Clawback (20 page)

“Change of topic,” said Johnny.

“Sure.”

“What have you heard about Plank Industrials?”

“Ah…” I thought. “Old-line manufacturing?”

“That’s the one.”

“I think they used to be part of the Dow, years ago. I don’t know what they actually make.”

“Now that you mention it, I’m not sure either. Crucibles for steel mills or something.”

“And they’re still in business? I though all that moved to China and India in the eighties.”

“Fortune 600.”

“Huh.”

“And a byzantine stock structure to keep control in the founder’s family. The CEO is the grandson, Terry Plank.”

“Okay, I learned something today. What’s the point?”

“I might have heard Terry’s next on the list.”

“Really?” The cabal had changed tactics, for sure, if they were now leaking everything ahead of time.

“Maybe. Someone mentioned it.”

“How many someones?”

“Right. Good question.” I could imagine Johnny nodding to himself. “Only one, a trader I know. Long-term, value, focused on industrials. Plank’s in his area.”

“Where’d
he
hear it?”

“At the gym. Pickup basketball, someone was talking. He says.”

Interesting, but I didn’t know what to do with it. “News to me.”

“The stock’s started to go down. Off two percent at close of business.”

“Are you in?”

A long pause. The line sounded dead, the way digital does when no one’s talking. “Johnny?”

“I can’t decide.”

“What’s the short interest?” That is, how many traders were betting that the stock would go down further.

“Five-point-one. Up a little.”

“So if the assassins have gone short—”

“The market apparently thinks that Terry Plank dead would be bad news for the company,” Johnny said. “Which is not always the case.”

Especially in closely controlled family firms—and doubly so at the third generation, when killing off entrenched leadership would usually kick the stock
up
. “But if it’s true here, then buying a big short position and shooting Plank might be a really good move.”

“Enough to retire on.”

“So what are you waiting for?”

“I dunno. Feels funny, that’s all.”

Like I said, Johnny relies on instinct.

“We’re not in well-charted territory,” I said. “Popping CEOs like ducks in a fairway gallery. I can’t believe traders are taking it all in like just another BlackBerry news alert.”

He laughed. “You need to spend some time on the floor, then.”

I got up, carrying my phone, to drop the ice in the bathtub. It was almost midnight.

“Terry Plank must have heard by now,” Johnny said.

“His personal-security expenses are about to skyrocket, I imagine.” I examined my neck in the mirror. The bleeding had stopped, and the swelling was minimal. Even the bruise on my chest was only slightly discolored. “Maybe I should call, see what he’s willing to pay.”

“The killers would expect that, though.” Johnny kept going, ignoring me. “Making it all the harder to get at Plank. So why would they say anything?”

“They’re being sporting. Who cares?”

“Well, that’s why I’m not in. The pieces don’t fit.”

“I wonder…”

“What?”

“Nah.” I went back to the bed and flopped down. “Can’t see it.”

“What are you thinking?”

“How was Plank doing before today? Business good? Decent press? Rising stock price?”

“Normal. Spinning the hamster wheel, no more. His company’s a backwater.”

“And now?”

“Whoa.” Johnny was silent for a moment. “You think he put the rumor out
himself
?”

“It’s going to get noticed. Really noticed—like dominating-the-news-cycle noticed. And CEOs do seem to like being the center of attention.”

“Fuck.” An even longer pause. “I can’t think how to play that.”

“Who says you have to?” I felt some late-night philosophy bubbling up. “Life is about more than just the next trade, you know.”

“Not a life worth living.” He might have been serious. “Let me know what you hear tomorrow.”

It was late, and five busy days had caught up with me. I fell asleep thinking about Clara.

I
n the morning, I continued charging all my phones, two at a time, using the replacement adapters I’d picked up at a bodega yesterday. As they powered up I turned them on and checked for messages. Only the red-tagged phone had any, and I returned them immediately.

Unlike me, Clara picked up her phone on the first ring.

“What were you waiting for? I called five times.”

“I know,” I said. “I heard them all when I turned it on just now.”

“Maybe it’s how I live.” She didn’t sound
too
annoyed. “Online publishing, you have to be available around the clock. Digital sweatshop and all that. But it seems like you’d be working inside the same set of parameters.”

“Parameters.”

“Life of danger? SMERSH operatives everywhere? If your job is to solve problems with guns, don’t enemies come looking for you?”

“They don’t usually bother calling first.” I sat down on the Mallory’s squeaky bed, phone propped at my ear, and started pulling on my socks. “I like to think of them as counterparties.”

“What?”

“Not enemies.”

“Whatever. Hey, I’m working at the athenaeum this morning. Want to meet me for lunch?”

I looked around the depressing hotel room and saw nothing remotely edible. “How about breakfast instead?”

“It’s already nine-thirty. Just getting up?”

“A life of danger tends to run to late evenings. Brunch?”

“Sure. Call me when you get here, I’ll come downstairs.”

Of course I wouldn’t be allowed into the Thatcher by myself.

“And read my story if you get a chance. From this morning. It’s running hot.”

“Oh?” But she’d already hung up.

I took the train downtown. Not too crowded, midmorning, which is an advantage to being self-employed. If you set your own schedule, you can avoid the awfulness of rush hour.

Outside the Thatcher, Lockerby was just getting off his bicycle—another commuter on his own schedule.

“Hi, Silas.” He was wearing khaki cutoffs and a sleeveless undershirt—okay for riding, maybe, but thin for the cool weather. His muscles were kind of wiry all over, like you see on those Tour de France dopers. He looked surprised to see me.

“I’m meeting Clara. Where are you coming from?”

“Bushwick.”

“How’s the ride?”

“Not bad, actually. And the Williamsburg Bridge is a decent way to enter the city.”

