a hundred yards ahead, just outside a wine bar.
I strode rapidly towards the source of light, reflected off the pools of water in the road and the glistening leaves of the privet hedges which loomed up on either side of the street. The back of my neck tingled, I expected at any moment to feel an arm round my throat or an iron bar on the back of my head.
I jumped as a couple tumbled out of the wine bar right in front of me. I paused to let them pass, laughing and swaying, on their way back to Gloucester Road.
I made it to the phone box. I pushed the door and squeezed myself inside. From what I could see, there was no one in the mews. The problem was that because the phone box was lit from the inside, it was very difficult to see anything outside.
I lifted the receiver to my face, ready to dial 999 at any sign of trouble.
There was none.
This was ridiculous. After a couple of minutes I replaced the receiver and left the phone box. I walked briskly down a narrow pathway, and then along a road next to a church. There was a path through the churchyard which formed a shortcut to my flat. I took it.
I had only walked a few yards when I thought I heard a soft thud behind me and to my left. Even though I was in the middle of a city, the churchyard was eerily quiet. The usual urban sounds were reduced to a muffled far-off rumble by the wall and the church. I waited, eyes and ears straining to pick out any sound or movement. Then I thought I saw a shadow flit behind a gravestone.
I ran.
I sprinted through the churchyard, flying past gravestones and moonshadows, concentrating on the churchyard gate. I reached it unscathed, and although it must have been almost five feet high, I hurdled it without slowing down. I ran on through another mews and on to the main road and didn’t stop running until I reached my flat.
I let myself in, poured myself a large whisky, and threw myself on to the sofa, still gasping for breath.
As my pulse and my breathing began to settle down, so did my brain. I was jumpy. Way too jumpy. I had never actually seen Joe clearly. I had thought I had seen and heard someone following me, but could I be sure? Was I going to spend every day from now on looking over my shoulder, running from shadows? I was a little drunk and more than a little scared.
I pulled myself together. Yes, I was up against some unpleasant people. They were unpredictable and probably dangerous. Joe, in particular, didn’t seem to like me very much. But there was nothing I could do about that. I wasn’t going to let him ruin my life. If I was careful and kept my wits about me, I would be all right. Or so I told myself as I took another gulp of whisky.
11
It was a relief to get out of the country. I had spent two days looking over my shoulder everywhere I went. Not knowing whether my apprehension was justified hadn’t helped at all. As soon as I got on the plane, I felt a huge weight lift from my shoulders. Somehow I doubted that Joe would track me down in New York.
I was glad that Cathy and Cash were not on the plane. They were following more or less the same itinerary I was. They were spending a couple of days at their head office in New York first, then moving on to Phoenix for the conference, and finally joining their clients for a visit to the Tahiti. Cash, especially, I was not looking forward to meeting. It was hard enough to think of him as responsible for the Tremont Capital fraud. What bothered me even more was the question of whether he was involved in Debbie’s death. I was still no nearer finding out who had killed her. I wasn’t even sure why she had been killed.
It was going to be difficult to talk to Cash on this trip, but I was going to have to do it. I had lots of questions to ask him, and I would have to be subtle. I also needed to find out what I could about Dick Waigel, and look for some trace of Tremont Capital at Bloomfield Weiss’s New York office. I was due to spend the whole of my first day there, and Cash had fixed up a lot of people for me to meet, so I was hopeful that I would find something out. I was still not exactly sure how.
Despite this, the task excited me. It was a challenge with a lot at stake; twenty million dollars and De Jong & Co.’s reputation. Hamilton was going to meet me for dinner in New York on his way back from the Netherlands Antilles. I would make sure I had something to tell him.
My arrival in New York was just as intimidating as always. Although it was half past seven local time when I left the airport, it was after midnight according to my own biological clock. Not the right time to deal with the stress of New York’s welcome.
As I emerged from the terminal, I beat off a chauffeur who offered to give me a lift in his boss’s limousine for a hundred dollars. I grabbed a yellow taxi. The driver, whose name according to the licence pinned to his dashboard was Diran Gregorian, did not seem to speak English. He didn’t even acknowledge the words ‘Westbury Hotel’. But he started his taxi and drove off towards the city at full speed.
