Black Fridays

by Michael Sears

  “Don’t worry. They know just how you like them.”

  —

  TWO HOURS LATER, the Kid was fed, bathed, read to, and—blessedly—asleep. Nirvana.

  It was a warm night and there were still plenty of people down on Broadway. The ebb and flow of pedestrians and traffic was soothing. I poured a glass of water and sank down into my chair.

  I realized that I was more content with my life than at any time in years. Heather had told me that the Kid was bright and responsive and might soon surprise both of us. The school reported that he was both happy and engaged—and had not tried to bite anyone since lunchtime.

  There was a date to look forward to, with a woman I could talk to—almost.

  And I had work. Something to both occupy my brain and fatten the coffers. The opportunity to use old skills, to get outside the looping track of anger, self-pity, recrimination, and depression that had marked the last few years of my life. The challenge of solving a puzzle. It all combined to give me a healthy shot of serotonin.

  The Kid’s light snoring stopped. I went to his room to check. The Kid had managed to free one foot from the sheets, his pale skin glowed in the darkness. I considered pulling the sheet back into place, but held off. Peace trumped order. If the Kid was uncomfortable, he would let me know. I was learning.

  An hour later, I nodded out over an article purporting to be the final word on mercury toxicity as a causal factor in autism. The one thing I was sure of about anything to do with my son’s condition was the final word had yet to be written.

  WEDNESDAY—A BEIGE DAY. I dressed the Kid in a pair of khakis and a polo shirt that Angie would have described as ecru. I was glad that neither the Kid nor I was capable of making such distinctions. Wednesday was also an egg day. Scrambled—never fried.

  The cab dropped us on the corner and we walked the half-block to school. There were two on the block—the Kid’s and a more mainstream private school. The street was solid with cabs, Town Cars, and SUVs, all holding one or two adults and one child—all inching forward one car length per child delivered, and all spewing enough hydrocarbons to make Dick Cheney smile.

  “Mr. Stafford? Jason? Hellooooo.” I knew that voice. I cringed.

  I felt for Helene Wyckoff, but her neediness terrified me. The first day of school, she had identified Jason and me as newbies and latched herself onto us. In five minutes, she had dumped on my unsuspecting shoulders the full story of her and her son’s lives.

  She had been married to an oral surgeon who left her for a dental hygienist soon after the boy was born. The autism became apparent before the divorce decree, and her settlement mushroomed. But her life had shrunk to encompass only her son and her dog. The boy was a year older than the Kid, but did not yet speak. He carried a notebook with pictures of various foods, clothing, and places—a toilet, his bed—so that he could point and communicate his needs, but he rarely used it. Most of his time was spent sitting, staring, and humming tunelessly. His mother tried to arrange playdates for him with anyone she could buttonhole, in some kind of mad hope that her son might notice another young person and miraculously begin to interact.

  “Good morning, Helene,” I called, silently wishing the Kid to step faster.

  “Hurry up now, Prince.” She had the dog in tow—a high-energy, scruffy Jack Russell, inexplicably named for the Broadway producer Hal Prince. Her son came up behind her, eyes on the ground, bounding slightly on the balls of his feet, as though trying to shed some energy too painful to contain. “Now, Jason, I haven’t forgotten your promise to get our boys together sometime soon.”

  I had never even hinted that such a thing was a possibility. Helene might even have admitted this if challenged, but she refused to let reality stand in the way of her dreams for her son.

  The Kid saw the dog and dropped down on his haunches for some penetrating, heartfelt eye contact. There were times I would gladly have traded places with a dog.

  A Jack Russell is a working dog—bred to hunt fox. They need lots of exercise. They need to run and dig and burrow down tunnels looking for rats and snakes and foxes. They’re not great on a leash. People who live in apartments get them because they’re small. Those people should think it through a bit longer.

  The little terrier was hopping up and down and yipping like a Chihuahua, its head whipping back and forth and its bobbed tail vibrating like a rattlesnake. It was not into making peaceful eye contact with a weird little human.

