Clawback (23 page)

“You hired me to find the killer, and I think I have.”

“Why? There’s no evidence tying them to any of the trades—or even that there
was
opportunistic trading around those events. Anyway, they make so much money as it is, I can’t see them risking felony murder for an occasional goddamn boost in the spread.”

A good point. But people aren’t the rational calculating machines of neoclassical economics, not all the time. “You said it yourself. People do stupid things.”

“Employing mercenaries to kill businessmen all over Manhattan goes a little beyond stupid, don’t you think?”

“Well…”

This would have been the moment to bring up the connection I’d discovered between Akelman, Riverton and Blacktail, but I hesitated.

“You know what I do for a living,” I said. “Real life actually
does
get comic-book, sometimes.”

Ganderson smiled. “Never mind. I sat with Blacktail’s managing partners for two hours, Tarbari jumping in about every third sentence. Look, I can read people. I have to, you can’t survive as a trader otherwise. What I think’s going on is that it’s not just Blacktail. All the HFT firms are getting hammered. Congress held hearings, and even the SEC is making noises about systemic risk. They’ve probably got some pigshit trades they’re covering up—everyone does—and they’re being extra careful. It’ll pass.”

No, this wasn’t the time to bring up my little talk with Mr. Riverton. Ganderson was in a parallel universe, one gradually diverging from reality. I’d have to think about how to bring the two back together—or if doing so was even necessary.

“What about Hayden Pennerton?” Ganderson said. “Fucked up his hedge fund, and now he’s tied to Marlett, somehow, according to the cops. I saw it on the wire.”

I’d noticed that too, catching up on my feeds that morning. One Police Plaza was as leaky as the mayor’s budget.

“I’ve heard of him,” I said, cautiously. “But a connection to Blacktail, I dunno, that seems really farfetched.”

“Maybe. Hard to see why they haven’t arrested him yet.”

“Indeed.”

“Anyway, Terry Plank.” Ganderson leaned back in his chair. “The fact that the killers have announced he’s the next target is very interesting.”

“Yes,” I said. “Certainly to Terry.”

“Haw.”

We watched a pair of EMTs run in another gurney, staff in blue
scrubs meeting them and taking over on the fly. Rapid talking, paperwork back and forth. I noticed they left the ambulance door hanging open.

“At first, the deaths went unconnected,” said Ganderson. “By the time they shot Marlett, though, we noticed. And we thought it was going to be about attention seeking—a kind of bizarre Marxist attack on the foundations of capitalism.”

I didn’t feel like rehashing our first conversation, so I just grunted agreement.

“Then we realized the motives might be more sinister. It seemed like someone was trying to profit from the killings. Maybe it was an actual conspiracy, a despicable plot to manipulate prices by assassinating particular market participants.”

You can see why Ganderson was a go-to for industry quotes. “That’s what we discussed, yes.”

“But now we have to rethink completely. Again. Whoever the murderers are, if they’re announcing their attacks in advance, they get no advantage in a trade against the targets.”

He was right. The way you beat the market, about 90 percent of the time, is by exploiting inside information. The forthcoming death of an important player would do the trick—but not if the whole world knew ahead of time.

Leaking Faust’s and Plank’s names did seem to undermine the Chicago-School Cabal theory.

“So we’re back where we started,” Ganderson said. “Nutcases, out to make an ideological point.”

Outside the exterior doors, a man in a sweatsuit and an arm cast
noticed the open ambulance door. He looked around, then leaned forward to peer inside the vehicle.

“What do you want from me?” I asked.

“We need to shut them down. Sling a ton of bricks onto their towel-wrapped heads.”

“Like I said, I’m working on it. Although there’s no reason to assume an Islamist connection—”

“Whatever.” Ganderson waved one hand. “Maybe they’re ecoterrorists or antiglobalization agitators. Doesn’t matter.”

“Uh-huh.”

“So it’s good you’re going after them. But, in parallel, we need a countering narrative. We need to demonstrate that we’re unafraid of these bomb throwers—that we’re willing to do whatever it takes to defend our liberties, our way of life and the free markets that have enriched more people than ever in history.”

I’ve noticed that high-level executives use a lot of abstract language. That’s okay. Usually I have some idea what my clients are talking about. But Ganderson had me baffled.

He realized that, and lowered his voice, looking me directly in the eye. “We’re going to leak what you’re doing,” he said.

“What
I’m
doing?”

“Don’t worry—we won’t use your name. Or anything that might identify you personally.”

“Hold on.” I fought an urge to seize Ganderson by the suit lapels and shake some sense into him. “This is
not
part of our arrangement. This is
not
okay. My entire
modus vivendi
is to operate in the shadows, unseen.”

Ganderson raised his eyebrows. “Don’t you mean
modus operandi
?”

“No!” It’s not a good sign when clients begin arguing latinate subtleties. “I live my entire
life
this way—and it can’t be otherwise. If people know who I am, I simply cannot do my job.”

“Well, no problem, because no one will ever find out. We’ll make sure of that.”

Said Haldeman to Nixon.

“Let me guess,” I said. “You’ve started the whisper campaign already. Selected journalists, a few bloggers—”

“People who know how to be discreet.” He smiled. “Exactly.”

I stared at him bleakly. “Why are you doing this?”

The smile turned into a steely glare. “So the world knows we’re serious. No one can start gunning down investment professionals and expect to get away with it. We’re fighting back, on their home ground, in the shadows.”

“The deterrence of assured retaliation.”

