Black Fridays

by Michael Sears

  I was afraid to make that call. Whatever Angie might have to say, the odds were good that it was going to hurt.

  I finally dialed the number anyway.

  Her mother answered on the third ring—not enough of a delay for me to chicken out and hang up—and as soon as she realized who was calling, her voice went into that shrill effusion that is often mistaken for southern charm. She was so pleased to hear from me. She had missed me. She was so sure that I was good for Angie and it was all so sad about my legal problems, but she was sure it would all be sorted out someday and those men who had hounded me—hounded me, she repeated—would have to accept that they were wrong. She was sure of it. And then she asked after my dear father. All of it came out without a pause, almost without a breath. It was like being smothered in butterflies and molasses.

  “I was hoping to get to talk with Angie,” I said.

  That brought on another tornado of words. She was thrilled to have her little girl around, though she didn’t get to see her as much as she wanted because her Evangeline was so busy, reconnecting with all of her old friends and such, and she could not understand why that girl had felt the need to rent herself a house down to Morgan City while there was plenty of room right there.

  I fought my way through. “Could you give me her number down there?”

  She couldn’t. She would not give out Angie’s number, or her address, without checking with her first.

  “After you-all’s difficulties, it just would not be right, I don’t think,” she whispered, as though speaking of our divorce in a normal tone of voice might have been offensive. “But I will pass on your good wishes and I’m sure she will get right back to you. I will be seeing her this weekend, of course, when she comes up to visit the boy. She comes up every weekend. Without fail. She is such a good mother to that boy.”

  Once a week.

  “How is my son?”

  “Well, he is a trial. A trial. But I believe the Lord has a plan for that boy, Jason.”

  That made me nervous.

  I let her ring off with her usual “Bye-bye, now.”

  Sometimes doing the hard thing first turns out to be ripping the top off Pandora’s box.

  The last time Angie came to visit up at Ray Brook, she was drunk. Not falling down. Not even sloppy. Just a little louder than absolutely necessary. Louder and a lot more Bayou.

  It was eleven o’clock in the morning and she was telling me about our son’s latest round of doctors’ examinations. Four years old and barely able to speak. He communicated in grunts, growls, and snatches of ads he picked up from the television. Angie made it sound like he wasn’t trying. I lost it. I yelled at her. Told her to clean up her act. She owed it to the boy. Implicit, of course, was the accusation that all of the Kid’s problems were in some way her fault.

  She cried. Then she screamed. Then she called me a maggot and I laughed. I thought it was funny that in the midst of her histrionics she would think of the word “maggot.” And that’s when she hit me with the BIG news.

  Autism. Our son had been slow to walk, slower to talk. He never goo-gooed or giggled like other babies. He practically flinched when anyone tried to look into his eyes. If I hadn’t had my head screwed on backwards all that time, I might even have noticed.

  When I first accepted that my illegal accounting scheme wasn’t going to go on forever—and before I had felt the SEC closing in—I had set up the divorce scam. I signed over the Tribeca loft and half the assets to Angie and set up a small trust fund for the Kid. It worked. The Feds let me keep my old apartment uptown, but they took everything else. They left Angie alone. They never even looked her way.

  The plan was that we would hook up again as soon as I got out. We’d move to some tax haven and live off the interest. Of course, the whole fantasy depended upon Angie coming through—being there when I came home. Like building a mansion on a cliff, the view may be great but the foundation is the key.

  I made the assumption that my chances of getting my P.O. to approve me taking a trip to Louisiana were exactly zero. Therefore, he must never find out. I called and made my travel arrangements.

  I was due at my father’s house for dinner at six. There was nothing to do until then but drink coffee, stare out at Broadway, and write the script for what I was going to say to Angie.

  My cell phone rang, giving me a sudden shock. It was the first time. So far every conversation I had had on the little device was one I had initiated.

  “Jason Stafford.”

  “Mr. Stafford? This is Gwendolyn in Mr. Stockman’s office. Are you available to speak with him?”

