Black Market

24

Manhattan

Two hours later, on duty, Carroll's head was throbbing with dull pain. He felt he needed a stiff shot of Murphy's Irish whiskey. He also felt like going back to the role of Crusader Rabbit, running away into the convenient, strangely comfortable fantasy of the bag man. For the first time, maybe, he thought he was beginning to understand the past three years of his life.

Later, at around nine o'clock, he would vaguely remember weaving a mostly aimless path inside number 13 Wall Street. The fluorescent lights were too bright; the glaring overhead lamps were harsh, tearing at his eyes.

It was all wrong, the place felt wrong. There was too much gloom and doom, palpable frustration evident everywhere. The police investigators and Wall Street researchers bent over mountainous documents or hunched in paralysis in front of computer screens were like people who had been trapped indoors too long, men and women who hadn't seen the light of day for weeks. Even his own people, the usually unflappable Caruso included, had the quirky, tense mannerisms of heavy smokers suddenly deprived.

Around nine-thirty Arch Carroll set to work again inside his monastic office.

The broken windowpane hadn't been replaced, and the sheet of brown paper he'd stuck in the space hung limply now, like a beat-up old blind in an abandoned tenement. He kept the ceiling lights purposely bright, glaringly unpleasant. The door was shut tight so the radiator heat would build up.

An illusion of warmth, he thought.

Carroll was dressed appropriately for the overheated room: a Boston Celtics T-shirt that had the look of something left over from a banquet of moths, Levi's jeans, Crusader Rabbit's very own work boots. He was going to be comfortable, at least.

He also had a bottle of Murphy's Irish whiskey on the desk. What would Walter Trentkamp say? Oh, to hell with Walter and his imposing virtues, his old-world cop mores.

For a few minutes, slowly sipping the Irish, Arch Carroll thought about his job, jobs in general, the overwhelming job of life.

This particular job had been an important part of his life for almost nine years now. He hadn't exactly planned it like that, but life tended to go its own idiosyncratic way. After the army tour, Carroll had finished law at Michigan State. He'd also married Nora. Right about the same time, both his father and Walter Trentkamp had come along to convince him to do some legal work for the DIA. So Carroll had become an agent as the result of a combination of financial pressures, his long policeman heritage, and the coaxing of Trentkamp and his father.

It was weird, completely unfathomable, the ways of life. Society chose to overplay Wall Street salesmen, various marketing experts, obfuscating corporation lawyers, investment bankers. At the same time, society grossly underpaid the teachers of its children, its police, even its political leaders. Some kind of crazy society.

Well, they seriously underpaid him to work at protecting them from harm's way. But he was going to protect them, anyway-as well as he possibly could.

The nagging question was whether his best was going to be good enough. He'd had six good men, plus himself, on the streets since the night of December 4. So far they'd come up with almost nothing. How the hell could that be possible?

He wandered around the cramped room for a while, like a man without any particular sense of direction. Then he went to his desk and sat down, waiting for the day's first suspects to appear.

Green Band-why did he have the feeling just then that there was something important at the top of his mind, an obvious insight that had evaded him until now? It was infuriating and elusive.

Did it have something to do with Green Band's inside information? A spy at 13 Wall?

From a transcript taken in room 312; number 13 Wall; Monday, December 14.

Present: Arch Carroll; Anthony Ferrano; Michael Caruso.

CARROLL: Hello, Mr. Ferrano, I'm Mr. Carroll, Antiterrorist Division, State Department. This is my associate, Mr. Caruso. Mr. Ferrano, to get right to the point, not to waste any of your time, or mine, I need some information…

FERRANO: Figured that out already.

CARROLL: Uh-huh. Well, I read your earlier transcript. I just read over the conversation you had with Sergeant Caruso. I'm a little surprised you haven't heard anything about the bombing on Wall Street.

FERRANO: Why's that? Why should I have?

CARROLL: Well, for one thing, you being a heavy gun and explosives dealer, Mr. Ferrano. Doesn't it strike you as odd, uh, peculiar, you wouldn't have heard something? There must be rumors floating around on the street. I'm sorry, would you like a sip of whiskey?

FERRANO: I want whiskey, I got money in my pocket. Listen, I told you, I told somebody, him, I don't deal guns. I don't know what you're talking that shit for, I own Playland Arcade Games, Inc., on Tenth Avenue and Forty-ninth Street. You got that straight now?

CARROLL: Okay, that's bullshit. Who do you think you're talking to? Some punk off the street? Just some street punk here?

FERRANO: Hey, all right, fuck you. I want my lawyer in here now!… Hey, you understand English, pal? Lawyer! Now!… Hey! Hey!… Ohhh… oh, shit!

(Loud scuffling, fighting sounds. Furniture crashing; man groaning.)

CARROLL (breathing heavily): Mr. Ferrano, I think… feel it's important you understand something. Listen carefully to what I'm saying. Watch my lips… Ferrano, you've just entered the Twilight Zone. You don't have the right to remain silent in the Twilight Zone. All of your constitutional rights have been temporarily canceled. You have no lawyer. All right? We set to continue our discussion, fuckhead?

