Текст книги "The Villiers Touch"

Автор книги: Brian Garfield

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Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

2. Russell Hastings

The morning was hot, muggy, and without breath. The frail sun seemed watery and distant through its lemon sky. Air-conditioners thrummed in a million windows, pulling hard against the Edison generating plants, which-to meet the strain-poured tons of additional smoke into the heat-inverted cloud over the city.

Traffic backed up in lower Manhattan, raucous with horn-blowing frustration, from the Battery to Greenwich Village, choked by double-parked trucks making ear-splitting deliveries. Subway tunnels, gray with pungent mists, poured the morning rush of sweat-grimed bodies up onto the jammed sidewalks of the financial district.

Russ Hastings emerged from the IRT subway onto the Broadway sidewalk and pushed through the crowd, hands in his pockets, mouth closed and nostrils pinched, trying not to breathe. He found an empty eddy by the corner of the Irving Trust building, stopped there to stand a moment in the heat and watch a group of vivid pretty girls-well-turned legs, miniskirts, trim hips rolling in healthy action. They paused in a knot at the corner and burst into high laughter before they separated into the jam.

Russ Hastings’ attention followed one of them-tall girl with long yellow hair, white blouse, and pink skirt-as she went smartly up the far side of Broadway along the Trinity Churchyard fence. She didn’t really look like Diane, but at this point in his recovery the sight of any pair of long legs clipping along with lithe, quick strides still had the power to fill his mind with contradictory fantasies, part poignant nostalgia, part indiscriminate lechery, part misogyny; he watched them hurry by, thin-clothed, breasts bobbing and surging with young physical arrogance… It was some time before he shook it off and pushed Diane back into her slow-receding niche.

Feeling hungry, he checked the time and went on past Wall Street to a crowded coffee shop. He had to wait for a stool at the counter; when a space opened up, he ordered coffee and Danish and leaned on his elbows. Half his mind picked up the conversation between two men on his right:

“… I made six points on it when it split last year.”

“You got in on the ground floor, then.”

“Aeah. I figure to hold on till it hits fifty, then unload and get into something else.”

“What makes you think it’ll go that high? Somebody buying into it?”

“Who knows? But I picked up a tip from one of our district managers, his wife’s an administrator out at Brookhaven Labs-there’s a lot of inside talk out there about government contracts. Even Standard and Poor’s says NCI’s expected to earn a buck and a half a share by the end of the year.”

Russ Hastings glanced toward them-both middle-aged, talking through clouds of cigar smoke, fat with the self-importance of the not-quite-competent who had been passed over by Big Fortune. He listened with more care. The man beside him went on: “Expecting a big rise in earnings because they’re getting in on all that government money going into police enforcement equipment. Stands to reason, Charlie. All this law-and-order talk, the crime rate zooming up, and the police market booming.”

“Who ever said crime didn’t pay?”

Some laughter in the cigar smoke. “Sure. Getting the kind of market play they used to give to tronic stocks and aerospace and the Pill. Well, hell, NCI’s already gone up six points this year-where’d it start, around twenty-five? Up to thirty-one yesterday at the close. One of the magazines I read says enforcement-equipment spending will keep going up by ten percent a year for five or ten years.”

“Come to think of it, I had lunch with Sol Weinstein last week. He’d just come in from Chicago-said Chicago Investment Mutual was buying NCI.”

“Then there you are.”

“On the other hand, you know, NCI’s involved in a lot of things besides law-enforcement supplies. When you look to invest in these conglomerates, you’ve got to see the whole picture. Now, take these shale oil stocks-they’re bound to start moving pretty soon now…”

Russ Hastings stopped eavesdropping then; he paid his check and pushed his way out of the place, squinting with thought. He picked up a Times at the corner stand and folded it back to the financial section and stood on the corner of Broadway and Wall Street running his eye down the columns.

197O Stocks and Div. Sales Net High Low in Dollars 100s High Low Last Change 31? 24? NorthEastCon 1.25 779 31? 30? 31? +1

He rolled the paper up and put it under his arm; his face had taken on the expression of a man not sure whether he had made a significant discovery. He turned into Wall Street, looking for a phone.

His cheeks stung in the heat from shaving rash. He rubbed his jaw and turned into a revolving door, found phones in the lobby, went into a stifling close booth, and dialed Quint’s number. As the connection whistled and clicked, he could picture Quint-the fattest man he had ever met-perched in his huge leather wingback chair, lapless, grunting as he counted candy wrappers in his abalone-shell ashtray.

The call, on Quint’s direct line, would not have to go through the switchboard; Hastings was spared the operator’s saccharin chirp, “Good morning? Securities and Exchange Commission? Whooooooom did you wish, please?” Instead, Quint’s private secretary came on the line, sterile and brisk, and put Hastings through.