  My mind was racing, trying to place the name. “I’m sorry. You’re with . . . ?”

  “Weld Securities.” A medium-sized boutique firm, I remembered, with a middle-market focus. “Mr. Stockman is our Chief Financial Officer.”

  I remembered him. We had been introduced at a Federal Reserve meeting years ago. An accountant, not a trader. A lightweight, I thought, a bit out of his depth and working too hard to impress. He dressed too well and wore cologne to a business meeting. He was also on the short side, which I didn’t hold against him, but judging by the lifts on his custom-made shoes, I had guessed it was an issue for him.

  “Certainly. Do you have any idea why he wants to talk to me?”

  “I’m sorry, sir. Mr. Stockman does not always confide in me. Will you hold, please?”

  I held. I vowed to project confidence, aggressiveness, and strength. I felt desperate, unsure, and needy. Minutes dragged by, draining my strength.

  Finally. “Jason? Thanks so much for waiting. I’m glad I could get you. How are you? How you holding up?”

  So he knew my history. Now we could comfortably talk around it.

  “I’m doing well. Glad to be enjoying this weather. Looking forward to being productive again, in some way.”

  “Excellent. Excellent. This might dovetail nicely for both of us. I was talking to an old friend of yours today—Al Pierce, over at your old shop.”

  Al Pierce had never been my friend. He had been CFO at Case Securities when I was there and it was discovered that the billion dollars in profits my group had run up over three years was, in fact, only a half-billion dollars, the rest being a function of my imagination and faking a few hundred trade tickets. Al hadn’t caught it and was gobsmacked when the Feds showed up with the evidence. It was a mystery to me how he’d held on to his job. He had no reason to be doing me any favors.

  “He suggested I should give you a call. We have a situation here and he thought you might be able to pilot us through these troubled waters.”

  “Listen, Mr. Stockman . . .”

  “Bill, please.”

  “Okay. Bill. It’s nice to be thought of, but I’m not sure what I can do for you. I am permanently barred from my old job, and I don’t know whether Al mentioned it or not, but I’m under court order not to even speak to him.”

  There it was—as out in the open as I could make it. If he was still interested, that told me something. It told me he was scared.

  “Yes, he made that clear. But this is an unusual situation, Jay . . .”

  I hated it when people called me Jay. They always wanted something.

  “. . . and we would not be asking you to do anything that would jeopardize your legal standing.”

  There was a tell in Stockman’s voice. He was smooth—a Wall Street senior bureaucrat, and they’re the worst kind—but he didn’t sound smooth. He sounded like somebody had his balls in a vise, but hadn’t started squeezing. Yet. I wanted to hear more. But I didn’t want him to know I wanted it.

  “Bill, I’m sorry. I just got home. I have personal things I need to sort out. What’s your timing on this?”

  “We are prepared to make this worth your while.”

  “You have my full at
tention.”

  “A young trader at the firm was in an unfortunate accident this summer. There was no question at the time that it was an accident. A boating accident . . .”

  “Is this the story that was in the news this week?” I interrupted.

  “Ahh, you saw it.” He sighed, as though the world would be a much better place if William Stockman controlled the flow of all information. “Yes, well, what was not mentioned by the press was that the SEC has indicated an interest in his trading reports. They have asked us to turn over all of his trade blotters, tickets, reports, notebooks, and market diary.”

  “What are they looking for?”

  “I don’t know. I have had our internal auditors and compliance officers go over everything and they’ve come up with nothing that would interest the regulators.”

  “But you’re not comfortable with that?”

  “The markets are in turmoil every day. I am focused on doing whatever it takes to guarantee the survival of this firm . . .”

  I wondered if I was supposed to salute.

  “. . . and if there is anything there that could jeopardize my work, I want to know about it. Before I hand it over to the SEC.”

  I was interested. My parole officer would be happy. My bank account would be happy. And I wouldn’t mind beating the Feds at their own game. A little bit of payback.

