Black Market

by James Patterson

  What did they do down on Wall Street? Carroll wondered. Were there genetic laboratories dedicated to the preservation of the pure-blooded, uncontaminated WASP strain? All of them turning out plump little Freddie Hotchkisses?

  Caitlin had told Carroll that Hotchkiss was becoming legendary on Wall Street. He was a very hot partner at his firm, a frequent emissary to both the West Coast and Europe -where he had extensive dealings with key European bankers as well as movie moguls.

  “Truly sorry about the time.” Hotchkiss looked anything but sorry. “I completely lost track. Roughing it out in the pied-à-terre on Park since the trouble on Friday. Kim and the kids are staying down in Boca Raton, her mom and dad's place. Ah, what exquisite timing you have, sir.”

  A Christ Cella waiter had spotted Hotchkiss arriving and had scurried to the table for the all-important drink order. Carroll stared at Hotchkiss. This was a type he wasn't comfortable with and didn't particularly like. Poor bastard had to rough it on Park Avenue. Carroll thought his heart would break.

  “I'd like a Kir. Anyone for seconds?” Hotchkiss asked.

  “I'll have another Sam Smith.” Carroll was trying to be good: no hard liquor, no neat shots of Irish. He was also trying not to say something impulsive, something that might lose him the advantage of surprise with Freddie Hotchkiss. It might be fun, he decided, to lean on this character.

  “No, thank you, nothing for me,” Caitlin said.

  “Freddie, this is Arch Carroll. Mr. Carroll is the head of the United States Antiterrorist Division. Out of the DIA.”

  Freddie Hotchkiss beamed enthusiastically. “Oh, yes, I've read volumes about you specialized police folks. The sooner someone can bring a little order and reason to this whole unfortunate affair, the better, I say. I heard yesterday, or maybe I read it somewhere, that there is a Libyan hit team right here in New York. Actually residing in Manhattan.”

  “I doubt it's the Libyans we're looking for,” Carroll remarked casually. His darker eyes held Hotchkiss's pale blue ones for an extra beat as he sipped his Sam Smith. He was going to attack.

  He leaned forward, softly nudging a finger into Freddie's pale blue shirt, seeing a faint expression of surprise float across the man's puffy face. It amazed Carroll that such a face was capable of expression.

  “I'd like to cut out the chitchat bullshit, okay? You're an hour late, and we're pressed for time. I have absolutely no personal interest in you, Freddie, you understand that? I don't think I like you, but that doesn't matter. I'm only interested in a man named Michel Chevron.”

  “He's not one for small talk, Freddie.” Caitlin threw a quick glance at Carroll, and he thought it was the most intimate thing he'd experienced in years.

  Freddie Hotchkiss, meanwhile, seemed to have stopped breathing. He looked down at Carroll's finger sticking in his chest. “I'm not sure… I don't think I understand. I mean, I've heard of Michel Chevron, of course.”

  “Of course you have,” Carroll said.

  “Tall, austere-looking French gentleman,” Caitlin intervened. “Plush Louis Quatorze offices on rue de Faubourg in Paris. Very affluent digs in the heart of Beverly Hills.”

  She flipped open a leather-bound notebook.

  “Let me see if I can jog your memory. Mm, oh, yes… on February nineteenth of last year, you visited Michel Chevron's Beverly Hills office. You stayed for approximately two hours. On March third, you visited the Los Angeles offices again. Also on July ninth, July eleventh, July twelfth. In October you visited Chevron's Paris office. You had dinner with Chevron that night at Lasserre. Remember? Can you place him yet?”

  Freddie Hotchkiss had slowly begun clasping and unclasping his plump, hairless hands. The watery eyes were even more watery.

  “We've known for over two years that Michel Chevron is the largest stolen securities and bond dealer in Europe and the Middle East. We also know he has a personal relationship with François Monserrat,” Caitlin continued. “We know a great deal about your own security-trading abilities as well. Right now we need to know exactly who else Chevron deals with, and we need a rough idea of the nature of these deals, a general feel for the Euro-Asian black market. That's why I thought we all should have lunch.” Caitlin Dillon smiled.