FERRANO: Shit, man. My tooth's broken. Gimme a break for… Awhh, shit, man.

CARROLL: I'm trying to give you every break in the world. Don't you understand anything yet? What this is here? What's happening?… Somebody stole money from the man. Some very important people are severely pissed off. Big, big people. Why don't you imagine that this is Vietnam and you're the Vietcong? Would that help you?

FERRANO: Wait a minute! I didn't do anything!

CARROLL: No? You sell pump-action shotguns, revolvers, to fourteen- and fifteen-year-old kids. Black, P.R., Chinese kids in gangs. I'm not gonna say any more than that… Your lawyer is a Mr. Joseph Rao of 24 Park Avenue. Mr. Rao doesn't want any part of this… I think you better tell me everything you've heard on the street.

FERRANO: Look. I'll tell you what I know. I can't tell you what I don't know.

CARROLL: That I can buy.

FERRANO: All right, I heard there was some heavy artillery available. In the city. This was about, beginning, I guess, maybe middle of November. Yean five weeks ago.

CARROLL: How heavy are we talking about?

FERRANO: Like M-60s. Like M-79 rocket launchers. Soviet RPD light machine guns. SKS automatics. That kinda stuff. Heavy! I mean, what the fuck they gonna do with that kind of munitions? That's basic ground-assault equipment. Like in ' Nam. What you'd use, take over a country. That's all I heard… I'm telling the truth, Carroll… Hey, that's all anybody knows on the street… Awhh, c'mon, don'tcha believe me?… Hey! Seriously!

CARROLL: Tell me what you know about François Monserrat…

FERRANO: He ain't Italian.

CARROLL: Mr. Ferrano, thank you so much for your help. Now get out of my office, please. Mr. Caruso will show you to the nearest rathole.

From a transcript taken in room 312; number 13 Wall.

Present: Arch Carroll; Muhammed Saalam.

CARROLL: Hello there, Mr. Saalam. Haven't seen you since you had Percy Ellis killed on 103rd Street. Very nice djellaba. Sip of Irish whiskey?

SAALAM: Liquor is against my religious belief.

CARROLL: This is Irish whiskey. It's blessed. Well, we'll get right down to official police business, then. Tell me, uh, are you a hunter, Mr. Saalam?

SAALAM (laughs): No, not really. A hunter?… Actually, if you stop to think about it, I'm a huntee. Ever since I fought for you whites in Southeast Asia. My name is Sah-lahm, by the way.

CARROLL: Sah-lahm. I'm sorry… No, you see, I thought you must be a hunter. Something like that. You see, we found all of these hunting guns, these hunting bombs, in your apartment up in Yonkers, M-23 squirrel-hunting guns. Opossum-hunting sniper rifles, the ones with star nightscopes. Chipmunk-hunting fragmentation grenades. B-40 duck-hunting rockets.

SAALAM: You bust into my place?

CARROLL: Had to. What do you know about a Mr. François Monserrat?

SAALAM: You had a warrant from a judge?

CARROLL: Well, we couldn't get an official warrant. We did talk to a judge off the record. He said don't get caught. We took it from there.

SAALAM: No search warrant or nothing?

CARROLL: You know, this is really shocking. Didn't anybody read that Time magazine story on me? Little squared-off red box thing? Doesn't anybody understand who I am? I'm a terrorist! Just like you guys… I don't play by international Red Cross of Switzerland agreements. Mr. Saalam, you sold some M-23 squirrel-hunting guns, also some quail-hunting sniper rifles to a couple of fellas. About six weeks ago. Who… are… they?…

(Long pause.) “Uh-oh. Uh-oh… Mr. Saalam, please let me explain something else to you. Explain this as clearly as I can… You're a bright, U.S. college-educated terrorist. You went to Howard University for a year; you did a little time in Attica. You're one of the Mark Rudd-Eldridge Cleaver-Kathy Boudin school… Me, on the other hand, I'm a terrorist of the PLO-Red Brigade-Blow-away-anything-that-moves school… Now then. You sold a full case of stolen M-23s on or about November 1. That's a fact we both know about. Now say-Yes, I did, or I'll break your right hand. Just say Yes, I did…

SAALAM: Yeah, I did.

CARROLL: Good. Thank you for your forthrightness. Now, who did you sell the M-23s to? Wait. Before you answer. Remember that I'm the PLO. Don't say anything you'd be afraid to say to a PLO investigator in Beirut.

SAALAM: I don't know who they are.

CARROLL: Oh, Jesus Christ.

SAALAM: No, wait a minute. They knew who I was. They knew everything about me. I never saw nobody, I swear it. I felt like they had set me up.

CARROLL: I love former-inmate sincerity. Unfortunately, I happen to believe you… Because that's what your current roommate, Mr. Rashad, said, too. Please get the hell out of here now… Oh, by the way, Mr. Saalam. We had to rent your apartment up in Yonkers. We rented it to a very nice welfare lady, with these three little kids.

SAALAM: You did what?

