Black Market

4

Green Band struck the Wall Street financial district at 6:34 P.M. on December 4.

There had been no demands, no further warning or attempt at justification of any kind. There was no reason given why the massive attack came an hour and twenty-nine minutes past the deadline. When it happened, it was like a volcano of heat. One small, essential corner of New York seemed for a moment to tilt, then spin out of balance. And the black Manhattan sky, which had been settling down in wintry sullenness, came abruptly alive with flares of chaotic light, much like a battlefield at night.

Under towering, half-mile-high plumes of roiling black smoke, the canyons of Wall Street suddenly blazed with fierce individual fires.

The flames were like a blitzkrieg raging out of control on Wall and Broad streets, on Pine, South William, and Exchange Place. The scene of sudden random destruction reminded some news observers of Beirut; others thought back to banished memories of Berlin, to London during World War II, to North and South Vietnam.

Shrill, deafening choruses of police and hospital emergency sirens screamed through the glowing darkness. The streets were thick with uniformed police, hospital medics, forensic vans, detectives' and commanders' vehicles. Army, network news, and New York Police Department helicopters chattered overhead, barely avoiding tragic collisions among themselves.

A well-known and respected eyewitness TV reporter stood, without hat or coat, on what had recently been the stately corner of Wall and Broadway, right under Trinity Church spires. He spoke solemnly into a gaping ABC videotape camera lens. Genuine awe was softening his usually thespian voice.

“Thus far this is our definite information, and more is coming in all the time… The following sites in the Wall Street area were either partially or completely destroyed tonight: the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, where over one hundred billion dollars in foreign-owned gold bullion is stored… Salomon Brothers, one of the country's largest traders in government securities… Merrill Lynch at One Liberty Plaza… the Depository Trust Company, which handles debits and credits for brokerages via computer… Lehman Brothers, an old-line investment house…

“Also reportedly struck during the siege of unexplained bombings were safe deposit and storage vaults at Chase and the U.S. Trust Company; the New York offices of NASDAQ; the venerable New York Stock Exchange Building; Three Hanover Square, which is where Manufacturers Hanover and the European American Bank were located.

“The full extent of this awesome damage, the complete toll, will not be known tonight. Probably not for days, from the look of this incredible chaos. First estimates of the actual number of explosions range from a dozen to as many as forty separate blasts… It is an awful, awful scene here in what remains of the once proud and lofty financial district of New York.”

Green Band had struck like an invisible army.

Two justifiably nervous New York City patrolmen, Alry Simmons and Robert Havens, were carefully threading a path through the smoldering ruins of the Federal Reserve Bank located on Maiden Lane. The two men were attached at their belts to five-hundred-yard-long safety lines snaking back toward the street.

The patrolmen were now deep inside what had once been the Fed's massive and richly ornamental public lobby. Indeed, the gray-and-blue limestone, the sandstone bricks of the Federal Reserve, had always impressed visitors with a sense of their durability and authority. The fortlike appearance, the stout iron bars on every window, had reinforced the image of self-importance and impregnability. The image had obviously been a sham.

The destruction that officers Simmons and Havens found downstairs in the coin section was difficult to comprehend and even more difficult to assess. Mountainous coin-weighing machines had been blown apart like a child's toys. Fifty-pound coin bags were strewn open everywhere.

The marble floor was easily three feet deep in quarters, dimes, and nickels. Building support columns had been knocked down everywhere on the basement floor. The entire structure seemed to be trembling.

In the deepest basement of the Federal Reserve Bank was the largest single accumulation of gold stored anywhere in the world. It all belonged to foreign governments. The Fed both guarded the gold and kept track of who owned what. In an ordinary change of ownership, the Fed merely moved gold from one country's bin to another's. The gold was transported on ordinary metal carts, like books in a library. The security system in the deep basement was so highly elaborate that even the bank's president had to be accompanied when he ventured into the gold storage area.

Now patrolmen Havens and Simmons were alone in the cavernous basement. Gold was everywhere around them. Rivers of shining gold ran through the dust and rubble. Gold bars, more than they could possibly count, surrounded them. There was well over a hundred billion dollars at the day's market price of three hundred and eighty-six dollars an ounce, all within their reach.

Patrolman Robert Havens was hyperventilating, taking enormously deep breaths. His broad, flat face was expressionless.

Suddenly both emergency policemen stopped inching forward. Robert Havens let out a sharp gasp. “Christ Jesus! What the hell is this?”

An armed Federal Reserve Bank guard was sitting on a caned wooden chair, directly blocking their path from the gold section into the Fed's main garage. The cane chair still smoldered.

The guard was staring directly into Robert Havens's eyes, but he was beyond words. He was horribly burned, charred a blistering charcoal black. The ghastly sight made them so sick, they almost missed the most important clue…

Wrapped around the bank guard's right arm was a shiny, bright green band.

