The University of Texas at Austin

Law in Popular Culture collection

Deathplay



 

Death Play: A stock strategy that buys stock on the belief that a key executive will die, the company will be dissolved, and shares will command a higher price at their private market value.
http://www.marketvolume.com/glossary/d0029.asp


Ch. 1     Ch. 2     Ch. 3     Ch. 4     Ch. 5     Ch. 6     Ch. 7     Ch. 8     Ch. 9     Ch. 10     Ch. 11     Ch. 12




Chapter 1


     Anthony Trask couldn't stand carelessness. A lot of people on Wall Street always wanted to bullshit you about the "big picture," but they had no patience for details. Tony had only been in the business a few years, and yet he knew better than to make that kind of mistake. Details were everything.
     Emerging from the subway at Citicorp Center, he walked a few blocks to Grantley headquarters and flashed his business card at the guards. He wasn't awfully proud of the card. Fenster & Co. was still a pretty good name among the thinning ranks of mid-size investment firms, but it'was Tony's title that bothered him: account executive. He deserved a lot better after all he had been through to have the Cornell name imprinted on his diploma. Okay, his college transcript didn't place him in the top third, but that wasn't important the way Tony saw things. Each of his courses had been a problem in strategic efficiency: you sized up what the professor wanted, and that's what you gave him in as little time as was required. Meanwhile, Tony made the time-saving pay off by working off-hours at a real estate brokerage to supplement his scholarship. And it wasn't as if his work for the realtor had been easy street. The cheap bastards hardly paid him enough to cover living expenses, let alone tuition and books.
     A few of Tony's rich classmates looked down on him for having to put himself through college, but he was able to live with that. In his own view, social standing was purely a matter of how you divided your waking hours. If you took a day job and went to night-school, you were a second-class citizen. But Tony had been smart enough to arrange his schedule the other way around, and he was now, and for all time, a Cornell man.
     Tony's goal when he entered college was to make his first 10 million before he was 30. He had never given much thought to what he would do with all the money, but that was not the point. The 10 million dollar club was pretty exclusive, even these days, and people would be impressed when he came in the front door waving his checkbook. Also, as Tony liked to tell classmates with a lot vaguer career ambitions, cash in the bank was a pretty good measure of accomplishment. When the job interview questionnaires started circulating in his senior year, Tony consistently identified the 10 million dollar target as his professional purpose, knowing full well that many of the other applicants for the same positions would type in lofty sentiments about saving mankind.
     Since he had graduated Tony's optimism about his future had dimmed considerably. Here he was pushing 27 and he wasn't even a lousy assistant vice-president. Not much time to go, and Tony continued to spend his dinner hours making cold calls to prospects scared off the market by crashes, recession and war. It wasn't like the 80's, when the Wall Street money-tree was raining dollars on everyone, and it didn't matter whether you were from Cornell or CUNY. Nowadays you really had to use your brains if you were going to bust out of the rat race. Tony had thought about his problem long and hard, and came up with a solution that he regarded as just as creative, in its way, as the junk bond had once been.
     Very few people had taken their seats in the Grantley auditorium when Tony was admitted for the annual shareholders' meeting. He chose an aisle seat at the first table behind the area roped off for the officers, directors and other V.I.P.s. By repositioning the water pitcher and drinking glasses he claimed as much work space for himself as possible. It was probably an unnecessary step, because the Grantley meetings were lightly attended. What was the point in coming, when old Grantley Buchanan kept such tight control and never told the shareholders any more than he thought was good for them? And Grantley, though close to 90, was going to live forever or so people thought.
     Tony Trask unzipped his blue briefcase, gold-stamped with the Fenster logo, which showed a capital F over a wide casement window (Wall Street wags claimed the symbol showed the window through which the founder had jumped during the 1929 Crash, but the true explanation was quite straightforward: the firm's name meant "window" in German). As Tony fanned out the contents of his briefcase on the table before him, he located and withdrew a sheet of graph paper that showed a gradually rising trend measured at several dates advancing from left to right below the chart. By the side of this page Tony placed a chapter of a technical treatise that he had copied on the office's xerox machine. He took a pen and notepad from his breast pocket and waited for the proceedings to begin.
     The meeting was scheduled for 10:00 a.m., and a few minutes before the hour, a file of Grantley dignitaries began to move into the reserved rows from a side door. Tony couldn't help thinking that it was like a funeral service, with the family mourners arriving at the last moment from a side chapel where they had congregated. In short order it seemed that all the Grantley officials were seated, but that was misleading, an inevitable part of the ritual to which Trask had become accustomed from past meetings. There was a pause of perhaps half a minute, and then the side door was swung open again to admit the CEO. There was applause for the famous man, fervent from the reserved section but less enthusiastic around the rest of the hall.
     Tony Trask turned his head to monitor the audience response. Buchanan richly deserved the lukewarm reception he was getting from shareholders. The old man was a survivor of an early generation of conglomerate-builders, who had gobbled up companies to diversify their operations rather than for fast-buck liquidation. The trouble was that a lot of the Grantley Enterprises acquisitions had turned sour and Buchanan was too stubborn to get rid of them, so they continued to drag down the consistently profitable results of the company's core pharmaceuticals business. What made matters worse, Buchanan was so self-centered that he often put his own personal political causes ahead of business concerns; the major
investment he had ordered made in a Polish shipyard had proved to be the disaster everyone but Buchanan had predicted. What else could you expect of a CEO that treated a public company so much like his own child that 15 years ago he had given it his own first name, Grantley?
     Tony bent forward to observe Grantley Buchanan closely. The press used to describe Buchanan as "bird-like", but now it would be generous to call him malnourished. The skin of his face was markedly livid and his eyes bulged and pulsated. All was going even better than Tony had expected; he scribbled a few words on his notepad.
     When the hour of 10:00 struck, Buchanan signaled by a nod to his fellow directors. They marched up to the stage and he followed them. Tony looked at his watch as Buchanan neared the bottom of the stairs. There were four steps with rather high risers. On the third step Buchanan staggered and paused briefly. His breathing was labored and a deep flush appeared on his cheeks, but he regathered his forces and went on, refusing offers of assistance from his directors.
     When Buchanan reached the speaker's microphone, Tony Trask looked at his watch again: 15 seconds. It was a new record. He consulted the graph. At the security analysts' meeting in July, the time had been 9.8 seconds, up only slightly from the two previous gatherings Tony had attended in the Grantley auditorium.
      Everything else checked out, all the symptoms were right. Tony looked at the treatise pages he had brought along. The chapter was titled "Manifestations of Heart Failure."

*          *          *
      When Tony Trask came into the Fenster offices before noon, the packing boxes were cluttering the fourth floor again. They had become a familiar sight this year and Tony, taking the straightest route from the elevator to the retail "bullpen", pretended to ignore them.
      He strode briskly to his desk in a corner cubicle separated from the neighboring salesman by a chest-high wooden panel stained to look like walnut. Only the retail manager, Tom Murphy, had an office with a real door. The management had told the brokers that the architect had favored the "open look," but Murphy had a different explanation. "The SEC tells me to supervise, and dammit, I'm gonna supervise," Tom would say when he made his daily parade around the registered reps' desks.
      Bill Gagliano poked his damfool face over the panel before Trask had a chance to empty his brief case.
      "Welcome to the shipping department, Two-tone Tony."
      Bill knew that Trask hated the nickname. Superficially, it was supposed to have been inspired by the white-collared blue dress shirts that Tony favored. But just about everybody, Tony included, caught the punning allusion to the overweight Italian boxer who was one of Joe Louis' bums of the month. Although an overpowering tennis player and allstate in high school basketball, Trask was slightly built and Gagliano, a benchwarmer for his third-rate college football team, never let him forget it.
      "Who's being shipped out today?" Tony asked.
      Gagliano walked around the panel and sat, uninvited, on the edge of Tony's desk. The wood creaked but held.
      "It's investment banking's turn, 40% of them will be 'leaving to pursue other interests.' That's what the asshole said over the P.A. system at 11:00 sharp."
      The "asshole" was a man who absolutely needed no introduction. He was George Hunnewell, the head of investment banking and a member of the executive committee.
      "Did Donna make the cut?"
      Gagliano grinned maliciously. "I suppose so, she's probably fucking half of the fourth floor."
      Tony didn't rise to the bait. "I don't think so, Bill. At the moment, I think I'm the only lucky guy."
      "You're an optimist, Two-tone Tony, anyone can see that. It's a wonderful trait to have in today's nervous market." Bill hefted his large bottom from the desk and disappeared around the panel.
      Tony was furious with himself for not finding a prompt insult to return, but, better late than never, he stared at Gagliano over the divider and said: "If you weren't so damn ugly, I'd tell you to go screw yourself." A moment later, when Bill left his work station to meet a customer, Tony devised a better revenge. He stepped quickly to Gagliano's desk and emptied a wire basket where the salesman kept a pile of message slips to preserve the callers' telephone numbers. Once he had fed the slips to an office shredder, Tony felt the flush of anger begin to recede.
     Now Tony was ready to call Donna Marzo's extension; it was busy so he pressed the call-back button. He'd met Donna shortly after he came to Fenster, and it didn't take him long to draw up her personal balance sheet. Her face he'd rate so-so, but she would never be picked for Miss Elmira. Wiry and black, her hair stuck out in all directions as if it carried a heavy charge of energy, not electricity exactly but the same power source that made her talk too fast and blink her violet-pencilled eyes a lot. But the legs were a definite plus and she wore the shortest skirts in the office so you couldn't miss them. Her calves were athletic, just the kind he liked. Maybe their firmness came from dancing or tennis, but Tony wouldn't know because he had never bothered to ask.
     The fact was, it wasn't her looks that made him seek Donna out in the lunchroom a few days after he first arrived as a sales assistant after passing Fenster's entrance exam. He'd heard she was one of the rising young stars in investment banking. If he and his customers were going to know what was going on in mergers and acquisitions or new financing, he'd need a friend like Donna. The problem was that Fenster had imposed a tough "Chinese wall" separation between its brokers and investment bankers, to prevent retail trades from being made on the basis of confidential information regarding in-house deals. Although the investment banking department was also on the fourth floor, its entrance was locked and the brokers' access cards were not programmed to pass them through. And if a broker was caught in investment banking, even on invitation, there would be all hell to pay.

*          *          *
     On their first date Tony drove Donna up to Westchester for dinner at a fancy French restaurant, complete with champagne. Tony didn't have a car of his own, because he firmly believed in spending money where it showed, on his Paul Stuart suits and designer ties; for the time being he didn't see any great benefit in prestige wheels. But tonight was an exception, so he took pains to borrow a friend's red Alfa Romeo sport sedan. "I like the way your car rides," Donna had said admiringly, "what kind of mileage do you get?" Making a quick mental calculation from the odometer, Tony had answered, "About 24 on the highway, but I'm probably going to get rid of it. I'm planning to work pretty hard at Fenster nights and weekends and won't have much use for a car in the city."
     In very little time, Donna Marzo had become Tony Trask's friend, and more than that. It hadn't worked out badly at all. She kept him very well informed about Fenster's deals and after hours she showed him that the surplus energy he had detected in her hair was the real thing.
     The phone rang; Donna was on the line.
     "Tony?" she asked with her usual caution, though his name had appeared on her telephone grid.
     "Yes. Are you still at Fenster?"
     "Yeah, I guess that puts me in the top 60. If you're curious, I can tell you all about the morning's excitement. Where should we meet?"
     Tony had a bright idea. "How about the dining room?"
     Until last week the dining room would have been just the wrong place to meet. It was only for the top brass and Tony and Donna didn't exactly qualify. Suddenly, though, it had become the perfect place to talk without being overheard. In an economy move, the chef and his kitchen staff had been fired and the dining room was empty; there was nothing left there worth stealing so even the paranoid Fenster management saw no reason to lock the door.
     Donna was waiting for Tony Trask when he came in. She was sitting, legs attractively crossed, in the chairman's place at the head of the abandoned dining room table. Tony kissed her and asked: "Tell me how the asshole let you know you're still on the team."
     "He didn't really. At first he just sputtered a lot on the P.A. - you know how he sounds like static even when he condescends to talk to you face to face - but he finally managed to inform us that the department is being cut some 40%."
     Tony wasn't surprised the first word of the firings came over the P.A. It' was really getting a workout for the last eighteen months. The risk arbitrage department had been the first to go, right after Mike Milken's sentencing, and then municipal bonds.
     "Well, somehow you found out you're still among the lucky survivors."
     "Nothing simpler," Donna said, stroking the arms of Mr. Fenster's chair. "The asshole told us to look at the lists of dear departed that were being posted in the restrooms."
     "He told you to check out the walls of the john?" Trask asked in disbelief.
     Donna laughed. "'At Fenster you're canned in the can.' But it's just as well, don't you think, that the men had a private place to learn about their dismissals. You know how the poor creatures tend to cry when they get emotional."
     "What's the betting on the rest of you?"
     "I'm not starting early on my Christmas shopping, that's for sure. There's a departmental meeting scheduled for Friday. But to turn to a more pleasant subject, how fast is Grantley Buchanan sinking?"
     Tony Trask's eyes brightened. "He's on his last legs, I mean that literally. He just about made it up to the stage. And his shortness of breath, sick complexion, it's all in the book."
     Donna humored him, settling back even more comfortably in her CEO's chair. "That's just great, doc, but I don't think your business thinking's up to your cardiology. You're still trying to play the auction game. The old man dies and somebody, friend or foe, calls in the auctioneer. He sells off the company's divisions one by one and - abracadabra - they bring total prices way above the stock's market value. The trouble is that this kind of easy money vanished with junk bonds and the raiders."
     Tony Trask looked disgusted. She was supposed to be so smart but kept on missing what he was driving at. "That's not the point, don't you see? I'm not looking for breakup values; what we've got here is a 'pare-down.' There's a lot of shit in the company that's holding down the market valuation of the pharmaceuticals operation. You sell off the shit, you give it away, who cares what it brings."
     Donna wasn't persuaded. "I guess it's got some commodity value as fertilizer." He didn't react, and she was afraid she had gone too far. "Still it's your show. Is there anything I can do to help?"
     "As a matter of fact, there is. Can you work up some market values on comparable pharmaceutical stocks?"
     "Consider it done," Donna said, claiming another kiss - somewhat more lingering - as her downpayment. "Come to think of it," she added, "I'm not sure there are any comparables. I don't think too many drug companies share Grantley's passion for Polish shipyards."
     Tony snapped at her. "That's just what I've been trying to tell you."

*          *          *
     Tony Trask was back at his desk for only a few minutes when his day's quota of luck ran out. The sales assistant he shared with Bill Gagliano was away from her desk, so he had to answer his phone when Johnnie Fowler called.
     "Is that you, Anthony?" Fowler piped in his ear. There was no escape. John Fowler III, whom Tom Murphy had assigned to him as a kind of hazing prank when Tony joined Fenster, owned a substantial position in Consolidated Tools, an inheritance from his father, a retired executive of the company. Trask held the receiver away from his ear, knowing only too well what Fowler's next words would be.
     "I've been trying to reach you for several days, Anthony. I think it's time we had lunch again to discuss my investments."
     The lunches, which Tony tried to space out as best he could, ran true to an invariable pattern. Apart from small holdings of mutual funds and money market holdings, Fowler's investments were limited to the Consolidated Tool shares. No matter how the company's fortunes fared, and regardless of the number of martinis Trask served up at lunch, there was no way Fowler was ever going to part with the Consolidated. That still didn't prevent him from wanting to be treated like an important customer of Fenster and taken to periodic lunches, some of which he was actually willing to pay for.
     Tony's part of the Fowler phone conversations had also become a formula. "Yes, you're absolutely right, Johnnie," he vaguely heard himself saying, "we should get together for lunch again, but this month is terribly busy for me, you wouldn't believe it. I'm marking my calendar to call you after the first. Goodbye."
     Tony hung up before Fowler could protest.
     Methodically he reached for the silver dollar money clip he used to hold his pink telephone messages and removed the bottom half-dozen slips that noted previous unanswered calls from Fowler. He firmly crumpled the papers into a ball, and the short toss into his wastebasket was an easy two-pointer.
     It was now time for more serious business. He took a few moments to put in good order the notes and materials he had brought back from the Grantley Enterprises meeting. He flicked back the plastic lid of his telephone card index and began with the letter A. He dialled and waited.
     "Ronald Abrams," he told the secretary who answered. His customer came on the line. "Ronnie, this is Tony Trask, how's it going, fella?"
     "Not wonderful, I guess that's why I'm lucky in love."
     "Say, that's not bad either. We can't all be rich, right? But come to think of it, why not? I've got a great idea to make you some money the new-fangled way - without earning it." Tony was mocking a pretentious brokerage T.V. ad he knew Abrams hated.
     There was no laughter at the other end. Instead, a little chill crept into Abrams' voice. "I hope this time it's something you and I both understand."
     Abrams didn't have to quote Tony chapter and verse. A few months ago he'd talked Ron into buying a commodities option. How did Tony know that Fenster was about to kiss goodbye to its commodities department, and that Tony would be left twisting in the wind, without the slightest idea how to close out his customer's exposure? Only a lot of fast-talking to Ron had saved Tony a complaint letter to the NASD.
     It was best not to rake up ancient history, so Tony said: "This time it's simplicity itself. What do you think of picking up some call options on Grantley Enterprises? The premiums are quite reasonable."
     Ron was unenthusiastic. "No wonder. That stock's going nowhere while that old crackpot's around."
     Tony hung in there. "You're right, and that's just my strategy. I don't think the old crackpot's going to be with us much longer. His heart's giving way, and fast. That's why the options would be a smart move. For two bucks you can get a December option to buy at 20; I guarantee you Buchanan won't live to see the new year. When he dies, the market will jump, probably close to 30; we'll exercise your options and you'll have a sweet profit. You see, Ron, it's a cheap way to buy into a 'death play.'"
     "How do you see Grantley as a $30 stock?'"
     Tony went through his "pare-down" analysis and promised to send Ron market ranges on comparable drug stocks.
     Abrams said he'd consider the advice and get back to him. Tony was encouraged by the first customer reaction; he guessed there was a 50/50 chance Ron would buy some options. His fingers continued to probe the card index.
     There's a death play in Grantley options. Not a bad phrase, Tony thought as he used it over and over again in solicitation calls he placed that afternoon and into the dinner hour. Even some of the "livies" he called cold seemed intrigued. Sometimes you just had to dramatize investments if you wanted to make a sale.
 

 
 

Chapter 2


          Tony wasn't at all pleased with the market comparables Donna laid before him on the executive dining room table two days later. He pushed the papers aside and asked irritably: "What am I supposed to do with this crap?"
     "You could at least keep your voice down. There are other people using the hallway."
     "Yeah, I know, you don't have to tell me where the johns are. Your pals from M&A are probably checking in there every half hour to see if they've been fired. If we didn't know better, it'd look like the investment bankers had an epidemic of diarrhea. And speaking of your pals, whatever genius put together these figures for you deserves to get fired."
     "I did the work myself. And now that you've heard that, you can be a little more polite. I'm not your employee."
     Tony rewarded her mild protest by getting even angrier. "Donna, I don't need to be reminded that we've got something going. You're a great girl, but stop taking my temperature, because I don't like the place you're aiming the thermometer. O.K.? Now can we get back to work?"
     "Bastard," Donna said, more to herself than to him. "What's the matter with the figures?"
     Tony accepted her capitulation with good grace. "I've told my customers that Grantley is a sure thing to hit 30 if we toss out the results of its non-pharmaceutical businesses. Your comparisons with other drug stocks wouldn't put Grantley above 25."
     Donna defended her work with a cliche: "Figures don't lie, Tony."
     "Of course not, and I wouldn't want them to; I just want them to use a little more imagination. You've picked six comparable companies, O.K.? First, we get rid of the two with the lowest market ranges. Then we price Grantley on the basis of projected drug earnings. The last two years have been lousy with Buchanan and his management off on Polish junkets half the time. Have I solved your problem?"
     "Yes, I understand. The price for Grantley is supposed to come out at 30."
     "Hey, that's good thinking," Tony complimented her, "I couldn't put it better myself. But I'm really a little ashamed of myself. We've been sitting here talking about nothing but my little sales project. You know how interested I am in your work. Do you have any new deals shaping up in your department?"
     As Donna ticked off some merger possibilities that were in early stages of discussion, Tony listened to her with genuine, undiluted interest. More and more, he was coming to believe that, though stocks could rise and fall, he really knew how to pick women.
     The next day Tony mailed out Donna's revised comparables to every customer who had not rejected his Grantley option recommendation out of hand. He gave them a few days for reflection, because he was no high-powered salesman, that was not his style. There was plenty to do while he waited; he circumnavigated his telephone card index a few times to make sure he missed nobody - not even the Florida vacationers and the cowards who hid behind their answering machines. And of course the cold calls promised endless opportunities to good salesmen like Tony whose egos were not dented when the prospect hung up in mid-sentence.
     Tony's campaign was helped by the new high-tech phones that had just been installed in the sales department. Fenster had ordered them before the recent business downturn and had put up too large a downpayment to cancel the purchase. The phones could do everything but your socks. What Tony liked best was the confidential voice messaging capability. Callers could leave their messages on the phone, as on a customary answering device, but access to the recordings could only be obtained by hitting a personalized four-digit password. In a rare exercise in sentiment, Tony had programmed 0909, a number standing for September 9, the birthday of his dimly remembered father, who had died when Tony was only seven.
     After a few weeks, Tony had to admit that the Grantley sales push was a flop. He'd sold options to only a dozen customers and a total of about 2,000 Grantley shares to a few imbeciles who couldn't understand what a call option was, even though he used words of one syllable and showered them with Fenster's option strategy brochures. Tony was persuaded that, on the ladder of evolution, there was a rung reserved somewhere between homo sapiens and the chimpanzee for the securities customer. At least Ron Abrams hadn't disappointed him entirely but the order he placed was much more modest than Tony had hoped.
     Right after the Grantley annual meeting, Tony had bet some of his own money on the death play, buying some call options in the personal brokerage account he maintained at Fenster. Donna matched his investment in her account, but the firm had imposed strict elements on the positions their employees could take in any stocks that were being recommended to customers. So Tony and Donna were never going to get rich on their options.
     It seemed a shame. Tony's Grantley analysis was rock-solid but he just couldn't get the financial support he needed to turn a decent profit. Donna, however, had a new idea.
     It came to her when they were in bed one Sunday morning in her Chelsea apartment. "Your problem is you haven't gone where the money is."
     "For Chrissake, Donna," he growled, "you're getting worse than me. What a time to think of business." He rolled away from her and punched his pillow.
     Donna laughed and pulled him back. "Don't knock it if you haven't tried it. Talking dollars in bed is better than talking dirty; it's much more exciting and will make you last longer."
     Tony sat up, his feet dangling from his side of the bed. "I forgot that you're an expert." Involuntarily he thought of Bill Gagliano's sneering innuendo, but, unable to restrain his curiosity, he asked "O.K. I'll bite. What's the place where the money is?"
     "The trading department, of course. Why don't you talk to Hank Jacobs about taking a major position in Grantley for the firm?" Hank Jacobs was the head trader, and a member of Fenster's capital committee, which had authority to approve all large investments by the firm.
     "You've got a great little idea there, Donna. If I'm lucky enough to have Hank say yes, Fenster becomes rich. What's in it for me?"
     "A big fat check at Christmas bonus time, if you don't broadcast your idea all over the office. I know for a fact that your good neighbor Gagliano got a hefty bonus last year for bringing the Hollis deal to investment banking. These payoffs aren't in the firm manual, but that's how our bosses work if you know how to keep your mouth shut."
     "Okay, I'll see whether Hank goes for it, but if we're really talking oversized money bags, how about your Uncle Damon?"
     Damon Marzo, Donna's childless uncle, doted on her. She reciprocated his passion with the fervent hope of becoming the sole heir of his reputedly vast though mysterious fortune. One of the ways she showed her worthiness to inherit was to cook him regular Sunday breakfasts of bacon and eggs, served up in such enormous quantities that his early demise from excessive cholesterol would not have been a medical surprise.
     So far as Tony Trask knew, Uncle Damon was his greatest rival for Donna's attention. Many a Sunday morning, Donna kicked him out of bed to give him time to clear out before her uncle arrived. Damon, his morals as chilly as his snow-white hair, did not look with approval on his favorite niece's unwedded bliss and treated her lover with minimal politeness whenever their paths crossed. From Tony's point of view, it wasn't all bad that the old man kept his distance, because he was not anxious for Damon to treat him as a member of the family. Too much togetherness might give Donna the wrong ideas. On the other hand, Damon had a lot of dollars, some of them perhaps underemployed, and Tony had once read an article in the Times implicating him in a big municipal contracting scandal. Maybe the guy had possibilities as a backer.
     If Uncle Damon would wager some of his riches on Grantley stock, Tony was ready to be as warm as the mid-day sun. Donna didn't give him much encouragement, however: "I think Uncle Damon's gonna sit this one out. I've talked to him about Grantley, and he's very impressed with your thinking, I know he is. But I think it's kind of a test case for him. If you pull it off and your predictions prove out, I wouldn't be surprised to see Uncle Damon throwing a lot of cash at your 
next deal. That's why it's important to get the trading department behind you before it's too late. It won't do you any good to tell Uncle Damon that Grantley Buchanan died on schedule and the stock went through the roof. He's going to ask how much money you made for your investors.
     "Now can I ask you to get out of my bed? I feel some scrambled eggs coming on."
     On Monday, after the market closed, Tony went to see Hank Jacobs. Hank made a big deal of his democratic attitudes which he projected by sitting at a desk in the middle of the trading floor that couldn't be distinguished in any way from the work spaces of the other traders.
     Tony had decided it would be best to take Hank by surprise. It wasn't hard to do, because Hank wasn't the kind of guy you made appointments with. If you tried, he would have laughed at the formality.
     Tony also knew that Hank didn't like to beat around the bush and could not pretend to give a damn how the Jets had done in yesterday's home game. Therefore, Tony plunged right in, and he was gratified to see Hank's eyes fixed on him in evident interest. Maybe Donna's suggestion wasn't so bad. The year was drawing to a close, and Tony had heard rumors that the market-making operations that Hank Jacobs supervised had really taken a nose dive. Maybe the head trader wouldn't mind an opportunity for a quick year-end profit to make him look a little better when management met to make its annual business review.
     Hank asked Tony a few questions but was noncommittal. "Thanks for coming to see me," he said. "I like your style."
     But what did he think about the idea? Tony knew him well enough not to press for an answer.

*           *           *
     In early November, the director of public relations of Grantley Enterprises received a phone call from the New York Stock Exchange: "Hello, this is Jill Manthey at the Exchange. I'm sure you've noticed that over the last several days there's been a sharp increase in Grantley Enterprises' trading volume."
     "Yes, we have."
     "Well, daily trades have reached levels where we have to make our usual inquiry." She paused as if she were reading him a printed statement. "Is management aware of any unannounced developments that could account for the rise in trading volume?"
     The PR director answered quickly: "There's absolutely nothing that we're aware of. Maybe people are just beginning to realize what a great bargain Grantley stock is."
     Ms. Manthey seemed satisfied. "That's fine. Could you please send us a confirming fax?"
     "Of course, I'll get it off to you right away."