“Precisely.”

“Sort of like, the partisans ambush an
Oberleutnant
and the SS comes back and massacres the entire village.”

“Yes, ri—” He stopped. “No, wait a minute.”

I looked away in disgust. Through the window I saw the guy with the cast slip furtively out of the ambulance, tucking a bulky plastic sack under his sweatshirt. He turned the corner and disappeared just as the EMTs came out.

Nice to see that
someone
was still on his game.

I turned back to Ganderson. “You had better be right about keeping my name out. Completely.”

“Or what?” He didn’t sound worried.

“Or I’ll come for you,” I said. “You, personally.” I got up to leave. “Think long and hard about that before you wave me around like an Amex black card.”

He started to say something, but I walked away.

Rule number one: clients
always
fuck you up.

S
o Ganderson’s media strategy had gone from “keep this secret at any cost” to—a picosecond later—“I want a billion eyeballs.” By the time I’d found a pizza shop with wi-fi, twenty minutes after leaving the hospital, it was already on
Gawker. Deep City
was close behind, and then, like a piñata exploding, it was everywhere.

DealNote:
THE CATTLEMEN HAVE HIRED SHANE

Alpha Insider:
THEY FUCKED WITH THE WRONG BILLIONAIRE THIS TIME

StreetWire:
BOND VIGILANTES
!

AP:
FINANCIAL EXECUTIVES RUMORED TO BEGIN PRIVATE INVESTIGATION

New York Times:
AGGRESSIVE TACTICS MOOTED IN HUNT FOR FINANCIER’S KILLER

Post:
DON’T BAIL THEM OUT;
TAKE
THEM OUT!

Ganderson himself was quoted: “Of course we have complete confidence in the authorities who appear to be working on the case. It is absurd to suggest we would take justice into our own hands
simply because four people have been shot down in broad daylight and not a single arrest has been made. We would never consider trying to find this insane murderer ourselves—and we certainly would not try to stop him before he kills, kills and kills again.”

And so on, for a few more paragraphs.

I threw away the pepperoni slice I’d bought and stomped out of the shop.

“I was worried about you,” Clara said. “You idiot.”

She’d visited my apartment, looking for me. Jesus.

“You shouldn’t have gone.” In the middle of this crisis, my gaze kept drifting back to the short black skirt she’d chosen to wear today.

“
You
should be answering your phone.”

Okay, that was my mistake. There had to be a better way to keep my office open than carrying a dogweight of cellphones around all the time. I’d turned on three, but somehow overlooked the fourth—which, of course, was the only one that mattered.

“You really didn’t notice anyone?” I said.

“Your neighbor the ex-convict was at the mailboxes,” she said. “Nothing to worry about.”

“How do you know?”

“He hit on me.” She glanced at me. “In a low-key, subtle way. No one else was around.”

Low-key and subtle. I decided not to believe this was a backhanded comparison. “What does an ex-con look like?”

“Shaved head? With tattoos on his skull? Not very good ones, either.”

“Oh yeah, that’s Gabriel. He’s all right.”

The drizzle had never stopped. I’d caught up to Clara in a chain copy shop on Second Avenue, after I finally collected her messages. Over a row of self-service Xerox machines I could see umbrella-wielding pedestrians slogging past outside, dim in the murk.

The steady clacking buzz of a half-dozen copiers at work provided more than enough white noise to conceal our conversation.

“Your name hasn’t appeared anywhere.” Clara continued feeding pages from a long printout through the intake tray. “I looked, and set some search alerts. No one I talked to mentioned you either. The story totally owns the cycle, but you’re not in it.”

“Not personally. Not yet.”

“I walked back the reporting. Which wasn’t that hard, because after three links everyone’s basically repeating the same source.” She finished the stack of documents and waited for the machine to spit them out. “I’d heard of Ganderson, maybe even met him once—he spoke at a conference I was at, back when I could still get press credentials. Did he really hire you?”

I didn’t say anything for a moment.

It’s not true that I never discuss what I do. I shouldn’t, of course. Professional ethics—not to mention self-preservation—demands discretion.

They called Matt Helm everything from The Silencer to The Demolisher, but never The Blabbermouth.

On the other hand, I’m not some psychotic loner. Half of being human is conversation. Sports and real estate will only take you so far—eventually you end up talking about your life. Still, I’d
always kept it compartmentalized. Colleagues, one-off teammates, acquaintances in the business, sure. Civilians—including those I really, really wanted to sleep with—never.

So what the fuck was I doing, unspooling to Clara?

“Yes,” I said. “He’s the one who hired me. But not to lead some hunter-killer vengeance squad.”

“Have you ever done that?”

“What?”

“Killed someone.”

I blinked. How did we come to have this conversation, here of all places? We were standing in a FedEx office, for Christ’s sake, under fluorescent lights, breathing ozone and toner fumes. We should be in a confessional, or a schul—or at least a badly rumpled bed, at four a.m.

“I was in the military for eight years.”

Clara shook her head. Her copier had fallen silent, waiting. “After that.”

Pause. “Yes,” I said.

Eventually, just audible over the room’s noise, she said, “It would be one hell of a story to write.”

I couldn’t respond to that, only shook my head once slowly.

“Too bad I never will.” She smiled, just a bit. “Ever.”

An even longer pause. “Thank you.”

“Ever,” she said again.

I guess I’d forgotten what it was like to trust someone, utterly, outside a firefight.

“By the way,” I said, “every last one of them deserved it.”