“Gordon Quint here-Russ?” Quint’s slurred roar thundered in the earpiece, the London accent completely at odds with the hearty bellow of the voice. “How are things in the financial fleshpot?”

“I’m beginning to learn the language,” Hastings said, sweating in the airless booth. “Question for you. Have we got anybody working on Northeast Consolidated?”

“I very much doubt it. Why? Should we?”

“I’m picking up a few vibrations. The last week or so, all of a sudden every other tongue in Wall Street seems to be wagging about NCI.”

“Just rumors, or something firm?”

“Rumors-loose ones at that. But a lot of volume to them.”

The sound, like crackling flames, meant Quint was unwrapping another hard ball of low-cal candy. Quint said, in the cultivated English drawl he hadn’t relaxed a bit in the thirty-odd years he’d been in America, “I shouldn’t think too much of it if I were you. Perhaps you haven’t been in this job long enough to strike the proper balance. You’ve still got a bit to learn, you know. Rumors come and go-they’re all fads. Last month it was airlines, next month we’ll have another favorite; it might as well be the hit parade.”

“I haven’t heard one come up quite so fast before, with nothing at all behind it.”

“How do you know there’s nothing behind it?”

“I don’t-I’d like to find out.”

There was a pause; the creak of the burdened springs of Quint’s swivel chair; finally Quint said, “I should imagine your ears would be particularly sensitive to any mention of NCI, since your father-in-law occupies its throne. What if there were no personal involvement with Elliot Judd? What if this were a company whose board chairman you’d never heard of? I suppose you’ve given thought to that?”

“My ex-father-in-law,” Hastings corrected mildly. “Yes, I’ve taken that into account. I still think the vibrations are too strong for the usual run of things. There haven’t been any applications for merger clearance? Big stock options exercised? Insiders buying blocks of stock?”

“All I can tell you is, nothing’s come to my attention. I’m quite sure-”

“Then why did it sit still at twenty-six for four or five months and suddenly shoot up four points in the last two weeks?”

“I’m sure I couldn’t give you an answer to that off the top of the head, Russ, but it’s hardly a startling movement in the price. Perhaps a few of the big funds decided to pick up blocks of it-after all, it’s a sound security.”

“It always has been. But don’t you get suspicious when there’s a sudden flurry of excitement over a blue chip?”

“Mildly interested, perhaps. Suspicious? No-not unless there’s much more to go on. We’ve far too much work here to chase down every odd rumor. Have you any idea how far behind schedule we are in processing applications?”

Hastings pulled the booth door open an inch for air. “I’d like to look into it, Gordon. How about it?”

Quint hesitated. When the fat voice finally replied, it was as avuncular as a handpat on the head. “Look, old boy, don’t take this the wrong way, but don’t you think it might be worthwhile for you to take a holiday-a week or two in the country to unwind and get your breath?”

Hastings closed his eyes briefly. “What I do not need right now is to take time off so I can brood.”

“I’m sorry I mentioned it.”

“I suppose I’ll forgive you.”

Quint chortled. “May the Lord save us from eager beavers.”

“How about it, then?”

“Oh, I suppose-all right, Russ. You’ll, ah, forgive me for saying so, but it should do you a bloody bit of good to work off some of that office fat.”

“Coming from you, that’s droll. Another twenty pounds and you’d have to wear license plates.”

“I am not overweight,” Quint purred, “I’m merely too short for my weight. According to the chart, I ought to be eleven-foot-eight. All right-just one thing. Are you certain you know how to handle this sort of investigation? It won’t do to trample unnecessarily.”

“I won’t step on any sore corns unless I have to. You’ll remember I did enough investigative work for Jim Speed to learn the ropes.”

“Ah, yes. But that was politics. This is finance.”

“The object of the game may be different but the rules are the same.”

“Don’t be too sure of that, Russ.”

“I’ll be circumspect,” Hastings said.

“Good luck-keep your pecker up, old boy.”

Hastings hung up and dialed another number, trying to imagine the stares he might attract if, in fact, he kept his pecker up.

Gloria Sprague’s matronly voice spoke to him briskly: “Securities and Exchange Commission, Mr. Hastings’ office. May I help you?”

“That depends on what sort of help you’re offering,” Hastings said, deadpan.

“Oh, Mr. Hastings.” Brief, nervous, spinsterish laugh. “I’m glad you called. The papers on the National Packaging case just came up from the Justice Department. They have to have your signature before we can send them down to court.”

“How soon do they have to be signed?”

“Anytime today, but I wasn’t sure whether you planned to be in the office at all today.”

“Do I play hooky that often, Miss Sprague?”

“Oh, I didn’t mean-” she began quickly.

Hastings laughed at her and cut her off: “It’s all right, never mind. I’ll be up sometime this afternoon. In the meantime I want you to do a quick research job for me.”