As Archer Carroll carefully maneuvered his battered station wagon along the Major Deegan Expressway, the words of the Atlantic Avenue restaurant owner came back to him with the persistence of an unanswerable philosophical question: And what are you?… What are you, please tell me, mister?

He glanced at his tired face in the rearview mirror. Yeah, what are you, Arch? The Rashids and Hussein Moussa are bad people, but you're some kind of okay national hero, right?

He was drained, completely numb. He wanted everything to be quiet and still inside his throbbing head.

And what are you, mister?

“Nothing worth a shit,” he finally answered in the general direction of the station wagon's fogged windshield. He felt as if he were traveling inside a sealed capsule. The world he could see beyond the grimy car windows had retreated one step farther away from him.

He turned on the car radio, looking for a diversion from his mood.

Immediately he heard the news about Wall Street, delivered by a voice edged in the hushed hysteria so favored by newscasters when they describe events of national importance. Carroll turned up the volume.

Along with the newscaster's tensely delivered reportage were a couple of man-on-the-street interviews recorded against a brassy background of screaming sirens. The people spoke in shocked tones.

Carroll tightened his hands on the steering wheel. His mind was crowded with realistic images of urban guerrilla destruction. He understood that Wall Street was a perfect target for any determined terrorist group-but he couldn't make the jump from his thoughts to the horrible reality of what had just happened.

He didn't want to think about it. Not tonight, anyway. He was almost home, and he didn't need to drag the world inside the last sanctuary left to him.

Moments later Carroll swung his stiff, aching body inside the familiar, musty front hallway of his house in the Riverdale section of the Bronx. Automatically he hung his coat up on the hook under an ancient totem-the snoopy-eyed Sacred Heart of Jesus. Turn out the night-light. Home from the wars, at last, he thought.

As he slumped into the living room, Carroll sighed.

“Oh, poor Arch. It's almost eleven-thirty.”

“Sorry. Didn't see you there, Mary K.”

Mary Katherine Carroll was sitting neatly curled up on one corner of the couch. The room was only dimly illuminated by an amber light from the dining parlor.

“You look like a skuzzy Bowery bag man. Is that blood on your sleeve? Are you all right?” She stood up suddenly.

Carroll looked down at his torn, dingy shirtsleeve. He turned it toward the dining parlor light. It was blood all right. Dark, dried blood, but not his own.

“I'm fine. The blood isn't mine. At least I don't think it is.”

Mary Katherine frowned deeply as she came forward to examine her brother's arm. “The bad guys get banged up, too?”

Arch Carroll smiled at his twenty-four-year-old “baby” sister. Mary Katherine was the keeper of his house, the substitute mother for his four children, the uncomplaining cook and chief bottle washer, all for a two-hundred-dollar-a-month stipend, a “scholarship.” It was all he could afford to pay her right now.

“I had to kill one of them. He won't be bothering people with his plastique bombs anymore… The kids all asleep?”

The kids, in order of arrival, were Mary III, Clancy, Mickey Kevin, and Elizabeth. All four of them were far too Irish-American cute for their own good: outrageously tow-headed and blue-eyed, with infectious smiles and quick, almost adult wits. Mary Katherine had been their house mother for nearly three years now. Ever since Arch's wife, Nora, had died on December 14, 1982.

After Nora's funeral, after just one desolate night at their old New York apartment, the six of them had moved into the Carroll family homestead in Riverdale. The old house had been closed and boarded up since the deaths of Carroll's mother and father back in 1980 and 1981.

Mary Katherine had redecorated immediately. She'd even set up a huge light-filled painting studio for herself in the attic. The kids were out of New York City proper, at least. They suddenly had acres of fresh air and space in which to ramble around. There were definite advantages to being up in Riverdale. They had almost everything they needed up here… everything but a mother.

Carroll had held on to their old rent-controlled apartment on Riverside Drive. Sometimes he even stayed there when he had to work weekends in New York. It wasn't ideal, but it could have been a lot worse. Especially without Mary K.

“I have several important messages for you,” Mary Katherine announced brightly.

“Mickey says, if I might paraphrase, that you work too hard and don't make enough skoots. Clancy says if you don't play catch with him this weekend-and not video game baseball-you're a dead man. That's a direct quote. Let's see… oh, yes, I almost forgot. Lizzie has decided to become a prima ballerina. Lessons for the spring semester at the Joliere School start at three hundred per, Dad.”

“That's all?”

“Mairzy Doats left you a humongous kiss, and a hug of equal magnitude and intensity.”

“Uncomplicated young woman. Shame she can't stay six years old forever.”

“Arch? What about this Wall Street thing? The bombing? I was worried.”

“I don't know. Too late to talk.”

