Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street (21 page)

“Hey!” he managed to blurt out, as he started to reach up toward the offending arms. He hadn’t plotted a reaction, as the images were slow to crystallize in his brain, though adrenaline would soon clear the webs. He started to push himself upright, though the smooth leather soles of his Alden wing tips got scant purchase on the quartz-encrusted concrete and kept him off-balence before he could get past a sitting position.

The sudden punch to his chest, and the second to his throat, startled him, but there was no time for anger, or even fear, as his eyes caught the glint of the long steel blade, now wet with his own blood, and his lungs filled and his breath escaped, and the hot, dark puddle that suddenly grew steamed briefly in the frostbitten evening before the wind bore it away.

twenty-one

Warren pulled a
Post
off the stack at the corner grocery before he hailed a cab every morning. He generally read the
Journal
once he got into the office, but the tabloid made for more entertaining fare during the ride in. There wasn’t much of interest nationally, but as he paged through to local news, he noticed an item on the fifth page, lower right: “Broker Slain near Central Park”:

William E. Dougherty, a broker for Wall Street powerhouse Weldon Brothers, was robbed and stabbed to death late last night only steps from the New York Athletic Club, on Central Park South in Manhattan, where he had just completed a business engagement. Police refused to speculate on the identity of the killer, but a witness said he’d seen an apparently homeless man panhandling in the area shortly before the incident. Dougherty evidently lay unattended for several minutes, before a maintenance worker from the Essex House Hotel nearby noticed him. He was rushed to St. Luke’s Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

A spokesman for the mayor’s office expressed abhorrence for the crime and promised “the full effort of all law enforcement agencies to capture the guilty party in this heinous crime.”

Mr. Dougherty, according to sources, was a highly successful salesman with Weldon Brothers and was a holder of the Silver Star for his service in Vietnam. He was married to Megan Rance, granddaughter of Reynolds Rance, the founder of Rance Aviation, a major defense contractor, and leaves two teenaged children.

“Holy shit!” Warren blurted out, startling the driver. “I can’t fucking believe it!” He snapped the paper shut and closed his eyes.

“Excuse me, sorh?” the man behind the wheel said in a Pakistani accent.

“I can’t fucking believe it! I can’t fucking believe it!” Warren was shaking his head now. “A guy I work with was killed last night. Jesus Christ! What the fuck is going on here? What do I do? Holy Jesus H. Christ.” Warren was rubbing his hands over his face as the cab reached the FDR Drive entrance and turned downtown.

As soon as he stepped onto the floor, he slowed down. What had he expected? Clumps of men in funeral garb, some kind of general outcry? The impact on the floor was negligible. A group of salesmen were gathered near Dougherty’s desk, but most everyone else who had arrived was on the phone. The morning passed with several brief conversations, mostly about the rise of violent crime in the city, expressions of shock and disbelief, and an address over the internal television system to announce the death, and to offer solace and advice on safety. At about eleven o’clock, Malcolm Conover called Warren into his office. Conover, as Fixed Income sales manager, was responsible for handling the reassignment of Dougherty’s responsibilities.

“Goddamn unbelievable what happened to Billy. Right after the biggest trade of his career with Wisconsin. I just can’t get over it.” Malcolm was speaking to the far wall as he led Warren into his glass-walled office. “How are you holding up?”

“Well, Malcolm, it’s not easy. All of Billy’s accounts are horrified, and I gotta tell you, I’m pretty shaken up. It just makes the business seem unimportant.” Warren hung his head as he plopped into a chair.

“God. He had two kids. I saw them at the Christmas party. And Anne. Christ, I hope he had a lot of insurance, at least. This fucking city. I told them we shoulda moved the company to Greenwich last year.” Conover seemed genuinely upset, and Warren could see he was thinking about his own family, and what would happen if it had been him. That he’d gotten Megan Dougherty’s name wrong didn’t really surprise Warren, but he was slightly appalled that Malcolm’s showing human emotion surprised him.

“Well, Malcolm, we’ve gotta figure no matter where the office was or where he lived, he’d still have had to come into town for dinner with Wisconsin. Barbara Hayes loves the AC, so that was where he’d’ve been no matter what.” Warren knew that she enjoyed the maleness of the NYAC, and the sense of intruding on privilege that made her feel special.