  Right then, Freddie Hotchkiss found the strength to frown derisively. He began to snap back, to rally strongly.

  “Really. You don't expect me to talk about private and absolutely legal business dealings here in this restaurant? You had better have all your subpoenas and your Justice Department lawyers ready, if you believe that will happen. I can assure you, it won't be done over lunch… Good afternoon, Caitlin, Mr., uh, Carroll.”

  Arch Carroll sat up very straight. He leaned across the dining table and flicked his finger three times very hard against Freddie Hotchkiss's starched white shirt collar.

  Thwack.

  Thwack.

  Thwack.

  “Just sit tight now, okay? Just put your nice soft ass back down on the chair, Freddie. Try to relax. Okay?” Hotchkiss was so astonished, he obeyed.

  In a soft voice, which to Carroll's ears sounded mildly seductive, Caitlin said, “February twenty-first-you deposited one hundred and twenty-six thousand dollars in Geneva, Switzerland. February twenty-sixth-you deposited another one hundred and fourteen thousand. April seventeenth-you deposited… is this a typo?… four hundred and sixty-two thousand? April twenty-fourth-thirty-one thousand. Small potatoes, that one…”

  “What Caitlin has been politely trying to point out to you, Freddie, is that you are a second-rate thief!” Carroll leaned back and smiled at Hotchkiss, who now sat as expressionless as a ventriloquist's dummy.

  Carroll raised his voice above the restaurant's usual buzz. “Poor Kim, the kiddies, wintering down in Boca Raton. They have no idea, I'll bet. Tennis pals at the club. The boys at the yacht club. They don't know, either… You ought to be in jail. You shouldn't be allowed to eat here, you're such a sad piece of shit.”

  Other diners in the expensive restaurant had stopped eating. In a state that resembled a communal hypnotic trance, they stared across the room.

  Carroll finally lowered his voice. He pointed toward a corner table where two men in dull gray suits were seated. “Those two guys? See them? They can't even afford to eat the nibbles here. See, they're sharing a three-dollar ginger ale. That's the FBI for you… Anyway, they're going to arrest you, right here and now… or, Fred, you're going to tell us a long and very convincing story about Michel Chevron. It's absolutely your move. And yes, it's going to happen right here in the restaurant.

  “Then, in that second case I mentioned, you get to go home absolutely scot-free to the pied-a-terre on Park Avenue. No problems, 'cause then you're my main man, see.”

  Arch Carroll dramatically crossed his two fingers. “We're tight, like that. Except, of course, you're the finger on the bottom.”

  Freddie Hotchkiss slumped pathetically at the table. He hesitated, then slowly began to tell yet another Wall Street horror story

  This one was about Monsieur Michel Chevron. It was a truly fascinating story of the most exclusive rat pack of thieves in the world. All of them very respected bankers, high-priced lawyers, successful stockbrokers. Every single one of them was in a position of absolute public trust.

  Was this Green Band? Arch Carroll couldn't help wondering.

  Was Green Band a powerful international cartel of the richest investment bankers and businessmen in the world? What would be their motivation?

  Carroll finally signaled to the two FBI guys patiently waiting at the corner table.

  “Read him his rights and arrest this guy now… Oh, and Freddie? I told a white lie about letting you go scot-free… Have your lawyer call my lawyer in the morning. Ciao.”

  Mike Caruso was outside the restaurant when Arch Carroll finally appeared. Carroll's lieutenant, a devotee of summer who never embraced the winter season, was wearing a garish beach shirt beneath his overcoat. He beckoned to Carroll. Both policemen huddled at t
he far edge of the sidewalk.

  “I just got a report on our friend Isabella Marqueza,” Caruso said. “Somebody murdered her in Bendel's. She was shot four times. At point-blank range,” he added in the offhand manner of someone immunized against murders. “It freaked out all the Christmas shoppers.”

  “Yeah, I'm sure it would.” Carroll was silent a second. He tried to imagine Isabella Marqueza dead. “Somebody thought she talked too much. Somebody was keeping close tabs on her.”

  Caruso nodded. “Somebody who knew all of her movements, Arch. Or yours.”