*           *           *
          From a technical point of view, Tony Trask's market strategy couldn't have done better. The news for which he had been waiting came across the Dow Jones tape on December 2:
ATLANTA - DJ - Grantley Buchanan, founder and CEO of Grantley Enterprises, Inc. died this morning at age 90. Company spokesmen attributed his death to congestive heart failure. The Board will meet this Thursday to appoint a successor and vote to consider strategic moves.
     The moves, when announced Friday morning, were right on target. The new CEO, with Board backing, declared a return to basics, with a focus on pharmaceuticals and an orderly divestiture of other operations. A boost in the dividend was also forecast.
     Grantley stock shot through the roof, and what was better, exceeded Tony Trask's projection, reaching $35 by mid-December. He took quick profits for his customers. Donna and he also closed out the Grantley options in their own accounts. He was not going to ride with the long-term performance of the new Grantley management. That wasn't how you worked a death play.
     For a while longer Hank Jacobs kept Tony guessing whether Fenster had benefited from the quick Grantley run-up. The suspense was dissipated one afternoon when Hank turned up in the bullpen, flashing one of the broadest grins Tony had ever seen on his shrewd, creased face, and offered him a cigar.
     "New father?" Tony asked.
     "It would come as quite a blow to my girl friend. You know why I'm here. It's to congratulate you and Fenster on the Grantley deal. You've really made our December."
     Liar, Tony thought, I made your year.
     "What's that all about?" Bill Gagliano asked, coming around the partition as soon as Jacobs had moved off.
     "It's none of your damn business," Tony snapped, exasperated by Gagliano's typical nosiness.
     As a matter of fact, Tony was wrong. Grantley Enterprises was very much Gagliano's business. He had been an attentive listener to Tony's sales calls and finally put a lot of his own dollars into the gamble, both in his securities account at Fenster and in a few others he maintained at other brokerage firms, in violation of the firm's house rules.
     At lunch in the staff cafeteria Tony told Donna about the presentation of the cigar. "Don't let Jacobs get you down," she advised. "He's got the trader personality to the nth degree; he lives and breathes secrecy. Anyway, he's not the guy who hands out the bonuses. When Christmas rolls around, you'll hear from Barney Fenster."
     Donna was right. In late December Tony was summoned to the office of the CEO for the first time since he'd been at the firm. Barney Fenster emerged from behind his enormous kidney-shaped desk and shot his hand out of a Giorgio Armani cuff to give Tony an affable greeting. Some of the staff made the mistake of writing off the 50-year-old president as a dilettante. His amused, good-natured face and trim figure were constantly featured in the party pages of Women's Wear Daily, and his celebrated townhouse evenings numbered among the guests more PYTs (pretty young things) and Civil War historians than investment bankers and businessmen. Tony Trask suspected that Barney's pleasure-seeking social style was misleading. For years he had been engaged in a devastating power struggle with his cousin Robert. After the two young Fensters were simultaneously appointed executive vice presidents, rumor had it that one evening Barney was found on his knees feeding out a measuring tape to satisfy himself that his cousin's new office was not even an inch wider than his own. The dimensions came out even, but Robert did not survive long.
     Barney Fenster was not a hands-on manager but he wanted to make sure that everybody would remember their boss's name. When his people won promotions or advanced financially, he wanted them to owe their gratitude to him and not to some committee whose membership he had the power to shift at a moment's notice. It was for this reason that from the first year of his accession he had insisted on presenting personally every bonus check to be awarded to Fenster professionals.
     After motioning Tony to be seated, Fenster got right to the point. "Tony, how long have you been with the firm now?"
     "It will be four years in March."
     "That's wonderful, you've become a real member of the Fenster family, and I hope you feel that way. When I got my start in this business, four years probably wouldn't have seemed like such a long time. But in those days brokers knew what loyalty meant. Now people sell themselves to the highest bidder and loyalty be damned.
     "Nevertheless, we're too smart at Fenster to take any chances about losing our talented folks. That's why I have a little surprise for you today." He handed a sealed envelope to Tony.
     For a fleeting moment Tony wondered whether protocol required him to thank Fenster for the check sight unseen and to beat a quick retreat. But he wasn't going to get anywhere with these sharks by worrying about protocol. He unsealed the envelope and took out the check.
     Barney Fenster was right. It was a very little surprise. The check was for $2,500.
     He thanked Fenster with as little warmth as he could get away with and rose to leave. Barney added a few words of encouragement: "Keep up the good work, Tony, and you'll be one of our first new officers of the 90's. Another Grantley Enterprises would be just the ticket."
     Tony was fuming as he returned to his desk. Barney Fenster's simpering platitudes had made his skin crawl. If Tony was a "real member of the Fenster family," then it looked like Barney had made up his mind to treat him as a poor relative. And meantime Hank Jacobs, who was close to a cretin as far as Tony could see, was making a fortune as one of Barney's ass-kissing cousins. That was one way to get ahead, but it was not Tony's. These guys were like the chintzy Ithaca realtors he'd worked for during college, only in spades.
     "Can you believe the cheap bastard?" Tony whispered into his phone to Donna, his wariness of Gagliano's big ears prevailing over his anger.
     Donna dismissed his news. "Forget it, Tony, I've got something more important to tell you. You've made a big hit with Uncle Damon. He wants to see you for lunch tomorrow."
     Donna had given Tony the address of a northern Italian restaurant newly opened off Second Avenue. The maitre d' ushered him into a private room, where Damon Marzo was waiting for him. Donna's uncle hardly acknowledged Tony's arrival and suggested: "Let's order. I don't like to talk business while I'm eating."
     The menu was the Italian version of nouvelle cuisine, but with a vengeance. Tony selected a specialty ravioli, and found that it was made only of spinach. While he chewed unenthusiastically, he observed his host, who ate in silence. Marzo's face was as white as his curly hair; it seemed that the sun had never shone upon him and that no blood coursed beneath his skin. He never smiled.
     When they had finished their main courses Damon did not ask Tony whether he wanted a dessert but ordered two espressos. He drained his cup in a swallow and addressed Tony for only the second time: "You're pretty good, you know. You really pulled off that Grantley business."
     "Thank you, Mr. Marzo, the stock performed very well, I think, but unfortunately I did a lot better on the deal for other people than I did for myself."
     Damon Marzo gave him a stern look. "But that's the way it should be, young man. Make money for others, and in time they'll make money for you. That's always been my golden
rule." Before Tony had time to ponder his wisdom, he added: "How'd you like to handle five million bucks? Are you up to it?"
     Tony produced his most confident smile before he replied: "I'm accustomed to dealing with very large accounts. Technically, Fenster discourages fully discretionary arrangements, but many of my big clients give me pretty broad latitude."
     Damon nodded. "Five million bucks for investment, no questions asked. It's the results my associates and I are interested in, and results like Grantley Enterprises will be completely satisfactory. What a wonderful idea you had there, young man. Tremendous stock values waiting to be realized and only one life standing in the way, the life of a stubborn CEO."
     Silence fell again between the two men, but it was not like the silence in which they had eaten their meal. Then Marzo had simply felt no need for conversation or perhaps he had found over the years that words could interfere with good digestion. The new silence was more calculated, a probe of the depths of Tony's ambition, a tacit offer of partnership without rules.
     Tony returned Marzo's unblinking gaze and tested the meaning of his words. "Grantley was, of course, what the investment business calls a 'special situation.' Buchanan had a chronic illness, but the trick was to time the progression of its final phase."
     Damon seemed intent on drawing Tony out. "Tony, almost every stock I've ever bought was supposed to be a special situation, but there was always another stock they told me I couldn't afford to pass up. How special was Grantley Enterprises?"
     "Maybe not all that special if I use my brains, Mr. Marzo. There are a lot of CEOs out there whose greatest gift to their shareholders would be to disappear. Not all of them, of course, have terminal illnesses like Grantley Buchanan, but a lot of them take risks, sometimes almost incredible risks. I see it as my business to identify those risks, and, if I may use some more investment jargon, 'capitalize' on them."
     Marzo took the hint without breaking the expressionless lines of his face. "People die in many ways, Tony; it's a question of fate or sometimes merely of ingenuity. To me and my investors, though, these matters are details with which we don't get involved. If we invest five million bucks, we're looking for answers, not questions."
     Tony readily agreed. "That's what you're entitled to expect if you've picked the right man. What's your usual compensation rate?"
     "I couldn't tell you, because we have no interest in the usual. If I'm not very much mistaken, you could be something out of the ordinary. I think we'd be prepared to give you a 25% interest in net profits, but I'd have to run the deal by a few of my key partners. Do you want to think it over?"
     Tony deferred his answer. "Who are your partners, Mr. Marzo?"
     Damon was not at all offended by the directness of the inquiry: "I always expect that my business will be handled very quietly. We live in a very noisy country, Tony, and that makes me look abroad for partners and bank accommodations. Geneva's pretty good, but I don't like what they've been doing lately to weaken their secrecy laws. Anyway, Switzerland's not the only place in the world. We have many players and we spread our accounts around; it's better that way when nosy people come prying into our business. And they do keep looking, there's no way to prevent it. But there's one thing we can promise them, Tony: if they're interested in our investments, they better have a big travel budget and be ready to fly anywhere - even Liechstenstein or the Caymans. We try to keep one step ahead of them; there's always a smaller country with a shorter runway."
     "How do you place your stock market orders?" Tony asked, well aware that Marzo was playing it safe with generalities.
     Damon folded and refolded his napkin. "I think we're getting a little ahead of ourselves there, Tony. You haven't said yes and neither have my partners. You're a nice guy, but I only talk business with people I'm doing business with. That makes sense, doesn't it?"
     Tony nodded but did not stir from his chair. He had the feeling that Damon would tell him when the lunch was over.
     Marzo took out his wallet and spun a business card across the table. It showed an address in Long Island City.
     "Think my proposition over, Tony, and come to my office Thursday, after the market closes, of course. I wouldn't want you to lose business on my account." He rose to leave and Tony followed. When they parted at the restaurant door, Marzo had the last word. "I'd just as soon that Donna doesn't know our business. That makes sense too, doesn't it?"
 

 
 

Chapter 3


     "How did lunch go with Uncle Damon?" Donna asked Tony over dinner at her apartment. She had burned the steaks again, but this was not the moment for complaints.
     "He's got a little business to throw my way, I guess. I'm supposed to see him at his office Wednesday evening."
     Donna was impressed. "You must have made a much bigger hit with him than you're admitting. He's never invited me to his place. In fact, I don't think he's ever given me his office phone number."
     By the time she had expressed surprise at his progress with her uncle, Tony had already tuned her out, as he watched for the first excuse to call it a night. He had only a few days to get ready for the Thursday meeting that was shaping up as the first half-decent business prospect he had ever had. He wasn't going to blow it.
     On the way to Fenster's on Tuesday morning he stopped at the post office to pick up a passport application. To Tony a passport was like a car: there was no point in acquiring one without any pressing need. During college there had been no place in the budget for Europe and so far Barney Fenster hadn't shown any inclination to send Tony winging to high-level financial meetings in the world's capitals. Now the situation was different. Suppose Marzo wanted him to meet some of the foreign partners; he couldn't very well tell his new client that he had no documents to take him farther than Canada.
     There was another reason for the hurried application: something could go wrong somewhere along the line, and from the very beginning it made sense to prepare the way for a quick exit. It was not that he was expecting any calamity, because he had every confidence in his own ability to plan ahead. Still, he would not be acting alone and there was always the risk that somebody on whom he would have to rely would lose his nerve. Damon looked pretty steady but Tony could only hope that the unnamed partners had been picked for their cool heads as well as their bank balances.
     Tony had his passport photo taken at a little shop that handled the service as a sideline to video rentals, and dropped his completed application in a mailbox at the corner.
     A row of phone booths stood nearby and one of them was unoccupied. Tony stepped inside and dialled Sam Belden, an expert in international law at NYU whom he knew from college. When his friend came on the line Tony had a request to make.
     "My firm has asked me to take part in an educational panel on crossborder law enforcement. I wonder whether you can help me out with some background material."
     "Sure. What do you need?"
     "I'd like some data on the extent to which the major foreign countries cooperate with the U.S. in criminal law enforcement, by extraditing fugitives, for example."
     Belden wanted a little more precision. "You mean, in the event of violations of the U.S. securities laws?"
     "Yes, that's the main subject of the seminar, of course, but the panelists are interested in more serious crimes as well."
     "I've got an index my students have prepared that should give you the data you're looking for. As I understand it, you want details on the countries that will ship our criminals back."
     "Right," Tony said, "and also the countries that cooperate the least. We're not going to focus so much on what the foreign regulations and treaties may say, but on the real world, in other words, which are the governments that will actually help us hunt people down and which will send us polite memos but do nothing."
     "I've got you," Professor Belden said, "your answers will be in the mail by the end of the week."
     Tony's mind was now free to concentrate on the Wednesday meeting with Marzo. His morning was slow; the market was going nowhere and the clients that he called were not happy to hear from him. Many of them had pulled back into mutual funds and seemed likely to stay there despite his best persuasions. At 11:30 he checked out for a long lunch.
     There was a possibility that one of Damon's purposes on Thursday would be to grill him about alternatives for following up on Grantley Enterprises. Even during more routine sales pitches, Tony tried not to sound like the guest stock market experts on TV who talked vaguely about the existence of "excellent profit-making opportunities in selected issues." But Marzo was not talking about chicken-feed investments, but about betting $5 million on Tony Trask's ingenuity. He therefore had better have more than generalities to pitch at Damon, even if it was too early to know which way to jump.
     Tony had given some thought to procedure for researching the next death play. Fenster had a large financial library on the fifth floor, but Tony had not used it much in his four years at the firm. Instead, he generally relied on the canned recommendations that the Fenster security analysts turned out or, more often, bought from larger firms. Original study of possible investments had never been Tony Trask's strong suit - at least before he had hit upon the Grantley idea and hung on to it for dear life - or maybe it would have been more accurate to say "dear death". Even the Grantley project, though, hadn't entailed a lot of work on the business side, because it was the medical aspects that had made that situation so promising. Therefore, the fact remained that, given Tony's infrequent appearances in the Fenster library, it would be better not to break that pattern now and give the librarian (a terrible gossip anyway) something unusual to observe and comment about. Determined to err, if at all, on the side of caution, Tony decided to do his reading, beginning with today's extended lunch hours, at the Business Section of the New York Public Library.

*           *           *
     Damon Marzo was obviously not plowing back his profits into his headquarters. He had a few rooms on the top floor of a converted loft building not far from Northern Boulevard. The frosted glass office door didn't tell visitors a hell of a lot about the business; they had to make do with "Damon Marzo and Associates" in peeling letters that were the remains of dark-red decals.
     The door was locked, and Marzo himself admitted Tony when he pressed the buzzer. "You're prompt, Tony, I like that. Early and late both waste time, yours or mine. Why don't we go into my office?" If secrecy was his aim, it was a useless precaution, since none of the Marzo "associates" that the door lettering advertised was in sight. The suite consisted of a empty lobby that was really no more than a continuation of the hallway leading from the elevator; there were no chairs and no other sign that any visitors would ever have occasion to wait there. Along one side of the lobby were three closed doors, the first of which Marzo opened to lead Tony Trask into his office.
     "Have you made up your mind?" he asked without ceremony as soon as they were both seated. Marzo's desk was clear and had no drawers; he was not much for paper work. The walls were bare except for a recent photograph of Donna.
     "I feel comfortable with the assignment, Mr. Marzo, and of course I'm flattered by your personal show of confidence. But I'm not quite sure who makes the next move. You indicated that you might have to sell some of your partners on the arrangement."
     "That's right. They listen to me because I've got a pretty good record, but I don't run the whole show. Since we had our first meeting I've touched a couple of bases and everything so far looks O.K. There are still a few people to reach and it could take about a week. So far I see no reason to be discouraged. Just to be sure, though, could you give me a few ideas about what you could do with our money, say, along the lines of Grantley Enterprises? We have only a few investment guidelines. First, we like to make money and with very little risk. The second is that we like to take our profits quickly."
     "Quite understandable," Tony said, and proceeded to run through some of the promising death plays he had looked into at the public library over the past two days. "I haven't reached any hard and fast conclusions," he said as he wound up his presentation. "These are just initial ideas; I may come up with something completely different."
     "Don't spin your wheels too much." Marzo counseled him. "I think you've got some interesting thoughts there and I hope you will pursue them. My partners will be very impressed with your originality, and it may just swing the deal with the gentlemen who haven't yet been heard from."
     For the first time, Tony received a signal that the unanimity of the partners was not a foregone conclusion. He decided to make things easier for Marzo: "Well, then, you'll let me know when your group has made up their minds?"
     "Right, it'll take about a week as I've said, but what you've told me today will help immensely and in the right direction. In the meantime, let's think positively about working together. If you have a few more minutes, I think we can just catch Benny."
     Marzo left his office and. returned with a middle-aged man who had already put on his overcoat and fedora. The man shook hands but did not remove his hat when they were introduced. "This is Benny Vitale, my accountant. Benny, Tony Trask. Tony may be helping us with some stock investments." Vitale did not make any conversation, as if he was anxious to leave. Through the partially open door at the accountant's back, Tony caught sight of a woman in a fake fur, apparently waiting.
     After Vitale left, Tony shifted in his chair, giving Marzo a cue to dismiss him. "Just one thing more," Marzo said, craning towards the photograph on the wall to his right but without removing his eyes from his guest's face. "What do you think of my pretty niece Donna?"
     Tony looked at the picture and immediately felt foolish, as if he had felt the need to consult the photograph to remind himself what she looked like. Despite the momentary flare of embarrassment, his self-command kept his eyes locked on Donna's features as he replied: "She's very attractive, and that's a good likeness." Then a thought struck him. "Have you had it hanging there long?"
     Trapped, Marzo laughed in good-humored confession. "As a matter of fact I brought it from home this week."
     Tony let the old man off the hook by praising his niece again. "I think a lot of Donna. She's becoming a great investment banker."
     Damon nodded and pursed his lips.
     "That's good for her but maybe not so wonderful for our investment program. She'll be curious about what you're planning to do for us and somehow she'll find out - if you haven't told her already."
     "I'm not a fool."
     "Of course not, but my group can't afford to take chances. You really have two choices, you must see that: stop seeing Donna or marry her. The first is really no choice at all: I'd hate to see you make her unhappy and anyway you'll just pick up some other girl and she could be worse. So I advise you to get married as soon as possible after we finish our setup. It's not necessary for me to tell you why, is it? I don't wish you any troubles but if things get tight, your wife won't be able to testify against you."
     Marzo seemed to admire frankness, so Tony was blunt. "Mr. Marzo, let's put all our cards on the table. Is Donna part of our deal?
     Damon shrugged off the question. "We're just looking for good judgment on your part, not only in your investment choices but across the board."
     "Well, let me put it this way. If you were me and were being called on to make personal decisions, wouldn't it be reasonable to find out first that our investment arrangement isn't going to crater?"
     "That's perfectly reasonable and I think the schedule we've been talking about is just about right for all purposes. What do you say to taking Donna on a vacation next week, any place of your choice, and all expenses charged to me. While you're away, I should hear from the rest of my partners and can get the word to you. If the result is as I expect, and everything else I've said makes sense as well, you'll have a wonderful opportunity to talk to Donna without mergers on her mind."
     Tony got up to go. "I'm not making any commitments yet, and I understand that your group hasn't either. But Donna and I could both use a vacation. I don't think she's ever been to Atlantic City."
     Tony figured that he would have had to make a trip there anyway. One of the deals he had in mind, perhaps the leading candidate for the next death play, involved a piece of Atlantic City real estate. It was important for Tony to make his own judgment on its marketability, and his work for the Ithaca realtor during college had persuaded him that the only way to make this kind of decision was to eyeball the property.
     As Marzo opened his office door to escort him back into the lobby, Tony saw three young men conversing quietly near the entrance from the public corridor. Sizing them up quickly, he doubted that they were additional "associates" to whom Damon planned to introduce him. They had arrived just in time to take a good look at Tony just in case they might ever need to recognize him again. Damon Marzo, like Tony, was a long-term planner.
     Before he emerged from Damon's office, Tony whipped on his sunglasses and slanted his hat low across his brow.
     "I feel a sty coming on," he whispered to Marzo whom he kept well between him and the three observers.
     "Sty, that's a good one," Marzo said appreciatively.

*           *           *
     "Some of the women here actually wear skirts, have you noticed?" Tony Trask stood near the head of the line at the reception desk of their Atlantic City hotel, eyeing Donna's outfit with a distaste that had grown steadily since he had picked her up in his rental car at her apartment this morning. She was wearing a catsuit at least a size too small under the hooded mink anorak. Her electric hair seemed about to shoot sparks across the lobby.
     "Thanks," Donna said, pursing her lips. "Do you have any more complaints you'd like to share with the desk staff?"
     In fact, they were lucky to attract the attention of any of the clerks, who were much more interested in answering incessant telephone calls than attending to their incoming guests. At last Tony succeeded in flagging down an assistant manager, who, after a confirming glance at his reservation index, slid two registration cards across the counter.
     "Rooms 307 and 309," the assistant manager told them, "beautiful views of the marina."
     "Two rooms?" Donna queried Tony.
     "Adjoining," Tony assured her.
     "That's a thrill. You don't mind if I keep the door locked on my side, I hope. We haven't been properly introduced."
     "I thought your uncle Damon would prefer it this way, and he's paying the tab." Tony was glad when the bellman came along.
     The idea to take two rooms was, of course, Tony's. Probably one of his reasons was personal. Donna was O.K. as far as he was concerned and her uncle was even better, but Damon wasn't going to push him into an entanglement he wasn't ready for, at least not before he confirmed the availability of the five million bucks.
     But there was more in it than that. He expected a call from Damon, and if the deal came through, he expected to make other contacts to get the ball rolling. It wasn't wise for Donna to learn a lot of names and addresses that were of no use to her. She was damn inquisitive anyway; that was one of the drawbacks of screwing an investment banker. It would be doubly hard to keep her out of his business because he had pried so much confidential deal information from her at Fenster. Well, if the worst that happened was that she discontinued her tips out of annoyance at his secretiveness, he would live with that. To avoid the attention of the SEC he had only made trades of very modest size on the basis of her tips.
     Now he had bigger fish to fry.
     She'd already given him one scare last night at her apartment, and he had learned his lesson. He had rented a videocassette. After the movie Donna seemed to have fallen asleep on the couch. Tony turned on a reading lamp across the room to its lowest intensity and located the dispatch case he had brought from the office. After spinning the combination locks into place, he withdrew his investment file. He read the most recent security analysts' reports he had gathered earlier in the week.
     In a few minutes Tony was startled to hear Donna's voice coming out of the semi-darkness behind his chair: "What's so great about Rose Hotels?"
     Tony closed the file and snapped the dispatch case shut. "It's nothing, really. Forget it." But Donna didn't forget.

*           *           *
     A few days later Damon Marzo reached Tony at his hotel room.
     "You're approved, congratulations. Five million dollars are at your disposal."
     Tony picked up the thread of their conversation at the restaurant. "How do I place stock market orders?"
     "You call Geneva. Our present contact for your account is Monsieur Philippe." He gave Tony his telephone number. "That's subject to change, of course, but only if the new number comes from me or my bookkeeper, Benny Vitale. You remember him, of course; you talked to him just before you met his three young nephews."
     Damon had a sense of humor; Tony hadn't noticed that before.
     "What if I can't reach Philippe? It's necessary to move quickly to keep ahead of market changes."
     "You can always contact Benny Vitale. He'll know what to do." Damon supplied Benny's home telephone number and added a warning. "But don't call me, Tony; I don't like a lot of detail. When I need a report, I'll call you. Oh, one last thing, Tony, I need a report right now. Is the first deal going to be Rose?"
     "It looks that way."
     "Good; I was hoping that's the one you would pick to start us off. Of course, it's your call, as long as you get results."
     "That's what you're paying me for, Mr. Marzo."
     "Then give my love to Donna," Marzo said, hanging up. The deal was complete.

*           *           *
     That night Tony said to Donna while helping her to remove her nightgown:
     "How'd you like to be doing this even more regularly and with the Church's blessing?"
     He had first turned off all the lights in her bedroom so that he wouldn't be distracted by the unbearable red to which she had had her hair transformed in the hotel beauty parlor.
     "Is that a proposal of marriage?" Donna asked.
     "I think it is, if I'm in my right mind."
     Without a moment's hesitation, she responded: "Then, subject to the same condition, I accept."
     Later she heard him muttering in his sleep as he often did. She placed her ear close to his pillow and heard him say: "Marry Donna by February. Right?"
     How romantic, she thought. It must be something in Atlantic City's air.

*           *           *
     The first Tuesday evening after her return from Atlantic City, Donna Marzo resumed her weekly sessions with her psychiatrist, Dr. Alex Cardon. He always waited for her to begin.
     "Dr. Cardon, I'm getting married."
     She had told him previously about her plans to go to Atlantic City with Tony, but the psychiatrist had learned not to make any assumptions, however obvious. "Congratulations," he responded, waiting for more particulars.
     "Tony proposed in Atlantic City. He wants us to set a date in early February."
     "An impetuous young man, that's very flattering." Dr. Cardon was not quite 40 and a little flirtatious; he persuaded himself that it aided the process of "transference."
     "Do you have any reservations about your decision?"
     "None at all, and it's surprising because I always seem to have second thoughts about everything. But I do have a question."
     Dr. Cardon was silent, waiting for her to continue.
     "Do I have to tell him that I'm seeing you?"
     The doctor tried not to smile at her choice of words; he saw amorous allusions almost everywhere. "What is your feeling about it?"
     Donna actually had a strong view that she wanted him to confirm. "I'd rather not tell him. I don't know how he feels about psychiatry; we've never talked about it. I wouldn't want him to feel threatened."
     "You think he might feel insecure," Dr. Cardon said, slightly rephrasing her thought.
     "Yes, that's it exactly."
     Dr. Cardon gave her his benediction. "If you'd rather not tell him for the moment, then there's no reason you should." Donna was greatly relieved.

*           *           *
     Tony and Donna did not celebrate the first February nuptials in the extended "family" of Fenster & Co.
     Bill Gagliano, a little tipsy and feeling a headache coming on from the full bottle of cheap champagne he had drained at his sister's wedding banquet, braced himself against the table with both fists before leading off the final round of toasts:
     "Sally has played a lotta dirty tricks on me since she was a brat. I could never leave my wallet around the house without having it emptied. The folks always blamed the cleaning woman but I knew it was Sal. One nice thing, though, about having a thief in the family: she always left me all my credit cards.
     "And do you think I could ever get in any quality time with the girl friend of the month in the living room or on the front porch? Forget it. Sally was always there with questions about her stupid homework. Homework, can you believe it? I don't think she ever had to turn it in anyway. She's always been so gorgeous all she had to do was smile and she'd skip a couple of grades. It helped when her teachers were male.
     "She's still gorgeous, don't you think, sitting over there, all in white. White! that's a joke, isn't it Sal? In fact, she looks so pretty I can almost forgive her for the worst trick she's ever come up with. Here I am, a poor struggling stockbroker, working my ass off - pardon my French - to make a dishonest living.
     "And what does Sal decide to do about it? She goes and marries Mark Braun, an investigator from the SEC."
     Tony Trask and Donna Marzo, sitting near the foot of the table, didn't even pretend to be amused. Gagliano was such a bore.
 