“Yeah, I suppose you’re right.” Conover paused for a moment, then dismissed the tragedy with a short wave of his hand. “Well, anyway, Warren, we’ve decided to split Malcolm’s book for now. You know everybody pretty well already, and you’ve been doing a good job, especially with the state. We’ll have JT split the coverage with you, but you’re the senior coverage, he’s more backup. A familiar voice on the telephone will do the clients well, and maybe you’ll even get a few sympathy trades out of it. If it works out, you’ll be alone on the list.” Malcolm was leaning back in his chair, looking away from Warren and out at the floor. “It’s kind of seamless this way. And a big opportunity for you.”

Warren let the air hang silent for a long moment as Malcolm rotated in his chair and looked Warren square-on for the first time since they’d started talking.

“I hate to have things happen this way,” Warren started, “but I think you’ll be happy with the job I do. Last night, after dinner, I dropped Barbara off at her hotel, and we had some great ideas on what to do next. I know that I can keep the state a top account. And I’ve been spending a lot of time working with the rest of the list. In fact I’m going to the Knicks game tomorrow night with Teachers Insurance, and we had dinner planned on Thursday with Morgan management. I know I can make this work out for the firm.” Warren was laboring to appear earnest and humble, his heart pounding at this huge opportunity. JT was a third-year associate who was clearly going nowhere. Warren had blown by him in a few weeks. Bill Dougherty had averaged about a million and a half take-home pay a year, after taxes. His account package was now effectively becoming Warren’s, and the burgeoning assets of the investment funds meant that the size of trades and the commissions were sure to grow rapidly.

“Well, then, good luck. I’ll check in with you a couple of times a week to see how you’re doing. In the meantime, the police department had a man here this morning, and he left his card for you to call him. I told him I thought you were at the AC last night, and he said he’d want to interview you.” Malcolm handed Warren a thinly embossed card belonging to Detective Dick McDermott of the Homicide Division.

“I’ll call him right away.” Warren stood up.

“Good. They’ll announce the services for Bill probably tomorrow. Tell everyone we should put in a good showing.”

“I will. Thanks, Malcolm, I’ll pick up the slack.” Warren left the office and returned to his seat. He immediately dialed the number on McDermott’s card.

The voice on the other end was mild and answered with two words: “Homicide. McDermott.”

“Detective McDermott, this is Warren Hament from Weldon Brothers. My boss told me to call you, that you might have some questions about last night.”

“Hament? Oh, yeah, Hament. Hey, sorry about your friend. That was a tough way to go. I hope he had insurance. Listen, if you want this to wait a while, we can talk later on. But it’d be better while it’s fresh in your mind.”

“No. If I can help in any way, I’d like you to catch whoever did it. Bill was a friend and did a lot for me. What can I tell you?” Warren sounded anxious to somehow be of use.

“Listen, Mr. Hament, we normally like to do these interviews in person. If it’s not too much trouble, I can come up there in a few minutes.” McDermott didn’t sound particularly flexible.

“How long do you think you’ll need? I’ve got a lot of calls to make for Bill.”

“I’d say twenty minutes or so.”

Hament glanced up at the clock on the ceiling beam. “Can you be here in the next half hour?”

*   *   *

“Well, why don’t you just give me a rundown on what you did last night, starting with leaving the office.” Lieutenants Dick McDermott and Roger Wittlin had settled into comfortable chairs in the syndicate conference room, which was dominated by a mahogany table easily capable of seating forty people. Foam cups of coffee steamed on the table in front of them. McDermott, about six feet, heavy, and rumpled, led off the questioning. Wittlin, a few inches shorter, sat back a little farther, dressed neatly, thin, hair slicked back, and with a far more intense manner. He had laid a notebook on the table.

“Okay. Let’s see … we had the dinner set up with Barbara Hayes from the Wisconsin Employees Retirement Fund at six thirty at the NYAC. I was writing up tickets—trade tickets—from the day and putting them into our logbooks until it was time to go. Bill stayed because he didn’t feel like going home first, and he and I caught a cab up to the AC, where we met Barbara. We were maybe five minutes late and met Barbara in the lobby.”

“So you’d say you got there around six thirty-five,” Wittlin said, taking notes.

