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Noon
by
“It’s just another gimmick,” Murray says. “Gimmick? What gimmick?” I say, wishing I had not. We are at Maloney’s having coffee, even though the big board is closed today because of the MLK holiday. Murray has called this meeting, and I know what he wants to talk about. Ash Wednesday we are dubbing it; it is only two days away, the day when everything goes up in smoke. I’m in no mood for it, the talking, that is. Not now. I am not the superstitious type, but last night I was awakened by my cell phone vibrating. It was a one word text message that said, DON’T. Only a select few have my personal cell number. Not even the CEO’s of my most affluent clients are privileged to that number. I don’t use it on the floor when I’m handling the trades either. And to send a one-word text message. I can only think of one person who might do a that, and it is absolutely impossible for her to do that. My daughter. I can’t think or say her name. She would do that though: send one word with a follow up within twenty-four hours. Always a cryptic little saying with a half-kernel of truth to it. It was her whacky sense of humor. I can’t even allow myself to entertain that thought—that she might be trying to contact me, but it keeps creeping in nonetheless. So right now, all I want to do is drink my coffee and keep my mind off everything by working the Daily Sentinel’s puzzle. So I throw Murray a red herring. “Murray, what’s a ten-letter word for forward and back?” He is rubbing his right eye awake with his forefinger. All this rain has caused his allergies to kick in. His eyes are always small, red, and itchy looking. This morning he has his customary bags and dark circles. “Palindrome,” he says. “Really?” I am trying to join the league of the big boys and complete this puzzle in ink. I count the squares and fill them in. “Perfect.” “No,” he says. “Not ‘perfect,’ try noon.” “Noon?” “Forward, backward, or upside down. It's still the same.” I say, “You’re not only a lawyer, but a philosopher.” I can think of others, but I don’t tell him. One in particular comes painfully to mind, just like last night’s message. Ana. How’s that for coincidence? It’s like I keep stumbling toward an inevitable conclusion that won’t go away. That’s the last thing I need this morning. To think about her. Ana. My only daughter, kidnapped in the jungles of Peru by the Sendero Luminoso, also known as The Shining Path. They are on the State Department’s list of terrorist groups with a Marxist ideology. A year and a half has passed with our pictures all over the tabloids, and still no demands for ransom, no notes, nothing, other than her periodic appearance on a website, along with her “mentor,” Theresa Gutierrez; each sequence showing the not-so-gradual change in her appearance, the shorn hair, the military fatigues, and then the last posting put up last fall, showing the open embrace and the kiss with her captor, who had metamorphosed from mentor to lover. Murray is soon back on the gimmick trail, as I knew he would be. He says, “The TRI.” “The TRI?” “Yeah. The gimmick. It’s just ISEC’s way of regaining the public trust so we can screw them again.” I think back to the flood of tutorial emails and specialized training that began a few years back and continues yet today. The TRI is the little handheld device that we specialists are required to carry while handling the trades on the floor. It is supposed to provide an electronic paper trail that eliminates the inside deal. GSEF initiated them a few years back just before everything went global. Trouble is, for them, we create the algorithms that detail the transactions. They provide the gadget and we, the specialist firms, provide the written codes that allow us to do what we have always done on the floor: make or break the transaction. Across the street stands the Merrill Lynch bull, its copper-colored metal glistening in the rain. In two days we will turn it into a steer cut and bleed the Dow from 13000 and cry all the way to the Swiss banks. Let the bears in. That’s what this meeting is all about. Murray looks around a little nervously. Maloney’s is a crowed little hole in the wall, noisy as hell with the sound of the ham and eggs sizzling. He likes to come here to flash money at the young servers and try for some real luck. I know Murray though. When he wants to talk real business he trusts no one, not with this new hotshot DA, Bruce Greene, breathing down our necks and waving subpoenas at the cameras. He’s going to want to go out and walk in this drizzly shit. “Come on, Izzy,” he says. “Let’s blow this popshop.” Murray stands and makes a big show of pulling out his money clip and peeling off a couple of twenties to impress the server, whose nametag reads Shannon. She is young enough to be his granddaughter, and she wears those low, hip hugger pants. Her hair has waves of brown curls and falls to her shoulders and around her oval face, which is as placid and expressionless as a manikin. Izzy has no problem getting her to pour a double shot of brandy into each of our coffees-to-go.