  The Kid was getting frustrated; he wanted to bond with that hyperactive canine and he was getting no cooperation. He began to grunt in frustration.

  Helene rattled on about the fall fund-raiser—a silent auction—and how she had no idea what she could contribute, though the year before she had paid thirty dollars for a facial at a salon on Broadway and she had never used it and wondered if she spoke to the store, could she get them to maybe donate a manicure as well. I had no opinion. I didn’t need one.

  The dog barked. The Kid’s grunting was beginning to spook it. Next, it snapped its jaws in his direction—not a bite, barely a threat, but the situation was escalating.

  I dropped to one knee and held out the back of my hand. It took a full minute of cha-cha-ing back and forth for the dog to get up the courage to sniff me. The Kid watched fascinated. The little terrier finally sniffed and immediately relaxed.

  “That’s how you say hello to a dog, Kid. They don’t know any better. They have to smell you to be your friend.”

  The dog squirmed its way under my fingers and I scratched its head and neck.

  “Go ahead. Give it a try.”

  The Kid held out his hand. The dog cautiously advanced, did its sniff, and barked once. The Kid didn’t move; he waited.

  “That’s right, just wait him out.”

  The dog advanced again. This time it sniffed and did the same squirmy dance under the hand. The Kid scratched. The dog relaxed.

  Helene was still holding up her end of the conversation about the fund-raiser. I wasn’t needed.

  “Nice work, Kid. Now you see? He likes you.”

  The Kid nodded seriously. The dog scampered back, its claustrophobic hyperactivity taking over again. We stood up.

  “So?” Helene finished. “Call me, we’ll make a plan.” She moved on, her son and dog behind. “Ta-ta.” She waved.

  The Kid’s teacher met us out front. Ms. Wegant was a stern-looking, breastless, hipless woman who managed—without ever saying any more than “Good morning”—to make me feel guilty for abandoning my son to her each day.

  “Good morning, Mr. Stafford.” It worked again. “Good morning, Jason.”

  The Kid ignored her.

  “Say good morning, Kid,” I said quietly.

  “Good morning, Ms. Wegant.” He didn’t quite look at her, but he got the words out perfectly, though I thought he sounded an awful lot like Heather when he spoke. Nevertheless, I felt an absurdly disproportionate rush of parental pride.

  I got down on one knee to say my good-byes and the Kid surprised me. He looked directly into my eyes. Then, he slowly raised his arm and held out the back of his hand. I took a second to think. I sniffed his hand, then I held out my own. He sniffed me back. Then he turned and walked into the building with Ms. Wegant.

  I walked to the subway on billows of euphoria, taking ten-foot strides with each step. My kid liked me.

  —

  SPUD WAS BACK in the conference room—shaved, showered, and rested.

  “You didn’t think to mention the casino trips?” I said instead of “Good morning.”

  He shook his head. “It was no big deal. Everybody knew.”

  “Who else went?”

  “I don’t know. A bunch of guys. It was something they all did.”

  I handed him a legal pad. “Give me names.”

  He shrugged a
nd began to write.

  “How about you?” I asked. “Were you ever invited along?”

  “Not a chance. Traders only.” He pushed the pad back to me. “These are the only guys I know from this firm.”

  Carmine Nardo—corporate bond trading

  Sudhir Patel—mortgage-backed trading

  Lowell Barrington—OTC stocks

  “I’m going to want to meet with each of them. Who do I talk to about setting it up?”

  “I can take care of it. I don’t know anyone over in stocks, but I’ll find Lowell.”

  Specialization and compartmentalization start early on Wall Street. No one is a generalist.

  “Good. Then, I want you back on the Arrowhead trades. I’m convinced there is something there. I don’t know what, but look for any patterns that stick out. The obvious thing is to see if there was any way Brian could have been hiding losses.”

  Or generating phony profits, the way I had done.