Fortunately his headlong flight was hindered by the Long Island traffic jams. We crossed the Triboro Bridge with New York’s skyline welcoming us on the left. I tried to pick out as many of the buildings as I could. Most prominent was the Empire State Building, incomplete without the figure of King Kong clambering up it. In front was the smaller and more elegant Chrysler Building, whose peak rose like a minaret, calling the faithful money-makers to their desks each morning. I picked out the Citicorp Building, the top right-hand corner of its roof cleanly sliced off, and in the distance the green rectangular slab of the UN jutting out into the East River. Other lesser structures clustered round these
in the middle of Manhattan Island. Then, to the left stretched a plain of the low, brown tenements of Soho, the East Village, and the Bowery, until the huge twin peaks of the World Trade Center dwarfed the Wall Street office blocks surrounding them downtown. My pulse quickened despite my fatigue. Amongst all those buildings were lights, noise, traffic and people. Millions of people working and playing. They beckoned even the tiredest traveller to join them.
We finally made it to the hotel. I threw down my bag without bothering to unpack it, and flopped into bed. I fell asleep immediately.
I wasn’t due at Bloomfield Weiss until ten o’clock, so I could linger over the excellent Westbury breakfast. One of the great pleasures of being away from the office was the opportunity to have a long, leisurely breakfast, instead of cramming down a stale bun at my desk at half past seven in the morning. The Westbury is Manhattan’s ‘English’ hotel. I had been booked in there because it was the hotel Hamilton usually stayed in when he was in New York. It had elegance without opulence. A tapestry in the foyer, Regency furniture and nineteenth-century landscapes could almost persuade you that you were in an English country hotel and not in an eight-storey block of stone in the middle of Manhattan.
Finally sated, I caught a taxi, Haitian driver this time, and bucketed down to Wall Street, a local French-language radio station blaring in my ears.
I was a few minutes early, so I asked the taxi-driver to drop me off at the top of Wall Street so I could walk the last few blocks to Bloomfield Weiss’s offices. Walking down Wall Street was like descending into a canyon, with huge walls shooting up on both sides. Although it was a sunny day, the giant buildings threw the street into shadow, and at this time of morning it still felt cool. Halfway down the street I turned left and then right, down narrower streets, the buildings coming ever closer together, the shadows ever deeper. Finally I came to a fifty-storey black tower, which looked more sinister than those surrounding it. The words ‘Bloomfield Weiss’ were printed in small gold lettering above the entrance.
I had been told to go up to the forty-fifth floor and ask for Lloyd Harbin, the head of high yield bond sales. I waited in the reception area for a couple of minutes before he came round to get me. He was of average height, but had a very compact frame. His shoulders were broad and his neck bulged with muscle. He strode across the room, hand outstretched and voice booming, ‘Hi Paul, how are you? Lloyd Harbin.’
I was prepared for the iron handshake. I had learned at school that if you pushed your hand hard into the joint between thumb and forefinger of your adversary, it was impossible for him to grip your hand tightly. I had developed this technique so that it was not obvious, but was still very effective against the American marine types. It momentarily put Lloyd Harbin off his stride.
But Lloyd was not going to be disconcerted by a young wimp of a Brit and recovered himself in a moment. ‘Have you seen a Wall Street trading floor before?’ he asked.
I shook my head.
‘Well, come and see ours then.’
I followed him through some grey double doors. Bloomfield Weiss’s trading floor was not quite the largest on Wall Street and certainly not the most modern, but it was the most active. Stretching out on all sides were hundreds of dealing desks. Large electronic boards proclaimed the latest news, stock prices and the time all round the world. Milling around the desks were an army of men in regulation Brooks Brothers white shirts, interspersed with a few women, mostly wearing tight dresses, lots of make-up and elaborate hair-dos. Trading floors are still male-dominated, the women were nearly all assistants and secretaries.
The floor was alive with the urgent buzz of voices, passing information, arguing, abusing, ordering. Standing on the edge of that room, I found myself in the throbbing heart of capitalist America, the place from where all the money was pumped around the system.
‘Here, come over to my desk, and I will show you our operation,’ Lloyd said.
I followed him through the trading room, picking my way through the jumble of wayward chairs, papers and rubbish bins. Lloyd’s desk was in the middle of a close-knit group of men in white shirts. I felt conspicuous as the only man in the room wearing a jacket, and so took it off. I still felt conspicuous as the only man in the room with a striped shirt, but there was nothing I could do about that.
Lloyd pointed out the two groups of people involved in trading junk bonds, the salesmen and the traders. It was the salesmen’s job to talk to clients and try to persuade them to buy or sell bonds. It was the traders’ job to determine at what price these bonds would be bought or sold. The traders were responsible for managing the bond positions owned by the firm. Traders bought and sold either from clients or from other traders at other brokers, collectively known as ‘the Street’. It was generally much more profitable to trade with clients, and it was only by talking to clients that the traders could get the information on what was going on in the market, which was so important to running a profitable position. Thus the salesmen needed the traders and the traders needed the salesmen. However, this symbiotic relationship had its rough side.