All of the rain has given the pavement a dark, hard look. Some poor bastard has managed to get through security and is sitting on the sidewalk beneath the awning strumming a guitar for tips. An old coffee can has a few dollars bills in the bottom. He is wearing a straw hat and has dirty hair falling out of the sides to this shoulders. I recognize the song as "Jambalaya." I drop a five dollar bill in his tip jar. I know it is a mistake as soon as I do it. “Aren’t we feeling philanthropic,” Murray says. He has an inherent distrust of all acts of charity. “It’s my contribution to the arts.” Murray snugs down his hat and gives me his cutthroat lawyer look, the one that sees quite through the deeds of men. “You alright?” “I’m okay. What about you?” He doesn’t answer that one, but makes a noise that is a cross between a cough and a laugh. Murray is my lawyer. My inside man, but some things even he isn’t privilege to. I don’t want to be reminded of anything. Not anymore. I want to look at something and be reminded of nothing, but this morning everything is reminding me of something. Jill, Ana’s mother, was infatuated with musicians. Tall, platinum blonde with spiked hair, she fancied herself a producer and ran off with the lead singer of a punk-metal band called Wad. I came home early one day and heard a thumping sound upstairs in the master bedroom. Caught the little son of a bitch in my own bed. Strangled him half to death before the cops came. That got out into the newspapers too. I’m a regular celeb. A five million dollar settlement later and she is living in Amsterdam and has the nerve periodically to call. That leaves Ana. What Would Ana Do? She would have tipped the singer. She had no killer instinct. She studied art at the university and wouldn’t hear anything of econ or marketing. Then she met her Venezuelan lover and ran off to the Andes for a summer of hiking. The rest, as they say, is history, Marxist history. We walk briskly up the street, packets of winter air rising above and behind us. That’s how most people get around in the financial district. There is little traffic anymore, since all of the security restrictions have gone into effect. For miles around, streets have been narrowed and barricades erected. Authorized vehicles only. Official shuttles. Murray’s black Mercedes is one of the few exceptions. I am wishing that we had taken it. We pass the old stock exchange. It has become a museum piece. In its place and directly across the street is the ultramodern and efficient Global Trade Center with its 200,000 square feet trading floor. Some things never change, though. Trinity Church stands at the end of the narrow slice of space between the buildings. “I don’t even know how to use the damn thing yet,” I say, meaning the TRI. “I’m glad they’re not using it in my corner. At least not yet.” “Don’t sweat it,” Murray says, blowing into his hands to keep ‘em warm. “We’ve got you covered. Just make your deals and push the red button. We’ll take care of the rest.” Murray has two umbrellas, and he hands me one of them. He’s always prepared for anything. I’m glad I've got him on my side. “What’sa matter with you?” he says to me. Already we are down near the water, with all the buildings reaching up behind us. “With me?” “Yeah. You seem awful quiet all of a sudden.” The sky is gray and down low and if you didn’t know better you’d think it was evening the way the sun is gone and the lights of the city are lighting things up. A solitary jogger goes struggling by, leaning into the wind, while dark waves crash into the shore and soar up into the air. “I’ll be okay,” I say. Once we get down there next to water, we just walk for a bit. I know Murray’s way about things. He likes to take his time to get to point, sometimes. So we walk and the sky has gone a creamy gray color. “Now this new guy, what’s his name?” “Greene,” I say. “Yeah, sorry you had to remind me.” Murray gives me his best “hah” and takes a drink of his coffee. “Anyway, Mr. What’s-his-name down there at the state attorney general office, Mr. Greene, is trying to make a name for himself. He’s not yet what you call a team player, if you know what I mean. But don’t you worry about him. We’ll get him on board, yessiree bob, indeed we will.” He takes another long drink and breathes through his nose. “It’s just a matter of time.” “Well time is something we haven’t got much of, Murray.” “Hey, trust me. Not to worry. I got two phone calls to make tomorrow, and Mr. Greene should be singing a different tune after that.” Finally we take a seat at a bench that overlooks the harbor, but not before Murray pulls a small towel out of his trench and wipes off the seat. The sea is the color of liquid mercury. I check my watch. Nine o’clock. Time for the opening bell. The rain has started up again, a cold, misting that even keeps the gulls away. If Murray wants privacy, he sure has it. He begins. We go over all the details, how things will start out strong in the morning. Murray gives me all the hype, as if I haven’t heard it before. This has been a five-year bull run. It’s time for a correction. We have all that money out on futures and the short sells. A little pain in the short term for the investor but the economy will be much better off. We even arranged for a little international incident, the Iranians will test their first nuke. They will deny it, of course, but the news will hit anyway, sometime during the morning. There will be investigations all in due time, but for now, it will suffice. It will serve its purpose. “I want to go for 700.” “Seven hundred?” I let go a little whistle. “Hey, it’s only five percent. No sweat. By third quarter, we will make it right back up. Memory is short, but money is long.” Murray is full of these little junk aphorisms. He’s a walking almanac. Next, Murray goes through the orders, the buy and sells, one by one. It has been scripted. He is not old enough to remember the last time this was done. I was there for that one too, and believe me, it was a lot easier then. I’m an old dog. Murray says that some of these corrections come naturally and some of them have to be helped along. Kind of like labor and childbirth. That always gets me about Murray. He always tries to make it as sound though we are doing humanity a big favor by robbing them this way, the poor investor at home working his 9-5 job and trying to plan for retirement—some day he will thank us. “You sure you feel okay?” he asks again, looking at me up close and personal. “I’m fine. “ During all this, I feel my cell phone go off. It is in my breast pocket, right over my heart. It vibrates and gives off a warmth and glow. I know who it must be and I can’t keep myself from smiling. It must be the rest of the message. “There’s only one more thing, “ Murray says. “What’s that?” I put my hand inside my jacket over my heart, where the warmth continues to grow. “It must begin precisely on time.” “Of course.” I can wait no longer and pull the phone out and flip the screen. Just as I thought. The rest of the message. The final two words. DO IT. “Noon.”
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