Carroll wanted to box off Wall Street in a dark, private corner until he was ready to deal with it. It would still be there in the morning, you could bet on that. He massaged his eyelids, which were heavy with fatigue. His mind was crowded with unwelcome pictures-the Lebanese Butcher, the face of the Atlantic Avenue restaurant owner, fire trucks and EMS ambulances flashing all over Wall Street…

Carroll bent and loosened his flopping high-topped sneaks. He peeled off a discolored satin Tollentine High School jacket. His fatigue now yielded to a kind of peaceful, ethereal, waking slumber.

In the large bathroom on the second floor, he turned on the water full blast. Curling hot steam rose toward the ceiling from the chipped and scratched white porcelain tub. He took off the rest of his squalid street-bum ensemble and rolled a fluffy bath towel around his waist.

Quick mirror check. Okay. He was still around six two, solid, durable, and sturdy. Pleasant face, even if it was a little pug ordinary, like some friendly mutt people generally took in out of the rain. Generally.

While the hot water was running, Carroll stiffly padded back downstairs to the kitchen and popped the top of a cold Schlitz. Mary Katherine had bought the Schlitz beer as a “change of pace.” Actually, she was trying to stop him from drinking so much.

Carroll took three chilled cans and headed back to the bathroom. Stripping off the soft bath towel, he slowly, luxuriously, entered the hot, sweet-smelling tub.

As he sipped the cold beer, he began to relax. Carroll used a bath the way some people used psychiatry-to get back in touch, to sort it all out. Hot water and soap, the only therapy he could afford.

Carroll began to think about Nora. Damn. Always at night when he got home from work… their time. The emptiness he felt then was unbearable. It pulsed against him and filled him with a terrible, hollow longing.

He closed his eyes, and he could see her face. Oh, Nora, sweet Nora. How could you leave me like this? How could you leave me alone, with the kids, fighting against this crazy, crazy world?

She had been the best person Carroll had ever met. It was simple, no more profound than that. The two of them had made a perfect fit. Nora had been warm, and thoughtful, and funny. That they had found each other convinced Carroll such a thing as fate might indeed exist. It wasn't all randomness and whim and unseeing chance.

Strange, the ways of life and death.

Growing up, all through high school in New York, at college (South Bend, Notre Dame), Carroll had been secretly afraid he'd never find anybody to love him. It was a curious fear, and sometimes he'd imagine that just as some people were born with a talent for art or music, he'd been given the gift of solitude.

Then Nora had found him, and that was absolute magic. She'd discovered Carroll the second day of law school at Michigan State. Right away, from their very first date, Carroll simply knew he could never love anybody else, that he would never need to. He'd never been more comfortable around another person in his whole life. Nothing even close to the feeling he had for Nora had ever existed before.

Only now Nora was gone. Nearly three years back, in the cancer ward of New York Hospital. Merry Christmas, Carroll family. Your friend, God…

“I'm just a kid, Arch,” Nora had whispered to him once, after she'd found out she was dying. She'd been thirty-one then, a year younger than he.

Carroll slowly sipped his can of watery beer. A song played through his head: “… The beer that made Milwaukee famous, made a loser out of me.” Ever since she'd died, he understood he'd been trying to commit slow, sure suicide. He'd been drinking too much; eating most of the wrong things; taking stupid chances on the job…

It wasn't as if he didn't understand the problem, because he did. He just couldn't seem to do a damn thing to stop his steep downhill slide. He was like some daredevil skier determined to destroy himself on the most treacherous slopes. He didn't seem to care enough anymore…

Arch Carroll, supposed tough-guy cop, well-quoted cynic around town-sitting in the tub with one of his kid's rubber toys floating next to him. The kids delighted and astonished Carroll. So why was he screwing up so badly lately?

He was tempted to wake them up now. Maybe go sleigh riding at midnight on the back lawn. Play catch with Mickey Kevin. Teach Lizzie how to do a plie and become a hot-shit little ballerina.

Arch Carroll's ears suddenly tuned in sharply. He thought he heard voices. A door slammed. There were loud steps in the hallway and the familiar creak of the floor-boards.

The kids were up! Exactly what he needed, Carroll thought, and he began to smile broadly.

There was a light tap on the bathroom door. That had to be Lizzie or Mickey trying to be cute. Soon to be followed by Dolby Stereo kid screams and uncontrollable belly laughs.

“Entrez. Come right in, you little assholes,” he called.

The bathroom door opened slowly, and Carroll cupped his hands, ready to splash them with water.

He managed to control his impulse just in time.

The man framed in the doorway was wearing a black London Fog raincoat, wire-rimmed eyeglasses, a white button-down shirt, and a striped rep tie. Carroll had never seen him before.

“Excuse me, sir,” the man said.

“How did you get up here? Who the hell are you?” Carroll asked.

The stranger looked like a banker, maybe an account executive at a brokerage firm.

The man spoke with Ivy League formality, pretending not to notice the little yellow duck. Nothing even close to a smile crossed his pale, thin lips. “Your sister let me come up. Sorry to barge in on you, to trouble you like this at home. I need you to get dressed and come with me, Mr. Carroll. The president wants to see you tonight.”