The Legacy

by Stephen W. Frey

  “Make me a market in the two-year.” With the words “make me a market,” Cole committed himself to a transaction. “A billion dollars’ worth,” he said calmly.

  Chris whistled through the phone. “A billion, huh?”

  “Yes,” Cole replied evenly. If interest rates continued to decline the way they had over the past few days, a January bonus might still be a possibility with this trade. If rates rose back up to last week’s levels, Gilchrist would lose millions on the trade and Cole wouldn’t have to worry about a bonus because he’d be looking for another job.

  “Do you know something the rest of the market doesn’t?” Chris’s curiosity was aroused.

  “Maybe.” Cole chuckled to himself. Nicki knew him so well. Bet the ranch, and why the hell not? In this city you could be shot to death minding your own business, doing your best to stay out of trouble. He was about to go looking for it.

  “Talk to me, Cole.” Chris was digging. “What’s going on?”

  Chris’s questions annoyed Cole. Salesmen were supposed to take orders and give information, not try to pry it out of their clients. He had no intention of telling Chris that this trade was part of a scorched-earth, the-hell-with-it-all strategy that had nothing to do with some insider tip. Let him wonder. “Are you going to make me a market or what?”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Chris heard Cole’s irritation. “Nine plus ten.”

  Cole checked his screen to make certain that Chris’s price was fair. It was close and he didn’t have time to bicker. “At ten I buy a billion dollars of the two-year.” This trade was a bet that the market interest rate of the two-year U.S. Government issue would decrease and the price of the note would rise.

  “Done at ten,” Chris confirmed.

  “Good.” Cole hung up and reached for a stack of blank yellow order tickets sitting atop the bulkhead behind his row of computer screens. For an instant he gazed at the papers. They were almost the same color as Bennett’s hair.

  “What the hell was that?” Lewis Gebauer had overheard Cole place the buy order with Tucker Travis.

  “None of your damn business, Lewis.” Cole picked up the top ticket from the stack, filled it out quickly and tossed it into the out box.

  “What’s your problem this morning?” Gebauer asked through mouthfuls of a Bavarian cream donut.

  Cole pushed his chair back and stood up. “Did you get that donut from Dino’s, the little shop on the corner?” Cole gestured at the bag on Gebauer’s desk. The deli’s name was on the bag.

  “Yeah,” Gebauer responded hesitantly. “Why?”

  “Somebody told me they closed that place down a half hour ago. One of the employees has hepatitis.” As he turned and walked away, Cole could hear Gebauer spitting out the donut.

  Cole threaded his way through the trading floor toward Barry Nelson’s corner office. Nelson was the senior managing director in charge of all bond trading at Gilchrist. Through the office’s glass wall, Cole saw that Nelson was deep in conversation with two other traders, but he knocked anyway. Nelson waved Cole off, but Cole yanked the door open.

  “This better be important,” Nelson snarled, glancing up from the desk over half-lens glasses.

  “It is.” Cole moved directly to Nelson’s desk. “I’m taking a week off.” Cole dropped a manila folder on Nelson’s desk. Inside was a summary of all of his investments. He had penciled in the price of the Tucker Travis trade as he walked to Nelson’s office. “Craig Leone will handle my portfolio while I’m gone.” Leone was one of the traders who sat on the other side of the bulkhead from Cole. “I’ve already spoken to him about it.”

  “Leave us,” Nelson barked at the man and woman seated in front of the desk, who were updating him on overnight losses in Gilchrist’s London office. They were gone in a heartbeat, only too happy to be off the hot seat. Nelson removed his glasses and dropped them on the manila folder. “What’s going on, Cole? You just took a week off.”

  “I have a family emergency.”