  “I can clear up my issues and start a week Monday. Does that work for you?”

  “I was hoping to get you started next week. There are bigger considerations. I doubt this will take more than a week or two, but I need it cleared up well before the SEC deadline.”

  My return ticket from New Orleans was for Wednesday, which would get me back a full two days before my next P.O. meeting.

  “I might be able to swing it by Thursday.”

  “I’m prepared to offer you five thousand a day, plus expenses, if you can start this Monday.”

  Two weeks’ work at five thousand a day. I was willing to bend for that kind of money.

  “Make it Tuesday and you’re done.” I could find a late flight back on Monday.

  “Done. Come to my office. I’ll expect you at nine-thirty Tuesday morning. And thank you.”

  I did the Dirty Bird touchdown dance around the living room.

  There was money coming in. I was on top of the world. Persuading Angie to return seemed possible. Anything was possible.

  I went across the street and stopped at the oldest wine store in America to pick up something a little special to take to dinner at my Pop’s. I ogled the Bordeaux—the seven-hundred-dollar Mouton Rothschild, the three-hundred-dollar Cos. I almost bought a ninety-dollar Barolo—it was on sale and I was sure it would be worth twice that in a year or two. Finally, I settled on a twenty-dollar California merlot. Times had changed.

  STOCKMAN KEPT ME waiting outside his office for over an hour. I didn’t sweat it. It was his dime and it felt like the first time I had sat down in days. Maybe he thought he was punishing me—I had kept him waiting a full week after my trip to Louisiana. The meeting with Angie had not gone as well as I’d hoped. I read through both the Journal and the Financial Times to reacclimatize myself to the world I was about to reenter. But my mind was elsewhere—on the rotting carcass of my marriage. I must have been scowling fiercely.

  “Mr. Stafford?” Stockman’s secretary was standing over me. “Are you all right?”

  I looked up at her kind face. Gwendolyn could have been forty or sixty—it was impossible to tell. She radiated calm, patience, and sympathy. And efficiency. “Thank you. I’m fine. It’s been an unusual week.”

  She smiled and I felt blessed. “We all have them.” She cleared her throat. “Mr. Stockman will see you now,” she said.

  “Thanks.” I stood up, shook off the memories, and prepared to go to work.

  She ushered me into the great man’s presence.

  “Jay! Sorry to keep you waiting. Forgive me, it won’t happen again. I had Volcker on the phone.”

  Paul Volcker. The most respected lion ever to have presided over the Federal Reserve. MISTER Volcker, to you, chump, I thought.

  “We go back, you know.”

  I wouldn’t know. I had never spoken to Paul Volcker in my life, but I doubted he and Stockman had any history more intimate than maybe having shared an elevator one day.

  Bill Stockman still dressed too well. His hair was combed, blow-dried, and brushed into a mini-pompadour that added an inch to his height. His desk sat on a three-inch riser—it helped a little, but when he stood up he still knew he was short.

  The view behind him was as good as it gets in New York. The harbor and the lower bay were laid out forty floors below. The Statue of Liberty. Ellis Island. The Verrazano Bridge. The rusting remains of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. To the east were Brooklyn, Queens, and the rest of Long Island, so flat that it was possible to imagine the curvature of the earth. To the west was New Jersey. Enough said.

  “You’ve got a great view.”

  He looked over his shoulder, as though surprised that there was anything worth looking at there. “I’m afraid I never have much time for it.”

  He turned on a practiced, Broadway smile. “You’re looking good, Jason.”

  I wasn’t. I was older, grayer, my jacket was a size too small for my current build, and I was red-eyed from lack of sleep for the past week.

  He looked good. Unchanged. He was probably waiting for me to say so. I didn’t.

  “So? Your affairs in order? Are you ready to get started?”

  It was a pointed question—pointed, hooked, and barbed. I was a week late. He wanted no confidential explanations, he just wanted to remind me that I now owed him one.