  “Meantime, I’ll get us coffee.”

  There was an alcove adjacent to the trading floor, with a pair of coffee machines, a small fridge, and a junk food dispenser. Some bright Ph.D. candidate should do a thesis project plotting bull and bear markets versus traders’ consumption of Oreos and Fig Newtons.

  The air of panic from the day before was gone, replaced with a dull sense of disassociation. There was no business getting done. Half the people on the floor were on the phone with headhunters and the rest were waiting nervously for a call back.

  “Hey. You’re Stafford, right?”

  The speaker was a dark-browed, good-looking man in his late twenties.

  “That’s right. And you are . . . ?”

  “I know why you’re here.” He sounded both accusatory and petulant.

  “I didn’t know it was a secret. Do you mind telling me who you are?”

  “Carmine Nardo. Brian Sanders was a good friend.”

  He had saved me a search.

  “Well, this is good news. I was going to look you up today. If you’ve got a minute, let’s talk now. Get it over with, all right?”

  “I don’t have to talk to you.” Now he was angry and petulant. There was a theme here.

  “No, you don’t, but you started this conversation.”

  “I don’t know what Brian had going on. I know you’re supposed to stick something on him. But it’s not going to work. Brian didn’t do anything.” The anger was overtaking the whining.

  “Somebody’s feeding you bad info, guy. I’ve got no axe here. If there’s nothing to find, I will be happy to report that.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  I was fed up. “Look, Carmine. If there’s something about Brian Sanders you want to share with me—personal or professional—I want to hear it. But I don’t want to fight about it with you.”

  “There’s nothing to say.” He looked as though he was thinking of more to say about having nothing to say and decided against it. He turned and stalked off.

  “Wait, Carmine. Just one thing, all right? Tell me about the trips to Atlantic City.”

  He took the bait. He whirled around and came at me, fists clenched.

  “There’s nothing. I’m telling you to forget about that shit.” He took a long breath and tried to pull himself together. “We played craps. Blackjack. Had a few laughs. That was it! Now leave it the fuck alone.” His face was angry, his pose adamant, but his eyes were two dark pools of misery. Carmine was not a good liar.

  “I’ll be sure and include that in my report. Stockman should know how helpful you’ve been.”

  For a moment, I thought I had pushed too far. He wanted to hit me. But he decided against it.

  This time I let him walk away. My Pop always said I was good with people.

  —

  SPUD LOOKED UP as I put the two cups of coffee down on the table.

  He counted off with upheld fingers as he reported. “Mortgages are still in a mess, but I got Sudhir’s boss to agree to let you have him for an hour on Friday. Eleven-thirty, if that’s okay.”

  “That’s fine,” I said.

  His index finger came up. “Lowell Barrington wants to know what this is all about before he agrees to meet. I’ll talk to him again. He wants to buy me a beer tomorrow night.”

  “The guy’s a little paranoid?”

  He shrugged. “He sounded distracted. Carmine was off the desk when I called. I’ll try again in a few.” The middle finger was coincidentally appropriate.

  “Don’t bother. We just met.”

  “Oh? How’d it go?”

  “Carmine’s a lying little shit. And scared. I’ll let him stew for a bit before I talk to him again.”

  Spud added his ring finger. “And.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Gwendolyn called from Mr. Stockman’s office. You have a ten-thirty with Jack Avery. In his office.”

  “Why can’t everybody who wants a piece of me just come here? We can give out numbers, like at Zabar’s.”

  “You know they call him ‘Iron Man’? He does triathlons. He’s done the Around Manhattan Swim a few times. He’s not fast, but he’s like a hippo. He goes forever.”

  “Hippos don’t really swim,” I said.

  “Really?”

  “They kind of run underwater, I think. I read that somewhere. They’re also very aggressive. They kill more humans every year than lions or crocodiles.”

  There was always a chance that Avery wanted to see me to apologize and offer me whatever help he could. And a chance that I would spot a pig with a six-foot wingspan circling the building. “So, where do I find our Iron Man?”