His bike looked typical: a road frame, disguised in dull, mottled second-coat paint, with bullhorn handlebars and alloy, not carbon, rims. The fenders indicated a more mature sensibility, however—image-conscious riders would never use them—as did the ancient “Bikes Not Bombs” sticker on the down tube.

“Tough in the winter, though.”

He shrugged. “I used to see peasants in Panjwai pushing their bicycles over dirt roads in the mountains, loaded down with the harvest. This is nothing.”

“Harvest?”

“Opium, mostly. We were refereeing a civil war, not doing interdiction.”

“I hear you.”

A pair of men in business suits went past. Lockerby watched them, then turned back to me.

“I was going to call you.”

I thought about my throwaway collection. “That’s harder than you might think. What’s up?”

“I’m worried about Clara. After she got mugged and all…I thought I saw someone staking this place out.”

Now that was disturbing. “When?”

“Last night. There was a car down the street, someone sitting in it.”

Vehicles were parked all along the block. I raised a skeptical eyebrow. “Lots of innocent explanations for something like that.”

“It was there earlier in the day. That time with two heads visible.”
Lockerby stooped to finish chaining his bike to an iron fence around a tree in the sidewalk.

“All right.”

He stood up. “You ever ride mounted patrols?”

“Sure.”

“Remember how it was, watching for IEDs? Pretty soon you’re so paranoid, every little pile of dirt looks like death?”

“Yeah.”

“So I know what paranoia is. But I also learned how to pay attention to all the tiny details.”

“Like a plate number?”

“Yup.” He recited it. “New Jersey.”

“Model?”

“A silver Cadillac of some sort.”

“Kind of fancy and memorable for a stakeout.”

“They drove off when they saw me approaching.”

If it weren’t for Clara’s involvement, I would have dismissed the whole thing. But Lockerby wasn’t a typical bystander, and Clara had already been attacked.

“I’ll have the plate run,” I said. “Might take a day.”

“Thanks.”

“And let me know if you see them again—or anything else.” I gave him an unused phone number.

After Lockerby went in, I surveyed the block once more. Nothing seemed out of place. I waited for Clara to emerge.

A sausage-and-dog vendor was setting up at the corner, his grill smoke a reminder of how hungry I was. A claque of students went past, on break from the photography college down the avenue, most
of them staring at their cellphones and talking to their friends simultaneously.

“Silas!”

She bounced down the steps, hair loose, a jacket tied around her waist, the ever-present courier bag in one hand.

“You look great,” I said, and I meant it.

I was ready to leave my entire life behind, right then.

“Um, not you.” She laughed. “What happened to your face?”

I guess the dings I’d taken from Hayden were more obvious than I’d hoped. “I’ll tell you about it, but let’s get that food first.”

“This way.”

We went up a couple blocks to a chrome-and-linoleum diner, the kind I never seem to find outside the city. The lumberjack special appealed, especially since a peek at the other booths suggested the owner had chosen “good food” over “huge portions” as a menu strategy. Clara ordered coffee—“And keep it coming, please.”

“So what’s your big story?” I asked when the waitress disappeared back around the counter.

“Plank Industrials. You didn’t read it?”

“The Mallory Arms doesn’t provide en suite internet, surprisingly. But I heard last night—Plank’s in the batter’s box.”

“I think that metaphor works only if the pitcher is throwing nothing but beanballs.”

“Or grenades. You’re the wordsmith, not me. Anyway, where’d you pick up the rumor?”

“It broke in London, about nine a.m. their time. Middle of the night here, of course. But I happened to be up early. Far as I can tell, I was first out the gate on this side of the pond.”

“Congratulations. Are you getting source credits from Fox Business?”

“Of course not. But plenty of links and hat tips in the feeds. Traffic is ticking over really well today.” She looked pleased. “The hosting provider says I may have to pay up a level—I’m hitting the monthly bandwidth limits in like four days.”

“Will you still remember me when you’re famous?”

“You can be a guest,” she said. “On my syndicated morning cable show.”

She opened her laptop, found some wi-fi, and let me read the headlines. Maybe it was slow in the business bullpens—no bank collapses, huge fraud cases, or absconding fraudsters to talk about—but the Plank story dominated everywhere.

Except print, since it had come too late to make it into the morning editions.

Ill-informed pundits were pounding the airwaves—and the internet—competing to propose the most outlandish, yet believable, “analysis.” Predictably, the “main street is mad as hell and won’t take it anymore” meme was leading, with anticapitalist direct action a close second and “al Qaeda financial jihad” a distant third. Clara’s explanation—rational profit maximization—was the dark horse, a topic for odd corners of the blogosphere that seemed to understand how Wall Street actually worked.

Our food arrived. I poured hot sauce over the egg-and-ham side of my plate and syrup over the rest.

“Why aren’t you camped out at Plank’s offices?” I asked, mouth full. “The attack on Faust came less than ten hours after the rumors appeared. An assault team is probably parachuting in as we speak.”

“No one knows where he is.”

“Really?”

“Believe me, I’ve tried. But no surprise, right? After seeing what happened to Faust, Plank would be stupid
not
to disappear.”

I’d read the
Times
that morning as I sat on the subway. They were too slow for the Plank story, but they had plenty on Faust’s sniper. The usual PR dynamic was at work, fortunately: NYPD and the FBI, both involved but each intensely resentful of the other, therefore willing to leak anything and everything that might demonstrate the prowess of their side of the investigation. That meant plenty of detail, the sort that really ought to have been kept in-house. You could almost follow the detective work in real time. If they ever got a solid lead on the sniper, the TV vans would probably get to his hideout first.

Though that looked unlikely to be any time soon. Saxon had burned his tracks well.

I wondered if I should drop an anonymous dime.