“I’ve got my notebook-go ahead.” Her tone implied not only businesslike efficiency but a mild rebuke; Miss Sprague, after twenty years’ service as secretary to the bland civil servants who had preceded Hastings, had not quite learned how to cope with his quiet, sometimes wry brand of humor.

He said, “The subject is Northeast Consolidated Industries. I want a rundown on large-block trades within the past two weeks-identities of buyers and sellers. You’ll have to call some of the brokers, of course-let me know if any of them give you static.”

“Static?”

“Resistance, hesitation.”

“All right. How large is ‘large’?”

“Let’s say anything over five thousand shares. I’m going down on the floor myself this morning, so I’ll get some of the information direct from the specialist. What I want you to do is check through the larger brokers and find out if there’ve been any large trades negotiated privately, not through the Exchange. Got it?”

“Yes, sir. When will you want this?”

“Ten minutes will do.”

“All right, I’ll-ten minutes, did you say?”

“Just a little joke, Miss Sprague,” he said wearily. “Do it as quickly as you can, but don’t break your neck over it. Okay?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll see you this afternoon.” He rang off and went outside, a tall man in his late thirties with a lot of loose brown hair and a wide, blade-nosed Saxon face. His expression was the small, distracted frown of mild irony of a man looking for something he had lost. At the corner of New Street he waited in a crowd for the light to change, presenting a picture of easygoing indolence, of which he was sometimes acutely aware, particularly when it was spurious, as it was now, and had been since the break-up with Diane. It was sheer habit that coated his turmoil with a surface pose of relaxed self-confidence. The brows that hooded his eyes were thick and unruly, of a lighter shade than his hair; his skin was the sort of smooth light brown which would take a deep tan and hold it if he spent any time at all on the beach; he never did, abhorring crowds and being by nature a land animal. Big and limber, with flat shoulder muscles and a long, loose gait, he had an easy way of moving, a natural taken-for-granted grace, the result of genetic endowment more than conscious care.

He joined the New Yorker’s endless war against aggressive taxis trying to nose through the pedestrian crossflow, reached the far curb intact, and stood for a moment looking at the great gray tomb across the street-11 Wall Street, the hub of it all.

Standing here, he was alert to his awkward presence: a pariah in an alien land where a foreign tongue was spoken, the language of blocks and odd lots, margins and floats, puts and calls, dollars divided into eighths, hedge funds, mutual portfolios, letter stocks, bid and asked. He had come to it by an odd route; he had not planned it.

In the beginning, he thought whimsically, you’re a fair corporation lawyer, and you’re a long way from home now, brother. You were one of the faceless juniors in a giant midtown partnership: practice in estates, corporate-charter drawing, real estate, mergers. Respectable law; no negligence cases, no criminal cases, no divorces, no insurance torts. So why right away did you begin to think about changing jobs?

Restless. You were restless, looking for action. You were in that frame of mind when you married Diane. It was a mistake from the start, but in those days you enjoyed challenges. Your own family was embedded as solidly in the social strata as hers, her money wouldn’t become a problem between you, but what you never counted on was her discontented ambition: her father’s wealth should have been a cushion, but to her it was a goad.

You quit private practice and you went to work for Jim Speed-fiery muckraker, stubborn digger, eminent exposer of corruption. That was where the challenge was. Doing Speed’s investigative work, unearthing the grit for the white papers on military-industrial collusion and Mafia labor corruption. It got Speed elected to Congress, and you spent those years running his home office in New York, and then the mayor tapped Speed to take over as commissioner of the scandal-staggered city Finance Department, and you, his chief assistant, helped clean it up, you with your mesomorphic curiosity and righteous indignation, and, just incidentally, with your home disrupted by a part-time wife who had a compulsion to succeed on her own and flung in your face, as an act of defiance (against you or against her father?), the art gallery she opened on Third Avenue. The senseless, brittle competition between the two of you-the divorce; and then, still rocked by that, you’re propelled out of your job when Speed dies in the crash of a private plane and a new commissioner moves in, complete with staff.

You didn’t know what you wanted to do then. You had dealt often with Quint’s SEC office. There were half a dozen good job offers, law firms and city jobs, but you didn’t see any promise of action in the rest of them. Maybe with Quint…

And so here you are, he thought, dour. If there was going to be any action, he would have to create it himself. Take up skydiving, maybe. Rob a bank.

Around him the street was still crowded, but the rush to get to work was nearly ended. The financial district’s working hours were earlier than those uptown; Wall Street was a city of its own, little known to midtown businessmen, bounded by Bowling Green to the south; the swift, filthy East River; Fulton Street (or perhaps Chambers Street, depending on your vintage) on the north; and on the west a mute anachronism: the cemetery of Trinity Church, where no human corpse had been buried in living memory, since Manhattan had long since run out of space for its dead.