  A ragged wind blew down East Forty-sixth Street, whipping discarded newspapers around. Carroll plunged his hands inside the pockets of his coat and stared at the cold, grim city surrounding him. He liked this investigation less and less.

  He pointed to the doorway of Christ Cella. “Nice place to eat, Mickey. Next time you want to blow a couple of hundred on lunch.”

  Caruso nodded. He tucked in a flap of his flowered shirt. “I already had a Sabrett.”

  12

  The following morning, eighty-three-year-old Anton Birnbaum, appearing on a special edition of the PBS show “Wall Street Week,” explained why the destruction of Manhattan 's financial district did not exactly signal the end of the civilized world.

  “The major American market was indeed knocked out this past Friday. More markets exist out there, however-believe it or not-and they may just possibly become the beneficiaries of this disaster… These markets are the midwestern, the Pacific, and the Philadelphia exchanges. They handle local issues as well as certain board listings. If Joe Investor has to sell fifty shares of A T and T to meet the balloon payment on his mortgage, his local broker may well be able to make a deal for him outside New York. Of course, he may not find a buyer at a price even close to what he's asking.

  “Obviously,” Birnbaum went on, “ Chicago is where the significant action is this week. Between the midwest exchange and the two premier commodity exchanges, there are still plenty of opportunities for everyone to lose a lot of money.”

  Even as he gave this purposely calming and reassuring speech, Anton Birnbaum knew that the existing situation was more tragic than he dared admit. Like almost everyone intimately connected with the market, he fully expected a crash.

  In a way, somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind, he almost welcomed the purification rite, so very long overdue. As of Tuesday morning, the venerable financier had no idea how large a part he himself would play in Green Band.

  13

  Paris, France

  Paris… a powerful man named Michel Chevron… Green Band…

  The idea of the magnificent city filled Carroll with something akin to dread. Even as he sat inside a dark blue State Department limousine, riding down the rue Saint-Honoré, Carroll didn't want to look out at the streets. He didn't want to acknowledge that he was truly back in the splendid French capital.

  The street sounds he heard pressing against the limousine were like the rattling of old bones. For Carroll, this Paris was a city of sharply painful memories. This Paris was Nora and himself in another age and time. This Paris was a fading decal imprinted with the spectral shapes of two young, carefree honeymooners who wandered all the boulevards, holding hands, who stopped to kiss impulsively every so often, who couldn't keep from touching each other constantly even in the most casual of ways.

  Carroll stared at the two American flags that flapped regally on the bumpers of the luxury car. Make believe you're somewhere else, he told himself.

  Christ, though, the memories kept coming back like a forceful tide. Nora sipping café au lait on the crowded boulevard Saint-Germain. Nora smiling and laughing as they made all the tourist stops-the Eiffel Tower, Montparnasse, the banks of the Seine, the Latin quarter.

  Carroll felt a tightening around his throat. It was a sense of the unfairness that had ended Nora's life, and it crowded him uncomfortably now.

  Near the Sorbonne, a man with a reptilian face crouched and pretended to hurl a spoiled grapefruit at the smooth, cruising symbol of American wealth and power.

  Seated in the gray velvet rear salon of the car, Carroll flinched at the sight of the man. But when the prospect of the grapefruit assault had passed, he relaxed a little and tried to shake his head free of the fog of overseas jet lag. He opened his bulky Green Band file and began to look over his scribbled notes. He knew work would be a salvation from the memories of this town. If he dug into his material on Green Band, he could make himself a foxhole safe from the scenes that passed by.

  How could Green Band have isolated itself so well from the terrorist underground? How could there be no rumor, no concrete leads, anywhere out on the street? And what was the ultimate reason for the New York financial district bombing?

  Something else occurred to Carroll: What if he was still looking in all the wrong places?

  “Société Générale bank, monsieur. Vous êtes arrivé. You have arrived safely, comfortably, I hope… This is le Quartier de la Bourse.”

  Arch Carroll climbed out of the limousine and slowly walked inside Société Générale.

  The bank building itself, the cavernous lobby, the hand-operated elevators, were all carved stone and exquisitely gilded. Everything was regal and impressive, the kind of background against which American tourists would take pictures to later put in albums.