  I ceded the point. “Thank you for the extra time. I’m here. I’m ready to go.”

  “May you live in interesting times. Isn’t that what the Chinese say? Let’s hope this next tax package puts some sense back into the markets.” The line sounded well practiced.

  I didn’t think it was the Chinese who had said that. I thought it was one of those made-up proverbs, too dependent upon irony to be real. But everyone on Wall Street trotted it out whenever the markets misbehaved. I’d used it myself, but not in the last decade or so.

  “Thank you for coming in on this. Forgive me if I come right to the point. This project has the potential to derail some very high-level negotiations. This cannot be allowed to happen. I need to know that there is nothing to this investigation. And I need it yesterday.”

  If that was another slap for taking more than a week to get started, he was going to have to hit a lot harder before I took any notice.

  “I’m here,” I said again.

  There were pictures on top of the cabinets in front of the window—Stockman with his wife and children. The wife was pretty, in that wholesome, blond, middle-American way. The two daughters looked like her clones—two or three years apart. But in every picture, the camera had been focused on Stockman. Either he was the center of the grouping, or the other three were staring at him in adoration. And all the shots were upper torso only, with Stockman’s head showing just a millimeter or so higher than his wife’s. He must have been standing on a box.

  “Brian Sanders,” he said, as though announcing the first slide at a PowerPoint presentation. “The Coast Guard has officially closed their investigation of the young man’s death. It was an accident. Unfortunate.”

  I wasn’t there to investigate a boating accident.

  “Would I have known the guy?”

  “I can’t imagine. Sanders came to us from B-school. His family is from the Midwest somewhere. Kansas City?” He said it like I might not have heard of it. “Obviously, the family is still reeling. As are we. All of us. He was a good trader. Popular. Well liked. He would have had a long and prosperous career here.”

 
“So you knew him?” I asked.

  Stockman’s eyebrows shot up. “Me? No. I’m just repeating what his cohorts have said. It seems he was an unusual young man.”

  If he was both well liked and a good trader, he must have been unusual. Most young traders had to start their careers with enough arrogance to last multiple lifetimes. The market burned it out of them quickly. If they learned to roll with it, they stuck around. What they lost in arrogance, they made up for in skepticism. I don’t know that the trade-off made them any more attractive as human beings, but it did make them better at the job. What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger. Nietzsche would have made a good trader.

  “Why now? I mean with all that’s going on in the markets, all the fallout from the mortgage mess—here we are four or five years down the road and they haven’t come up with more than a handful of indictments—they’ve got insider trading running rampant, there’s all this going on, so why has the SEC chosen this month to investigate some junior trader? Have they asked about any other traders?”

  “No. Their letter of intent mentions no other traders.”

  He was hedging.

  “But you suspect something,” I said.

  “My contact there—a friend, looking out for me—mentioned that this little fishing expedition of theirs could be expanded.”

  One rogue trader is rarely capable of bringing down a bank—Barings being a notable exception—but a conspiracy of traders could easily be a huge problem.

  “On the phone you mentioned that compliance had already been over this. Why bring me in?”

  “Our people found nothing that the SEC might care about. Sanders’ managers were shocked to hear he’s being investigated. But I need an outsider’s eyes for confirmation.”

  Shocked? I doubted that. Traders whip around millions of dollars a day—sometimes billions—trying to make a minuscule profit on 60 percent of their trades. It is never a “shock” to find that someone cut some corners. Traders front-run customers—buying for their own book and running up the price before filling a customer order—though it’s illegal. They fade their bids—backing away, dropping their price when the customer wants to sell—when they know the market hasn’t moved. They often mismark their book—falsely pricing the securities they own—to smooth out the bad days. And a few brazenly trade on insider information. Sometimes it is surprising when they get caught, but never “shocking.” Mostly it’s just sad. But unless it was really egregious, these things were all handled internally. They don’t usually draw the regulators’ attention unless there is a lot more to it. I was interested to see what had the sharks homing in on this guy.