 
 

Chapter 4


     Damon Marzo frequently dabbed at his eyes when he gave his favorite niece away as Tony's bride, but at the small wedding reception that followed the ceremony, Damon was all business. After exchanging a few perfunctory words with his sister-in-law and Mrs. Trask, the young couple's only surviving parents, Damon cornered Tony and led him to a darkened lounge outside the party room. On his way Tony waved vaguely to one of his guests who smiled at him from a distance. It was Johnnie Fowler, whom he had just had to ask to the wedding as a peacemaking gesture; one of Tony's first instructions to his sales assistant after returning from Atlantic City was to reschedule his long-pending lunch meeting with Fowler. Johnnie had been flattered by the wedding invitation and was, as Tony figured, too polite to discuss Consolidated Tools with a bridegroom.
     In the lounge Damon put his arm around Tony's shoulder to acknowledge him as a new relative and asked: "How's your deal shaping up?"
     Tony offered Marzo one of the expensive cigars he smoked only on public occasions; at home he favored Tiparillos. "I'm just about ready to move. There's a new report I want to check out this weekend."
     "You shouldn't forget you're a married man now," Damon advised him without much conviction in his voice.
     "Don't I know it," Tony replied. Donna and he had agreed to postpone their honeymoon after he told her he was working on something important with Uncle Damon. Anyway, they had just come back from Atlantic City; she'd done enough shopping and fancy eating to hold her for a while.
     "Anything I can do to help, you just let me know." Damon offered broadly, but Tony knew the old man was only talking about money; everything else, as he had made clear from the beginning, was going to be Tony's problem.
     "Well, there is something I was going to ask you about. I need some more expense money, say about $20,000 for now."
     "You've got it, no questions asked; I'll send cash over to your apartment on Monday. And when you need more money, Tony, don't be bashful. When I invest 5 million dollars in somebody I don't cut corners on deal costs."
     On the next afternoon, Sunday, Tony spent a while helping Donna straighten up her flat, where he had moved in a few days before the wedding. He left around 3 o'clock, telling her he had some business to do and would be back in time to take her out to dinner.
     Donna probably knew where he was going, and he didn't much care. He headed for his bachelor apartment on Bleecker Street, which he decided to hang onto, at least for a while. The knowledge that he still had his own residence and telephone line gave him some comfort as he made his transition into a marriage he had not given any serious consideration before Damon had made his pointed recommendation in Long Island City. There were also operational reasons to keep his old place, shabby as it was compared with Donna's. The Bleecker Street apartment would be a convenient death-play headquarters where he could keep his research materials, receive Damon's money, and talk freely, without worrying about having Donna on his neck.
     Today Tony had come to his apartment for a final review of the latest analyst's report on Rose Properties. The new write-up was consistent with all the others he had pored over for weeks. The basic business of Rose Properties, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, was the operation of a highly profitable international chain of luxury hotels and resorts. For years, the Street regarded it as a perennial blue chip, a "cash cow."
     But that was before the accession five years ago of its present CEO, Martin Farrell. The trouble with Farrell, otherwise well regarded as a manager and investor, was his compulsive gambling habit. It didn't matter so much when his fascination with cardplaying and roulette remained a personal quirk, impelling him to take charter flights to Las Vegas almost as often as his more strait-laced colleagues toured their country-club golf courses. After he took command at Rose, however, Farrell started mixing business with pleasure.
     The company's financial miseries began when Farrell pushed through the acquisition of a manufacturer of slot 
machines. That controversial move was followed in more recent years by Rose's construction and purchase of gambling casinos in both Las Vegas and Atlantic City. The earnings of the new operations were spotty, but that was not the main reason for the slide in the company's stock price. The fact was that many influential analysts and money managers were avoiding Rose Properties' securities like the plague, fearing that Farrell's gambling acquisitions had brought with them serious risks of mob infiltration. In fact, the new report that Tony Trask studied at his apartment revealed that fear of Rose Property's underworld connections had spread beyond Wall Street. The insurance company that had issued key-man insurance on the life of Martin Farrell had recently declined Rose Properties' application for an increase in coverage, citing concerns about possible criminal associates. The insurer was starting to worry about Farrell's life expectancy.
     Tony was extremely pleased with the final paragraph of the new report, which concluded that "Rose Properties can be recommended as affording a short or mid-term profit opportunity if but only if its Board has the courage to seek new top management favorable to jettisoning all the gambling subsidiaries and properties." In other words, for investors to make money on Rose Properties, Farrell had to go, and the sooner the better.
     Tony picked up the telephone and placed two calls in quick succession. The first was a call to his Swiss contact, "Monsieur Philippe", who had told him previously he could be reached around the clock. Tony requested Philippe to begin the syndicate's accumulation of Rose Properties shares. The second phone call was to Damon Marzo, confirming that the Rose Properties purchases were underway. Damon was supportive: "I'm glad to hear it, Tony, I was beginning to worry that you were getting cold feet on this one. It's a very sound idea. Remember, if you need more petty cash, let me know. Expect my messenger with the first $20,000 at 6 p.m. tomorrow."
     "Can you trust the guy?" Tony asked.
     "Don't worry, Tony, it'll be my bookkeeper, Benny Vitale. He knows as much about my business as I do, and a hell of a lot more than the IRS."
     When Damon hung up, Tony Trask turned to reading of another sort, a magazine he had picked up during the week at a kiosk on Lexington Avenue. It was called Crack Shot and was, according to the masthead, dedicated to "men of action and defenders of our rights to bear arms under the Second Amendment."
     Tony skipped the monthly round-up of terrorist activities and a description of high-tech weapons likely to be used in World War Three. What interested him was a short listing of personal ads, tucked between the announcement of a forthcoming "encyclopedia of retaliation" and an offer of memorabilia of President Kennedy's assassination. Only one of the ads seemed to guarantee the kind of professionalism Tony needed.
Vietnam veteran, expert marksman and tracker. Dangerous assignments performed quickly and discreetly. All jobs considered. Privacy guaranteed. Write to Box T-259, Miami, Florida.
     Tony put a sheet of foolscap into his typewriter and composed a guarded response:
Dear Sir,

Regarding your ad in this month's Crack Shot, I may have an assignment in your line, if you would be available for service in the New York area within the next two to three weeks. Price and terms are negotiable.

Please write to me at my residence,  _____ Bleecker Street, or if you prefer, you may call me here (212 _____ ) next Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday night at any time between 8 and 10 P.M.
     Tony was tempted to add a post-script instructing the marksman to destroy his letter, but he quickly decided that would only make him look foolish. If this was the man for the job he already knew a hell of a lot more about security than Tony did.
     The three time-brackets specified in the letter fell within the "night-work" schedule he had established since his return to New York without giving Donna much of an explanation. She didn't seem to begrudge his evenings alone; maybe her acquiescence wasn't exactly flattering but it was certainly convenient.
     At 8 o'clock sharp on Wednesday evening the phone rang at the Bleecker Street apartment. A soft male voice with a trace of a Southern accent spoke:
     "Is this Mr. Anthony Trask?"
     "Yes. Who am I speaking to?"
     "You wrote to my Miami box number."
     Tony had not signed his name to the letter, but the man had been able to trace it from the address and phone number. He probably had access to a reverse directory, hardly a surprise since he had described himself as a "tracker" as well as a marksman. Well, so what; he'd have to find out sooner or later.
     "Yes, I'm Trask. What's your name?"
     The caller was polite but firm. "That's not the way I work, but you can call me Fred."
     "That's fine, Fred."
     "Your inquiry is very interesting, and you come with mighty fine credentials. Fenster is a most impressive firm."
     Before he could check himself, Tony blurted out angrily: "This has nothing to do with Fenster."
     "I hear you," Fred said, "but I'm pretty particular about my clients, and your connections are impressive, as I've said. Who's the lucky man?"
     "Lucky man?"
     "Yes, the man you want me to take an interest in. I have to know that up front. You see, I have many clients and before I go any further, I want to be sure that your assignment won't involve me in any conflicts."
     Tony was startled for a moment as he recalled the rumors about mob ties with Rose Properties. What if he'd 
stumbled by chance on one of Farrell's acquaintances? If so, his own life wouldn't be worth a nickel once he mentioned the executive's name. So Tony's answer was a little roundabout:
     "He's the head of a company in this area listed on the New York Stock Exchange."
     There was a suggestion of humor in the mellow voice when it responded:
     "That's not the type of fella that gives me a lot of business. I don't think I'll have any trouble handling him for you. But you'll want to know my terms. My standard fee is $10,000 cash, small bills: $5,000 down when we meet and the balance after performance. Sometimes I go higher if the assignment's complicated. And of course, I want all expenses paid, travel and things like that. If there are any unusual costs I try to clear them in advance."
     Tony was well within budget, so he said: "No problem. When can we meet to talk about details?"
     "At the present time, my business is a little slow," Fred said candidly. "It must be the recession; it affects everybody. I think I could be up there by next Tuesday night; is that soon enough?"
     "Perfect. Do you want to meet here?"
     Fred reverted to his formula: "That's not the way I do things. I suggest the Jubilee movie theatre near Times Square at 8 p.m. Do you know it?"
     Tony was a little surprised by Fred's choice. "By name; it's one of the porno houses, isn't it?"
     "One of my favorites," Fred said, "but what's more important, it's got a balcony. Very quiet there and very dark. I'll be in the back row near the left wall. Please bring the downpayment, and nothing bigger than $50 bills."
     Tony was beginning to be intrigued by the man's operating procedures, almost for their own sake. "How do you know you can trust me for the balance?"
     Fred seemed to think the question was perfectly in order. "Well, Fenster checks out fine, I've already told you that. And I take my own precautions, and you wouldn't want to hire me if I didn't. For starters, this conversation is being recorded at this end. It will be a pleasure to work with you, Mr. Trask."
     The conversation was over. Fred sounded like Tony's kind of guy.

*           *           *
     Sunrise was due Friday morning at 6:39, and it was still quite dark. The cold penetrated Tony's Reeboks so that he had to keep rubbing his feet together under the park bench to work out the numbness.
     His eyes were fixed on the entrance of the apartment house about halfway down the block on Fifth Avenue. For three days in a row Farrell had been like clockwork, emerging from the doorway under the awning at 6 o'clock sharp and back just as the morning broke. Tony figured he must be like a bat, hating to have the light in his eyes. Except that Martin Farrell didn't fly: he was a runner.
     Tony had dressed differently every morning, fearing to test the acuteness of Farrell's peripheral vision. This morning he slumped on the bench to seem shorter, and even the blue and white Reeboks were an innovation, one that he regretted in the morning's wind chill.
     But Farrell was always the same, down to the last detail of his dress and schedule. At 6:00 precisely Farrell came out of the building. In the zone of light under the canopy Tony could see that, as usual, he was wearing a heavy brown sweater, jogging pants with luminous orange stripes, and a knit cap with a huge tassel that had probably been handed out at his college reunion.
     Tony watched Farrell as he loped across the avenue in defiance of the horns of oncoming traffic and entered Central Park. Tony rose from the bench, and, after testing his frozen soles, followed at a safe distance. After about ten minutes, Tony felt winded from lack of regular exercise and the cold winter air. He turned back long before Farrell had reached the midpoint of his run.
     Before giving up the pursuit Tony was satisfied that Farrell was taking his usual route along the fringes of the park, a course so regular that Tony had been able to chart it precisely after the first two morning runs he had observed. Tony was proud of the chart; it had been sketched with every bit as much professional care as he had employed in the plotting the last stages of Grantley Buchanan's illness.
     Tony planned to present the jogging map to Fred when they met at the Jubilee Theatre. The marksman should be pleased that Tony was making his work so easy. Really, he ought to give a discount from the $10,000 price.
     Cost, of course, was not a consideration; Damon was obviously not expecting Tony to work on a shoestring. It was the timing that was everything. If the Rose Properties death play was going to work, Farrell had to be taken out quickly and there was no room for any unnecessary delays or surprises. If Fred wasn't used to having his "clients" help him, well, there was always a first time.
     Anyway, Tony was never happy leaving things to others. That was the perfect way to screw things up royally, because most people were so stupid.

*           *           *
     In the balcony of the Jubilee Theatre Tony squinted towards the left wall, adjusting slowly to the darkness. Fred was sitting in the back row as he had prearranged, a briefcase at his feet. Nobody else was in the balcony.
     Tony shoved Fred's briefcase aside to make room for a large paper-wrapped parcel of his own. "Office work piling up on you, or have you just brought along the recorder? I'm not sure you'll hear me on playback between all the grunts and groans."
     Fred barely acknowledged Tony's presence, keeping his eyes glued on the screen. Without hiding his purpose Tony inspected as best he could his closely-cropped gray hair, long jaw, aviator's glasses. Fred's first words could hardly be called a greeting. "Mighty fine programs here; this one's unbelievable, it's gonna be a classic." After a moment he asked: "What have you brought me?"
     Tony was brisk as if he were laying out an agenda for a business meeting. "There's the money, of course; also the man's name, address, photos, and a map showing where he takes morning runs in Central Park."
     Fred continued to look straight ahead. "Now, young fella, you wouldn't by any chance want to be teaching me my trade, would you?"
     Tony ignored the sarcasm. "I'd prefer you to shoot him in the Park if you can do that safely. Make it look like an ambush, an execution."
     Fred smiled. "My my, what strong language. You sure are doing a pretty good job of fouling up my cassette, Mr. Trask. I just might have to throw it away. Do you have any date in mind?"
     "I'm working with March 10, but it could change. Where can I reach you?"
     Fred handed him a card; Tony was putting together quite a collection. "I've written you two numbers, Miami and a place in New York. I would probably come up a day or two ahead. Anyway you can always leave a message with my friends."
     "Friends?" Tony had banked on working with a loner.
     "Yeah," Fred said casually, "I sometimes need help." Pretending to miss the point of Tony's question, he added: "Don't worry; the price I've quoted is all-inclusive."
     "That's not what bothers me. How do I know I can trust your friends?"
     Fred nodded to register understanding. "You can trust them because in my line of work you have to choose your friends very carefully. Take Janey down in Miami, for example. Do you know how I met her?"
     Tony admitted that he didn't.
     "She answered one of my ads in Crack Shot and now she's one of my satisfied customers. I guess you'd have to say she's real satisfied."
     There was still time for Tony to pull back the parcel and get the hell out of there. Fred wasn't giving him much to go on, a few words in a porno theatre and an indistinct view of his face. But Tony was impressed with his nonchalance and his steady, confident voice. Anyway, you couldn't exactly ask a killer for references.
     As Tony saw the situation, he really didn't have any good alternatives. He suspected that Damon Marzo could recommend other professionals without difficulty, but that was clearly not what Damon had in mind or his friends in Geneva either. This was supposed to be Tony's show, and if he screwed it up, Marzo and his associates had too much else going to want the trail to lead in their direction.
     But couldn't I just dispose of Farrell myself without all these complications? Tony had asked himself this question many times since he had cleared the Rose Properties death play with Marzo and the trading ring. He didn't doubt his own nerve for a minute, and at the Bleecker Street apartment he still kept the gun he had originally bought for use in a marksman's club. A couple of years ago he'd given up target practice but he would never try any serious shooting from a distance. They only did that in Westerns.
     Tony could do the killing, he didn't question that for a minute. But this was not a death play for an amateur assassin. The beauty of Tony's idea was that the murder was to be perfectly performed, just like the kind of underworld violence the experts feared when they downgraded Rose Properties stock because of its gambling operations.
     "Good luck, Fred," Tony said as he left the theatre, leaving his parcel behind.

*          *          * 
     Donna's session with Dr. Cardon was close to finished before she told him what was troubling her.
     "Do we have time today for something else?"
     Alex Cardon carefully consulted his watch before responding: "Of course."
     "It's my marriage. I don't think it's done a whole lot to bring Tony and me closer together."
     "You shouldn't expect too much too soon. You've only been married a couple of weeks. What concerns you?"
     "It isn't the sex," Donna hastened to assure him, "that's O.K. and it always has been. But he's just not willing to share everything with me."
     "In what ways?"
     "Well, in the first place he's dragging his feet on getting rid of his apartment in the Village. He blames the real estate slump in New York, but I think that's only an excuse. He stays there some evenings; I know that for a fact because I've reached him there on the phone. And lately, though I'm a pretty early riser, I wake up to find him already gone. I don't think there's another woman, and frankly I couldn't care less if there was. I'm not the possessive type and I hope he's not either. I had my fingers crossed during some of our marriage vows."
     "What do you think he's doing in the apartment?"
     "Working. And that's what bothers me. I don't think he wants me to know what he's working on, and that kind of pisses me off because he wasn't like that when we were going together. You remember how I helped him with his Grantley Enterprises sales pitch. And I've always told him a lot about the deals in my department, maybe more than I should have."
     "Why do you suppose Tony would want to keep his business to himself?"
     "I have no idea, but that's exactly what he's been doing ever since we went to Atlantic City." Donna told Dr. Cardon about the incident on the eve of their trip when Tony refused to answer her question about the Rose Properties reports he was reading. "Maybe his problem's got something to do with Rose Properties. It's become almost an obsession."
     "How do you mean?" Alex Cardon was becoming more interested; usually he regarded Donna as one of his duller patients.
     "Well, you know, Tony talks in his sleep. I've mentioned that to you before but never to Tony; he thinks he's got everything under control, and wouldn't like to know his dreams have a life of their own. At least three time since we've come back from Atlantic City, I've heard him mumbling in his sleep about Rose Properties."
     Dr. Cardon rarely took notes during his treatments, because he had a remarkable memory; he exercised it now.
     "What's Tony's mother's name? I think you told me once that it's Rosalind or something like that."
     Donna was impressed because she was sure she had not mentioned Tony's mother for quite a while. Mrs. Trask was fat and unsightly and would be a social embarrassment Donna firmly intended to find ways to minimize. "It is Rosalind; you've got it exactly."
     Dr. Cardon gave her one of his infuriating smiles of self-congratulation. "I thought so as I was listening to you. I have a little idea, no more than a hunch at this point but it's worth our considering further. Perhaps Tony's obsession with Rose Properties, as you call it, is a screen for his feelings about his mother." Before Donna could respond, Cardon added. "But our time's up for today. We can explore this subject further next week."
     When Donna had left his office, the doctor made good use of the ten-minute interval before the arrival of his next patient. He called his broker and placed a substantial order for the purchase of shares of Rose Properties. If the investment turned out to be as profitable for him as Grantley Enterprises had been, Dr. Cardon would be more than satisfied.

 

 
 

Chapter 5


     On March 8 Damon Marzo called Tony at Bleecker Street. "How's it going, Tony?" he asked pointedly, making it clear that he wasn't inquiring to be polite.
     "We're all set for later this week, but the temperature could be a factor." Tony had never given Damon any particulars about the operation and in fact, on more than one occasion, had been pretty obviously warned not to. It was therefore Damon's own fault if their conversations were beginning to sound like cautious military briefings.
     "Don't give me weather reports," Damon admonished him, "that's your problem, not ours. I'm told that the cash is all invested and ready to start producing lots of little baby dollars. As I've already told you, my friends are not used to sitting on their positions very long. It makes them very nervous and you can believe me, when they get nervous, they're awfully hard to live with. Do you get my point?"
     "I think so," Tony said grudgingly, his temper rising. He was taking all the risks and his partners were going to cream off 75% of the profit. On top of that, they weren't acting like "silent" partners; here was Damon needling him before he even had a chance to get the Rose Properties death play underway. Still there was no point alienating the first major-league investor he had ever had. Why not try a couple of cliches instead?
     "Don't worry, Mr. Marzo, it's a done deal. We're on target."
     "That's good, because the next time I call you it had better be to give you our congratulations." Damon hung up without a goodbye.
     Tony waited for the dial tone and called Fred's New York number; they had spoken the previous evening after the sharpshooter had arrived in the city. This time the news was bad.
     "He didn't go jogging this morning," Fred reported.
     "What! I can't believe it. In all the time I watched the apartment, he never let a day go by." There was silence at the other end while Tony wondered what had gone wrong. Fred must have let Farrell slip by unnoticed, or maybe he had even mixed up the address. The trouble with conspiracy was that it was no stronger than its weakest link.
     "I'm not even sure he's in town," Fred said at last, maddeningly calm.
     "Why do you say that?"
     "I called his office. His secretary was acting kind of cute - I don't think she's supposed to let on too much about his whereabouts, but I got the picture. Anyway, just to make sure, I spent the day outside their headquarters. I didn't see Farrell go in or out. And I almost wore out my eyes watching for him. It wasn't an easy job, because all the fellas who are trying to get ahead at Rose Properties part their hair in the middle exactly like the boss and have the same kind of little beards."
     Tony had studied very carefully the photos he had furnished Fred from Rose Properties' shareholder reports. "You can't miss Farrell. He has a deep crease running diagonally from his right brow to the hairline."
     "Right you are, young fella. I may just be offering you a job one of these days. But until the guy with the crease turns up, what do you want me to do, stick around New York? After 48 hours a per diem clicks in."
     "Never mind about that; just stay put and keep in touch. There's no problem with a short delay." Brave words; Tony hoped Damon and his partners agreed.
     The next morning Donna couldn't get any civil conversation from Tony over breakfast. He had stopped talking altogether after opening his Wall Street Journal and turning to an inner page. She didn't bother trying to read upside down or to query him, because her own copy was waiting for her at Fenster. It was probably some news break on Rose Properties.
     She was right. The front-page business news summary had led Tony to a disturbing article on page 8:
Rose Properties announced yesterday that it is exploring the possibility of acquiring a major interest in a casino in Monte Carlo. Consummation of the transaction, according to a company spokesman, will require successful resolution of a number of remaining business issues as well as approval by Monaco government authorities. Martin Farrell, Rose's chairman, flew to Nice yesterday and will assume personal responsibility for the negotiations, which are expected to be of long duration.
     The phone rang, and Donna got to the portable before Tony stirred. "Hello, Uncle Damon. Are we on for Sunday breakfast? That's great." She passed the phone to Tony. "He wants to talk to you."
     It was the first time that Marzo had ever called him at Donna's place and he knew that it wouldn't be pleasant. "I suppose you've read the news," was Damon's curt beginning.
     "Oh yes," Tony said. "It makes my work a little more difficult, but I have some contingency plans." Tony wished he knew what they were.
     Damon took him at his word. "I'm glad to hear it, because if there's anything my friends and I hate, it's surprises. Call me when you've got news."
     Tony waited for Donna to leave for work before calling Fred. A woman answered but put Fred on quickly.
     "Is that Janey I was talking to?" Tony asked.
     Fred's private life, however, turned out to be more complicated than Tony had hoped. "No, that's Millie. You don't have to worry about her either; I went to high school with her in Florida. I guess you're calling about Farrell's trip."
     Tony was impressed. He had not expected that his marksman would read the financial press.
     "Yes, that's right. Have you got your passport with you?"
     Fred chuckled. "What would I want that for? Florida's back in the Union now."
     Tony didn't pretend to find him amusing. "Why don't we just save the humor until the job's done. You've read the news report; God knows when he'll get back from Monaco. You'll just have to 'meet' him there."
     "That's out of the question," Fred said as if he were dealing with laws of nature. "I only do domestic jobs." "That's not what your ad said," Tony retorted.
     "I guess you're right about that, young fella. I sure hope you're not gonna turn me in to the Better Business Bureau." "If it's the money you're worrying about, that's no problem."
     "I'm sure of that, but I never expected to get rich in this business. If I wanted to be a millionaire, I'd be a stockbroker like you. But it isn't the money, I just happen to believe that overseas assignments are too risky at any price you could pay me; I'm not familiar with the territory and in my work I don't favor on-the-job training. Also I've got another problem if you're working on a tight schedule."
     "What's that?" Tony asked. It was best to hear all the negatives at once so he could plan his way out of the maze that was forming around him.
     "I'm afraid of flying," Fred explained. 
     "You're what?"
     "Afraid of flying," Fred repeated. "I haven't done it since I got back from Vietnam."
     "How'd you get up to New York from Florida?" "By bus."
     "Does Millie have a car?"
     "Nope," Fred said, "and her husband doesn't either."
     The group of Fred's pals was continuing to grow but that was the least of Tony's problems. What he needed was some time to think. "Don't go away. I'll get back to you."
     After he had shoved aside the breakfast dishes, Tony placed a single sheet of foolscap on the table and drew a triangle. The apex he marked X to represent the purpose for which he had hired Fred; this goal remained constant. Close to the other two angles he scrawled the letters T and P for time and place. These dimensions of the plan had also become inflexible because of Damon's pressure and Fred's limited operating range. Reluctantly Tony pencilled in the code: "Time is March 14 (at the latest) and place is New York." The revised program, whatever it was going to be, would have to meet these exacting restrictions. Keeping the triangle before him to remind him of the challenge, Tony considered and rejected a number of alternatives as if he were addressing an unyielding problem in geometry. Finally satisfied, he called Fred to discuss the new arrangements. The marksman was complimentary.
     "Truly awesome, and you came up with that one right out of the chute. There'll be an extra charge, of course, say another $5,000, and I'll need some help from Millie, but as I said, you can trust her just the same as me."
     That's encouraging, Tony thought. He wondered what kinds of phobias she might have.
     Still Fred had one reservation.
     "But it may not be so easy. You can't find one at every shopping mall."
     Jesus, do I have to do all the thinking for both of us? Tony took an instant to calm down before replying: "That isn't where you ought to be looking." And he explained.

*          *          *
     The first phase of the new operation was favored by a moonless night. While Fred tinkered with the gate to the parking lot, Millie mounted guard on the sidewalk around the corner. She stood away from the weak cone of light at the bus stop, but close enough to the edge of the shelter for any motorists passing along the quiet suburban street to take her for a late commuter rather than a hooker. She usually felt more than able to take care of herself, with or without Mace, but this was not the night for unwanted attentions.
     Fred and she had taken a bus to the neighborhood but exited a few blocks away, escaping the driver's attention by pushing open the back door while he was carrying on an animated conversation with a young blonde who occupied a seat reserved for the disabled. The destination Fred had selected, a clapboard house set far back from the street in a slender tract of artificial turf, was dark when they arrived, except for the peeling front porch, but the illumination there was nothing to worry about; it was only for advertising. Even so, Millie kept turning her head back to the house to be sure that there was no sign of occupants.
     At the gate around the corner Fred had a clear view of the back windows but they were all curtained and eyeless. He threw a stone over the fence; it rang crisply on the pavement but there was no watchdog in the yard to bark in protest. Quickly Fred got busy on the padlock of the gate. Five and dime, he thought contemptuously. The retracting metal saw he had carried in a tennis bag wasn't even needed; a few twists of his wrench and the lock sprung free. Fred slipped inside the yard and looked over the fleet. At least two of the stretch limos were in parking spaces that had a straight shot for the gate. Fred tried the driver's door of one of them and found that it was unlocked. It was wonderful how casual folks could be when they had insurance.
     But after he slid behind behind the wheel, Fred momentarily froze, reacting out of automatic caution. A light had gone on behind the curtains of an upstairs window. That's when you had to play the odds. It was possible someone had spotted him and that he would soon hear police sirens or a panic button sounding in his ears. On the other hand, Fred had been very careful and people didn't usually stay up all night to spy on their own back yards; the sound of the test stone he had tossed could have alerted a guard dog but wouldn't have carried to the top of the house. It was most likely just somebody going to the bathroom. Fred waited a while and, sure enough, the light went out. He went right back to work and it didn't take long for his experienced hands to expose and cross the ignition wires.
     He roared out of the gate, cut the corner dangerously and threw the front passenger door open for Millie. When they passed the front stoop of the house, the sign swung a little in the rising wind: Gilligan's Funeral Home.
     "Good work," said Millie, "but do you think that, when we get out of the neighborhood, we could stop to remove the little purple flags?"

*          *          *
     In his office on Capitol Square in Washington, Don Jebb, the long-time assistant director of the SEC's Division of Enforcement rubbed the elephantine folds around his weary eyes and admitted his perplexity to the two men who sat across his desk. One, a nervous young investigative attorney in the division, was Mark Braun, Bill Gagliano's new brother-in-law. At his side sat Arthur Drenik, a mild-mannered man in his early thirties who looked more like a banker than what he actually was, an experienced FBI agent specializing in racketeer infiltration of businesses. Art had contributed to many government victories in criminal prosecutions under the RICO Act.
     "I don't get it," Jebb said. "All of a sudden there's a lot of action in the stock of Rose Properties. All the bells were set off at the New York Stock Exchange; it must have sounded like New Year's Eve. The question is why. Even before the Exchange called, the company was notified by its stock watch service that something strange was going on. The Exchange tells me the company's PR guy went way beyond 'no comment.' He swore up and down there's nothing new at Rose, and pointed out that the last two quarters were disappointing with no immediate relief in sight. It can't be takeover interest either, because Farrell and the board have so many shares tied up that there wouldn't be any point in making a run for the company or trying to put it in play. What do you make of it, Mark?"
     The unexpected question jarred Braun back to full attention. He had been vaguely inspecting the framed photograph of a Federal penitentiary that hung behind Jebb's desk as a reminder to the targets of the assistant director's investigations that it would be best for them to negotiate with a sense of realism.
     Mark Braun had joined the division out of law school only the year before and still liked to test the waters before venturing an opinion. "Has anybody talked to Farrell?," he asked his boss.
     Jebb gave him an avuncular smile. "We may do that, but for the time being he's off in Monte Carlo to buy another casino. Just what the shareholders need." The assistant director was very conservative; in his heart of hearts he regarded the entire equities market as a huge gambling device.
     Art Drenik overlooked Mark Braun's tepid response and took direct aim at the assistant director's factual assumption.
     "Don, I'll let you into a little secret about mob takeovers. The Mafia doesn't need 51% of a company's stock to acquire control. You know that the Bureau's been keeping an eye on this show ever since Farrell bought the slot machine operation. Some of the purchase price had to go into the mob's pockets and it's my guess they're starting to plow it back into Rose stock. They want to get just enough ownership to remind Farrell not to ignore them."
     "I don't suppose you expect the Mafia's going to ask for seats on the board," Jebb replied with good humor. He admired Drenik's record but thought that the agent was inclined to see racketeering schemes wherever he looked. Nevertheless, Jebb himself had a tendency to pessimism about human behavior. Who knows, maybe Art was right. "Anything unusual in the buys, Mark?"
     In his short time with the Commission, Braun, who was something of a computer whiz, had developed a remarkable talent for piecing together patterns of market activity by trading rings.
     "There seems to be a lot of overseas interest. In fact, I see a lot of the same brokers we've come across in Operation Haven." Braun cited the code name for a long-standing SEC campaign, so far unsuccessful, to unravel an extensive insider trading conspiracy that was tied to shadowy market players in Switzerland and Liechtenstein.
     "That's odd," Jebb said, turning back to Art Drenik, "do you suppose U.S. racketeers are hooking up with international insider trading?"
     "Why not?" Art replied blandly, "the mob's always looking for something new. They're the only real innovators left in America."

