“So,” said Jackie, after her plain chicken and deviled egg salad arrived, “aren’t you going to ask us how the investigation is going?”
“I would if I hadn’t already urged, actually begged, you to abandon it,” said Web. “And if even saying the name Jonathan Eldridge out loud wouldn’t cost me my job and any future employment with the federal government.”
“Are you completely off the case?” she asked. “You can tell us that, can’t you.”
“I can tell you my name and that I live in an apartment with a cat. And that’s about it.”
“Okay,” she said, content to focus on her salad.
“Say, Web, this is not about the case, but just a general question,” I said to him, probably unconvincingly “Does the government actually keep gigantic databases on everybody, some kind of central Big Brother thing like everybody thinks they do?”
“No. Sorry to disappoint you. And all the conspiracy theorists out there. Fact is, I think they would if they could. There’s just too much in the way. Inter-agency rivalries, mostly. Some of which were put there intentionally as a protection against a real Big Brother taking root. That’ll probably change now, given the situation, but it’ll be a long time coming, right or wrong.”
“That’s all irrelevant,” said Jackie to me, trying to delicately shove an uncut piece of lettuce in her mouth. “I can find anything you want on the Internet.”
“Anything?”
“Yeah. I can’t help it if you’ve been living in a cave for the last five years. Tell me what you want to know, about anything, anywhere. I can dig it out.”
“Jackie’s maybe exaggerating a little, but you’d be surprised.”
If he only knew.
“Let me ask you something else,” I said to Web. “When everybody can find out anything they want about anybody and everything, will we be closer to or farther away from achieving the ultimate in human understanding?”
He sat back in his chair and folded his arms to buy a little time to think. Then he shook his head.
“Nah. It’s all the same shit, just recycled,” he said, smiling at his own wisdom and digging into his three-quarter-pound mound of chopped sirloin with cheddar, bacon, lettuce and tomato.
—
It once made me nervous to drive the Grand Prix into New York City, especially in the warm weather, but that was before I’d changed out the thermostat for a new aftermarket model that improved on the original in that it actually functioned as advertised. Having to keep the windows down to avoid suffocation was a new challenge as we emerged from the tunnel and slid into the cacophonous, malodorous atmosphere of midtown Manhattan. I told Jackie it made for a much more authentic street-level experience. Still afloat from her lunch with Web, she let that stand.
We turned south and headed for downtown, where we had one more stop to make before I dropped Jackie off at NYU Medical Center. The Eagle Exchange was almost on Wall Street, almost in the financial district, slightly out of the mainstream, which basically delineated its status within the hierarchy of American securities brokers. It was notable, though irrelevant to our pursuit, that Eagle was still an independent company, neither beholden to nor subsumed into some mega-conglomeration of competing financial services.
Alena had given us two names, one she marked with a star as her main man. Brad Maplewhite. Jackie had pinned him down with a cell call on the way in, so we had a clear shot at catching him at his desk. We just had to pilot the Grand Prix down the East Side, through Chinatown and into the backside of downtown where Eagle had its thirty-two-story office tower. Easier said than done.
“First time I ever saw New York cabbies afraid of another car,” said Jackie.
“Nothing to worry about. All bark and no bite.”
We found a parking garage within a block of our destination, though it took three tries before they came up with a
guy who thought he could drive a full-sized car with a stick shift.
“I’ll park it myself,” I offered.
“No, no. Insurance. No good. We do it. No problem.”
“You can ride the clutch all the way to LA,” I told the nervous Middle Eastern kid who drew the straw. “Just be careful if you’re backing her in. Can’t see the end of the trunk. Too far away.”
It seem to take more effort to get into the Eagle Exchange being what I thought were bona fide, legal, totally forthright visitors than it took to lie our way into the Sisters of Mercy home in Riverhead. A phalanx of very serious guys in dark blue uniforms and baseball hats, packing heavy ordnance inside bulging leather holsters, stood to either side of the reception desk and in front of a bank of elevators. All I could do, all I wanted to do, was repeat the name of the guy who’d agreed to see us and stand ready to be jacked up against the nearest wall and strip searched.
