Man in the Middle

“What’s the significance of that?”

“Banking laws, Petey. Untraceable accounts.”

“I still don’t get it. Jackson is an intermediary between us and a Swiss bank that’s brokering for some other client? Who and why?”

Stuart reached for his cocaine, this time satisfied with doing two lines. When he finished, he said, “Sometimes Muller has me do his grunt work. Same as you do for me, only his stuff is mega—not this nickel and dime stuff we do in the trading room.”

“Whoa. I’d hardly call making a few million bucks a day nickel and dime.”

“Peanuts. Muller’ll hand me a stack of twenty or thirty matched buy and sell tickets booked with Jackson Securities—currency and commodity trades mostly. My job is to go through these tickets and calculate the P&L, then report that number to Muller. A couple times, Muller’s accounts made a fortune trading with this untraceable Jackson Security account. I’m talking a hundred million or more, in a morning. That means the other side is losing that much money.”

“Must be somebody stupid.”

Stuart cackled. “You’re a beauty. Stupid? I don’t think so.”

“If they’re always losing money—”

“Maybe Howard Muller’s the smartest damn trader that ever lived. Did you ever consider that possibility, dude?”

Without warning, Stuart began to laugh. At first controlled, the chortle grew in intensity until he sounded like a small child, tickled by a relentless parent. He hugged his ribs with crossed arms, but failed to settle down. Through watering eyes, he snatched the vial, used his forearm to mop the table of all powdery remnants, got up, and said, “That thing I almost told you earlier?”

“The thing you never told anyone else?”

“Yeah. You’ll keep it a secret?”

“Sure.” Peter leaned forward.

Stuart choked the words from deep in his throat. “Muller. Him and me is related . . .” Stuart folded his forehead into his crossed arms, trying to stifle his laughter, coughing in the process. “Thank God,” he struggled to say, “I didn’t get that elephant noggin. Oh man . . . this is so damn funny. Cousins . . . Can you imagine my poor aunt giving birth to that head? Must have been like . . .”

It was contagious. Peter laughed, also out of control. “Ouch! That head, in the birth canal . . .” Peter couldn’t finish the thought.

“Dart boy,” Stuart managed to say. “Drop the dude, and his head falls fastest . . . Baby Howie’s feet sticking up in the air . . . like a dart . . . or a lab experiment gone very wrong.”

Peter felt like he might cramp, as if he had done drugs with Stuart. “That head, on that body—he looks like a Stonehenge column and top.”

“You’re cruel, dude.”

“He’s in New York,” Peter continued through his own guffaws, “at Thanksgiving. The Macy’s Parade. They’re gonna tie rope around him and pull him alongside Garfield the hot air balloon.”

“Oh, my God. Funny . . .” Stuart choked.

“Billed as the giant, floating head. Weird, scary, floating head.” Peter wondered how he got on such a roll. He couldn’t stop himself. “Muller trips . . . on his head . . . his skull would dent linoleum. Break bricks. Here, Howie, mind banging your gourd against this cement wall? . . . Need to knock it down . . .”

Stuart sniffed, then swabbed a tear from his cheek with a sleeve. “Hey, I can’t take no more. Maybe the guy’s just the best damn trader in the whole friggin’ world . . . that’s what got this laugh-riot started. That’s rich. Gotta go.”

Stuart left the room, his high-pitched cackles silenced once the soundproof door clicked shut. Peter’s mania immediately subsided. Why, he wondered, did Stuart think the comment concerning Howard’s trading prowess was so hilarious? Everybody knew Morgan Stenman and her CIO Howard Muller were two of the best—if not the best—traders in the world. The President of the United States, members of Congress, Third World central bankers, heads of states—all called for advice.

“Has to be the drugs,” Peter said under his breath.

At home an hour later, Peter put Henry’s food bowl on the kitchen floor, the episode with Stuart a dismissed curiosity. He changed his clothes and got ready to pick up Kate. It would be their fourth or fifth date in the last few weeks.

He wondered about their relationship. Were they more than friends? Kisses goodnight and handholding, but friends do that.

“Gonna go slow, old man,” Peter said to Henry. “Don’t want another Ellen Goodman.”

Peter grabbed his car keys—to his new BMW—and stepped out, noting that the keys to a Beemer felt different than those of a Jetta—heavier, as if made of gold. He jangled the key ring in a hand as he patted the sides of his jacket. For the first time in memory, he forgot to drop the moonstone into his pocket.

With his thumb, he repeatedly pressed the button on the key chain that activated the car door-lock system, listening to the high pitch go on and off as he neared his forty-four thousand dollar machine. Beep, beep, beep, beep—unlock, lock, unlock, lock. His moonstone never sang to him, he thought. One more beep and the door unlocked a final time.

CHAPTER TEN

 THE LAW OFFICES OF LEEMAN, JOHNSTON, AND AYERS WERE DOWNTOWN, overlooking the San Diego Harbor. A forest of masts and sails, moored to a labyrinth of docks, bobbed along the shoreline below Jason Ayers’ windows. Farther south, the arch of the Coronado Bay Bridge cut through his view of the marina and the ocean. At eye level, cumulus clouds looked frozen in place, back-lit by the late-day sun. For Ayers, the view was nothing more than an anchor, to keep his vision from floating around his office.

Usually law associates worked slave hours, billing clients at the rate of fourteen hours a day. Friday was the only day the firm tolerated—even encouraged—moderation. Most associates and partners left the building by six p.m. On this Friday, as Ayers pretended to be busy, Kate and two others remained in the outer offices, finishing projects deemed of sufficient importance to ignore Friday’s early-out-the-door rule.

Ayers jumped to his feet and began to pace. He staggered in the direction of the picture window, turned left, and shuffled towards a wall of built-in bookshelves filled with six-inch hardbound legal volumes. Along another wall, photographs stared down at him. One picture in particular stole his attention—a forty-year-old photo, framed and preserved. A boy, twenty-one years old, wore a grass- and blood-stained football uniform. Tucked under one arm, he held a battered helmet. The jock’s other arm draped around a grinning, skinny, bright-bore of a boy, dressed in a blue and gold sweater. That day, Matthew Neil had scored three touchdowns and caught eight passes for over two hundred yards. The last statistic remained a school record. Jason Ayers scarcely recognized himself as the geek in the photograph. He still recalled how warm he felt, being the best friend of the best player on one of the best teams in the country. Matthew had been his best friend. And what had it gotten his friend? Endless tragedy. And the duplicity had not ended. Not by a longshot.

“Nothing I can do, either,” Ayers said, as if explaining life’s unfairness to the ghosts of the two side-by-side buddies. Hidden somewhere, he suspected, were additional pages—and the life of anyone unlucky enough to discover those pages would become worthless. Peter Neil was the most likely candidate. Worse than that, if Peter became a target, so did anyone he cared for, including Kate.

“Insanity, Hannah. Why, Goddammit. Why?”

With exaggerated care, Ayers pushed an ice-cube floating in his drink. Licking the scotch off his index finger, he held up the tumbler, allowing the setting sunlight to plait through the light amber. He gulped, then set the glass down. With this last dose of courage coursing through his brain, he rang for Kate, wishing, more than anything else, Peter didn’t remind him so damn much of Matthew Neil.