An argument was in progress right then.
‘Look, Chris, you can bid higher than 88. My client has to sell. He’s been told by his management to sell today. We put him into this bond, we’ve got to take him out.’ The speaker was a blond, youngish man, well groomed with a friendly face. His voice was reasonable but firm. A salesman.
He was talking to a short hyperactive man, who was almost frothing at the mouth. ‘Hey, this is the asshole who took me short the Krogers last week, and then went round and lifted the rest of the Street,’ he shouted. ‘I still haven’t been able to buy them back. Let him suffer. It’s about time we made some money out of him for a change.’
The salesman turned to Lloyd, ‘Do something with this jerk, will you,’ he said quietly.
Lloyd walked up to the trader, who was bristling for a fight. ‘Where did you make those bonds this morning?’ he asked him.
‘Ninety to 92, but the market’s down.’
‘Fine, we will bid the customer 89.’
Howls of protest from the trader, and a disappointed shake of the head from the salesman. Lloyd’s voice rose in volume just a touch. ‘I said we will pay 89. Now get on with it.’
They got on with it.
Lloyd came back to his desk. We talked for a few minutes as Lloyd explained how his group worked. He then introduced me to the traders. There were five of them, all on edge. Although they were all polite, they couldn’t keep their attention on me for long. After thirty seconds of conversation, their eyes would wander back to their screens or their price sheets. There followed a few painful minutes of small-talk at which all the traders said they loved to do business with clients, especially those based in London. Lloyd pulled me over to another desk.
‘Why don’t you spend a few moments with Tommy here. Tommy Masterson, this is Paul Murray from De Jong.’
Tommy Masterson was the salesman I had seen arguing earlier. Despite that, he had a much more relaxed demeanour than those around him.
‘Take a seat,’ he said. ‘So you are from London?’
I nodded.
‘Not many people buy junk bonds over there, I bet.’
‘Not many,’ I agreed. ‘In fact we are just starting. Your traders seemed very anxious to help us get into the market.’
Tommy laughed. ‘You bet they are. They can’t wait. They will take advantage of you so bad, you’ll forget how many fingers you were born with.’
‘How will they do that?’ I asked.
‘Oh, quoting low prices when you are a seller and high prices when you are a buyer. Trying to offload their worst bonds on to you with stories about how great they are. It’s difficult for them to get away with that sort of thing with the large US accounts. But a small foreigner? Lamb to the slaughter.’
‘Well, thank you for the warning.’ I had known I was going to have to be careful dealing in the junk market, but I didn’t realise I had to be that c
areful.
‘If you have a good salesman, you should be protected,’ said Tommy. ‘Who is your salesman?’
‘Cash Callaghan,’ I said.
‘Oh dear. Now, there is a slippery customer. But I’m sure I don’t need to tell you that.’
‘I have seen him in action,’ I said. ‘But you tell me what he was like in New York. We hear he was the top salesman in the firm.’
‘He was. But that doesn’t mean he was the straightest salesman. He was like a good card shark. He would let the punters have some successful trades, make a bit of money, get the hang of trusting him. Then he would persuade them to do very large trades which generated Cash a fortune in sales commissions. The customers lost their shirts. He could fool even the smartest customers. Usually they didn’t even realise they were being taken and would come back for more.’
I thought of Hamilton. Cash had even managed to hoodwink him.
‘Was any of this illegal?’ I asked.
‘Not that I know of. Unethical? Yes. Illegal? No.’
‘Would you be surprised if Cash did something illegal?’
‘Yes, I would. Cash is too smart for that.’ Tommy sat up in his chair and smiled. ‘Have you got anything specific in mind?’
‘No,’ I said, although I could see Tommy was not convinced. I changed the subject. ‘Cash still does a lot of business with one American customer. It’s an Arizona savings and loan.’
‘That would be Phoenix Prosperity,’ Tommy said. I was thankful for his frankness.
‘Oh would it? Does he con them too?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. They have always done a ton of business with him. In fact it’s amazing how much business they do for such a small institution. They are pretty aggressive. They used to be covered by a fellow called Dick Waigel. He developed them into his biggest account, and then Cash took over when Dick moved to Corporate Finance.’
‘I’ve heard of this chap Dick Waigel,’ I said. ‘What’s he like?’
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