“Roger wants you to know he can add,” McDermott cracked, and grinned at Warren. Wittlin gave McDermott a bored glance.

“Close. Yeah, about six thirty-five.” Warren reciprocated with a thin smile. “So, we had a couple of drinks at the bar and then went to dinner. We spent a long time going over the big trade we just completed for the fund, and we showed her a bunch of exhibits Research had worked up, so dinner took a while. They drank a lot—Barbara likes to be wined and dined, and it was a celebration—so after the first course, the conversation kind of got off business. Anyhow, after dessert, Barbara said she was pretty tired and she’d talk to us some more when she got home to Madison.”

“That’s Wisconsin, Roger. About what time was that?” McDermott glanced up at Warren. “It must have been eleven or so, and we headed back down to the bar for a last drink.”

“You said they drank a lot. Did you drink much?” Wittlin cut in.

“I had one vodka gimlet before dinner, which I didn’t finish, maybe two glasses of wine, and one or two sips of cognac after. For me, that’s more than enough. I’m a lightweight.” Warren could never handle too much liquor. It tended to make him sick. He’d perfected nursing drinks while clients got tanked, and he’d used the practice well the previous night.

“So, they went down to the bar after dinner for another drink.” Wittlin waved his hand like a bandleader.

“That wound up being two drinks, and we were all pretty tired by then. So we decided to call it a night.”

“Yeah. What then? Who left how?” McDermott picked up the line.

“Well, Bill offered to have me drop Barbara off on my way home, since she was staying over at the Carlyle. He said he’d get a cab later, that he wanted to shoot a rack or two of pool. So, we said good-bye at the bar, and Barbara and I went down and got our coats. Then we got a cab. We got one heading the other way, but he made a U-turn. I dropped her in front, on Madison Avenue. Then I took the cab over to Columbus and Eighty-First. I got some milk at the Koreans’ for my morning coffee on my way, and that’s about it.” Warren was surprised the detective hadn’t interrupted him or slowed him down.

“You didn’t see Bill talk to anyone else at the club while you were with him?” McDermott now sounded bored.

“He did wave to one or two guys. I think he said one was a former partner of his at Merrill or something like that. But he didn’t have any conversations with anyone.”

“Do you know what time you got home?”

“Yeah, about eleven fifty or twelve. I looked at my watch when we left the AC, and it was around eleven forty. It couldn’t have taken me more then fifteen minutes to get home. I also know I was in bed by twelve fifteen. Oh, yeah, I had a message on my machine from work. Pete in Research had called with some questions about the final computer runs he was doing, so I tried to get him in the office, but he was gone. I got his machine, but I didn’t leave any message.”

“Your Research guys usually work that late?” Wittlin chimed in.

“Sometimes. If it’s important.”

“This was important?”

“Oh, yeah. We just traded several billion dollars for their portfolio. But I guess Pete got them done—the runs—or quit. I don’t know, because I haven’t had a chance to talk to him yet.”

“Okay. Thanks. I just want you to think about coming out of the AC.” Wittlin leaned in a little. “Did you see anyone or anything that made you notice them? Also, can you tell me anything about the cab or cabdriver? Maybe he saw something.”

“Well—the cab was just a regular one—not a new car or a Checker or anything. The driver was foreign, maybe Indian or something. It had a partition in it. And it smelled pretty bad. Barbara might remember more, she doesn’t … Oh, Jesus! Has anyone told her about this yet? Wow! She’ll be pretty shocked.”

“Don’t worry about that, I’ve already spoken to her. She saw it on the morning news. She took it okay. Didn’t remember much about the cabbie either, but we’ll be able to find him by his log.” McDermott glanced up at Warren to watch it sink in that they were comparing his story to Barbara’s. No wonder they’d been in a hurry to interview him. “Listen, I may ask you to come in for a more complete interview later on. Just to see if one of our guys can’t help you remember any tiny details. We want to find this guy before he gets anyone else.” McDermott’s voice had shifted from bored to hurried—he wanted to get going. He hadn’t touched the coffee.

“Okay, Detective, sure. If you need anything at all … do you have my home number?”

“Yeah. I got it from your boss. Listen, think hard. I’ll be talking to you.” McDermott got up and shook Warren’s hand.

“Thanks for your time,” the smaller man added as he pushed back his chair.