CARROLL: We rented the apartment you were selling guns out of. We rented it to a nice lady with a batch of kids. Skoal, brother.

“It's all so incredibly methodical. That's what is so mystifying. They keep evading all contact with this huge international police dragnet. How?”

Caitlin Dillon lit up a cigarette and slowly drew in millions of carcinogens.

She and eighty-three-year-old Anton Birnbaum, both red-eyed and exhausted, sat together on stiff leather Harvard chairs in Birnbaum's Wall Street office. Caitlin was a good six inches taller than the birdlike, deceptively frail financier. Earlier in her career, when she had worked for Birnbaum, he wouldn't walk anywhere on Wall Street with her for that very reason. “Vanity is a living legend,” she'd kidded him once she found out the truth.

Anton Birnbaum rubbed the small of his back as he talked. “Something so very methodical, so carefully orchestrated… something absolutely systematic is happening throughout Western Europe right now.”

Caitlin watched Birnbaum's face with its corrugated lines, which shifted and moved as he spoke. She waited patiently for more to come. It usually did with Anton, who thought much faster than he could now speak.

“There is a book… The Real War, it's called. The book's central thesis is that Germany and Japan have found an eminently reasonable road to further world conquest. Through commerce. That's the real war. As a country, we're losing that war spectacularly, don't you think, Caitlin?”

The former chairman of the venerable investment house, Levitt Birnbaum, was something of a prig, Caitlin knew. He could be savagely impatient with people he didn't like or respect, but he was also undeniably brilliant. Anton Birnbaum had been adviser to presidents, to kings, to multinational corporations such as Fiat, Procter & Gamble, Ford Motor. He had controlled the fate of untold billions of dollars. Anton Birnbaum had also been one of Caitlin's staunchest backers ever since she'd first left the Wharton School. Only as she'd come intimately to know Birnbaum had she begun to understand why.

Caitlin Dillon was a challenging mystery that Birnbaum still hadn't completely solved. She was a natural businessperson, perhaps the most gifted Anton Birnbaum had met. She had the intelligence, the necessary discipline, and the kinds of instincts Birnbaum rarely saw anymore. Yet she seemed to have little interest in actually making money.

She was a confounded mystery in other ways as well. She had been brought up in a small Ohio town, yet she exhibited the most cosmopolitan tastes and opinions. She spoke German and French fluently. She kept surprising Birnbaum with new talents whenever they spent time together.

Of course, her father had been teaching her about the stock market since she had expressed an interest in high school. But there was more to it than early coaching. Caitlin Dillon obviously wanted to be a force on Wall Street. Anton Birnbaum was certain that she wanted to be a legend one day herself. He steadfastly refused ever to say it out loud, even to hint it to his male peers, that the financier's protégée was a woman.

“What do you think is happening in Western Europe? We're having an impossible time piecing it together, Anton. Some very important data are missing. The absolutely essential thread of logic that might explain who they are.” Caitlin stood up and wandered around the old man's office as she talked.

She stopped with her back to the window and looked at the framed photographs on the walls. There was Anton, snapped in the company of the very powerful and famous. Statesmen, controversial industrialists, people from the entertainment industry… there were photos of Konrad Adenauer, Harold MacMillan, and Anwar Sadat. Also Henry Ford and J. Paul Getty. John Kennedy, Richard Nixon, and Ronald Reagan.

Anton Birnbaum scratched the bridge of his blotched and mottled nose as he contemplated his choice of words. He was reminded once again that Caitlin was one of the few people on Wall Street he could really talk to. Complex explanations of his theories and insights were unnecessary when speaking with her.

“The Europeans simply don't trust us. Which is precisely why they don't talk to us anymore. They believe we have different attitudes, different priorities toward the Middle East, also toward the Soviet bloc. They're certain we're too casual about the dangers of a nuclear war. They don't feel we understand Marxist-Leninist ideology.”

Birnbaum stared directly into Caitlin's deep brown eyes. His own eyes were watering hopelessly behind thick glasses. He reminded Caitlin of Mole in The Wind in the Willows.

“I sound like an alarmist, no? But I feel the intrinsic truth of what I'm saying. Almost prima facie, I feel it. There will be a crash now. I believe there will be a serious crash, possibly another Black Friday. Very, very soon.”

Caitlin sat down on the stiff leather chair.

Another Black Friday, her mind raced. A stock market crash! Her own worst fears had been confirmed by the man she most respected on the Street. Her father's jeremiads twenty years before had finally come home to roost.

Complete collapse; the entire economic system falling. Impossible ideas were formulating in her brain.

She stared at Birnbaum and saw that he was watching her with an expression of vague sorrow. The light from an antique brass lamp turned the lines on his face into deep dark bands.

Complete collapse… The phrase continued to ring. It meant the end of an entire way of life.

And after the failure of an economic system, who would survive? Who would finally crawl out of the rubble and be able to go on? If she had the answer to that, maybe she'd also have the answer to the mystery of Green Band.

Anton Birnbaum spoke again. “As I said, I think we could be in the middle of a war. The money war. The great Third World War we have so long feared-it may already be upon us.”