*          *          *
     At the end of the summer, Martin Farrell had opened a third casino-hotel in Atlantic City. The two older properties fronted on the Boardwalk, but the much heralded Rose of the Morning, whose flowing architectural lines, according to Farrell, faithfully conformed to a rare botanical print in his private collection, stood on an inlet near the Intracoastal Waterway.
     Blazing like deserts under monstrous chandeliers designed to resemble frozen waterfalls, the large game rooms of the Rose of the Morning never closed, and if a patron wanted to know the time of day or night it was best to wear a reliable wristwatch. The rooms had no windows or clocks, and the conservatively clad pit bosses who moved unobtrusively through the rooms did not smile if a player asked them the hour. In theory the management hoped and schemed that nobody would ever escape from the blackjack and roulette; even the exits were discreetly hidden.
     Although the hotel had successfully effaced the difference between night and day, the body clocks of its least addicted guests continued to tick away. Around 5 o'clock in the morning, the ranks of the casino gamblers began to thin. Even so, it was not hard to put off bedtime for a little longer. First, under the watchful eyes of the pit bosses, there were chips to be cashed unless the players had been particularly unlucky, and that was not what the management wished; it was not good for repeat business to send visitors home penniless. At the worst, therefore, the hotel patrons leaving the casino in the morning would not only have their wallets respectably filled but a lot of change rattling in their pockets.
     The coins could be easily disposed of in the slot machines that lined the hotel walls between the casino door - if the departing patron was fortunate enough to rediscover it - and the hotel entrance.
     Ordinarily, a peaceful half hour in front of the one-armed bandits was assured. Sometimes, there was a short wait for a vacant machine, because some women tended to camp there, whiling away the night as their husbands and companions tempted fortune more bravely in the casino. Still, even with the wait, the slots were a pleasant way of putting off the return to the hotel room and the agony of gambling withdrawal symptoms.
     But it didn't turn out that way on the morning of March 10. Many of the guests who were working the slot machines claimed afterwards to have heard the uproar at the hotel entrance and even some of the gamblers in the nearest casino room made similar statements, but they were probably lying or exercising a little imagination in the hope of being quoted.
     The only people who could reconstruct the events with any credibility were those who had been outside the hotel: the doormen, the bellboys and a few guests returning from other nightspots. A little after 5 a.m. a black stretch limousine had appeared at the head of the hotel driveway and paused at the curve although there were no parked cars to bar its closer approach. One of the doormen motioned the driver to pull up near to the portico but his gesture was disregarded. He noticed that the right front window was rolled down and walked towards the car to see whether he could be of any assistance.
     Before the doorman had taken more than a few steps along the driveway, the limo started up again. A volley of semiautomatic rifle fire burst from the car window as the driver swept past the hotel portico, relying more on surprise than his accelerator pedal. Most of the bullets spent harmlessly against the hotel walls but one of the bellboys, diving to safety behind the dispatcher's desk, was nicked slightly in a shoulder.
     One of the arriving hotel guests, who had ducked behind a panel of the revolving door into the lobby, had the presence of mind to watch the limo depart, gathering speed, in the direction of Route 30. She noticed that it had no rear license plate.
     Before dawn local reporters descended on the hotel and the first news stories were more flamboyant than the facts gathered from the limited eyewitness accounts could justify. The version in the Clarion was typical.
     Gangland Attack on Rose of the Morning

     Before dawn today a gangland-style assault was made on the Rose of the Morning, Atlantic City's newest casino-hotel. At 5:00 a.m. gunmen riding in a black stretch limousine, right out of the Godfather films, sprayed bullets at the hotel entrance and escaped before help could be summoned.
     The Rose of the Morning is owned by Rose Properties, a publicly owned company rumored to have underworld ties. Spokesmen for the company had no comment on the incident, beyond telling the Clarion that it would be "vigorously investigated."
     It was in the late afternoon, Monaco time, before Rose Properties' executive vice-president was able to reach Martin Farrell. He told Farrell that it was absolutely essential that he return to New York at once both to restore confidence among the staff of the Rose of the Morning and to dispel the renewed gossip on the Street about prospects of underworld warfare for control of the company.
     Farrell did not have to consider his reply. "I'll charter a plane tonight," he said.

     *           *           *
     Special agent Art Drenik, reviewing his files on Rose Properties at the FBI offices on Half Street, heard the report of the Atlantic City attack with great satisfaction. His immediate reaction was to call up Mark Braun for a little good-natured joshing.
     "Hey, Mark. You've heard the latest about Rose Properties? I guess you can forget your insider trading kick. The mob still prefers bullets to ballots."

     *           *           *
     On the morning of March 12 Martin Farrell woke up, as usual, at 5:30 p.m. Jet lag was just a lot of crap, as far as he was concerned. If the phenomenon existed at all, it was a problem only for people who drank too much on their flights or were stupid enough to stay up to watch the movies.
     As a sole concession to his overnight travel, Farrell put the shower on a quarter turn colder to shock his senses that were lagging behind his will to get on with the day. He was right on schedule except that he had forgotten to set up the coffee pot before he went to bed. Still he was into his jogging outfit and down to the lobby well before sunrise. The night concierge nodded to him as he passed the desk and pushed the outside door open.
     The bracing stream of air that met his face reminded him that it was not going to be an early spring. As was usual at this hour traffic on Fifth Avenue was not very heavy and Farrell, who hated to stand still even for a moment, saw no reason to wait for the light to change before loping across the street to the park.
     When he reached the sidewalk outside the park, though, he slowed his pace in spite of himself to glance to the right. For several days in a row - it must have been a couple of weeks before he left for Monte Carlo - he had seen a man huddled on a park bench when he had begun his run. He couldn't say whether it was the same man, because he had no distinguishing features in the early morning gloom, but it was unusual that anybody should be out at all in the kind of weather the city had been having, particularly since the man had been sitting there so many days in succession.
     Farrell didn't think his own behavior in challenging the raw wind was at all odd. He was a runner and jogging kept you fit, and anyway it was much easier to stay warm if you kept moving instead of sitting perfectly motionless on a park bench. Then too, it was clear that the man wasn't waiting for a bus because the bench was smack in the middle of the two nearest stops.
     Farrell wasn't proud of himself for thinking this morning about the man - or different men, for all he knew - and anyway there was nobody in sight. He must be getting a little paranoid, that had to be the explanation. How could he help it, with all the heavy stuff that the financial press, and recently even his own directors, were handing him about the gambling business? He couldn't understand what the hell they were whimpering about. As far as he could see, if a business was legal and there were profits to be made, that was the end of the matter. Why was it that hotels were o.k. but casinos were suspicious? Neither he nor his prissy directors had any idea what was going on in their hotel rooms - fornication (the least of their worries), prostitution or price-fixing, but nobody seemed to care about any of that as long as their guests settled their bills at the front desk when they checked out. Farrell couldn't understand why legalized gambling was worse; in fact, it was safer because it was all out in the open and so many precautions were taken to prevent cheating by the house or the players.
     The business about mob interest in Rose Properties was a lot of bullshit. Sure, there had been a couple of doubtful characters he had come across in negotiating to purchase the slot machine operation, but Farrell had never heard from them again. The recent hike in trading volume was a surprise, but he flattered himself that the market was finally getting over its jitters about Rose Properties and betting that the Monte Carlo deal would push the stock price north.
     The Atlantic City shooting was a strange incident that he could not yet explain and it would certainly have to be investigated. Still, Farrell had heard nothing to shake his confidence that under his management Rose Properties was on the right course. In the end, it would probably turn out that a customer, disgruntled over gambling losses, was taking splashy but basically harmless revenge. Farrell was convinced that the gunman hadn't meant to hurt anyone, and that the wounded bellboy had just been unfortunate to get in the way. The thoughtful CEO had already ordered a bonus check to be given to him after he returned from the hospital.
     Farrell wilfully ended this stream of thoughts as he ran along his accustomed route through the park. He switched on his Walkman to a favorite pop channel and let the music flush out the problems he would have to face that afternoon when he was driven to Atlantic City. The path he was taking was so familiar to him he could have found his way without opening his eyes.
     That is why he probably didn't notice until very late the man who stepped from behind a bush about ten yards ahead and turned to face him. Was it the man from the park bench?
     The man fired once, and his bullet found the center of Farrell's forehead. After his victim fell, the gunman approached very close and shot him twice more, in the back of the skull.

 

 
 

Chapter 6


     Even Johnnie Fowler, ineffectual as he was, could not be put off forever so Tony Trask had finally agreed to a late lunch at the Harvard Club. As matters turned out, it was not the best time to meet but Johnnie could ruin any day no matter how well it had seemed to begin. In a way, the lunch wasn't a complete disaster, because it was the first decent meal Tony had had in a couple of days. Donna was in Chicago working on a big deal she had tipped to him a week earlier.
     On the infrequent occasions when they met in public, Tony tried to pretend he had come upon Johnnie by accident, greeting him with exaggerated enthusiasm that he hoped onlookers would mistake for surprise. Fowler's unpressed trousers and fraying collars didn't give the world too favorable an image of Tony's clientele. Today Johnnie had made a tacky addition to his shirtfront that was almost more than self-respecting company could bear. He had clipped on a cellophane shade that could be pulled down over his tie to protect it from the otherwise inevitable stains.
     Tony could not keep himself from asking: "Wouldn't it be easier just to buy a new tie now and then?" Johnnie had replied sarcastically: "That might be a practical solution if I had a better stockbroker."
     By the time their orders arrived, Fowler was in a forgiving mood. "What do you think of Rose Properties?" he asked after sipping his tomato juice, in the provoking way he had of treating all liquids like vintage Bordeaux. Despite the awkward wording of the question, Tony knew that Johnnie must be referring to the murder, reported over the broad tape that morning, rather than to the desirability of investing in the stock. To Fowler, the thought of investing in any equities other than Consolidated Tools was somewhere between infidelity and high treason.
     Tony thought it best to defuse the issue. "Central Park is a very dangerous place; it's not where anybody in his right mind would go jogging before the sun is up."
     Johnnie looked at him in admiration. "Was it that early, Tony? I don't think Dow Jones specified. But never mind, I don't think Central Park is quite the issue, do you? The murder's got to have something to do with the gun battle in Atlantic City."
     Tony couldn't figure out how Fowler had turned the scene at the Rose of the Morning into a "gun battle", but nothing Johnnie said surprised him anymore. He decided that the best response to his customer's suppositions was a shrug, because in due course, and certainly before dessert, the conversation would swing around to Johnnie's shares in Consolidated Tools.
     Tony was right. Predictably, Fowler ordered a dish of indigestible "hasty pudding" and, as he put away the first heaping spoonful, he asked his broker: "What do your analysts think about Consolidated Tools these days?"
     Tony actually hadn't the foggiest idea because his thoughts had been elsewhere. Nevertheless, he felt strongly it was best never to be at a loss for an opinion. "They think it's a hold."
     Johnnie Fowler smiled, feeling that the cost of the lunch was amply repaid. Tony Trask had said exactly what he wanted to hear. Grateful, he offered Tony two of the restaurant's gold-wrapped chocolates on their way out.

 *           *           *
     A special meeting of the board of directors of Rose Properties was convened on such short notice that four of the nonresident directors had to be hooked in by telephone conference. For the first five minutes after the long-distance operator confirmed that everyone was on the line, Eugene Merk, the company's senior executive vice president, felt that he was close to losing his mind. One of the outside directors patched in from Florida was Serge Corwin, a retired lawyer who insisted laboriously that Merk promise to circulate formal waivers of notice of the meeting.
     Once Corwin was quieted down, the hastily concocted agenda proceeded very smoothly. In accordance with long-standing emergency provisions, the board elected Gene Merk president and chief executive officer and also shuffled other titles to satisfy the egos of other highly ranked officers. A press release that deplored the murder and was intended to allay fears of shareholders and employees was circulated among the officials in attendance and read to the four directors listening in on the phone. The crucial paragraph was at the end:
The police investigation of Mr. Farrell's death in Central Park is, of course, at an early stage. The company, however, is convinced that the attack on its chief executive will prove to have no relation to its business operations.
     "The last paragraph's pure speculation; take it out," growled Serge Corwin from his Florida clubhouse. He was angry that an unusually promising golf outing had been cut short by the conference call.
     "That's the whole point of the release," Merk suggested, addressing the troublesome director less tactfully now that he had been elevated to CEO. "We want to get the shareholders thinking Central Park and not Atlantic City."
     "Do the police say Martin was robbed?" Serge Corwin cross-examined Merk.
     "I don't know," Merk replied evasively, "but that doesn't really matter. To most of our investors and employees the Park means random violence; that's good enough for our purposes."
     Corwin pursued him. "Don't we care what actually happened to Martin, or is it all just a matter of public relations?"
     "Of course we care," Merk said, "and in a few minutes - that is, if you're willing to let your new CEO get in a word or two - I'll tell you how I think we ought to respond on the business front. But first I want to get this press release on its way."
     Another director called the question for a vote, and the press release was approved as drafted, with Serge Corwin abstaining sullenly; then Gene Merk took charge again. "Serge asked a moment ago whether the cause of Martin's death matters to us. Certainly it does, both as his friends and business associates. But it is not the responsibility of the management to look backwards; we hope that the police will solve the crime, we'll cooperate to the extent we can, but we can't guarantee their success. Anyway, the job we're all paid for is to plan for the future of Rose Properties."
     "What do you have in mind?" asked Serge Corwin, determined that the meeting should remain a duel between the two of them. The wonderful advantage of a conference call was the illusion it provided that nobody else was around. The trouble with Corwin was that he acted the same way even if he was in the midst of a crowded boardroom.
     Merk aimed his answer at all the directors, hoping that they would resent Corwin's rudeness. "We've got an image problem, gentlemen. Wall Street doesn't like our gambling businesses and they think our boardroom is wired to the Cosa Nostra. The gunfire in Atlantic City may have been nothing serious - who knows? - but now we have Martin's murder. We can argue until we're blue in the face that these events are disconnected but it won't do us much good."
     Serge Corwin interrupted. "Exactly. Then why are we sending out this stupid press release?"
     Merk ignored him. "I therefore propose to you that we announce our intention to call off the Monte Carlo negotiations and to seek purchase bids for our hotel-casinos and slot machine plant. Out of respect to Martin, I suggest that we defer this announcement for a day or two."
     The directors responded to the suggestion with relief and enthusiasm, that is, everyone except Serge Corwin. He lectured the board on its legal duties to make immediate public releases of significant news developments. In an extended conclusion, he threatened to submit a protest letter for the corporate record book unless his views prevailed.
     The board reached a compromise and the report of the termination of Rose Properties' gambling business went out over the Dow Jones tape early the next day. The news resulted in a spectacular rise in the stock price and an unprecedented surge in trading volume.

 *           *           *
     Donna had been avoiding him for days, she couldn't have made it more obvious. She hadn't called Tony from Chicago since the Atlantic City news story broke, except to leave one brief message on his answering machine at the office to the effect that her deal was progressing slowly and her stay would be extended for at least a week. If that was the way she wanted to play the game, it was all right with him: he had plenty on his mind as it was.
     It was two days after Farrell's murder that Donna returned to New York, entirely without warning. Around 11:00 p.m. Tony came home from Bleecker Street to find her waiting for him at the coffee table in front of the TV. Her hair was awry from the March wind and her nervous fingers, and her heavy purplish eye makeup was smudged; she had smoked most of her way through a pack of cigarettes. Her suitcase, still unopened, stood in the vestibule where she had dropped it while disarming the alarm.
     "Hi Donna, did you close?" Tony bent to kiss her cheek but pulled his head back immediately so that he could continue to observe her mood.
     "We closed all right but not before Potter's CEO came close to giving away the store. The dumb son of a bitch."
     Good girl, Tony thought. We've hardly tied the knot and she sounds more like me all the time. Or was it that she was trying to please him so that he would lower his guard? He frowned at her warily as she added:
     "You've been busy too, I guess, because you sure weren't burning up the wires to Chicago."
     Tony turned away from her to open the cabinet above the dry bar. "Is that what I was supposed to be doing?" he said to the well-stocked shelves of bottles. "How about a welcome-home brandy to forgive and forget."
     "Why not," replied Donna. "I guess we can afford it now."
     Tony faced her, bottle and glasses in his hands. "Why do you say that? Are you going to clean up on the Potter deal?"
     "That's not exactly what I had in mind," said Donna, sipping on her brandy. She hated the stuff, but it was one of the idiotic luxury symbols that seemed to mean so much to Tony. She preferred the real thing, like the Alfa Romeo he drove on their first date but had never produced for her again.
     "It isn't Potter that's going to make us rich, is it, Tony?" Donna set down her brandy on the coffee table and waited for an answer.
     "Who is it then?" said Tony, continuing to nurse his drink as he kept his distance from her, standing with his back grazing the bar cabinet.
     "Try Rose Properties," Donna said, smashing her cigarette on an ashtray for emphasis. "The stock's up more than a third since Farrell had his little accident in the park. It's an amazing performance, Tony, just like Grantley Enterprises only this time the heart failure was more sudden."
     Tony sized her up quickly and saw no reason for denials. "It's nothing you want to know about," he said.
     "Shouldn't I know what my husband is capable of?" Donna slid her drink, barely tasted, to the side of the coffee table and lighted another cigarette.
     Tony's reply was not improvised; he'd rehearsed this scene many times in his head over the past weeks. "It was Damon's idea."
     "Oh sure," Donna said, wreathing her reply in cigarette smoke, "and if he tells us both to jump in the East River that'll be a great idea too."
     It was time to play the legacy card that he had hoped to hold in reserve. When the chips were down Donna would not want to cross her uncle or complain too persistently about any project in which he took an interest. So Tony reminded her: "Damon's got a lot of money. We don't want to let him down. You've told me that yourself more often than I can remember."
     "That's right," Donna said, "I wouldn't be totally upset if the old guy mentions me lovingly in his will. So I make him scrambled eggs when he feels like it. But I don't hire a hit man who sprays bullets at a casino and then takes better aim at its CEO. Have you lost your mind?"
     Tony eyed Donna more narrowly, aware that something was not going according to his expectations. She knew her Uncle Damon a lot better than she was admitting now and, in spite of what she knew or because of it, had pushed Tony in Marzo's direction. He recalled all her encouraging little hints, how Damon was sitting out Grantley Enterprises but would back the next deal in spades. She hadn't meant that he'd back him only if Tony's ideas were safe. Safety didn't bring the returns all three of them had in mind.
     Tony decided that a direct assault was best. "And if I'd told you beforehand, would you have advised me to tell Damon to go to hell?"
     "I didn't guess it would be this kind of deal." Donna met his aggressive stare without blinking. That was a trick she had probably picked up from her uncle.
     "Right," Tony said. "Insider trading's o.k. but no rough stuff. I'll have to keep that in mind."
     "It's not just that, Tony; you didn't even let me know what stock you were working on."
     "Good God," Tony said, "don't tell me you've been shorting Rose Properties common."
     She didn't laugh at his feeble joke, and he had not expected her to; but she looked very uncomfortable. Damn it, Tony cursed inwardly, the murder of Farrell isn't what's getting to her at all. The dumb bitch has been doing something with Rose Properties stock. His suspicion was confirmed at breakfast the next morning. It was then that Tony tried to put their debate behind them.
     "I hope we talked out the Rose Properties business last night. From now on can you trust Damon and me to know our own business?"
     "I suppose so," Donna replied, "but I wish you'd give me some idea of what companies you're looking into." Her request sounded almost apologetic.

*          *          *
     Benny Vitale, Damon's accommodating bookkeeper was always right on the dot. He knocked on the door of Tony's Bleecker Street flat at precisely 7:00 p.m., as had been arranged with Damon, to deliver the needed amount of expense money. Vitale had told Tony the first time he had brought cash that he didn't mind making "home deliveries" at any time because he lived only a few blocks away. Vitale did make one exception, though; he preferred that his calls at Tony's apartment be scheduled for evenings other than Wednesday. That was the night he drove directly from Marzo's office in Long Island City to join his employer at his North Shore estate for dinner and a weekly "accounting review". Tonight was Thursday so Vitale had no problem making the delivery. He smiled at Tony as pleasantly as ever though a sudden rainshower had plastered down his hair and soaked his topcoat. Benny wore a white scarf and in its gap Tony spotted a black bowtie.
     "Heavy date?" Tony asked; he thought that Benny would be flattered by the suggestion because it was very improbable. The skinny bookkeeper didn't look much like a swinger and the heavy dose of hair dye he was using seemed to put him on the wrong side of sixty. Still the harmless comment drew an answer from Vitale, who mumbled something about a college reunion.
     The delivery of cash was timely because a half hour later, Tony met Fred in the balcony of the porno theatre. The program had not changed since their first appointment but Fred did not seem to mind in the least. "I told you this one was going to be very popular," Fred recalled. Despite the gunman's high rating, the balcony remained empty.
     Tony followed the same procedure he had used before, sliding his brown parcel under Fred's seat where it nestled against his companion's ever-present dispatch case. "The rest of the money is there," Tony said, "paid in full. Thanks for a job well done." The whole deal was a bargain; Fred had only charged the extra $5000 for both the car theft and the Atlantic City raid, with a modest supplement for expenses, all rounded off to the nearest hundred dollars. There was no point in dealing with small change. "It makes the package rattle," Fred had explained over the telephone.
     Now that their business was complete, Fred didn't seem to feel any words of parting were called for. He acknowledged Tony's payment with a slight nod and expected him to go. But there was one additional matter on his client's mental checklist.
     "What have you done with the car?" Tony asked.
     "I can't say, for sure. I think Millie's gonna keep it. She kind of took a shine to it."
     "She's going to keep the car?" Tony couldn't believe his ears. "What's she going to do with it? Your friends must like to live dangerously. Most people don't do their grocery shopping in a funeral limouisine."
     Fred chuckled softly, perhaps below the recording level of the equipment in his dispatch case. "Just kidding you, young fella. Millie's probably gonna sell the car; she's pretty good at that."
     Tony was not much relieved. "I don't want the car sold. I want it to be found."
     Fred shook his head but agreed. "You're the boss. I guess you must know what you're doing."
     Tony whispered without hesitation, "I do." He had designed the Farrell hit to look like a high-stakes Mafia operation. Big time mobsters bent on eliminating a chief executive didn't need to make extra nickels from the aftermarket for a stolen limousine. The recovery of the car and even its identification by witnesses at the Rose of the Morning would be all to the good. Tony's own cleverness in enticing Farrell back home from Monte Carlo would be attributed to the Mafia and that would be just fine with him. He didn't need the credit.
     As Tony got up to leave the balcony, he thought he heard Fred say, "Millie will be mighty disappointed."
     Tony didn't turn back. After he left the theatre, though, he wondered whether he should have offered a bonus to compensate Millie for returning the car.

*          *          *
     To celebrate the ring's profit on Rose Properties Damon Marzo invited Tony to lunch at the Italian restaurant where they had first discussed their partnership. The old man sported a boutonniere to reflect his festive spirits but was tantalizingly slow to talk about the money that was due.
     After the dishes were cleared and they were left with their espressos, Damon asked: "What does Donna know about this?"
     "She's not a fool, your niece," Tony answered, wondering where Marzo's question would lead them.
     Damon continued: "Don't underestimate her, Tony, that would be my advice to you. Protect her, yes, that's only wise and expected from a husband, but don't make the mistake of thinking she's soft or sentimental. You didn't know my older brother, her father, but he brought her up to face facts. I don't know whether she's told you or not, but he didn't die in bed."
     Tony paraphrased: "Donna's a realist."
     "Exactly. That means to me she knows about Rose Properties. Right? She doesn't need details any more than I do, but when you talk together you don't have to blush either. Remember, Tony, she brought you and me together. You and I are two of a kind, we saw that right away didn't we? But what I'm trying to tell you is that when you add in my niece Donna, we're three of a kind. Do you agree with me?"
     Tony was nettled by Damon's continued emphasis on Donna's role. As far as Tony was concerned, Donna might have pretty much served her purposes. Sure, she continued to send some useful deal information his way, but her principal value had been the introduction to Damon. It was too bad really that he couldn't slough Donna off like an outgrown skin. Probably, though, Uncle Damon wouldn't see things quite the same way; but a little sense of perspective was in order. 
     He responded, "Look, Damon, I can handle Donna O.K. if that's what you're getting at. I can't believe you asked me here to talk about family matters." Tony figured that after pulling off Rose Properties so professionally, he didn't have to stand on ceremony any longer. The old man appeared to agree because he wasn't at all disturbed by Tony's rebellion. In fact, he seemed pleased.
     "You're right, Tony; we're here to talk about business. In my opinion, there are two important things to straighten out. The first has nothing at all to do with Donna, unless you're careless about your banking. I'm talking about your cut on Rose Properties. The 25% comes out to a little over $450,000 as we calculate our net, but we're very pleased with your approach to partnership business; in fact, we couldn't be happier. But words are cheap, aren't they? What do you say to $600,000?"
     Tony cautiously tempered his gratitude with an unmistakeable signal of his ambition. "I think you might call it a pretty good debut."
     "Debut," Damon repeated, catching Tony's intended ambiguity in mid-air. "A good start for you and I hope we haven't made a bad beginning either, tearing up your contract so we can have the pleasure of shelling out more of the group's cash. Why don't we just agree that we acted all around like good partners should? That way there's no hard feelings left and no markers. That brings me back to Donna."
     "It does?" Tony asked, irritated more and more that Damon couldn't get her off his mind.
     "Yes, Tony, that's the second point I want to be clear about. I'm sure that Rose Properties went down all right with your wife, and I explained why. But we haven't gone to all this trouble together just for a one-shot deal. You understand that, of course, I told you that before we got going. And I think that Donna understands as well, but I want you to tell me now that I'm not wrong. You and I don't need any second-guessing from anybody. It complicates business, and I like my business to be nice and simple. Can Donna take your deals as a 'way of life'?"
     "Donna won't be any trouble; you can count on that." Tony hoped he was right. Donna was a realist, as her uncle had suggested, but there was obviously something about the Rose Properties setup that bothered her. He still hadn't found out what it was.
     Marzo seemed very happy with Tony's unqualified answer. "Good", he said. "Take off a couple of weeks from partnership activity. You've earned the rest and it will clear your mind. Any time you want to draw down on your account, just call Benny Vitale. But, Tony, don't ever think of resting on your laurels. That's the one thing your partners won't tolerate."
     Tony nodded his agreement without the slightest reluctance. He already had another deal in mind. It would take a lot longer to develop but there was a lot more upside potential. For the time being, Tony preferred to keep the idea to himself.
     On his way back to Fenster's, Tony reckoned his financial status. If he added the $600,000 to his profits on Donna's tips and pretty good personal trading in a very tricky market, Tony would be closing in on his first million by year's end. It wasn't where he had been expected to be by now. He wasn't exactly sitting on top of the world but he was climbing. That was the very word, he thought with inner satisfaction: climbing.
 