  “I don’t give a crap. Tell whoever it is not to die yet, or hold off on the funeral if they’re already in the morgue. The markets are going insane. A week after the Fed raises rates, suddenly they’re coming down again. It’s nuts out there.” Nelson gestured toward the trading floor. “We’re coming close to the end of the year, and the senior people are going ballistic. The firm’s had a great year so far, and the execs are worried sick that we’re going to give all our gains back now, just as we’re all about to get bonuses.” He pointed at Cole. “Listen, I want you on the desk every morning bright and early until December thirty-first.”

  “I can’t,” Cole snapped. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Cole, you’re on the bubble here after last year. You know that. I would think you’d want to be here to personally protect your trading positions, not trust them with Leone.”

  “I’ll be back in a week,” Cole said firmly.

  “Christ!” Nelson picked up an autographed baseball from his desktop and flung it against the wall. The ball smashed into a picture of the 1927 Yankees, shattering the glass. “You are one stubborn son of a bitch sometimes, Cole.”

  Cole reached the office door.

  “I need to talk to you about something else,” Nelson yelled.

  There was an edge to Nelson’s voice that made Cole turn around. “What is it?”

  Nelson’s expression was grim. “About a week ago a Gilchrist security guard was stabbed down in the lobby. It was after hours, around eight o’clock at night. He died yesterday evening without ever regaining consciousness. We’ve kept this very quiet.”

  “That’s terrible.” Cole blinked slowly, trying hard to convince Nelson this was the first he’d heard of the incident. “But why are you telling me?”

  “Your name was on the night register. You had signed in only a few minutes before the guard was found.”

  Cole had forgotten about that. He glanced out through the glass wall onto the floor and noticed Gebauer rifling through the message slips on his desk. “So?”

  “So the police want to talk to you. They want to know if you saw anything suspicious.”

  “I came back that night to pick up some personal papers. I didn’t see anything.”

  “One of the front doors in the lobby was smashed,” Nelson pressed. “The police think it might have been shot out.”

  “I didn’t see anything,” Cole repeated. “If I had, I would have already told someone.”

  “Tell them that,” Nelson urged.

  “I don’t have time.”

  “Make time.”

  Cole shook his head. He felt compassion for the guard, but the police would never solve the crime. If Bennett was correct, the investigation would pit the New York City Police Department against a covert operation buried so deep in the DIA no one was going to find it. “If the police want to arrest me, I guess I’ll have to talk to them. But you better convey that to them soon, because I’m leaving.” Cole turned and walked out of the office.

  “Cole! Wait a minute!”

  But he didn’t. He moved quickly across the floor, which was breaking into chaos as the morning session started to heat up again, pausing only long enough to check an up-to-the-second two-year government interest rate quote on one of the Bloomberg terminals at the corporate bond desk. The rate was down five basis points, which meant that the long position he had put on only a few minutes ago with Tucker Travis was already up almost a million dollars.

  Gebauer was still rummaging through papers on the desk as Cole made it back to his seat. “Can I help you?” Cole asked sarcastically, ripping the message slips out of Gebauer’s hand.

  “Why the hell are all these news people calling you?” Gebauer demanded.

  “I won the lottery yesterday, Lewis, didn’t you hear?” Cole stuffed the messages in his shirt pocket. “They want my story.”

  “
Seriously!” Gebauer yelled.

  “But I’m taking a week off to enjoy myself before I give any interviews. I’m going back to my room at the hotel, pack a few things and fly to Bermuda to enjoy some sand and sun.” Cole watched Gebauer taking mental notes. So the bastard really was involved somehow. “Or am I flying to Hawaii?” He put a finger to his forehead as if he were thinking hard, then picked up his overcoat from the chair, slipped it on and headed for the door. “Maybe it’s Rio,” he called over his shoulder.

  Gebauer cursed under his breath. Finally he headed for the door too. He needed to make a call quickly and couldn’t do it on a trading room phone. All conversations over these lines were recorded.

  At the reception desk, Anita smiled as she saw Cole coming toward her. “Hi, Cole.”

  He leaned over the desk, took her face gently in his hands and kissed her on the cheek. “See you in a week,” he whispered in her ear. “I may need your help. Okay?”