After we waited half an hour, the lead guard called us over and handed us ID badges, then told us to wait again until a person from up above came down to escort us to our destination, which she did soon after—a tall woman in a form-fitting blue skirt, pumps and blue blouse, very reminiscent of a stewardess outfit circa 1975. We followed the click of her heels across the marble floor to a bank of elevators with tall brass doors embossed with an Art Deco rendering of heroic-looking people gazing off toward a brilliant sun, presumably meant to represent the brokers upstairs spotting a hot stock pick. I didn’t bother chatting it up with the woman in the blue dress as we ascended in the elevator. Way too scary.
She opened a pair of glass doors by swiping a pass card she wore around her neck, then left us without a word at an enormous curved reception desk—more like a hardwood
fortress—behind which a stringy little woman sat on duty. She was very thin, African-American, about sixty, her jet-black hair straightened and formed into large waves that accentuated her narrow, finely featured face. As we approached she dropped both hands on the surface of the desk in front of her, palms up.
“Badges,” she said.
We gave them up, Jackie to the right hand, me to the left. The woman, Eugenia Wilde according to the nameplate, pulled out the white inserts and wrote in the time, and her initials, EW, then handed them back for us to reassemble. She pointed to the one tiny couch a mile or two away at the far end of reception area.
“Someone will be out to get you,” she said.
We took the trip to the couch and sat there for a few minutes in the pale utter silence of the room. The couch had side tables at either end, but no magazines or phones or pinball machines or anything else to keep you occupied, so I spent the time humming the chorus to
Night on Bald Mountain
until Jackie asked me to stop. Right about then, as predicted, someone came out to get us.
He was about my height—an inch under six feet—but shaped more like a cylinder, with narrow shoulders and broad hips. He wore a blue-and-white-striped dress shirt with starched white collar and French cuffs, and a deep burgundy-colored tie sprinkled with tiny fleurs-de-lis. His dark brown hair had receded to about the peak of his round head, though it fit well with his heavy horn-rimmed glasses and look of serious intent.
“Brad Maplewhite,” he said, shaking our hands. “How was your trip in?”
He was probably somewhere in his mid-to late thirties, though with guys like Brad chronological age was irrelevant.
He repeated our names as we introduced ourselves while studying our faces, as if to prepare himself for the inevitable police sketch. He had a very small mouth, and when he smiled it was the only thing that moved.
“Not bad, considering we came all the way from the other end of Long Island,” I said.
“It was fine,” said Jackie, cutting me off. “We appreciate your seeing us. Hope it’s not a bad time.”
“Not at all,” said Brad. “Let’s go find a place to sit.”
The office was an open plan honeycombed with cubicles furnished with walnut desk sets and divided by panels upholstered in a cushioned black-and-silver herringbone fabric ideal for sticking full of pushpins. Brad took us into a small conference room with a window, whiteboard and computer workstation, which he immediately sat in front of and fired up.
The building across the street had the unsettling proximity typical of downtown. The facade was ornately decorated, with moldings in Roman ogee, filigrees and pediments over the windows in alternating curved and triangular patterns. The summer sunlight was just bright enough to penetrate the canyon and cast a glare on the glass, providing some privacy for the Brads next door tapping away at their own computers.
“I’ll just get all the relevant account history ready before we talk.”
“I really appreciate it,” said Jackie.
“Well,” said Brad, “when the FBI is on the phone, you take notice.”
I couldn’t help an involuntary glance in Jackie’s direction, which she returned with a quick twitch of her head.
“How’s Alena?” asked Brad while waiting for the computer to respond.
“Fine,” said Jackie. “She’s back in town now.” She told him the name of her new brokerage house. “Getting on with the next phase.”
“Good. I liked working with her. Very colorful.”
“More than you know,” I said.
He tapped a few more times on the keyboard, then, satisfied, spun the screen around so we could see what he’d brought up.
“As I explained on the phone, I looked after the Eldridge Consultants account, which is fundamentally one account split into about twenty-three sub-accounts, designated by these numbers here at the back of the string—101, 102, 103, etc. Some have been dormant for a while, but they’d all show up here as long as the principal account is still open. I’d only send Alena statements on the active subs, suppressing the rest, so I wouldn’t load her up with a lot of paperwork. Of course, now there’s only the one main account, the original, plus the ECM.”