 
 

Chapter 7


     As a rule, Tony didn't think a lot of the popular business magazine called Millions. Its stock in trade was a series of incredibly long-winded puff pieces about entrepreneurs or professionals who had made it big. You could bet your life that although the subjects of the stories liked to see their name in print (and had probably besieged the magazine through their public relations representatives to "give them ink"), they were not about to give away any important secrets that could enable readers to follow in their footsteps. Disappointed as he was with his own rate of progress, Tony usually found that reading about other people's success was at best a bittersweet experience. That is why he was surprised and pleased when he came across the article on Emil Soderman in the March issue. It was the mother of all death plays.
     The piece that had caught Tony's eye was entitled "One on One". Over six double-column pages the reporter sprawled his shameless eulogy. Emil Soderman was the chairman and controlling shareholder of Jox Corp., a leading sports equipment firm. In the overwhelming detail for which Millions was notorious, the writer sketched Soderman's career, which began with two years of pitching in the minor leagues until an elbow problem caused his unconditional release. In one of his few notes of realism, the journalist suggested that Soderman's unfavorable ratio of walks to strike-outs didn't bode well, in any event, for his transfer to the majors. Still, organized sports were in his blood and Emil never gave any thought to earning his livelihood elsewhere. Building on friendships he had made in the minors, he became a powerful sports agent, negotiating contracts and masterminding arbitrations for an impressive stable of professional athletes. A decade ago he had sold his sports agency and used the proceeds to acquire a number of athletic equipment firms which he had combined into a publicly-held industry giant.
     During its first years in the market, Jox seemed to have nowhere to go but up. All the product lines that Soderman added - running shoes, golf clubs, even vaulting poles - became recognized as state of the art, backed as they were with the endorsements of Soderman's former clients. Nevertheless, as even the fawning Millions journalist was compelled to admit, Soderman let his dizzying success affect his customarily shrewd judgment. In unguarded moments when the journalists were within earshot, Soderman had made a number of comments that were interpreted as slurs against black athletes and coaches and female sports reporters. As a result, professional athletes (including many for whom Soderman's agency had made millions) refused to endorse Jox products and, in alliance with powerful feminist groups, organized boycotts against the firm. These bitter enmities had hurt the company's profits to an alarming extent and had caused money managers to dump their Jox shares. In the midst of all this adversity, however, Soderman stubbornly refused to apologize or even to claim that his controversial statements had been misinterpreted.
     With an obvious sense of relief, the writer of the Millions article turned from these disturbing developments to a flattering portrayal of Soderman's personality in business and private life. The title of the article was derived from the executive's frequently vaunted preference for "one-on-one" relationships. He thought very little of group management, consulted his board as rarely as possible, and preferred to meet alone with each officer who reported to him. The same style carried over into Soderman's other activities. Unmarried, he was well known for his charitable work with underprivileged boys, for whom he had organized a recreational settlement house called simply "The Buddies". Although the house had a basketball court, a soccer field and an Olympic-sized pool, Soderman required that each of the volunteers take direct responsibility for one of the boys and plan individual outings. Even when he took time out for personal recreation, he favored a sport that lent itself to a "one-on-one" relationship: he had acquired national fame as a rock climber who would share his rope only with a single companion.
     Tony Trask reread the Millions article many times, almost unable to believe his good fortune. All the elements he looked for in a death play were made to order in Jox Corp. and its willful CEO. What was best about the project he had in mind was that there would be no need for Fred or Millie or any other equally unpredictable hirelings. This time Tony could attend to everything himself, and with his determination to act alone came a sense of new power and confidence. Without trepidation, he called Damon Marzo a week after their last meeting in the restaurant: "Damon, I don't need the two weeks off you suggested. I'm all set to move again, but it's going to take me a while. You and your partners will just have to be patient."
     "Where's the play?" Damon asked.
     "Jox Corp. It's complicated but a sure thing. Unless you object, I'm going to call Philippe."
     Marzo played it cool. "It's your decision, Tony, that's your end of the deal."
     The conversation had nowhere else to go so Tony said goodbye. He had gotten used to Damon's habit of distancing himself from their deals until he could see the results. Actually, Tony had the feeling that Marzo had given him a pretty good sendoff. In any event, there was no point in wasting his time mind reading because there was a lot to do.
     The first step was to call at a stationer's in a downtown neighborhood Tony rarely visited. The place looked like it had seen better days, but that didn't make the sales girl at the counter any happier to see him.
     "I've got a couple of printing jobs for you if you can have them finished by the end of the week," Tony said, adopting an aggressive style that would give him the upper hand and forestall inconvenient questions.
     "Maybe we can do that," the girl responded, dotting her order pad with a ballpoint pen. "What do you have for us?"
     "The first would be some business cards, say about 500." It was ridiculously more than he needed, but that was exactly why Tony had chosen that figure. He handed the clerk a paper on which he had printed "Barton S. Andrews, Andrews Productions, Easton, Pennsylvania".
     "No street address or telephone number?" the girl inquired.
     "That's right," Tony answered firmly, "does that entitle me to a discount?"
     The clerk poked her solar calculator and quoted Tony a price, which he accepted after furrowing his brow to mimic prudence.
     "You mentioned a second order," she reminded him. 
     "Yes, that's right, I need a certificate engraved on your best paper stock." He gave her another slip on which the following legend appeared in pencilled capital letters: 
     BARTON S. ANDREWS
     YOUNG HUMANITARIAN OF THE YEAR
     EASTON, PENNSYLVANIA
     "Leave room for a signature and a date at the lower right," he instructed the girl.
     "Congratulations," she said, with a possible trace of irony which he pretended not to notice.
     "Oh, the certificate's not for me. It's for Mr. Andrews, who's going to be pleasantly surprised."
     The girl didn't seem to care much about either Mr. Andrews or his emotions, and that suited Tony very well.
     On the following Monday after picking up his stationery orders, Tony presented himself at the office of the settlement house, which was located on the upper west side of the city. "I'd like to volunteer for the Buddies," he told a social worker in her fading forties who cultivated a quiet voice. "My name's Barton Andrews," he said, searching his wallet for a business card.
     "Barton Productions," the social worker said in her near-whisper, "how interesting. What do you produce? - if that is information you can share."
     "Business videos, mostly. Some product ads as well."
     "Very interesting," the woman said, continuing to scrutinize the card. Tony decided to head off her next question.
     "I travel quite a lot, but, of course, I would stay in touch. What are your busiest days?"
     "Our founder, Mr. Soderman, likes our kids to know that there's no day and no hour when we're not there for them. But our children are mainly school-age so most of our volunteers work with us on the weekends. Mr. Soderman, for example, seldom misses a Sunday when he's in town."
     The only disturbing sign so far was that even as she answered him at length, the social worker was continuing to hold the business card between her thumb and index finger, searching for details that were not there. It was time for the clincher, Tony decided, opening his briefcase to withdraw a scroll bound with a blue ribbon. He untied the ribbon with emphatic care and unrolled the scroll on the social worker's desk.
     "I don't like to brag, but you might like to note this award for your files."
     The social worker was obviously impressed. "Last year's young humanitarian; that's quite an honor."
     "It's nothing, really," said Tony, speaking the truth for the first time.
     The social worker opened her desk drawer and took out a Buddies volunteer card. She filled in the name of Barton Andrews. Only when she had finished did she ask, "Or do you prefer Bart?"
     "It doesn't matter at all; Barton will do." Placing the card in his wallet, Tony asked when he could begin work. The social worker explained that the house was closed for spring cleaning and would reopen in mid-April. Mr. Andrews would be welcome anytime after then.
     Tony told her that the schedule would suit him very well because he would be on the road for a while. For once he wasn't lying, because he would have to devote some of his next weekends to the training he would need. A few days earlier he had confirmed his arrangements by phone from Bleecker Street. The number he reached had listed in a round-up of recreational activities in the Times. Under the rubric "Thrilling Ascents", the article announced the availability of rock-climbing lessons in either the White Mountains of New Hampshire or the Shawangunks in the Catskills. Tony had passed up the Gunks, favoring the remoteness of the New England location.
     From the very first lesson the climbing coaches found Barton Andrews of Easton, Pennsylvania to be a very intense student. Visiting their New Hampshire headquarters near Franconia Notch, he told them bluntly that he insisted on solo instruction on an easily manageable cliff (no more than a single pitch to the top) that would not be swarming with other beginners. He added that he was more than willing to pay whatever premium might be appropriate to provide a course meeting his specifications.
     One of the senior instructors, Wally Nash, thought that he knew just the place. He drove Tony for miles down a dirt road to a secluded cliff that he described as an "open-book" formation. Local climbers used to refer to the outcropping as "Webster's Dictionary," but that was years ago before the cliff was pretty much abandoned in favor of more challenging rock faces.
     Wally Nash described "Webster's Dictionary" as an ideal spot for them because it combined some bouldering with an elementary rope-climb. From the roadside there was an easy, unassisted scramble over rocks that led gradually uphill to a triangular plateau. It was here that their rope-climb up the cliff would begin. The face of the cliff, as Tony observed it from Wally's car, looked as if it had been formed by a granite wedge smashing into the hillside. A vertical crevice ascended from the plateau to the summit about a hundred feet above, and on either side of the central seam angled rock walls formed the pages of the "open book". Wally explained the basic lay-back climbing technique his student would learn: he would ascend in perfect safety, grasping the seam securely while obtaining a firm purchase on one of the rock faces with his feet.
     Tony listened attentively but at his first opportunity he asked about the "protections" Wally would use as lead climber. "I assume you won't be driving pitons," he said.
     "Nope," Wally said. "Haven't used them for years. That's because of the damn Sierra Club types, who kept complaining about the damage we were doing to the rock surface. For this particular cliff, I'll probably use climbing nuts."
     He reached into a rack that was strapped on his shoulder to illustrate the safety device he was describing. It was a common metal nut with the threads bored out, through which Wally had tied a sling anchored to a snap-link that climbers called a carabiner. He explained that every ten feet or so up the cliff he would jam one of the metal nuts into the rock crevice and would run the climbing rope through the carabiner. The rope would be tied around the climber's waist, and if all went well, the last planted protection would break any fall.
     Tony's next question surprised the instructor. "Whose responsibility is it to remove the nuts?"
     "That'll be your job as second climber. Nothing easier; I'll show you how."
     Tony was just about satisfied but he had one more worry. "How will we get down once we reach the top?"
     Wally laughed, recognizing that he had one of the faint-hearted city folks on his hands. As was his policy under these circumstances, he tried to be encouraging as well as holding out the prospect of an extended series of lessons. "Don't worry about that for now. If you want to get into more advanced techniques, I can teach you some rappelling. For the time being, though, all we have to do is take a nice comfortable stroll to the road along a pretty wooded trail that leads down the back of the hill. You can't see it from this side, but take my word that the path is there."
     Perfect, Tony thought, it couldn't be better; and to Wally Nash he said, "I'm ready to begin Lesson One."

*          *          *
     After the news of Martin Farrell's murder broke at the SEC, assistant director Jebb held progress meetings at least daily with the Rose Properties investigative team. Nobody joked anymore when Art Drenik theorized about mob involvement in the case. Art was convinced that he had put the icing on the cake when the black limousine was discovered near the Garden State Parkway.
     "Nothing was taken from the car, not even the goddam cellular phone," Drenik told Jebb and Mark Braun, who was soberly taking notes. "You know why, don't you? Because that's not why they took the car from the funeral home. They needed the car to make the raid that would scare Farrell into coming home where they could get their hands on him. Hey, it sort of sounds like 'this is the house that Jack built.'"
     Since no laughs were forthcoming, Drenik went on with his explanation. "But there's something clever at work here, almost a sort of black humor. These wiseguys steal a limo to make the Atlantic City raid look like an underworld job, but that's exactly what it was. So Farrell comes back and they shoot him."
     Mark Braun didn't have a competitive bone in his body but Art's explanation didn't account for all the evidence. "What you're telling us is very persuasive but only up to the point of the murder; afterwards it leaves us pretty much at sea again. If I've understood you correctly all these weeks, it's your idea that the mob's been quietly accumulating Rose Properties shares so that it can exercise more muscle in the business operations. But the trading records don't bear you out on that. There's been a board decision to sell off the gambling businesses, followed by a big run-up and sell-off in Rose Properties common. Somebody's made huge market profits, and it looks very much to me - strange as it seems - as if somebody's figured out a new way to trigger insider trading. I guess I meant 'trigger' more literally than I intended. My apologies."
     Jebb made no effort to referee the debate. Maybe they were both right to some degree. In any event, Braun's computer analyses of the post-murder selling were not complete and it was best to await the full results.
     A few days later Mark had surprising news for them both. "You remember our meeting when I was going over the heavy purchase volume and reported involvement on the part of many of the foreign brokers identified in Operation Haven?"
     Jebb nodded, but Drenik looked stolid, always unhappy when insider trading analysis threatened to disprove his speculations that a racketeering takeover was underway.
     Mark Braun, deciding that the assistant director was by far the more receptive listener, treated Drenik to a little body language, turning his chair to the left so that Art would lose eye contact with him as he continued his recitation.
     "Well, the earlier data plays out well, because many of those overseas firms were the first to sell after Farrell's death and they made out like bandits. Strangely, though, they were not alone, because there's an American gent who didn't do so badly either."
     "Who is that?" Jebb asked. His prosecutorial ideas glistened as he heard for the first time of a possible culprit who was within his jurisdiction.
     "This is what makes his case so strange," said Mark, enjoying the impression he was making on his veteran chief. "He sure doesn't look like an international ring member. His name is Dr. Alex Cardon; he's a New York psychiatrist. Maybe he's a great doctor but as a trader he won't be memorable. He bought two 5,000 share lots of Rose Properties shortly before the murder and sold everything on the run-up, and - get this - all through a single broker. This guy doesn't want to make us work too hard."
     "And that's not easy to understand," said Jebb, cheered by the report. "You'd think he would figure that by overworking some SEC staffers he might be producing future patients, if not for himself, then for some lucky colleagues."
     "Not at our rates of pay," Mark was brave enough to remind him. Jebb was in such a good mood that he didn't mind in the least. "Let's bring Dr. Cardon in for questioning, down here in Washington; that ought to shake him up a little."
     To end the meeting, Jebb directed a barb at Drenik. "Come to think of it, Mark, you better given Cardon a little care in handling. He may be a capo or even higher."

*          *          *
     Tony and Donna had worked out their own minimum disclosure rules for the new death play. He told her that Jox Corp. was the target of the new death play. It would be a sure thing and a lot more profitable than either Grantley Enterprises or Rose Properties. These bright prospects were all on the plus side, of course, but the deal wasn't going to be pretty. The best way to put it was that Donna wouldn't be reading about it only on the business pages.
     That was all the information he was willing to give Donna, but, as far as he could determine from her guarded response, she did not want to know any more. To Donna, maybe because of her work in investment banking, knowledge regarding the identity of a company in play was equivalent to power, and secrecy was exhilarating. Everything else was money in the bank, and that was a preoccupation that drove her as mercilessly as Tony. Sure, the Rose Properties business had knocked her out but that was because Tony had not prepared her fully for what he had in mind. She would be no trouble at all from now on.
     One sign of her compliance was that she didn't ask Tony any questions when he took off from home, usually with little advance notice or none at all, and often without leaving her the slightest clue about his whereabouts. She knew nothing about his enrollment with the Buddies or his new-found pleasure in rock-climbing weekends. His evenings at Bleecker Street had never seemed to bother her much, even at the beginning, but now when he would get up from the dinner table with a downtown look in his eye she would go out of her way to give him some token of leave-taking, maybe no more than a hand signal if he was in a hurry, but enough to show that she was on his side.
     It was therefore without any worries about trouble on the home front that Tony, back from his second straight weekend in New Hampshire, went directly to the Bleecker Street apartment after returning his rented car. He had always hated the place and had not made the slightest effort to make it more liveable. The investment would have been useless, because he had never invited friends there; they would have sneered at the street address and the fourth-floor walkup even if he had spruced up the interior. In time he had come to ignore the horrors he had inherited from the prior tenant: the off-white carpet patterned with coffee stains, the scratched lucite breakfast table, and the cracked black leather couch that had lost most of its buttons.
     The best way to forget his surroundings was to throw himself into his work. The apartment continued to serve as his command post just as it had during the Rose Properties planning, and some of the activities were the same, the calls to Philippe placing and confirming stock investments, and the occasional conversations with Damon. The researches, obviously, had changed their character. Now night after night Tony studied primers and magazines on rock-climbing techniques and equipment, and pored over road maps of New Hampshire.
     Tonight, as soon as Tony opened the door to the flat, he could see in the dark that the red light was shining on his answering machine. He pressed the playback and heard the voice of Damon Marzo returning a call Tony had placed on the previous  Thursday evening.
     After a beep a second caller began to talk. She was a woman who spoke slowly in a toneless voice, as if she were trying to convey the impression that she was reading her message for the very first time:
     "You do not know me but I find you very interesting. You have always been a fascinating person, but you are even more fascinating since Rose Properties. If we can do business, pull up the shade on your window nearest the corner, and leave it in that position. In any case, you will hear from me again."
     There was another beep, and then the machine sang out the time of 10:27 p.m. on Friday; a click followed as the tape shut off.
     Tony felt neither alarm nor panic; a burning fury purged all other responses. If somebody was playing with the idea of blackmail, they'd picked the wrong guy to tackle. He'd been working with Damon Marzo and the big boys, and the death plays were working to perfection. He wasn't going to let a two-bit shakedown artist screw things up, he would guarantee that regardless of the consequences.
     Reflecting coolly, as he flattered himself he did with particular success when the pressure was great, he reasoned that his caller (or more likely the asshole who'd picked a bimbo to be his voice) hadn't decided whether Tony would be easy pickings. They weren't asking for any money, at least not yet. Instead, they would be watching his reaction for signs of flight or terror. Well, their expectations weren't going to pan out. He would continue coming to Bleecker Street on his regular schedule and he wasn't going to touch his window shade.
     Still, there was no point in making their work any simpler than was necessary. When the telephone service opened for business Monday morning, Tony would order an unlisted number for the Bleecker apartment. In and of itself, that move wouldn't put an end to the nuisance. They could write to him but perhaps they would worry that a written message could be easier to trace. Or they could call him at home or at the office, but that could involve them with Donna and God knows who else. The hell with it, Tony decided for the moment, as he took a rock-climbing manual from the unfinished bookcase he had never painted and found his place in a late chapter.
 

 
 

Chapter 8


     Early on the morning of the first Sunday he was due to check in with the Buddies Tony Trask awoke with a start. He had forgotten something, an essential detail of his plan; there was no harm done, and yet it troubled him to have made such an uncharacteristic oversight. He should have attended to the matter before he had appeared for his interview with the social worker, but she hadn't asked him the right questions and was so caught up in her professional rituals that she could not have observed him more than casually. Still it was careless of him to have forgotten and he had better do something about it before he ran into Soderman.
     Tony had told the social worker he was married but he wasn't wearing a ring. Donna and he had had a single-ring ceremony, and he knew a lot of other men who had the sense (as he did) to resist the sex-equality mystique. So it wouldn't make him out a liar if he turned up at the Buddies with a bare fourth finger. It was nonetheless true that many people scanned your ring finger even before you were introduced and, if marriage was a part of your con, a wedding band could work wonders.
     Tony jumped out of bed while Donna was still sleeping and headed for a street flea market that opened at dawn in Chelsea. There he found a dirt-cheap ring that looked enough like gold to serve his purpose although it was several sizes too large. If he kept his knuckle bent, he would manage to get through the day, and next week he could find a suitable replacement on 47th Street.
     When he arrived at the settlement house at 9:00 sharp, very few of the volunteers were there but Emil Soderman, silver-haired and even more trim than the Millions photographs had shown him to be, was already presiding over the herbal tea and oat bran muffins.
     "Let me help you to a continental breakfast, young man. I don't think we've met, have we?"
     Tony shook hands as firmly as he could without inflicting pain or suffering worse in the grip of the former pitcher. "I haven't had the pleasure," he said. "My name's Bart Andrews. I'm a new volunteer and, as a matter of fact, today's my first day."
     "Glad to have you aboard. Where'd you hear about the Buddies, Bart?"
     "Well, it's pretty well known among the city's charities; I guess that's not exactly news to you. And the activities here just happen to fit my interests to a tee."
     "Like working with young people, do you?"
     Tony let his face go dead serious and he stepped closer to Soderman to show his intensity. "They're our future, Mr. Soderman, it's as simple as that: yours, mine and the whole country's. The President talks about a thousand points of light. None of them burns any brighter than the fires of enthusiasm and talent that can flare up in these wonderful city kids, if they're given half a chance."
     "I agree with you completely," Soderman said, delighted with the Buddies' latest acquisition. He would have been glad to pursue the conversation, but Tony made way for some new arrivals who were waiting in line to make their respects to the benefactor.
     The kids started to stream in after 10:00, and Tony offered to referee a pick-up basketball game. He hadn't played much since his glory days in high school, and it felt good to be back on the court. Feeling Soderman's eyes on him, he kept his young charges under firm control, calling the turnovers and preventing near-scuffles. After the game had gone on about a half hour, Tony blew his whistle and declared the contest over. He then suggested that the boys pair off for one-on-one contests in shooting and defense. As they took their turns at the basket, he praised them all and gave them pointers.
     When Tony at last trotted to the sidelines, Emil Soderman greeted him with enthusiasm. "A great idea, Bart, the one-on-one competitions. Team sports are great; I'm crazy about them myself and they keep me in business. But everything good in life happens face to face, don't you agree?"
     Tony beamed. "Those are my sentiments exactly, but I don't think I could have expressed them so well."
     Soderman did not mind the flattery one bit and, in fact, showed his appreciation by professing a deeper interest in his new Buddies recruit. "What line of work are you in?"
     "Business video production," Tony answered, well rehearsed from his conversations with the stationer's clerk and the social worker. "Would you like to see my card?"
     Soderman smiled in conventional gratitude as he placed Tony's business card, unread, in the breast pocket of his sport jacket where it would probably rest pending the eventual journey to the drycleaner. Soderman's scant attention to the credentials of his fresh acquaintance made Tony's path much smoother. He had prepared himself to defend the skimpy information provided by the card but he was relieved to be spared the trouble. Superficiality was a wonderful quality in a victim.
     Tony ducked away from Soderman when the first graceful opportunity presented itself in the form of two ten-year-olds excitedly seeking information about the day's swimming schedule. Cordial as Emil had been to him, Tony wanted to let matters take a slow course; the whole game would be blown if he gave the sports magnate the feeling that he was setting out to make an impression.
     At 4:00 in the afternoon Tony was getting ready to leave. Only a handful of the volunteers were still there and the house would close in about a half hour. Tony wasn't going to be the last to leave but he would stay long enough for his ardor to be noticed. As he drifted towards the door without seeking out the founder for a special goodbye, Soderman hailed him and walked in his direction. "Bart, do you have a minute before you go?"
     "Sure," Tony said, walking towards Soderman, at just the right pace so they would meet halfway as they approached each other.
     Emil offered his hand and said: "I was very impressed with the way you handled those kids on the court. You've got a talent for relationships, I can see that already. Why don't you see Julia about setting up some one-on-one field trips for you?" Julia was the social worker who had interviewed Tony during his first visit to the Buddies.
     "That's a very good idea, Mr. Soderman. I'll stop in to see Julia on my way out."
     "That's great, Bart, and by the way, call me Emil. My mother tells me that Mr. Soderman's my father."
     Julia gave Tony the name of 6-year-old Hernando Mendez.
     Tony's first solo outing with Hernando, a visit to the Natural History Museum on the following Saturday, was a fiasco. The little boy was scared to death of dinosaurs, especially their skeletons. Tony tried to explain that the giant lizards had never coexisted with human beings on the planet, but that didn't make Hernando any more willing to move close to the exhibits. It was bad enough that the monsters had left their bones behind to give him nightmares.
     Afterwards Tony bought the child a bag of peanuts from a street vendor. While he munched, Hernando, who had been very quiet during the museum visit, asked Tony:
     "What do you do at your office?"
     To simplify matters, Tony replied: "I make money." 
     "Why?"
     "That's a silly question, Hernando. Whatever people say to you, you can always ask why; it can go on forever. Why do you like ice cream?"
     "I don't," Hernando said.
     "Well then, what do you like?"
     "Hot dogs."
     "Why?" Tony asked, giving him a taste of his own medicine.
     "Because hot dogs are good. Is money good?"
     Tony was disgusted. This kid is a real loser, he concluded. Nevertheless, when he returned Hernando to the settlement house he left a written report with Julia that described the afternoon's experience in glowing terms. The social worker had told him last Sunday that Emil Soderman personally reviewed all the field trip reports.
     The next day Tony was promoted to officiating a teenagers' "spring league" basketball game at the Buddies' settlement house. Aware that Soderman was watching him again, this time from the team benches, Tony vied with the players' speed, even running after the fast breaks to signal the score though the result of the play was a foregone conclusion. When the game was over, Emil congratulated him for the second week in a row on his endurance. This time Tony did not let the compliment slip by. "Thanks. I'm not sure I would have been up to this a year ago because I had let myself get pretty badly out of shape. But since then I've been doing quite a little rock-climbing."
     "Really?" Emil's eyes lighted up.
     Tony trotted out his best imitation of modesty. "I shouldn't call it rock-climbing, I guess. Most of the time we're hiking or bouldering but we sometimes end up with an ascent that's not too difficult."
     "You mean a roped climb?" Soderman asked to clarify what his young volunteer meant by "not too difficult.'
     "Yes, of course, but I don't think you would be all that impressed with our cliffs; I don't think I've ever climbed more than 100 feet or so."
     "That's all right; it's just the right distance to give you the feel of a typical pitch from ledge to ledge. Just multiply that experience many times and you'll be a champion. Do you climb in teams?"
     Tony answered in a matter-of-fact style that hid his caculation. "Not so far. We have climbed only in pairs, and I have always been the second. My teacher gives me passing grades in dynamic belay, so there's a fair chance my lead climber will get up top safe and sound."
     Emil Soderman was overjoyed. "How would you like to show off for me on a cliff of your choice?"
     "I'd be flattered, but I'm afraid it's quite a drive. I've been training near Franconia Notch."
     "No problem," Emil assured him. "What do you think about picking me up a week from Monday, early in the morning, say around 5 o'clock; we can return the same evening if you don't mind night driving. I hate to take off weekend days, because it's important for me to keep my eyes on the Buddies. You know what they say the mice do when the cat's away?"
     Tony readily agreed to the schedule and discussed equipment. He'd take care of the climbing gear, from "rope to nuts," as he put it. Emil, however, should be sure to bring hiking shoes as well as the specialized footwear for the climb because there'd be long trails to the base of the cliff and down the back of the hill.
     When the settlement house closed for the day, Tony accompanied Soderman to the parking lot. Emil was struck by a sudden thought.
     "Where can I call you if I have to change our plans?"
     "Actually, I'd rather you didn't," Tony replied, pinching the bridge of his nose as he spoke, so that his gold wedding band (now the genuine article) would show. "I work out of my home and my wife - God bless her - is very possessive of my spare time. I can't say I blame her, because I'm on the road a lot. She'd be pretty upset if she knew I was taking off a day for a little old-fashioned male bonding."
     "That's the trouble with women," Emil commented. "How did you manage to get in your practice sessions?"
     "I had to take her along," Tony explained, parrying the first personal inquiry Soderman had ever made. "But I'm going to have a lot of trouble selling her on advanced lessons."
     "It sounds to me like you need a good marital counselor, and if that doesn't work, an even better divorce lawyer. But the New Hampshire trip will be our little secret. Even my secretary won't know where the hell I've gone if your little wife sends her spies around." Emil unlocked his car door, waved with finality so that Tony would not debate about married bliss, and drove away.