  She nodded, uncertain what that meant. “Okay.”

  “Thanks.” He turned abruptly, moved across the reception area into an elevator and was gone.

  For several moments she gazed at the silver metal doors that had closed behind Cole. Then Lewis Gebauer came puffing out of the trading floor. She watched the fat man move into one of the small conference rooms off the main reception room and slam the door. What a jerk he was. Not once since she had come to work at Gilchrist had he even so much as acknowledged her presence.

  Cole stepped out of the elevator and moved quickly through the lobby. It was a sunny day in Manhattan and the air was crisp and cool. As Cole walked through the doors, he pulled sunglasses from his inside suit coat pocket and wrapped the curved stems behind his ears.

  “Hey, stranger.”

  He’d recognize that gravelly voice anywhere, even after only one lunch. He glanced to the left. Tori Brown was leaning against the building wall, putting her cell phone back into a large black bag slung over her shoulder. Her brown hair was down today—there was no black velvet band—and she was wrapped in an ankle-length blue overcoat decorated with gold buttons.

  “Hi, Cole.”

  Tori suddenly seemed to emit an aura of affluence he hadn’t noticed at lunch yesterday, but maybe that was just because of what Cole had found out about her. “Hi,” he said, making certain his voice was devoid of emotion.

  She moved to where he stood and looked directly up into his eyes. “I know you’re angry with me, and you have every right to be. What I did at lunch was inexcusable. I put my career goals in front of what was the right thing to do.” She searched his face. “I want to make it up to you.”

  So Tori had a heart after all. Or perhaps she was trying to get closer to him for another reason. “What do you have in mind?”

  “I want to take you to see your grandparents.”

  He had anticipated this offer, but his pulse jumped anyway. “As a matter of fact, I was about to get on a plane.”

  “Where are you going?” she asked quickly.

  “You’re a nosy person, you know that?”

  “Sorry, it comes with the job.” She smiled nervously. “If you can spare a few minutes, I’ll take you to the Thomases’ apartment.”

  “They might not be home,” Cole pointed out.

  “I know your grandmother is. I just called to make certain. I hung up when she answered, so she doesn’t know we’re coming.”

  Cole pressed his arm against his wallet, which was stashed safely in his suit coat pocket. Inside was the hand-scrawled note he had picked up off the hotel room floor last night. Nothing was going to happen until he made the first move. Until then, he could dictate the pace of the action. After that, everything would spin out of control and it would simply be a matter of trying to hold on for dear life. He made a snap decision. “Okay, let’s go.”

  Tori turned and moved toward the curb, holding up her hand to hail a cab.

  “Let’s take the subway,” Cole called out.

  “I’m not going down into a hole,” she mumbled to herself.

  “What’s the matter?” Cole asked as a taxi came to a halt in front of them. “Rich girls don’t take subways?” He opened the door for her.

  Tori ducked into the cab. “Park Avenue and Eighty-seventh Street,” she directed.

  “And you tried to tell me you couldn’t afford lunch at an expensive restaurant.” Cole slid onto the seat next to her and slammed the door as the cabbie punched the accelerator. “I guess you didn’t hear me,” he said loudly as the engine revved.

  “I heard you,” she said coolly. “Something about a poor little rich girl and five-star restaurants.”

  “You added a few adjectives.”

  Tori laughed. “Yes, I guess I did.”

  “You know, you have a nice smile, but it’s as if you have only so many you can use a day. It’s as if someone rations you.”

  “You probably say that to all the women.” But Tori’s smile widened. She grabbed the strap above the door as the driver took a hard left onto Forty-second Street and headed east. “How did you find out about my family? I assume that’s what you were referring to. Do you have friends at the FBI or something?”

  Cole shook his head. “No, I used Bloomberg and the Internet. It’s tough to hide yourself these days if someone knows what they’re looking for and has the information systems available to do the research.”