  “Up on thirty-nine.”

  “Down the hall from Stockman?”

  “No. Head of compliance doesn’t rate the harbor view. He’s on the other side of the floor—all the way back in Legal. Surrounded by lawyers.”

  My vision of hell.

  —

  A HARRIED-LOOKING receptionist was on the phone as I came through the double doors.

  “Avery?” I asked softly.

  She waved vaguely back over her shoulder.

  I thanked her and moved on through a warren of cubicles surrounded by stacks of paper. Cardboard file boxes lined both sides of the narrow hallway, reducing the navigable space to the point that I was practically walking sideways. It was like walking in on a caucus of hoarders.

  And everyone was grim. They were doing serious work. Serious typing. Serious talking on the phone. Serious xeroxing. All were dedicated, cult-like, to the care and breeding of documents. I had another one of my brief flashes of claustrophobia.

  Jack Avery didn’t have a window, but he did have a small room to himself, buffered from the somber surroundings by an uninhabited secretary’s desk. He seemed to be the only lawyer on the floor without a gatekeeper. I poked my head around the door and gave a discreet knock. He rose, gave my hand a polite shake, and gestured me to take the only other chair in the tiny room.

  The wall behind him held a pastel-colored watercolor of a vaguely rural scene—bland, corporate art, designed to be ignored. The only hint of character in the room was a set of framed photos over the desk. They were all pictures of Jack Avery in competition. Jack Avery charging up the beach, water streaming from him, his massive gut looking in perfect proportion to his outsized shoulders, thighs, and arms. Perched on a bicycle, pedaling up a mountain highway. Red-faced and pouring sweat, as he crossed a finish line beneath a banner reading “Ironman World Championship, Hawaii.” My respect for him went up a notch—he wasn’t just a big brute, he was a big brute in incredible shape.

  “Thank you for coming up. I want to apologize for my behavior yesterday. Like a lot of people here at the firm, I have been under a lot of stress lately. That is not an excuse, merely an explanati
on.”

  He paused, reached under the desk, and handed over a Thomas Pink shopping bag. “I understand I inadvertently tore your shirt. Please accept these as replacements.”

  I didn’t know who had done his speechwriting—though it sounded a lot like Stockman—but his delivery was well rehearsed and almost flawless. His eyes betrayed him, though. I could see he still wanted to beat the crap out of me.

  He had the cleanest, barest desk in the department. There was a yellow legal pad and two sharpened pencils in front of him. That was it.

  He picked up a pencil. “I want to cooperate with your investigation. Please tell me what you need.”

  Somebody must have jerked very hard on his leash. I looked in the bag. There were a half-dozen white Egyptian cotton pinpoint button-down dress shirts.

  “Thank you. You didn’t have to do this.” I knew he did.

  “They make a nice shirt.”

  I needed to pick his brain, but if he stood up suddenly or got that look in his eyes again, I was going to be out the door and gone.

  “Everybody is telling me that Brian Sanders was a great guy and squeaky clean. So, what do you think has the SEC riled up? I’m coming up with nada.”

  “I was never a fan. I think traders in general have a big chip on their shoulders. He was no different. But I looked. If there was something there, I would have found it.”

  It sounded like he had his own chip, but I let it pass.

  “In your experience, what are they usually looking for?”

  “Number one. Insider trading. Doesn’t apply, though, ’cause the guy traded government bonds. There’s been maybe two cases of that in the last century. Next, fraud. Mishandling funds. That kind of thing. But there’s no sign of anything like that. His book was marked to market. There were no trade settlement problems. I’ve gone back over his trades twice now. Nothing.”

  “All of his trades?”

  He tried not to look startled. “Of course. What do you mean?”

  “Come on, Jack. The missing Arrowhead trades? That was you who tried to hide them, wasn’t it? You’ve got the security codes. Give me credit for some brains.”