*          *          *
     Wholly apart from the death plays, Tony Trask was having a banner year at Fenster. For the month of February, for example, Tony's name appeared in a list of the top six commission producers in the main office. When the roster circulated in the intra-office bulletin, Bill Gagliano came tearing around the partition and peppered Tony with questions about the stocks he had been pushing. To get Bill out of his hair, Tony mentioned a couple of companies that were definitely stale news.
     Even when he was alone with his own thoughts, Tony had no explanation for the sudden upturn his commission business had taken. It wasn't that he had such great ideas about the market; for the past several months he had saved all his original research ideas for the death plays. During regular office hours, he generally hawked the stocks that were on Fenster's recommended list, and for some reason clients, even the cold calls, were suddenly listening to him and following his advice without much resistance. Maybe, without knowing it, he had bolstered his sales pitch with a new authoritative manner born of his triumph in Grantley Enterprises and the other more complicated death plays that had followed.
     Returning to the office on the Monday after he made the rock-climbing date with Emil Soderman, Tony was determined to put in a solid week at the office; he would lose the following Monday in New Hampshire and wanted to keep on top of his business. Barely acknowledging the greetings of a few other early-arriving salesmen, he headed straight to his desk. The messaging image was activated on the face of his phone, so he entered his code and listened.
     There were two messages. The first was from Johnnie Fowler asking him to call. Deciding to face the music, Tony erased the message and pressed Johnnie's number in the phone's memory bank. Johnnie's sleepy voice came on.
     "Hey, John, I'm returning your call. Tony Trask."
     Fowler was at once fully awake, and he got right to the point. "Tony, I'm glad you called. Listen, this volatile market's making me nervous. What do you say about putting a stop-loss order on my Consolidated Tools so that if the price drops 15% we sell out automatically?"
     Just what I needed, Tony thought, but he had had the same conversation so often that he went on automatic pilot: "Are you planning to be out of the country, Johnnie?" "No," his customer admitted.
     "Well, then it'll be better just to stay in touch. I like the market right now, and I don't think you have any reason to be concerned. But anyway I don't like stop-loss orders. If you put your trigger in at 15% and the price suddenly falls through the floor you could take a loss much bigger than you had in mind. It's better to keep in touch with me."
     "That'll work just fine if I can ever reach you in time." Johnnie sounded a little peeved but that was nothing new.
     "Don't worry, John, I'll be around, nose to the old grindstone." He hung up before Fowler could continue the pointless conversation.
     The second message on Tony's phone was from Dom Gazzetta, Fenster's inside counsel and compliance officer. Dom's voice said simply: "Tony, this is Dom. Could you please drop in and see me for a minute on Monday morning?"
     Around 9 o'clock Tony went around to Gazzetta's office, which was close to one of the outside aisles of the bullpen. Barney Fenster wanted his salesmen to know that the house dick was watching.
     "Good morning, Dom, what can I do you for?" Tony did not take a seat, making it plain that he expected the meeting to be short.
     Dom had a sober look on his face. "You better sit down for a minute, Tony, I've got something to show you." When Tony complied, the in-house lawyer picked up an envelope from his desk and said, "This letter came in for you on Saturday. The cashier called it to my attention."
     Fenster, like most brokerage firms, had a policy requiring that all incoming mail addressed to salesmen should be opened by the back office before distribution. The main idea behind the procedure was to prevent unscrupulous registered reps from diverting checks intended for the firm, but Barney Fenster had ordered his cashier to give at least a cursory look at all the salesmen's mail, even if it did not accompany any payments. He wanted to make sure that any letters containing customer complaints would come to the attention of management.
     Dom Gazzetta handed the letter to Tony. The envelope was addressed in printed capitals and the same style was used in the letter:
TONY,
YOU CAN'T AVOID ME JUST BY GETTING AN UNLISTED NUMBER. MY INSTRUCTIONS ARE UNCHANGED. I LOOK FORWARD TO YOUR ANSWER.
     The letter was unsigned. Tony put it back in the envelope, which he did not offer to return to Gazzetta. Instead, he snapped, "Do you mind telling me why the cashier is reading my personal mail?"
     Dom was a little apologetic. "You know the policy, Tony; it's in the office manual. We look at all incoming correspondence. This one looks a little different, you'd have to admit that."
     Tony had always found Dom to be a little insecure, not necessarily the best qualification for a compliance officer, so he bullied him. "It's a personal note that's none of Fenster's goddamn business. I didn't see any complaints in the letter about my trades, did you?" He pounded his fist on Gazzetta's desk for emphasis.
     Dom tried to be conciliatory. "Of course, I didn't see any references to your Fenster business. But then you could hardly call the letter self-explanatory, could you? I'd be grateful if you could tell me what it's about - not for the record, of course, but I'd like your confirmation that this is a personal message. Then I can forget about it."
     Gazzetta just wanted to cover his ass, and Tony was more than willing to help: "If you must know, it's from a girl I used to date before I started going with Donna. She hasn't taken my marriage in very good grace."
     "Ah, fatal attraction," Gazzetta remarked, wanting to say something to cover the blush that he felt coming on. Not wanting to make matters easier for him, Tony left his office without giving the compliance officer any indication that his anger over the invasion of his privacy had been appeased.
     For the moment, Gazzetta wouldn't be a problem, but there was no telling when the next message would arrive or what it would say. The blackmailer - if that was his game - was getting to be a nuisance and would have to be dealt with. And dealt with he would be, Tony could promise him that; he was well on his way to pulling off his best death play, and he had plenty of time and resourcefulness to face this new challenge as well. It was a help, though, that Soderman had left him a whole week free before the New Hampshire trip.
     At Bleecker Street that night Tony began by putting his thoughts in order, beginning at square one. The first step was to prepare an all-inclusive list of suspects, that is, of everyone who knew or might know about the Rose Properties deal. He omitted Donna, not that she deserved, as his wife, an automatic exemption from suspicion, but only because he had ruled her out after a conversation at dinner.
     "Uncle Damon says I can draw my profits out of the Swiss accounts at any time. Would you like me to put some of the money in your name, either here or overseas? It might be a smart move, you know, just if something goes wrong." He was hoping she would turn him down because he had already withdrawn as much as the Swiss would allow and salted the funds away where Donna wouldn't have a prayer of finding them.
     In fact, Donna couldn't have cared less. "Do whatever you think is best," she had replied. "Just be sure that the money's been sent to the best laundry."
     Donna wasn't one of the world's great actresses so Tony felt she had passed the test. There was no reason to doubt that she trusted him to share the death play proceeds.
     It would be even more foolish to suspect Uncle Damon. He appeared to be immensely wealthy, and in any event was the ultimate source of the funds from which the blackmailer was hoping to chisel a payoff. What point would there be of working out a bonus for Tony, as Damon had done on Rose Properties, only to grab some of the money back by a petty (and somewhat amateurish) extortion scheme?
     Tony proceeded with his list. The blackmailer had to be a lot poorer than Damon and much more willing to take risks. What about that cretin Bill Gagliano, who always had his ear to the wall-divider trying to hear what stocks Tony was touting? Bill was an unlikely candidate for two reasons. Tony had taken great pains not to bring any printed materials on his death plays to the office; he had done his hard-copy research at the public library and made all of his phone calls to the investment ring from Bleecker Street. An even more persuasive reason for discarding Gagliano was Bill's knowledge of the Fenster procedures for monitoring correspondence; he would never have risked sending the idiotic note that had been intercepted by the cashier.
     That reasoning brought him to a group of suspects worthier of more serious consideration, the hit-man Fred and the confederates Tony had never met, Millie, her husband, and - who knows? - cast of thousands. They were all small-timers and it would be believable that they might want to supplement their irregular earnings with a little blackmail. Then, too, Fred had suggested that Millie might be mad about being prevented from selling the stolen limo. Tony picked up the phone and called Florida.
     Fred came on and seemed happy to hear from Tony. "How are you doing, young fella? Do you have another assignment?"
     "I might have in the not too distant future," Tony said, "so I just wanted to check in with you. Everything all right on your end?"
     "Couldn't be better. As I told you before, it was a real pleasure to do business with a man who knows what he's doing."
     "And was Millie happy with the deal as well?"
     Fred laughed. "If you're worrying about the limo, you can forget it. I explained everything to her, and she was more than satisfied. Millie and I have been working together for years, and she's not going to get short-sighted on me now."
     Tony needed more assurance than that. "And did she feel she made out all right financially?"
     "You mean on your deal? Look, Mr. Trask, that's my problem, not yours. I set the fee, we upped it when there were some unexpected trimmings, and you paid without fighting me. If there's one thing I can't stand, it's haggling. But when clients treat me right, I can guarantee them I've marked their bills paid in full; and that goes for me and for anyone else I've brought into the deal. That's what I call being professional. I hope you haven't been fretting about Millie; it would be a terrible waste of time."
     Tony was impressed with the man's shrewdness; maybe he'd underestimated him. "I haven't been exactly worrying about it," he told Fred, "but what you say is very reassuring. I don't know how my situation here is going to develop, but I'll keep you in mind."
     "That would be very complimentary, if you would do that, but no matter how things work out, you've paid us all in full, as I just said. And it was nice to hear from you again."
     When Fred hung up, Tony was left with a dilemma. He wanted to believe the assurances he had been given, but if he did, he was in danger of running out of suspects. Unless he had overlooked someone. He reviewed his list again and again, and no matter how many variations he tried, his thoughts kept coming back to Damon Marzo and his associates. Maybe there were some leaks in the trading network, some disloyal lower-level employees in the banks or brokerage houses the Swiss were using; Tony hoped he was wrong in this supposition because he would have an almost hopeless task identifying the traitors. First of all, a formidable obstacle would be presented by the impossibility of taking Marzo into his confidence. After making such a show of supreme confidence, Tony couldn't bring himself to confess that he had endangered the ring's operations by laying himself open to blackmail. It wouldn't help any even if the guilty party turned out to be someone who had worked with their group before.
     These speculations turned Tony's thoughts in a new direction. It was close to 10 o'clock when he called Marzo at home. Before he could get a word out, Damon pressed him about the "closing" schedule on Jox, and Tony reported that next week they would probably see the deal behind them. He then steered the conversation where he wanted it to go.
     "I was actually calling for some personal advice, Mr. Marzo."
     "What's up?" asked Uncle Damon. Tony regretted the phrasing of his own question, because Damon's strained tone suggested that he expected to hear of marital difficulties.
     "It's nothing urgent," Tony said to repair the damage. "I'm just getting snowed under with all my personal business on top of the office work. How much do you think I would have to pay a good full-time bookkeeper with a college education - like your Benny Vitale?"
     Damon was highly amused. "What makes you think Benny's a college man? I don't think he even finished high school; even when he uses a calculator, he moves his lips. But in other ways, he's a pretty smart guy."
     The tuxedo Benny was wearing that rainy night, the white scarf, the story about the college reunion. A lie; Benny was leading a double life.
     "Okay, let's forget the college degree. Maybe I'm just being a snob, and anyway Benny seems to be doing fine for you without a lot of education. How much do you have to pay him, if I may ask?"
     "Thirty thousand," Damon answered. "Plus a few extras. I don't believe in spoiling my associates unless they're pretty smart and have married into my family. See you, Tony."
     Thirty thousand. Not an awful big salary to support a bookkeeper's taste for New York night spots where tuxedos were the right attire, a taste that was fishy enough for Benny to conceal it with the lie about the reunion.
     Tony walked to the night table near his bed; the table staggered on a splayed leg as he opened the door. The gun was still there; although his college enthusiasm for marksmanship had left him, the weapon made it a lot easier to sleep with peace of mind on Bleecker Street. Maybe he would put it to a new use.
     But first he needed to be certain, and there was only one way to proceed. Obedient to the blackmailer's phone message, Tony lifted the shade on the living room window nearest the corner of the street.

 

 
 

Chapter 9


     It was Mark Braun's first phone call to an investigative target and he was going to make the most of it, taking Dr. Cardon by surprise in the hope of forcing a spontaneous confession. He reached the psychiatrist at his office in mid-morning.
     "Hello, Dr. Cardon, this is Mark Braun. I'm with the Division of Enforcement of the Securities and Exchange Commission in Washington. I have a few questions to ask you."
     There was a dead silence at the other end as if the connection had been severed. Then Dr. Cardon replied in a hushed, almost funereal tone: "I can't talk with you at the moment. I'm with a patient."
     "That's perfectly all right; when will you be free?"
     "I have appointments through 9 p.m."
     "Fine," Mark said, "I'll call you then. It's important for us to talk today." Before Cardon had a chance to protest, Braun hung up. The surprise tactic hadn't panned out, but maybe it was even better for the psychiatrist to spend the next ten hours sweating. Cardon's patients were not likely to receive much attention to their woes today, but that was an example of what the military called "collateral damage."
     Mark called back on the stroke of 9:00 so that Cardon would not be tempted to sneak out of his office, putting off the inevitable. After hearing the doctor's faint voice, Mark said "I want to talk to you about your purchases of Rose Properties shares."
     Silence. Then Cardon, barely audible, murmured: "I can't discuss that with you." "Why is that?"
     The explanation was astonishing: "Doctor-patient privilege."
     Mark let his amusement show when he replied: "I am familiar with many courses of psychiatric treatment, Doctor, but I have never heard of stock therapy. I suggest you reconsider your answer so we don't start off on the wrong foot."
     Dr. Cardon, though, was adamant. "I'm not prepared to argue with you about my professional responsibilities."
     "O.K.," Braun said, "have it your way. You don't have to talk to me if you don't want to. We'll expect you down in Washington in the office of my assistant director Thursday at 11 a.m."
     "That's out of the question," Cardon insisted. "I'll be with patients."
     "I'm afraid they'll have to do without you for the day. It would be best for you to cooperate so that we don't have to put you to the embarrassment of accepting service of a subpoena in your waiting room."
     "You'll hear from my lawyer." Cardon promised, his voice regaining volume. 
     Mark responded calmly "That might be the best thing that could happen. I'd suggest you find somebody with SEC experience who can advise you about our criminal remedies."
     "I don't need your advice," said the psychiatrist as he slammed down the phone.

*          *          *
     The reply to Tony's signal of apparent capitulation appeared in his Bleecker Street mailbox when he emptied it after the market closed on Thursday. The printing of the curt message was identical to that used in the letter addressed to him at Fenster:
LEAVE $5,000 IN SMALL DENOMINATIONS ON CABINET ABOVE MIDDLE TOILET SEAT MEN'S ROOM GRYPHON RESTAURANT NEAR NINTH AVENUE 10 PM FRIDAY. THE FOOD IS GOOD. ARRIVE ALONE. LEAVE IMMEDIATELY.
     Tony did not follow the instructions in their entirety as he prepared to leave for the rendezvous the next evening. To swell the sides of the padded mailing envelope he intended to deliver, he inserted, page by page, two weekday issues of the Times, and added strips of cardboard from his newly laundered shirts. On top of this ballast he slid in the light cargo of a one-dollar bill, clipped to a single sheet from his telephone memo pad. In screaming headlines that parodied the blackmailer's capitals, his memo offered this sentiment: FUCK YOU.
     Before he turned out the lights, a sudden impulse brought him back into the bedroom. He opened the night table drawer and took out his gun, cradling it in his hand. It was a 22 caliber single-action semiautomatic. While the dealer who sold the pistol to him had praised its technical performance, Tony had admired its concealability. He couldn't have told himself why at the time, but now he was pleased to be able to slip the weapon into a deep pocket of his raincoat without worrying about its bulk. Of course, he would keep the coat at his restaurant table. It was doubtful that he would have occasion to use the gun tonight, but it was a comfort to him to feel its weight as the panels of his coat swung with his movements.
     The Gryphon restaurant, Tony found, was never going to be listed in Zagat's guide. By the time he arrived - close to 9:00 - the place was close to deserted, as if the clientele had been tipped to an impending raid by the Health Department. The menu, gravy-stained, had a Mideast inspiration featuring grape leaves with just about everything, and the best that could be said of the service was that it was unobtrusive. The prices were reasonable enough but that was not necessarily good news: perhaps the blackmailer was saving Tony's money for his own exactions.
     Tony ordered only baklava and Greek coffee. The slovenly waiter sneered at him as he retrieved the menu. In revenge for the minimal tip he was expecting, he vanished for close to half an hour before turning up with a square of unyielding pastry and an acidic demitasse. As he stabbed at the baklava, uncertain about the wisdom of bringing any of it to his mouth, Tony continued to survey the room from his centrally placed table. Nearby a fat man with hooded eyes and a large black mole on his right cheek sat reading a Greek-American paper; he had been there when Tony came in and had taken no notice of him. Two young women sat near the window, bending forward in whispered conversation. In an adjoining room a birthday party for a sullen little boy in a dark suit seemed to be winding down. In all the time he had been there, Tony had not seen anyone move toward the restrooms which he had noticed on arriving were located in a short side corridor near the cloakroom.
     Tony paid his bill around 9:45 and bravely asked for a refill of the poisonous coffee. A few minutes before 10:00 he put on his raincoat, took his package from beneath the table, and walked towards the front of the restaurant. As he passed the cloakroom, the attendant, a slim girl in a low-belted miniskirt smiled at him though he had evaded her services. He turned down the corridor to his left and pushed open the door to the men's room. There was nobody in sight and he bent low to confirm that the three toilet stalls were also vacant. Satisfied that he was alone, he entered the middle stall and placed his envelope on top of the ceramic wall cabinet. He didn't hear anyone enter the men's room after him, but taking every precaution, he flushed the toilet for the sake of realism and crouched below the level of the partition for about the time it would have taken him to adjust his clothing. Emerging from the stall, he found that the men's room was still empty, and the corridor outside was also quiet. Instead of heading for the street door, as the blackmailer had instructed him, Tony straddled a stool at the dimly lighted bar that faced the end of the corridor. He ordered an ouzo and kept an eye on the men's room door.
     For about 20 minutes, Tony sat there sipping his milky drink and nobody entered the men's room, except for the birthday boy, looking no happier than he had in the midst of the festivities. A few minutes later the kid came out empty-handed, which was no surprise, since he didn't look like an underworld courier and probably couldn't have reached the wall cabinet anyway. To make sure he was right on both counts, Tony, after checking to see that nobody else was coming up the corridor, slid off his bar stool and strode quickly to the men's room. He reentered the middle stall and felt around for the package on top of the wall cabinet. It was gone.
     Tony came back out and turned on the faucet at one of the two sinks. Rinsing his hands like a compulsive washer, Tony examined the setup of the room more carefully. Near the next sink a locked door was set into the wall. When he had given a cursory look around before, he had assumed it was a closet, but now Tony knew better. It must lead into rooms behind the restaurant. That was the way someone had entered without his being aware, and it was through the same door that someone had left with his package. Obviously, whoever handled the pickup knew the restaurant management a hell of a lot better than Tony did.
     Tony left a five dollar bill on the bar and left the Gryphon. He loitered around Ninth Avenue for an hour but while he was watching, nobody left the restaurant except the fat man with his newspaper flattened under his arm.
     Tony hailed a cab and gave the address of Donna's apartment. She had already gone to bed so he fixed himself a scotch to wash away the sickly taste of ouzo. He sat in a winged armchair that Donna had bought for him after the wedding and brooded about the blackmailer. He had learned nothing at the Gryphon to bolster his suspicion of Vitale or to give him any other better theory for that matter. He didn't have a lot of time to let the problem fester, either. Monday he would be leaving for New Hampshire with Soderman. In the meantime, his challenge to the blackmailer could bring another letter into Fenster's hopper and it might carry a much more explicit message that Tony couldn't explain away so easily.
     He had to test his Vitale hunch; there had to be some way to place him at the Gryphon. The guy wasn't invisible, and he couldn't be as smart as he thought he was. Come to think of it, how stupid could you be laying a blackmail note right in the hands of the Fenster compliance officer.
     Tony sat in his chair for hours, rising only for a second and then a third drink. It would have been better (he knew that) to get a good night's sleep and to awaken with the cobwebs swept away, but he couldn't get the problem out of his mind. It had been the same at college when he had an algebra problem he couldn't seem to fathom; but then it had been the little pills instead of the scotch.
     It was almost dawn when the idea came to him: the weakest link, he had to go for the weakest link, not everybody would have been clued into Vitale's rendezvous. His mind at rest, he finally went to bed; Donna groaned a little when he slid under the sheets but she did not turn towards him.
     Precisely at noon on Saturday Tony called the Gryphon from a telephone booth. "I'd like to speak to the checkroom girl, please." When a woman was put on the line, he asked:
     "Were you handling the checkroom last night?" He knew it was an unnecessary question. The Gryphon wasn't the kind of place that would have a lot of depth at any position.
     "Yes, I was," the woman said. The crack of chewing gum exploded in Tony's ears.
     "I'm Benny Vitale's assistant. He asked me to have you look to see whether he left his scarf behind last night."
     There was a sigh. "The famous white scarf? I'll bet he feels naked without it. But you tell Benny he didn't check it with me. He marched right into the boss's office without as much as saying hello; he must have left his scarf there. It's amazing what people will do to save a buck. Just kidding, of course."
     "Thanks a lot," Tony said. He really meant it.
     "Should I ask the boss to look for the scarf?"
     "Don't bother," Tony answered, guessing that the woman would be happy not to budge from the stool where he had come upon her last night, buffing her irridescent nails. "Benny must be wrong. The scarf's probably on a hook in his own closet."
     Or around Benny's neck, where Tony would pull it tight.

*          *          *
     David Chen, Dr. Cardon's Washington lawyer, had been negotiating with the SEC for several days. His first tactic 
was to try going over Mark Braun's head but Jebb firmly rebuffed him, telling him that the investigation at this stage was in his young subordinate's hands. Chen then descended on Mark unannounced and found him in conference with Arthur Drenik, who was introduced to him as a special agent of the FBI. After identifying his client, Chen began to drop a hailstorm of names he could call on both at the agency and on the Hill; but when that gimmick didn't work either, he saw that the case would require some hard-ball lawyering. First, he told Braun that everything he said was to be off the record and, second, he wasn't going to say a damn thing unless the FBI agent was excluded from their meeting. Mark protested the latter condition for the sake of appearances but he wasn't unhappy about sacrificing Drenik. All Art had to do was start tossing around threats of a racketeering prosecution and he'd set back the inquiry for weeks.
     When Mark agreed to Chen's terms, the lawyer also asked for a postponement of the SEC interview with Dr. Cardon until the following Monday so he would have time to make a preliminary investigation of the facts and work out the ground rules. 
     Mark responded, "I don't have authority to agree to a postponement at this point, but it might be possible to accommodate you if we seem to be making progress in the meantime. I want to have your professional assurances that your client will cooperate with the investigation."
     David Chen lost his temper. Zipping his briefcase to dramatize his flat-out rejection of Braun's proposal, he raised his voice: "You're not entitled to anything. You guys have the nerve to call the doctor out of the blue, hoping that he'll say something silly before he reaches his lawyer. You're going to hear a lot more about that if I find we can't do business together. And don't push me too far, because I might decide to advise the client to plead the Fifth. I think you'd find it's not as easy to bully a doctor into giving up his constitutional rights as it is when you're going after broker-dealers."
     Mark kept his head although he was not taking an instant liking to Chen. "You may be right about that, Mr. Chen, from a technical point of view, but pleading the Fifth never looks good in the papers, whatever profession you're in. I'm afraid, though, that we're getting off on the wrong track. You talked about needing time to investigate the facts. Let's see if I can help you out at all.
     "Your client has a securities account with a discount brokerage firm. According to our information, he generally makes small purchases of equities in transactions running from $5,000 to $10,000. Then in the first week of March of this year, he placed two 5,000 share orders for the purchase of Rose Properties stock, for a total purchase price of over $150,000. Within a week the chief executive of Rose was murdered, execution style, in Central Park and the company's stock took off on news of a change in business strategy on the part of the victim's successor. Your client immediately sold out and we figure his profit at close to 40%. Not bad for a two-week investment, wouldn't you agree?"
     David Chen said nothing, but he had reopened his briefcase and was taking notes, but not at such a feverish pace as would reflect more than casual interest.
     "Now what we want to know is how did a respectable psychiatrist like Dr. Cardon receive advance information about Rose Properties that enabled him to profit enormously on a murder."
     Chen sprang to his feet. "Is the SEC pursuing Dr. Cardon for participation in a murder plot?" Mark remained seated and continued to talk unemotionally. "There's no reason to get excited. Murder's not within our jurisdiction. I guess your question would be better presented to the FBI, but you didn't want Drenik to stick around. Speaking for myself, I think what would interest the Commission most is to find out how the doctor was tipped about Rose Properties."
     Two days later Chen phoned Mark Braun to outline a deal. "I want to pose a hypothetical question," he said by way of introduction.
     "I'm listening," Mark replied.
     "Suppose my client were able to tell you that he learned there was a lot of informed interest in Rose Properties stock; that he didn't know why, but he had reason to believe the investor or investors had a good track record; that the person who mentioned Rose Properties to him is a patient; and that he might be willing to disclose the patient's name. Suppose also, just for the sake of discussion, that my client, while acknowledging no personal wrongdoing, would disgorge all his profits on Rose stock and would also agree to a lie-detector test to rule out his involvement in the murder. Would all that spell immunity?"
     "It would spell a good beginning," Mark said noncommittally, "and would also get your interview postponed until Monday."