  Tori gripped the strap even more tightly as the cabbie whipped left onto Madison Avenue, then began weaving in and out of traffic. “Isn’t that the truth?”

  As the taxi raced north Cole put his head back on the seat and stared up at the skyscrapers towering over them. “Let’s see if I can remember all this. Your mother’s name is Alicia Ferris Brown. She lives in Los Angeles, California. Her occupation is chief executive officer of Brown Communications, which owns outright, or controls a majority stake in, seven daily papers, four FM radio stations and an NBC television affiliate. All of the properties are in midsize markets where the competition isn’t so tough, and they are all very profitable.” Cole removed his sunglasses and slid them into his suit pocket. It wasn’t so bright in the cab and he hated people who wore sunglasses just for effect. “Brown Communications is a private company, so specific revenue and income figures are hard to find, but reliable sources estimate that your mother’s net worth exceeds half a billion dollars.” He hadn’t limited his research to Bloomberg and the Internet. “I hope you don’t mind, but I called the Gilchrist media analyst this morning. Those equity people have a way of finding figures.”

  “You aren’t telling me anything I don’t know.”

  Cole kept going. “Alicia Brown’s husband, Martin, died in 1985 of a massive stroke. Alicia has run the company since his death, turning it into one of the fastest-growing media concerns in this country. News articles report that even though she’s closing in on seventy years of age, she’s known as a dynamo in the industry. She has more energy than assistants half her age and expects them to keep up with her or else.” Cole paused. “There’s a footnote to the story. Alicia Brown has one child, a daughter, who is the only heir to the Brown fortune. The daughter’s name is Victoria and she’s thirty-seven.” Tori was older than Cole had thought. “She’s a producer at NBC News, and she goes by Tori.”

  Tori gave Cole a quick golf clap. “You should be a reporter,” she said. “And you’re right, I am a footnote.”

  “Do I detect a little bitterness?” he asked. “The Mom-never-had-time-for-me syndrome?”

  “I’ve been trying to get my mother to notice me since I was five years old, but she was always on the road for a business meeting. My father’s death was nothing but a very small bump in the road for her. The papers all play up the fact that she was able to take the reins after he died and turn the company into something really big, but she was always the driving force, even before he died. It was just that after his deat
h she didn’t have him in the way any longer.” A wry smile crossed Tori’s face. “I think in a way she was kind of glad when he passed away.” The smile faded.

  “At least you had parents.”

  “Yeah,” she said softly, as if she was a million miles away. “The strange thing is, I never cared that much about my father’s attention, even though he was always there for me. I wanted my mother to notice me. I wanted her to make time for me.”

  “It’s like that a lot,” Cole observed. “We don’t usually care as much about the people who are always there for us. We take them for granted, which is terrible. It’s the people who aren’t around very much that we crave the attention of.”

  Tori turned on the seat so she was facing him. “How would you know about that? You’ve probably been in that latter category most of your life, one of those people others were always trying to get the attention of.” It was her turn to tick off vital statistics. “If I’m remembering correctly, you were a high school all-American football player, received a full athletic scholarship to the University of Minnesota, were all-Big Ten your senior year and became a Wall Street trader after that—with Gilchrist and Company, no less, one of the most prestigious firms in New York.” She saw that he was impressed. “As you said, Cole, it’s tough to hide yourself these days from someone who knows what they’re looking for and has the information systems available to do the research.”

  “I did say that, didn’t I?”

  “Yes, but you’re ducking my question. How do you know about craving attention?”

  Cole reached for his sunglasses.

  “No.” Tori pressed her hand over his.

  “What?”

  “There will be no hiding your eyes behind dark lenses.” She took her hand away.

  “That’s stupid.”

  “No it isn’t,” she said firmly. “Tell me how you know.”

  He looked away. “My aunt and uncle raised me from the time I was a year old.” He hesitated. This was close to home, perhaps too close.