  The prestigious French financial institution reminded Carroll quite powerfully of another era. Compared with Wall Street, it was visually softer and more civilized to behold. It was as if money were not the major game being played here. The aim was something less vulgar, something even spiritual, perhaps. In actuality, le Quartier de la Bourse occupied the former site of a Dominican convent. No matter the history of the place, no matter the artistic appeal, it was the same religion you found on Wall Street. Gentility and manners, these were only illusions.

  Michel Chevron, Carroll thought, remembering why he was there. Chevron and the massive, secretive European black market.

  The question was whether Chevron really fit into the frustrating Green Band puzzle and whether there was a bridge, even a frail one, linking Chevron with François Monserrat.

  The bank executive's personal assistant was a thin, sickly-looking man of perhaps twenty-eight. He had white-blond hair, closely cropped, almost punk in style. He sat stiffly behind an antique desk, which in New York would have seemed inappropriate for anyone except a chief executive. He wore a double-breasted pin-striped suit, a funereal, mauve four-in-hand tie.

  Carroll tried to imagine applying for a loan from this chilly character, something for home repair, maybe, a room extension, or an underground sprinkler system. He could just see the bank assistant sniffling over the application papers with an expression of mild disgust. He knew this particular assistant would turn him down flat, possibly even laugh at him.

  “My name is Archer Carroll. I'm here from New York to see Monsieur Chevron. I spoke to someone yesterday on the telephone.”

  “Yes, to me.” The bank assistant addressed him as a country gentleman would address a stable hand on the subject of a gelding's health. “Director Chevron has provided fifteen minutes… at eleven forty-five.”

  Observing the bank assistant's manner and tone, Carroll had the impression that only a very few names could have been substituted for “Director Chevron” in the assistant's reply-names like de Gaulle or Napoleon. Maybe even the Lord God Almighty.

  “Director has an important lunch at twelve. You will please wait. The sofa for waiting is there, Monsieur Carroll.”

  Arch Carroll nodded his head slowly. Reluctantly he wandered over to a tight nest of art deco couches. He sat down and clenched his hands together. He was trying to fight back anger now, seething anger. On the telephone the bank assistant had set up a meeting firmly for eleven o'clock. He was right on time, and he'd traveled several thousand miles to be here.

  Michel Chevron was right behind those heavy oak doors, he kept thinking, probably laughing up his well-tailore
d sleeve at the ugly American outside in reception…

  He steadily drummed his fingers on his knee. His right loafer tapped against the elegant marble floor. At fifteen minutes to twelve, the bank assistant set down his slender silver fountain pen. He looked up from a thick sheaf of paperwork. He smacked his purplish lips before he spoke.

  “You may see Director Chevron now. Will you please follow me?”

  A moment or so later, Director Michel Chevron, a tall man with an equine face and shock of ink-black hair that stood up on his head like a fuzzy yarmulke, said, “Mr. Carroll, so good of you to come to Paris,” almost as if this transatlantic journey were something Carroll did every other day of the week.

  Carroll was ushered into an intimidating, old-world chief executive's office. Tall, glass-enclosed bookcases filled with antiquarian books crowded one paneled wall. Along the other, there were crimson-draped casement windows looking out onto a narrow gray stone terrace. The ceiling was at least twelve feet high, beautifully sculpted, ornamented with grinning bronze cherubs. A glass chandelier hung down like the world's heaviest key chain.

  Michel Chevron remained standing behind his massive desk. He was obviously impressed with himself, his position, and all the trappings of success that surrounded him. A regal Fragonard hung directly behind the bank executive.

  The Frenchman began to speak rapid, excellent English as soon as his assistant left the room. His tone remained cool and superior, and Carroll felt inferior all over again.

  “There is a slight problem, Monsieur Carroll. A regrettable circumstance, beyond anyone's control. I'm very sorry, but I have an important engagement at Taillevent. The restaurant, monsieur? The rest of my afternoon is equally bad… I can spare these few moments with you only.”

  Arch Carroll could suddenly feel a very hot place in his stomach. He knew the sensation well, and he tried to ignore it, but a familiar fuse was burning. When the spark reached close to his emotional arsenal, there was very little he could do to stop the explosion.