*          *          *
     It was only when they stopped for gas at a service plaza on Interstate 91 that Emil Soderman noticed the rental company logo on the trunk. A little embarrassed, he told Tony Trask: "You didn't have to go to the trouble of renting a car for the trip; I could have used one of mine."
     "No problem," Tony assured him. "I'll be needing it when I can get back to the city." The comment was, in fact, perfectly true.
     The weather couldn't have been worse; it rained in buckets all the way to the town of Franconia, where they lunched at an eighteenth-century inn surrounded by cottages set in a pine grove. The rain was unrelenting so they quickly agreed to check into the inn for the night and to postpone the climb until the next morning for which sunny skies were predicted. Tony wasn't at all happy about the change in plans, because it was risky to place his name, even a false one, on the hotel's books and to increase the number of people who might remember the young man who had been in Soderman's company. Still, Tony could think of no alternative.
     After registering at the desk, Tony guided his companion on a driving tour of the area with which Soderman was unfamiliar, since he did most of his climbing up the formidable cliffs of Yosemite; time and again he would return to the same rocks, devising ever more challenging scaling techniques and even venturing on solo ascents against the strong advice of the local experts. Today, though, the two men remained anchored to the level ground; they paid the obligatory visit to the Old Man of the Mountain and walked along the boardwalk of the granite gorge called the Flume. A short drive out of Franconia brought them to Robert Frost's farm where Soderman surprised Tony by launching into extensive quotations from two of the famous poems that Frost had composed there.
     Over dinner at the inn, the conversation turned to the inclination that caused some men, and increasingly women as well, to assume the physical risks involved in such sports as rock-climbing. Soderman, who had read the popular literature on the subject, welcomed the opportunity to show off to a neophyte:
     "A lot of the theorizing is pure horseshit, if you want my frank opinion. If you can believe it, you and I have wasted our tax dollars on a seminar of the National Institute of Mental Health which reached the brilliant conclusion that rock-climbers are "sensation-seekers," just like violent criminals. Now tell me the truth, Bart, do you see any connection between rock-climbing and murder?"
     "It seems kind of far-fetched to me," Tony concurred.
     "Well, the explanations these so-called scientists came up with are even sillier than their conclusion. They claim that thrill-seekers lack an enzyme that would make them more cowardly, or that for some reason we athletes are so dumb that we can't make a connection between cause and effect, in other words, that we don't know what happens when we fall hundreds of feet and land on our heads.
     "But what I say is completely different. To me life isn't worth living if you spend all your time protecting yourself. You might as well stay in bed, although, come to think of it, these days that's not always the safest place either."
     "I agree with you absolutely," Tony said as Emil signaled the waiter for their check.
     The next morning was fine as promised. Tony observed with pleasure that there was nothing in Soderman's clothing that would identify him as the champion climber he was. He wore a loose beige sweatshirt that would permit his arms freedom of maneuvre and navy-blue sweatpants that did not advertise their manufacturer. Since he had been told that they would hike along a woodland path before they reached the base of the cliff, Emil wore a pair of sneakers but entrusted to Tony his black leather climbing shoes. He explained with pride that the climbing shoes were made with great care by a Spanish bootmaker, and ran his fingers over their sticky rubber soles designed to adhere to the most treacherous surfaces.
     Tony drove them up the dirt road he had taken many times with his instructor and parked on the grassy fringe of a pine forest about three miles from "Webster's Dictionary." Shouldering their climbing gear, including their changes of shoes, in a large canvas sack, Tony led the way along a shaded path that paralleled the road.
     When they reached the rise of boulders that formed the approach to the triangular ledge at the base of the sheer rock walls, the two men donned their protective apparatus. Before Emil threaded the rope through his waist harness he attached a small cloth bag that dangled from the harness like a good luck charm.
     "What's the bag for?" Tony asked, nonchalant in manner but actually disturbed that there was even this minor detail he had not foreseen.
     "It contains gymnast's chalk," Emil explained. "I apply it to my fingers as I climb to keep them dry and give them a better grip on the rock. It's not necessary for an elementary climb so I'm not surprised if your instructors didn't bother you with it. But, in my opinion, once you've tackled the higher-rated cliffs, you've got to follow all the safety procedures every time you go up. Otherwise you're going to forget someday at the wrong time, and you'll turn into another statistic." He secured the coiled rope around his neck and began the scramble over the boulders. Tony, a little handicapped by the size of his backpack, tried his best to stay close behind.
     When they emerged together at the level rock beneath the cliff walls, Soderman cast his practiced eye around them before approving Tony's choice of a secure anchor for the belay. Only then did he begin to climb, gripping the vertical seam that divided the cliff's rock "pages." About ten yards up he wedged a climbing nut into the fissure and shouted down to Tony, "snapped in." Responding as he had been taught, Tony called back, "on belay," and continued to play out the rope, taking care not to allow any slack. For a while, Tony lost himself in the pure mechanics of his work as if governed by an irrelevant impulse to show an expert climber that he had learned his lessons well.
     This impression did not last long. As Tony involuntarily strengthened his grip on the rope and kept a close watch on Soderman's progress, it seemed to him that the belay was his own life line as well as the lead climber's. The two men were closely linked, not only by a rope, but by all the weeks of Tony's planning and the way it was calculated to end. It was not only pride in his newly acquired skill that moved Tony to maintain his concentration: he was betting everything on Soderman's safe ascent. His own beginner's training was adequate to carrying out the plan as he had conceived it but did not give him any room for improvisation.
     As Emil was planting his sixth climbing nut perhaps twenty-five feet from the summit, his foot dislodged a crystalline excrescence, which came bouncing down the cliff. "Falling!" he warned, but Tony maintained his position at his anchor without flinching because he correctly assessed that the loosened rock would fall harmlessly far to his right.
     Soderman reached the top without further incident.
     Tony watched him anchor the line to a projecting rock and then raised his right hand to signal that he was ready to start his ascent. Emil was as expert in belaying as he was as lead climber, keeping the line tense so he could feel Tony's slightest movement in any direction. As Tony came up, Emil shouted encouragement and instruction. "Twist your hip," he would call so that Tony could reach further, or he would order a "fist jam," directing Tony to wedge his fist into the vertical crevice when it widened out. Tony made a credible show of obedience, but his principal concern was to jar all the climbing nuts loose as he ascended, leaving the cliff as bare as they had found it. His instructors called the process "cleaning the climb" and that was exactly what he wanted to do.
     When Tony crawled the last few feet to reach the summit, Soderman helped pull him to safety.
     "Congratulations," Emil said, "next time you'll be ready for Yosemite."
     "Thanks a lot; with a little bit of valium and a safety net, I might just be willing to give it a try."
     Soderman coiled the climbing rope which he handed to Tony, and then removed his harness. Tony was glad to see that when he stuffed the harness into his canvas sack, the chalk bag was still attached. Since the climbing portion of their excursion was over, the two men changed to their walking shoes and were prepared for a leisurely descent along the back trail. First, though, Tony walked to the edge of the cliff and made a sweeping arm gesture to introduce their panoramic view of the Franconia Notch, the deep cut between the Franconia and Kinsman Mountain ranges. He pointed in the direction of Mounts Lafayette and Lincoln, although from where they stood, the exact location of the peaks had to be taken on faith; turning to the west, he next called attention to the massive wall of Profile Mountain. Soderman stood by Tony's side, entranced by any talk and sight of mountains.
     Sensing that Soderman was close by, Tony continued to face west.
     "If you look a little further in this direction, Emil, I think you'll see the road that brought us here." Soderman squinted for a while, but soon shook his head. "We were farther north, I think. If I may quote again from Robert Frost, Tony, I think you've pointed out 'the road not taken."'
     Laughing at his own joke, Soderman did not see Tony move quickly behind him and shove him forward with two stiff-arms to his shoulder blades. Emil didn't have a chance to regain his balance. As he plummeted towards the rocky base below, Tony called contemptuously after him: "Falling!"
 

 
 

Chapter 10


     After opening Damon Marzo's Long Island City office early Monday morning, Benny Vitale closed the door of his office so that he could talk undisturbed with his secretary, Marcia Peppers. She was at least a head taller than he, but he didn't mind; he liked a woman who stood out in a crowd. He had been seeing quite a bit of Marcia lately and she was costing him a lot more than he earned from his tight-fisted employer. She understood that, of course, and it hadn't been too hard to persuade her to help him balance the budget of their high-flying social life. He always made a point of showing her their restaurant bill before he handed the waiter his credit card; to this simple routine, repeated like clockwork, plus occasional gifts of discounted designer clothes and one furtive cruise of the Caribbean, he owed her unwavering loyalty.
     "Here's the script," he told Marcia, inviting her to use his phone. "At the top I've written his direct-dial number at Fenster."
     When Marcia had looked over the message, she had a suggestion. "You mention Rose Properties but not the deal he's working on now. Shouldn't we throw that in as well?"
     Vitale scowled and pushed the phone across the desk to her. "How about leaving the thinking to me," he suggested.
     "I wouldn't say you've done too well so far, mastermind. All we've got to show for all your messages is a note that tells you to fuck yourself."
     Benny didn't want to quarrel with her; it might ruin the emotionless telephone voice she had perfected after hours of coaching. "O.K., let me explain why we can't talk about Jox, at least not now. Marzo's got a lot of cash riding on that deal, and it isn't finished yet. We don't want to screw things up for Marzo, do we?"
     "Have it your way," Marcia said and dialed the number. Benny gave her encouraging nods as she read his words. Hello, Tony. I hope you got a big charge out of your joke because it's going to cost you plenty. The price is up to $10,000 and the deadline is this Friday night. Leave your package at 10:00 P.M. Friday - real money this time, please - in the men's room of Carl's Restaurant, West 87th Street, first stall on the left as you enter. Unless you follow these instructions, the police will be told about Rose Properties. Don't be foolish, Tony.
     Benny patted her shoulder. "That'll do it," he said confidently.

*          *          *
     Dr. Cardon's meeting with the SEC had begun late on Monday because of air travel delays and had to be continued on the next morning. In addition to giving the doctor a good long look at the prison photograph on his office wall, Jebb tried to overawe the psychiatrist with the sheer numbers the government was ready to throw into the investigation. Overriding David Chen's objections, the assistant director invited Art Drenik and another FBI agent to participate in the meeting, and also brought in many of his own staffers for some of the discussions. Before their Monday session broke up, Jebb even orchestrated a brief appearance by the Director of Enforcement to impress on Cardon how seriously the higher echelons of the SEC regarded the case.
     By the early evening the outlines of a deal were beginning to take shape, pretty much in accord with the proposal that David Chen had made the week before. The SEC staff was close to unanimous in concluding that the doctor had been greedy in acting on his patient's tip but had no deeper involvement than that. Disgorgement of his profits would teach him a financial lesson, but the entry of a civil injunction against future trading abuses would serve as an appropriate reminder that the psychiatrist should keep his mind on sex and the unconscious. David Chen argued at length against the injunction. What had his client done wrong? He had not received any information from company insiders about Rose Properties; unwittingly, he invested in a stock that turned out to be the target of some kind of criminal plot that still remained foggy.
     The SEC team remained firm and Chen finally agreed to the injunction. He acknowledged, as well, that a grant of criminal immunity would be premature because the murder investigation was ongoing.
     Jebb then proceeded to the wrap-up. "David, I believe that should take care of all the procedural points. We ought to be ready now for Dr. Cardon's disclosure of his source."
     Chen consulted in whispers with his client and then nodded. "O.K., but I want to reconfirm our understanding first. The doctor will identify his patient but will not repeat what the patient told him. That remains subject to Dr. Cardon's claim of professional privilege."
     "That's the deal," Jebb acknowledged, "but we make no promises for the future; at the present time we've agreed to disagree as to whether the privilege applies."
     "That is satisfactory," Chen answered. "O.K., Dr. Cardon, go ahead."
     Lost for hours amidst the legal wrangling, Alex Cardon reasserted his presence. "The name of my patient who mentioned Rose Properties to me was Donna Marzo, Mrs. Anthony Trask. The conversation in question occurred in the course of psychiatric treatment." In accordance with his attorney's agreement, the doctor gave her residence address, place of employment, and telephone numbers.
     Mark Braun maintained his best poker face as he scribbled a note for Jebb. The name Marzo had often cropped up in connection with the SEC's investigation of Operation Haven.
     After reading Braun's message, Jebb inquired, "Is your patient by any chance a relative of a Mr. Damon Marzo?"
     "She's his niece," Chen answered for Dr. Cardon, "but that's all the information we are prepared to supply pursuant to our agreement. Anything else you may want to know you'll have to learn from Mrs. Trask."
     Before he could reply, Jebb was interrupted by a call from his secretary on the intercom. He had just received an urgent FAX from Boston. Jebb excused himself, and when he returned after a few minutes, he hastily adjourned the meeting, telling Chen that he would call him when there was further need for Dr. Cardon's assistance.
     When Chen and his client were gone, Jebb's secretary distributed copies of the FAX to Braun and Drenik. The message was from the assistant regional administrator who oversaw enforcement matters in the SEC's Boston office. The FAX transmitted a newspaper article reporting the apparent suicide of Emil Soderman, the chief executive of Jox Corp. The SEC had been watching Jox shares closely because of extraordinary trading volume in recent weeks.
     The article reported that Soderman, a celebrated rock-climber, was found at the base of a cliff once popular with beginners but long abandoned in favor of other ascents in the area of Franconia Notch. First indications were that Soderman could not have fallen in the course of a climb. The cliff was not tough enough to have challenged him, and in any event he was not using a rope or wearing climber's gear; even his shoes were ordinary sneakers. Speculation has therefore turned to the possibility that Soderman walked up a back trail to the top of the rock and then fell or jumped to his death. Mr. Soderman's company had fared poorly in recent times due to public controversies in which he was embroiled, and certain financial experts contacted in New York had mentioned the possibility of suicide.
     An element of mystery, though, was provided by a report from a Franconia inn that Soderman spent Monday night with a young man named Barton Andrews. The two men checked out early Tuesday morning, but nobody was able to confirm whether they left the inn together. Mr. Soderman's body was found by a hiker in the early afternoon.
     Jebb waited for Braun and Drenik to finish reading the article and then requested their comments. 
     Art was the first to speak. "I've been taking a back seat to you guys for the last two days, but isn't it time for the FBI to get back into the act. Doesn't this sound an awful lot like Rose Properties all over again?"
     Mark Braun, for one, concurred. Without any wrangling over jurisdiction, it was agreed that he and Drenik would take a Wednesday morning flight to New Hampshire.

*          *          *
     Bill Gagliano, swaying from the third martini he had downed with a potential customer who had slipped the hook, signed in at the night desk and took the elevator up to his office. Nobody was in the bullpen except two young salesmen who were plodding through their cold call lists, defeat stamped on their faces. If Bill's heart went out to them, it was only because of the heavy load of alcohol his blood vessels were carrying. When sober, he had enough to worry about without wasting sympathy on other salesmen.
     It had been a lousy year, promising to be the worst since he had moved to Fenster from a larger firm that had collapsed in the wake of incessant SEC charges. The previous year had started out just as badly but Gagliano had run up spectacular winter earnings, boosted by piggybacking on Tony Trask's Grantley Enterprises brainstorm. At first he had underrated Tony but there was no denying the little nerd sometimes seemed to come up with great ideas. If only he hadn't gotten so damn secretive; he always acted as if Gagliano were spying on his conversations and if Bill ever asked what he was working on, he would abruptly change the subject.
     Gagliano wondered what Tony was up to now. He walked around the partition but was disappointed to find that his neighbor's desk top was clear and the drawers locked. On the display screen of Tony's phone, though, the image of a bell appeared, indicating that voice messages had been received. Bill looked down the aisle of the bullpen to confirm that both the salesmen had their backs to him. He then entered Tony's code. What a fool to choose such an elementary combination, 0909; time and again Gagliano had watched him punch in the four digits to bring their conversations to a close.
     The computer voice confirmed that there were 15 messages. The number was not surprising, because Tony had been away since Friday. Bill pressed the key that ordered the playback of the first call. It had been received at 8:00 a.m. on Monday morning, long before the retail department opened; Gagliano kept the phone to his ear while the computer disk was activated.
     Then the caller began to speak. It was a woman talking slowly in a monotone. What Gagliano heard jolted him out of his alcoholic haze, particularly the woman's final threat about Rose Properties.
     Gagliano dropped the receiver and lurched back to his desk. He was thinking more lucidly now, but that didn't make it much easier deciding what should be done. Notifying Dom Gazzetta would be about the biggest mistake he could make. The compliance officer, whose main purpose in life was to grope through the work day without getting into trouble, would tell Bill to mind his own business or even report him for eavesdropping. What about an anonymous call to the police? They'd think he was a nut and in New York that would be a pretty good guess.
     Then he thought about his brother-in-law, Mark Braun, who worked closely with the FBI on securities crimes. He might know how to use the information without getting Gagliano involved. This seemed like a safer course but Bill decided that, given the three martinis, it was better to sleep on it.
     The next morning Gagliano woke up with a raging headache, but between spasms the conclusion he had reached last night was still intact. Before he left for work he called Mark Braun's house. Sleepily, his sister told him that Mark had left for New Hampshire. She wasn't sure how he could be reached.

*          *          *
     The Jox board was well aware that the fix was in and three outside directors had already made it known that they would resign after they made their statements of protest for the record. To begin with, the dissenting faction regarded it as unseemly that on Wednesday afternoon, the very day after Emil Soderman's tragic death in New Hampshire, they would be convened to elect his successor. The Soderman family had insisted, however, and it was hard to say no to the clan that owned close to two-thirds of the company stock.
     It was not any easier to oppose the nominee proposed by the Sodermans although their choice was outrageous. Emil's youngest brother, Henry, who was to be nominated as the new CEO, had served on the board of directors at his family's behest, but he had no qualifications for a high executive position. After struggling through college he found refuge for a few years in the recesses of a bank where he occupied himself with some minor functions that he could never lucidly explain. In recent years, he was more than happy to live off his Jox dividends and to second any motions that his brother made at board meetings.
     As the first and only matter on the board agenda, Clara Soderman, Emil's mother, proposed Henry's nomination. There was no discussion and Mrs. Soderman, as acting chairman, was about to ask for a show of hands when one of the dissidents asked to be recognized.
     "Mrs. Soderman and Henry, I am not speaking for the record but personally in expressing our grief and condolences. I am sorry, though, that our first meeting together after receiving this dreadful news had to be in this board room. If we would only take the time to let our emotions settle down, we would be in a position to think more clearly and consider all our options. I can well understand why Henry is the first choice of the Soderman family and he is probably the sentimental favorite of many of us here. But we are a public company and cannot afford to be seen as acting hastily. I regret to say again what I have already told the directors informally: If the board approves the proposal without appointing a nominating committee to consider a wider range of candidates, I have no alternative but first to dissent and then to resign."
     Clara Soderman did not reply to this objection but called for the vote. The motion carried 9 to 3; all the dissenters announced their resignations and left the room. Henry Soderman shook hands with his mother and the other remaining directors but then asked for an immediate adjournment. He explained that a press conference was scheduled to begin in an adjoining conference room.
     After a brief introduction by the head of Jox's public relations department, Henry Soderman faced a press corps dominated by sports reporters. He grinned at them and said:
     "I'm the new boy at Jox and I hope to keep the company moving ahead. Any questions?"
     A young woman in the front row had her hand up first: "Mr. Soderman, what do you plan to do to persuade blacks and women to terminate their boycott?"
     The P.R. executive was startled as Henry drew a wrinkled sheet of paper from the inside pocket of his suitcoat and quipped: "As they say in the movies, I'm glad you asked me that." He proceeded to read his handwritten statement, falling into a sing-song cadence that robbed his words of some of the pugnaciousness he intended to convey.
     "My brother Emil was one of the pioneers of modern sports equipment. Many of the world records held today, particularly in track and field, are due to his innovations. He was also a great sports agent and won financial security for champions and journeymen players as well..
     "He did well while doing good, some of you may say, and you'd be absolutely right. When you're smart and hardworking, you might as well get rich because you're sure not going to get any thanks. After years of helping sports and athletes, a bunch of reporters, including one or two I see in this room, blew up some of Emil's off-the-cuff remarks into a so-called discrimination case and have caused a lot of damage to our company. The harm you have done didn't stop there, because sure as I'm standing here, it was the bloodthirsty elements in the press that hounded my brother to his death yesterday."
     "Are you saying your brother committed suicide?" a paunchy man in a loud sportshirt shouted from the back.
     "The facts speak for themselves," Henry retorted.
     "A follow-up, please," the reporter added. "Are you going to negotiate on the boycott's demands for ads retracting your brother's slurs?"
     "Over my dead body," Henry retorted. "They'll have to finish off a second Soderman before they get any apologies from this company. Whatever my brother said I'm backing to the hilt."
     The P.R. man pressed his face into his palms, but recovered quickly to usher his new CEO out of the room.
     But the damage was done. Jox stock was massacred in afternoon trading.

*          *          *
     A philosophical man who liked to generalize, Alex Cardon, waiting in the shuttle lounge at Washington National Airport, reflected on the differences between the practices of law and psychiatry. Attorneys were in the business of talking while psychiatrists were professional listeners who did not necessarily concur in everything they heard. Another characteristic of lawyers was their frequent resort to intimidation; they were forever warning their clients of the dire consequences that would follow if their advice (often inadequately explained) were not followed to the letter.
     David Chen's parting admonition to Cardon, before they took separate cabs from SEC headquarters, was to say nothing to Donna Marzo Trask about their Washington meeting or the government's interest in Rose Properties. The worst disaster that could befall their delicate negotiations with the SEC would be for the doctor to give the agency reason to believe that he had given key witnesses advance warning of the investigation so that they could fabricate their stories or take to the hills.
     What Chen didn't understand was that the doctor was treating him like a patient, appraising his words with respect before coming to his own secret conclusion. The plane would not leave for another twenty minutes, and Cardon had decided that he must call Donna. It was strange that Chen had shown no appreciation for the purely ethical aspect of the doctor's predicament.
     Donna was in her office when the call came through.
     "Donna, this is Alex Cardon. I have only a few minutes but I've got an important confession to make."
     Puzzled, Donna made a brave front. "That's a switch. It's usually me that's into the confessing. Are you lying down and comfortable?"
     "I wish this was a joking matter, Donna, but it isn't. Do you remember that earlier this year you mentioned Tony's preoccupation with Rose Properties?"
     Donna felt a tightness in her left shoulder, usually marking the onset of one of the muscle spasms to which she was prone, but almost immediately she surmounted the attack.
     Taking a deep breath to ease the pain, she felt something close to relief that the moment she had dreaded for weeks, waking and sleeping, had arrived. At last she could confront her danger as it really was, free of the distorting power of her imagination. She remained silent, applying Cardon's own patented technique.
     "I committed a serious indiscretion," he continued. "Knowing how well Tony and you were doing in the market, I bought some Rose stock; quite a lot of it, I'm afraid."
     "Yes," Donna intervened, as her parody of their therapy sessions, now largely unintended, broadened.
     "The purchases were so large, in fact, that they have come to the attention of the SEC, which demanded that I reveal how I became aware of Rose Properties." Cardon rushed to unburden himself of all the worst.
     "And you told them about our conversations?"
     Donna knew the answer that she would receive, but she could no longer restrain an expression of indignation; to do otherwise would have required Dr. Cardon's years of training.
     "I had no choice," Dr. Cardon asserted, gamely attempting to revive his mastery. "I told them as little as possible."
     "Did you mention Tony?"
     The doctor sounded mortally offended. "Of course not. That would have been an unforgiveable breach of a patient's confidence."
     That was about as far as Dr. Cardon could go with Donna without getting even more deeply involved in the Rose Properties mess than he was already. He was always a professional first but that didn't mean that he was without normal curiosity. He would have liked to ask Donna what she or Tony knew about the Farrell murder and what, if anything, it had had to do with the handsome profit he had won and now agreed to forfeit. But he was a very mature person and realized that there were some mysteries that it was best to leave unexplained.

*          *          *
     Tuesday night Tony stayed at a motel on the highway and slept deeply. So far as he knew, he was no dreamer or maybe he was blessed with the ability to forget. He awoke late and returned to the city in the afternoon. At this hour there was no point in making an appearance at Fenster, so Tony drove out to Long Island City and explored for a last time the route that led from Damon Marzo's office to his Nassau County home. This was the way Benny Vitale would take after work this afternoon when he visited Damon for their regular Wednesday night review of the business accounts.
     Around 5:00 Tony parked his rental car at the curb across from Marzo's building. He didn't know when Vitale closed shop so he gave the parking meter a generous feeding of coins; it was not the moment to tangle with a traffic cop or meter maid. He then slid back into the car and watched.
     During his previous inspections Tony had never ventured into the lobby for fear of running into Damon or Benny but as he sat at the curb he got a pretty good overview of the occupants, first secretaries leaving in clusters, some hefting canvas exercise bags as well as their purses, and then the salesmen, branded unmistakably by their moustaches and sample cases. A few men strode out totally unencumbered and headed for the building parking lot at the next corner: they must be the proprietors or the office administrators. But Benny Vitale was not among them, not yet.
     Tony would have liked to use his pistol, but better judgment had prevailed. An obvious murder would have aroused Damon Marzo's worries about his bookkeeper's activities, and who knows what trails Vitale might have left that would point in Tony's direction. Whatever emotional ties Marzo might have had to a long-time employee (a man who had in any event turned out not to be as reliable as he looked), Tony would hardly expect Donna's own uncle to turn her husband in to the police. On the other hand, Damon was unlikely to be enthusiastic about doing more business with a junior partner who was liable to be picked up as a murder suspect. The gun was therefore out of the question.
     It was almost 6:00 when Tony caught sight of Vitale leaving the building. He could have missed him in the large group that had apparently emerged from the same elevator, but it was impossible to overlook the enormously tall woman who accompanied him, one arm encircling his waist in a possessive arc that brought her thin fingers close to his belt buckle. As the couple turned towards the parking lot, Tony started up his motor, ready to follow when they came out of the lot.
     The woman was driving a Buick that wouldn't bring much on a trade-in. Tony pulled away from the curb and neatly passed a bakery van so that he would not lose them in the late rush hour traffic. As he returned to the right lane, he caught a glimpse of Vitale. The bookkeeper had some papers in his hand and was gesturing to his companion, who continually darted her eyes in his direction.
     Tony ruminated about the woman: she was another bookkeeper, possibly, or a secretary. But there was more than work between them and they obviously didn't mind people knowing. She looked awkward behind the wheel, bending her neck forward so that her field of vision through the windshield would not be curtailed. Tony supposed she must have heartily welcomed Vitale's attentions, even though he was at least a foot shorter and more than a generation her senior. He wondered whether her ardor would have led her to accept his wishes unquestioningly, even if he asked her to make a threatening phone call in a studied monotone.
     If she was his accomplice, she deserved to be with him now; but if in fact she knew nothing about the blackmail, it was not Tony's fault that she had picked Vitale as her fellow worker and driving companion. The news was full of innocent bystanders; they were the ones whose names rounded out the final paragraphs in the stories of disaster.
     The Buick turned right on Northern Boulevard and headed east towards the freeway. Tony trailed at a safe distance like a racehorse saving his wind for the stretch. At the shopping center the light was turning red and the woman braked suddenly. With a last-minute maneuver Tony passed a subcompact and slid into place directly behind Vitale's car.
     He would have preferred for the woman to have crashed the light but this was a stretch of road he had studied closely; there was plenty of room to accelerate to full speed from a dead stop.
     The light changed and the woman started up again. Reacting quickly, Tony was close to their rear bumper but began to drift towards the right. A long block ahead, a railroad overpass spanned the boulevard, and from the east a line of trucks, headlights blazing, streamed towards the city from the passage beneath the bridge. Within a very few seconds the Buick would enter the passage; the time was now. Tony fiercely hit the accelerator pedal and swerved onto the right berm. As he drew even with Vitale, he savored for an instant the imprint of sick fear on the accountant's face and his hands grasping the padded edge of the dashboard. Continuing to gain speed, Tony waited until he had nosed a little ahead and then lurched back diagonally onto the roadway to block both eastward lanes. Vitale's driver, panicked by Tony's sudden moves and dazed by the lights of the oncoming trucks, pulled her wheel sharply left. The Buick, out of control and tires screaming, veered into the path of the heavy traffic approaching from under the bridge. The car was crushed in a pile-up of trucks.
 