“ECM?”
“Eagle Cash Manager. A place for cash to flow in and out as clients make deposits, securities are sold off, portfolios rebalanced, all of that. Plus you can use it like a normal bank account, write checks, have a debit card. Quite handy for everybody.”
“Did you only deal with Alena?”
“Usually, but I spoke to Mr. Eldridge occasionally. Sometimes he’d ask me to make a trade, buy or sell, move things around, or perform some other task. All very routine stuff. But he always asked me to double back with Alena so she could keep her records up to date. He was very respectful of her capabilities.”
“But you never met him.”
“Face to face? No, never met either one of them face to face. Not unusual. No need. Especially with professional
people like that. A dream account. Very large pool of assets, fair number of trades, though not too many, low maintenance, utterly fluent with the process. Knew what they wanted, but would listen to advice, not that they needed much.”
“You’re gonna miss them,” said Jackie.
I think Brad raised his eyebrows a tiny bit at that, but I can’t be sure.
“Once you folks unfroze the assets the sub-accounts were vacated by the consultancy.” He used a ballpoint pen to tap down a column of numbers that coincided with the sub-accounts, all showing zero balances. “Though Mrs. Eldridge has opted to maintain the core account as it stands for now. Her attorney, Mr. Szwit, seems quite capable of carrying on with the management on her behalf, with my assistance, of course.”
Appolonia’s balance was anything but zero. I felt an uncomfortable surge of protectiveness toward her for no other reason than the scale of loss should she fall prey to incompetence or evil.
“I guess old Jonathan was pretty good with investments.”
“Indeed he was. Played the tech thing like he had a time machine. Not a lot of frantic trading, just steady, even brilliant. Especially in retrospect. I’m an S&P type myself, like to stay away from big peaks and valleys. I’ve done okay for myself and my clients, but I wish I’d just followed this guy around. When I did, I was always happy.”
Jackie had her manila envelope on her lap. She pulled out a Xeroxed page.
“Do me a favor, Brad, and look up the history on 115 and 123.”
This time I was sure I saw his eyes brighten. Or maybe it was just a reflection off his glasses.
“I think I know what you’re getting at,” he said, spinning the monitor around and tapping at the keyboard. “Jonathan’s players.”
“Players?”
“That’s my word. Every broker has them. Just can’t stop messing with the portfolio. Day trader mentality. No patience, no adherence to a sound investment plan. No sense of diversification or dispersal of risk. Absolutely the wrong type of investor for an elegant adviser like Jonathan Eldridge. Here we are. Oh yes, I remember now. Some very unfortunate moves.”
He spun the monitor back around for us.
“There’re a lot of numbers here, but look at this column, then this one here. Note the red brackets.”
“Ouch,” said Jackie.
“You can lead em to water,” said Brad.
“Do you know who these people are?” I asked.
He put his hands over his ears.
“Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know. I can’t tell you how unhappy our compliance people were when this whole thing erupted. There’s nothing improper or illegal about this approach. But our liability extends only to Jonathan Eldridge Consultants, since technically, everything in this account belongs to them. It gets grayer when you have knowledge of his client relationships upstream. I just don’t want to know.”
I remembered Alena saying that Jonathan worked hard to calibrate his level of stress to just the right pitch. It looked like he’d found in Brad Maplewhite the ideal partner for the downstream portion of the calibration.
I reached over and took the Xeroxed sheet from Jackie.
“What about the other side of the equation. Any luckiest of the lucky?”
Brad worked at the screen for a while, occasionally cocking his head from side to side as he typed like a concert pianist. The chatter of keys was fleet enough to betray a true virtuoso. Something you wouldn’t see much with men my age, most of whom had barely mastered the technological intricacies of IBM Selectrics before typewriters turned into television sets.
“Well, 102 and 105 have faired very well over the years. Especially in the months preceding the, ah, event. Quite a burst of activity, mostly funded out of the ECM.”