 
 

Chapter 11


     The moment he disposed so expertly of Benny Vitale (and the woman too, whoever she was) confirmed to Tony that he was on a roll. A second death play successfully concluded - third, if you counted his maiden flight with Grantley Enterprises - and now the blackmail threat was over. He had nothing before him now but Uncle Damon's renewed congratulations and another princely bonus.
     Driving back to the rental agency, Tony turned the radio dial in search of an evening business report. He had lost touch with the market since he drove Soderman up to New Hampshire because he had had more than enough to keep his mind occupied. After loud bursts of pop music he finally located a stock report. The Dow was up 50 points with gains far outnumbering losses on the exchanges and NASDAQ. As always, there were some major firms that ran counter to the trend. The announcer mentioned one of the most dramatic exceptions.
"The stock of Jox Corp. took a drubbing on the surprising news that its deceased chairman Emil Soderman would be replaced by his younger brother Henry. At a press conference this afternoon Henry Soderman flatly ruled out any efforts to reach an accommodation with black and feminist boycott leaders. The shares were off by as much as 10 points but recovered some lost ground to close down 7 and a half."
     Tony was furious. How could he have counted on the cretinous Soderman board to elect Henry, who had never earned a dollar on his own in his entire miserable life? They would see the light eventually, and maybe sooner rather than later, in view of Henry's less than brilliant performance with the press. But what troubled Tony was whether Damon and the ring would wait patiently for Jox to return to its senses.
     Donna had the answer for him when he got home. "You better have a strong drink, preferably without any ice," she counselled him. "It's going to be a very long evening."
     "Forget the goddamn drink," he said, avoiding her offer of a welcoming kiss. More and more, he found that he could not bear to look at her unless things were going awfully well and he was in a very good mood. He dropped his baggage, lighter now because he had buried the climbing gear in the New Hampshire woods - and sank into his wing chair.
     "Uncle Damon wants you to call him."
     Tony sat stiffly for a moment, grasping the arms of his chair. "Jox?" he asked hoarsely.
     Donna nodded, and went to the bar to fix the drink he didn't want. "I think so; I take it you've heard about Henry Soderman and the market's reaction. But I don't think it's only Jox that has Uncle Damon upset; he's in a terrible mood.
     For the first time in God knows how many years, his bookkeeper hasn't turned up on schedule at his home. I don't think I have ever heard him so angry."
     Tony downed half the scotch and dialed. "Hello, Mr. Marzo," he said as firmly as he could, overpronouncing each syllable.
     "Is this the genius I've been betting my shirt on?" Marzo's voice dripped more than sarcasm; there was a plentiful dose of acid as well.
     "Oh, you've heard the report on Jox," Tony replied stating the obvious at once so that he could put it behind him. "You really shouldn't over-react. The board was stupid to pick Henry but they won't keep him very long; the market understands that because the stock moved back up before the close."
     "Spare me, Tony. I'm not one of your dumb customers, remember; this is Damon Marzo. You are in shit so deep it's got no bottom. I've told you before that my associates and I don't sit on our investments. Your Jox deal is over, understand? We're selling tomorrow, and we're closing you out. I guess you were smart enough to take some of your cash already, but whatever you've left behind will be netted against our losses."
     Tony kept his temper and took another long pull at his drink. "I think you're making a big mistake, Mr. Marzo. The Jox deal is as sound as ever, and from a technical point of view - up in New England - it couldn't have gone better."
     Damon was so angry he discarded the caution he had previously used in their telephone conversations. "O.K., let's say you were wonderful with your hands; but tough guys are a dime a dozen, we didn't need you for that. What we wanted was an investment adviser, and that's where you struck out." Damon hung up.
     "I guess you're through with Jox," Donna said tentatively, as she searched Tony's face for hints of his reaction to Damon's assault.
     With perfect composure Tony drained his scotch before responding: "Your uncle's a worrier; if they held on, the stock would be bounce right back and reach new highs by summer. But I'm not sure they're willing to wait that long. That's their problem and they can't blame their losses on me."
     "But they will," said Donna, laboring the point.
     "Maybe," said Tony. She could tell that he was preoccupied and had not given any weight to her comment. When he returned to the bar for a refill, it was almost like sleepwalking.
     "I have some more news that's even worse," Donna said bluntly. Timing or subtlety wouldn't have helped soften the blow, so as soon as he settled himself again in the wing chair she told him about Alex Cardon's Rose Properties trades and the ongoing SEC investigation. Two weeks ago she had for the first time told Tony about her psychiatric treatment, but the rest of her story was brand new. To her great surprise and relief Tony took the news calmly, listening with the same quiet attention that he had always given her when she had tipped him on pending corporate finance deals. When she finished what she had to say, Tony had only one question: "You're sure that Cardon didn't mention my name?"
     Donna nodded her assurance. "Absolutely. He told me that it would have been unethical for him to have gone into the details."
     "That's great; he sounds like a super guy," Tony said. Donna was willing to put up with his mockery if only he kept his temper under control, but she felt her body tense, waiting for a delayed explosion. Instead, he took charge of their crisis, giving her his advice. "Don't worry about the SEC, Donna. They don't know what they're doing. Most of their investigators are right out of law school and, long before they make any progress on their cases, some Wall Street law firm snaps them up. The important thing to remember is that they've got nothing on us yet, nothing at all, and they never will have unless we make their case for them.
     "The first thing we've got to do is slow down the SEC. I hate to say this Donna, but the way your shrink has screwed up, they're going to come looking for you first, maybe even tomorrow."
     "What can I do then?" Donna was glad to put herself in his hands and to abide by the decisions he would make for both of them.
     "Pack your bags and I mean now. Drop in on Uncle Damon and tell him as little as you can get away with. Say you want to get out of the city for a while, that you need a change of air, that your work's getting to you. You can even pretend our marriage is in trouble; he'll like that line best of all since I'm not his favorite at the moment."
     While she packed Donna praised Tony's decisiveness and his self-control. He accepted her compliments as his due because her observations were correct. Tony was clear-sighted about the evening's developments and enjoyed all the serenity and peace of mind that comes from having a good travel agent. Before he reported for work on Thursday morning he would order a single air ticket, one-way, to Buenos Aires. It was a city he had long ago selected as a refuge if the death plays went wrong; the weather was good and, according to the material his friend Professor Sam Beldon had sent him, the Argentine courts didn't put extradition cases high on the docket. He wondered whether Donna would miss him. Maybe she would for a little while, until she made her separate peace with the SEC, but then she'd get over him very easily. There'd be another ambitious beginner in the Fenster sales department who would be willing to give up his heart for her tips on corporate deals.

*           *           *
     On Thursday the investigation of Emil Soderman's death, under the direction of the New Hampshire state police, had uncovered evidence indicating that the possibility of suicide could be confidently excluded. When Soderman's body was examined in the Manchester hospital to which it was flown, the fingertips on both hands were found to be covered with a layer of white chalk. The medical officer noted this evidence in his report without comment; he had been called to the hospital from another assignment and there had been no opportunity to brief him on the setting in which the corpse had been found. The doctor concluded that the cause of death was a fall from great heights and, having made that unremarkable judgment, was content to sign his report and call it a day.
     The doctor's findings were telecopied to the Twin Mountain headquarters of Troop F which was responsible for the inquiry, and there the terse sentence about Soderman's chalky fingers caused a considerable stir. Earlier in the day, Bob Miller, a member of New Hampshire's volunteer Mountain Rescue Service and an expert climber, had paid a visit to the murder scene and talked his way past the barricades that the state troopers had set up between the road and the approach to "Webster's Dictionary." Miller clambered rapidly over the boulders that rose to the base of the cliff and, leaning back comfortably against a shoulder-high rock, trained his Nikon binoculars against the seam of the open-book formation. It was not a site that Miller had visited before, at least as far as he could remember. The ascent was so steep that a roped climb, involving two or more participants, was necessary, but there was no call for mountain rescues when the summit was less than a hundred feet high.
     Maybe it was the very unfamiliarity of "Webster's Dictionary" that made Miller examine its surface so closely. The sweep of his field glasses paused first about ten feet up the crevice where a lead climber would lodge his first metal protection, and then about ten feet higher. The high-powered lenses did not detect any metallic glints in the seam; either no protections had been planted (an impossibility if Soderman had made the ascent) or somebody else had followed to "clean the climb". Miller lowered his glasses and began for a second time to trace the course of the seam from the rocky base.
     Holding the glasses steady about ten feet up, the mountaineer sharpened the focus and pressed his eyes close to the viewing lenses to exclude the glare of the strong sun. The crack was narrow at that point and along both its edges, Miller could clearly distinguish white smudges. They were not part of the surface pattern of the rock, which was a deep unblemished gray. Miller repeated his examination at a height of twenty feet, and once again the white smudges appeared.
     Excited by his discovery, Miller called Troop F headquarters on his cellular car phone and obtained approval of Lieutenant Calvin Perkins, the troop commander, to scale Webster's Dictionary with another Mountain Rescue volunteer so that they could examine the cliff seam more closely and photograph the white markings.
     The results of the climb, reported to Perkins in the afternoon, confirmed that all the way to the top the seam of the cliff showed fresh traces of white gymnast's chalk that must have been applied by a lead climber in making his ascent; no metal protections of any sort remained in place. It was only shortly before receiving this report that Perkins had read the medical findings, telecopied from Manchester, that described Soderman's chalky fingers.
     Cal Perkins wouldn't have won any glamour awards. His long teeth set in bulging gums, and the lock of coarse brown hair that escaped beneath the band of his gray stetson, made him resemble a comic-strip horse, but looks were never more deceiving. Newly promoted to his rank in recognition of his success in a major arson investigation, he was inclined to keep the new developments in the Soderman case to himself for the time being, hoping that Troop F could handle the matter without the intervention of the Major Crime Unit. A couple of folks had flown up to New Hampshire on Wednesday from Washington, an SEC lawyer named Braun and an FBI agent with an ethnic name Perkins had a terrible time remembering. They were mannerly and doing their best not to be a nuisance; still that was no reason to take them into his confidence prematurely. It was beginning to look like a murder case, but if it was, the man had been pushed from a New Hampshire cliff and New Hampshire would find the murderer. Braun and that FBI agent, as soon as they arrived, started lecturing Perkins about a suspected conspiracy to rig stock prices by killing off businessmen. Perkins had listened to them politely, but was much more interested in finding out what had happened here in the White Mountains.
     In the course of the late afternoon and early evening, Lieutenant Perkins slowly and irreversibly changed his mind. The damn murder just wouldn't stay put in Franconia the way he would have liked; it seemed to involve some shadowy figure from farther south, maybe even as far south as New York or Pennsylvania. The first indication of the widening scope of the mystery came to Perkins in an interview with Wally Nash, a climbing instructor from a school in the Notch. Nash told him about a young man with a New York accent who had requested elementary instruction on a secluded cliff where he wouldn't embarrass himself in front of the gawking spectators who assembled in the more popular locales. The man called himself Jon Cramer and gave an Atlanta address which Nash never bothered to verify, since the student always paid cash. Nash had selected "Webster's Dictionary" as the training cliff, and when he read of the Soderman case in the morning paper, he decided he should report his experience to the state police.
     "Why did you wait all day, Mr. Nash?" Lieutenant Perkins asked.
     "I had a busy schedule of instruction all day; I didn't finish until 4:30 and came right over."
     "Nice of you to hurry over to Twin Mountain," Perkins said. "I guess it's more important to teach folks how to climb than to deal with their bodies once they've fallen. Maybe I should give some thought to switching jobs with you."
     Nash was not at all embarrassed by the policeman's reprimand; he had done his citizen's duty at a sensible pace.
     "Do you have any photos of this man Cramer?"
     "No, we don't. When we train a group, we give them all the trimmings when they finish, a certificate that looks like a college diploma, and a class photo. But Cramer insisted on solo instruction and he turned down my offer to take his picture with Webster's Dictionary in the background. Come to think of it, he was almost rude about it."
     "What did Cramer look like?" Perkins, a pretty good cartoonist, was ready to sketch on the margin of his notes.
     "Nothing special, I'd have to say. He was a little man with dark brown, almost black, hair and big ears. If I spotted him again, it would probably be the ears, if anything, that would give him away."
     In the evening a call was transferred to Cal Perkins from Julia Mann of New York City. She described herself as a social worker in a settlement house founded by Mr. Soderman. She was very emotional about her employer's death, but, once she calmed down, Perkins found her to be very professional, more than that, the woman seemed to be very observant.
     "Lieutenant," she began, "Mr. Soderman was an avid and highly skilled rock climber; I wanted to be sure that you are aware of that."
     "Yes, we know that already but it's good of you to take the trouble to call."
     Julia was afraid the officer was about to hang up on her, so she hurried to assure him that she had much more to say. "He would not have hiked up that back trail just for the view, not with a rock wall he could scale just on the other side."
     Cal tried to take account of her grief when he replied gently: "Some folks up here have been talking about suicide."
     "Nonsense," Julia snapped. "I've never met a more optimistic man in my life. It's not generally known, but Mr. Soderman has fought a tough battle with cancer over the last two years. It was only in late March that his doctor gave him a clean bill of health, at least to the extent they ever can. Mr. Soderman was planning to celebrate with a trip to Yosemite in a few weeks. He wasn't about to kill himself, you can believe me." She began to cry again but recovered quickly, once more afraid that she would lose the connection.
     "The rest of what I say is no more than a guess and I hope I can go off the record."
     "Yes," said Perkins, repeating one of the police force's great white lies.
     "There's a new volunteer at the house named Barton Andrews. In his short time here, he made a remarkably strong impression on Mr. Soderman. In fact, I would say that they appeared to strike up a personal friendship." Despite her calm and even stilted manner of speech, there was no mistaking a strong undercurrent of jealousy.
     "Everything Mr. Andrews said or did pleased Mr. Soderman. But I think what delighted him most was the young man's avowed interest in rock-climbing. I know that Mr. Soderman was thrilled to find he shared an interest with a man so much younger, because he took the trouble to tell me about it, in fact, more than once and each time with increased enthusiasm."
     "Yes?" Perkins prompted.
     "That's really all I know personally, but I read a news report that Mr. Soderman had registered at a Franconia inn with Mr. Andrews. The rest is only conjecture, as I warned you at the start, but it seems likely that the two men traveled to New Hampshire for some rock-climbing."
     "What does Mr. Andrews look like?" As Julia described him, Perkins pencilled over the sketch he had made in his Nash interview; he didn't have to make many alterations.
     "When do you expect to see him next?"
     "If he keeps to his regular schedule, he should be here on Sunday."
     Don't bet on it, Perkins was tempted to tell her, but instead he asked "Do you know where he can be reached during the week?"
     The social worker was embarrassed to admit that the man had declined to furnish an address and telphone number when he applied for a volunteer's position. She added an explanation to justify her lapse but Perkins wasn't listening. A pattern was emerging of a man who covered his traces. He had paid his climbing instructor in cash; on the inn register he had entered a Pennsylvania address that didn't check out, and Soderman had paid both their bills with his own credit card.
     It was only a little later that a phone call from New York reached Mark Braun at the Franconia inn where he was staying; he and Art Drenik had made a point of booking rooms at the same place where Soderman and Andrews had spent Monday night. When Braun recognized his brother-in-law's voice on the line, he wasn't ecstatic.
     "Listen, Bill, can this wait? I'm kind of busy up here right now."
     Gagliano produced one of his irritating hoots. "I'm sure you are, Markie, with the Soderman case in your clever little hands. But that's why I'm calling, don't you see, and if you didn't do my family the favor of bringing my sister in from the street, I would have given up trying to find you; your pals in Washington have been giving me a royal runaround. I've talked to just about everybody but the chairman, and he probably doesn't know where you are."
     Mark made a face at his phone but decided not to hold it responsible. "Bill, how about cutting the comedy. I have a meeting with the police."
     Gagliano complied; and the tone of the conversation quickly changed as he told Braun about the message he had lifted from Tony Trask's telephone. Bill listened to the voice-mail a second time after he remained alone in the sales department Wednesday night, and had transcribed it verbatim.
     "What do you think, Markie?" he asked when he finished reading the woman's threat. "I'll save my notes for you, because this phone message is like vintage wine; it's getting better every day. The Soderman business sounds a lot like Rose Properties - two public company CEOs die in mysterious circumstances. I won't be at all surprised if you find that Jox has been trading up a storm, just like Rose Properties, and that my old friend Tony Trask is smack in the middle of both deals. I mean on the market side; I can't imagine him getting off his ass long enough to push someone off a cliff."
     "I didn't realize Soderman was pushed. Thanks for letting me know; I'd better pass the tip along to the police." It was Mark's way of avoiding the compliment he really owed Gagliano for his fruitful eavesdropping.
     Braun knocked on Drenik's door and briefed him on the call. With Art at his side advancing a new theory every mile, Mark drove to the police headquarters in Twin Mountain. After Braun summarized the phone message, the lieutenant returned the favor, updating his two visitors on the disclosures volunteered by the climbing instructor and the social worker. He concluded by showing off the composite sketch he had made from the informants' descriptions.
     Mark examined the drawing closely and said: "I've seen that man before, but only once. He was at my wedding; his name is Tony Trask."
     Art Drenik briefly put aside his speculations and asked a practical question: "What's the earliest plane we can catch for Washington?"

*          *          *
     The woman's voice gave Tony a jolt when she spoke his name without warning, first of a dozen callers to have been switched into his voice-mail. It was fortunate that when he seated himself at his office desk Thursday morning, his airplane tickets radiating comfort in an inner pocket of his suit jacket, he had turned off the hand-free speaker and put the receiver to his ear.
     When he heard the woman's voice he had two conflicting thoughts. The first, surreal and fleeting, was that it was a message from the dead; but that reaction was the product of too much scotch and fitful sleep. The second idea was more alarming, that he had failed last night to make a clean sweep of his enemies: that Vitale was not the blackmailer or that the accomplice who was reciting their latest menace was not the woman who drove the Buick.
     There was no doubt that Vitale and his driver were dead. Tony and Donna had heard the report together on the 11:00 news, and while they observed the accident scene, a smile pulled irresistibly at the corners of his mouth. When he turned from the screen he encountered Donna's stare, unreproachful but knowing. Once before, on her return from Chicago after Farrell's death, she had asserted her desire to know "what her husband was capable of." Last night's stare told him that she had nothing more to learn.
     When the woman's recorded message ended, Tony reversed the tape to the beginning and found the simple explanation that had eluded him when he first activated the playback: the time of day recording told him that the woman's message was received three days ago, early Monday morning.
     Still it was prudent to confirm the life span of the blackmailing voice. Tony erased the first message and worked forward through the balance of the recordings. With a sense of great relief, he did not hear the woman's monotone again. The other calls came from customers whom he would not have to flatter and placate anymore; he took a genuine pleasure in cutting each of them off in mid-sentence by pressing the "erase-in-advance" button.
     Having cleared his telephone, Tony embarked methodically on winding up his affairs. The joint checking account for their household was in the branch bank office downstairs off the building lobby and the line feeding the tellers' windows was mercifully short. Tony cleaned out the entire balance and took the proceeds in cash. When Donna came out of hiding in a few days, he would be long gone and she could cover the outstanding checks out of her own funds, or else Uncle Damon could come to her rescue. He owed her a lot for the scrambled eggs and family affection ought to count for something. Damon would probably also pay for a good lawyer to defend her in the SEC probe of Rose Properties.
     Tony didn't stop for lunch because he still had much to do. There were several drawers of files to be taken to the shredder, and he took care to space his trips to the machine at discreet intervals so that he would not attract undue attention; and all the data in his desk-top computer must also be searched and deleted. He was reasonably certain that there were no documents or information in his office that would aid an investigation, but it was not in his nature to take chances. Tomorrow morning, when he left his office for Kennedy Airport, where his bags were already stored, the Fenster brokerage firm would have nothing but an empty desk to show for the short and eventful career of Anthony Trask, commission producer extraordinary. It was unfortunate that he couldn't finish up at the office this afternoon and keep out of circulation at an airport motel until his plane was ready to depart at 7:00 p.m. tomorrow. The bottleneck was his nemesis, the cashier. Tomorrow morning the quarterly commission settlement was due, and the back office had refused to give him his check even one day in advance despite his earnest story about a real estate closing deadline. He had no choice but to swallow his frustration, because he had no intention of leaving his commission check behind as a parting gift to Barney Fenster. As soon as the cashier appeared at Tony's desk with his fat payment, he would transmit the funds to a remote bank where they would lose themselves in a complex money-laundering circuit Tony had devised. When the bank wire was safely on its way, Tony planned to hail the first passing cab for Kennedy.
     Early Thursday afternoon the shredding was done and Tony headed back towards his desk at the sedate pace Fenster trainees were taught to adopt as a means of inspiring confidence in their maturity and care. As he entered the bullpen, however, he noticed at once that his leisurely manner was no longer in style. Customers and walk-ins who ordinarily watched the stock market prices from rows of benches in the middle of the floor were on their feet and huddling in agitated groups near the quotation screen. Brokers were among them trying to calm their anxiety but, after recognizing that their efforts were unavailing, they dashed back to their desks to answer their ringing phones or to place calls of their own.
     Tony spotted the sales manager, Tom Murphy, patrolling the bullpen and asked him what was going on. Murphy passed by rapidly but shouted over his shoulder "The market's collapsing. It looks like '87 all over again."
     Within the hour the Dow was down over 250 points and trading was suspended.
 

 
 

Chapter 12


     Tony ran for the elevator and within moments was in a cab to Bleecker Street. By the time the hour-long trading suspension was over, he brought up the market quotes on his personal computer and was ready to monitor the stocks in which he had reinvested most of his Rose Properties profits. After surveying his perilous situation, he was on the phone to his banks and brokers urging liquidation of the securities, but most of them cautioned him against placing orders at the market price; buying interest was crumbling away and there was no telling how far down bids would dip when the markets reopened.
     When trading resumed the free fall went on unabated and Tony, who had kept his wits about him at all the dangerous corners of the death plays, was approaching pure frenzy. Every few minutes, he would leave his PC to enter a sell order only to change his mind before he had finished dialling. Then he would renew his desperate watch before the computer screen until alarm at the further erosion of values would send him back to the telephone once more. At 3:00 another one of the regulatory bells and whistles installed at the exchanges after the 1987 crash temporarily restored his peace of mind; a second trading halt went into effect for the rest of the day. As he collapsed in exhaustion on his sagging couch, the phone rang. Just what he needed; it was Donna.
     "Tony, why aren't you at the office? All hell is breaking loose on the market."
     "Tell me about it. Another hour like this tomorrow and we'll be filing short-form tax returns." Actually, that was what she would be doing; Tony would be rereading his Argentina travel guide to find a lower-priced hotel.
     "Tony, are you all right?" He had not been aware of his long silence.
     "I'm fine. Whenever I get to feel sorry for myself, I thank God I'm not one of Fenster's customers. Are you at Damon's house?"
     "No, that's why I've been trying to reach you. He's moved me to a safer place." She gave him the phone number.
     "I'll memorize it and eat the whole phone pad," he promised her, and then his tone grew more serious. "Is Damon still mad at me?"
     "To be honest, I'd have to say yes," Donna answered, "but at the same time he's worried sick. Jox is likely to be a penny stock by tomorrow's opening, and Damon says his partners have never taken a loss like this."
     "Then they'll be in good company. The only guy with a real sense of timing was your psychiatrist. Would he be interested in a job at Fenster?"
     Encouraged by his reviving spirits, Donna put the question that troubled her most. "Tony, when will I be able to come home?"
     "Don't try to rush things. I'm keeping my eye on the SEC front, and when the coast is clear, I'll let you know." "You'll stick by me, won't you Tony?" This was the first time he'd ever heard her plead with him, and it didn't make him like her any better. She had always presented herself as a tough little bitch, and as far as he was concerned, she was stuck with the role. Anyway, there was no point in getting into heavy emotions, since he firmly intended that they would never meet again.
     "Trust me," he said and hung up.
     Tony slept well and awoke to find his perspective and efficiency fully revived. He drank two cups of coffee and left the rest in the pot; then he dressed quickly and was ready to proceed through the check list he had well in mind. First, he had to take further measures for the reduction of his stock portfolio. Without need of further reflection he phoned his brokers in rapid sequence to give his contingency instructions for the day, advising them that he would be out of contact for several hours. He was satisfied that he had made the best investment decisions possible in the midst of the stock market disaster, dumping the holdings where he had the most exposure and hoping that the others would recover before he was rattling a tin cup in the streets of Buenos Aires.
     In any event, he had to put the market out of his mind, for there were many other things to do. He made a final search of his apartment to verify that none of his research files had survived last night's deliveries to the compactor room. A few old issues of Forbes and Business Week were stacked on his night table, but any reading material that could possibly be incriminating was gone. About to leave the bedroom, he turned at the last moment and, almost as an automatic housecleaning gesture, opened the night table drawer; he had forgotten his pistol. It would not have been fatal to leave the weapon behind, because he had never had occasion to use it in the death plays. But there was no point in handing people evidence, after he was gone, that might suggest he had had something violent on his mind, crime or fear of retaliation. It was better by far to leave behind him the reputation of a mysterious swindler; he might even rate a colorful front-page feature in the Journal. Tony slipped the gun into the pocket of the light topcoat he would wear this morning; he decided to leave the weapon wrapped in the morning newspaper, under his seat on the subway he was going to take on his last ride to Fenster. When it was discovered, the gun would seem to be in its natural habitat.
     Tony's final chore before leaving Bleecker Street was to pen a note to the janitor, informing him that he had been urgently called away on a business trip and would be back in a few days. That message, bolstered by the half-filled coffee pot, the unwashed dishes in the sink, and the two suits he had left in his closet, was intended to cover his tracks only briefly. After that he would have to count on the tolerance of the Argentine authorities.

*          *          *
     Tony arrived at Fenster about 8:00, long before his customary starting time, but he anticipated rightly that he would hardly be noticed today among the crowd of early arrivals; the registered reps would be at their desks before the opening to field anguished client calls, and the back office staff would be gearing up to handle transaction volume that was likely to test record levels before the trading session was history. (A pessimistic commentator in the morning Journal was already predicting a Dow below the 2000 level.) Even Bill Gagliano, notorious for his late mornings, was on hand to share the same crowded elevator with Tony. There was a fixed smirk on Bill's face that Tony thought at first was intended for him, but maybe it was just his imagination. Gagliano had so few customers left that he was probably enjoying the spectacle of Fenster's heavy-hitters tearing their hair out over the fast disintegrating market. When the door opened at the fourth floor, though, Tony couldn't resist taking a public jab at Gagliano: "You look awfully happy this morning, Bill. Did you lose a rich relative?"
     Tony did not wait for a response, but rode up to the fifth floor to visit the back office. He asked the cashier when the commission checks would be ready and learned that, with yesterday's crunch, the salesmen would be lucky to have their distributions by midday. Tony tried a special plea, "Is there any chance you could cut mine earlier? I have a lunch appointment out of the office, and I'm not sure when I'll be back."
     "You're picking an odd day for socializing," the cashier said sourly, "but that's your business. The checks are my business, and you'll get yours with everybody else."
     Suppressing his anger, Tony turned on his heel and walked down the interior stairway to the bullpen. There were a few details to be attended to. For the last time he accessed the voice-mail on his phone to survey the new messages that had accumulated. The only calls had come from customers, all frantic in their own individual ways. There was no further word from the blackmailers, one more proof that the crash on Northern Boulevard had removed them from his life.
     Tony erased the customer messages and switched on his PC. Yesterday the onset of the market crash had sent him scurrying to Bleecker Street before he had a chance to clear his computer. Now he went through his complete menu, eliminating his files one after the other.
     Tony was near-sighted and brought his eyes close to the monitor. It was because of his intense concentration on the greenish letters and symbols on the computer screen that he did not see the man appear at the side of his chair. At last, Tony sensed that someone was there, standing completely still, and he got up to face him. Before a word was spoken on either side, a gun roared. Eyes wide in pain and disbelief, Tony fell prone onto the drab carpet of the bullpen. He died instantly, far short of his first ten million dollars.
     Bill Gagliano, reckless of the danger, hurried over from his desk. Johnnie Fowler calmly handed Bill his gun with an explanation that was close to apology. "He ruined me, you know. My Consolidated Tools shares are worthless. I wanted to sell, but he never returned my calls."

*          *          *
     All personnel were asked to remain at their desks at noon for an important statement by Barney Fenster over the public address system. To ensure that his audience would not elude him, Barney ordered the doors to the lunchroom locked, and the security guards in the downstairs lobby were to turn back any employees who might be tempted to leave the building without the benefit of their chairman's remarks.
     Precisely on schedule the PA speakers were turned on throughout the brokerage house and Mr. Fenster began to talk.
     "Ladies and gentlemen, I thank you for taking a few moments to listen to me on this most tragic day in the long history of our firm.
     "As you all know by now, our account executive Tony Trask, was shot and killed at his desk this morning by a customer who was despondent over the market correction that has been in progress over the past two days. This is not the first time such a senseless crime has been committed on brokerage premises; some of you will recall a similar outrage several years ago at a Merrill Lynch office in Florida. These acts of violence bring home to us that our profession is not without personal risk. We are not astronauts, I am not saying that, but in times of financial stress we face the danger that customers will blame us for their own decisions or for general market conditions.
     "I want you to know that we have never taken your personal safety lightly, and our security force is just about
the best in our industry. The first step I took today after Tony Trask's death was to double the number of our guards for the duration of this unsettled market. That should give you peace of mind, but you can do much to help yourselves: stay in touch with your customers, keep them informed, and let them know Fenster is with them 100% when the going is tough."
     While the chairman was reaching this point in his prepared remarks, Art Drenik and Mark Braun, who had taken an early shuttle from Washington, presented themselves at the security desk. The guard, pleading his instructions, attempted to persuade them to await the conclusion of Fenster's address, but their flashed credentials cowed him and he let them pass.
     When Drenik and Braun reached the anteroom of Barney Fenster's office, he had begun a eulogy of his murdered salesman.
     "Tony Trask embodied the highest standards of the broker's profession. His future with Fenster had unlimited horizons. After a short time here he had entered the very top class of our commission producers and was regarded as one of our cleverest observers of market trends. If he had not been struck down prematurely, he could have had a long and very successful association with Fenster."
     When he finished the paragraph and turned to the last page of his prepared remarks, he was exasperated to see his secretary, visibly nervous about disturbing him, deposit a note on the edge of his desk: Two Federal agents are waiting to see you.
     Barney frowned but motioned to her to stay. He galloped through the windup of his speech, expressing the condolences of the "large Fenster family" to Tony's wife.
     When the P.A. shut off, Barney asked his secretary why his visitors had come.
     "They're from the FBI and the SEC," she replied. "If I heard them right, they want to ask you a few questions about Donna Marzo and Tony Trask."
 

 

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