By now the brokers, bankers, secretaries, corporation potentates and their entourages had long ago hurried into their offices. The streets still flowed with workers and late arrivals, rushing, as thick as pigeons in the Piazza San Marco. In offices looming all around, men would be swiveling toward Quotron tickers and watching their clocks, synchronizing like field generals preparing for battle. In these slow-ticking moments, all over the world, men and women would be drawing their telephones near-waiting, adrenalin flooding in anticipation, for the Market (very capital “M”) to open.

They waited keenly, in offices and homes and hotels, for the Magic Hour when they could dial their stockbrokers, ask “How’s Motors?”, talk about yesterday’s closing Dow-Jones, place buy or sell orders, discuss the weather or the day’s political news with brokers who only wanted to be let alone by the lonely phone callers so they could run their businesses.

All over the United States right now they would be converging into the funeral-parlor board rooms of Stock Exchange member firms: wise investors, ignorant speculators, compulsive gamblers, ticker-tape addicts, retired bored pensioners. In the Far West, to coincide with New York’s exchange hours, brokers’ offices would open as early as seven A.M. The customers would sit for the next five hours with faces studiously guarded against any show of feelings as they watched the boards tick over, watched the stock news chatter by like an endless freight train, pacing off the latest sale price, bid-and-asked, high, low, and close of all active listed stocks…

Hastings went across the street into the old mausoleum-the New York Stock Exchange. Crowds churned through the doors. There were virtually no women in the place-the Street was one of the few masculine preserves left in the world. He had a brief vision of Diane, talking archly: That’s probably what’s wrong with it.

A group preceded him into the visitors’ gallery; the young girl-guide spoke briskly, identifying the shirtsleeved men on the crowded floor below: floor traders, two-dollar brokers, commission house representatives, odd-lot dealers, specialists-“You are looking at the men who do the actual physical trading of listed stocks.” Not true, Hastings thought-not physical. No stock certificates passed these portals. Here it was all word-of-mouth-trading on faith, always assuming the stock certificates which were traded here did, in fact, somewhere, exist.

It was getting on toward ten o’clock. The floor men began to coagulate around the eighteen trading posts. No one ran: the milling crowd must be protected. No one smoked: paper must be safeguarded-the slips on which orders from a few dollars to a few millions were jotted in cryptic symbols, as vital as certified bank checks. But these restrictions would not observably reduce the frenzied bedlam that was about to erupt.

Precisely at ten o’clock the gong on the south wall sounded its brassy doomsday clang.

The New York Stock Exchange was open for another day’s pandemonium.

All noise and confusion, traders clustered at their posts, licked pencils, hurtled their voices against the babble. By the end of the day the floor would be ankle-deep in paper. Overhead, giant boards signaled floor brokers by number on turning metal flaps. Thump, slap. Roar. Trades were made in seconds; the words “We buy from you” were enough to bind a transaction-not even a handshake was needed.

He moved along the rail, looking for Herb Capps’s bald head in the foaming sea below: Herb Capps, floor specialist in Northeast Consolidated Industries stock. Finally Hastings spotted him, at a post near the west wall.

Hastings went downstairs, flashed his identification to the guard, and went onto the floor. He went across like a swimmer pushing against the current; he came up to Capps’s station just as a floor broker approached:

“How’s NCI quoted, Herb?”

“Thirty-two to 32?.”

“Put me down for an odd lot-fifty shares at 32?.”

“Might be a few ahead of you on the list at that price.”

“How many?”

Capps glanced past the broker and grinned at Hastings. “You know I can’t give that out, George. There’s an SEC hawkshaw breathing right over your shoulder.”

The broker turned and shook hands with Hastings. Then he looked at his watch. “I’ve got a buy order too, five hundred shares at the market. You said 32??”

“Right.”

“Okay. We buy from you five hundred.”

Capps nodded his bald head; the broker and Capps checked each other’s badges before they separated to send word to their customers. Hastings waited for Capps to return.

The transaction was completed; if the market’s ticker machinery wasn’t jammed, the trade would appear on the tape within a minute or two, and a new market would be established in NCI stock-up an eighth over the previous close.

Capps came back, amiable and unperturbed by the thunder around him. Hastings said, “NCI’s started to move in the past couple of weeks-what do you think?”

“It keeps me busy.”

“Do you see anything behind it?”

“Not that I know of. From down here you don’t see much anyway. I just execute orders, you know?” Capps was friendly and smiling, but there was something vaguely defensive in his answers; he wheeled to meet a new broker who came up to trade. Hastings watched Capps flip pages in his notebook while the broker talked in characteristic clipped phrases. The floor specialist’s notebook was on a par in value with a top-secret copy of a diplomatic document. Capps would have his buy and sell orders listed on facing pages, written down in the order received: he acted as a one-man auction market, and the knowledge of the listings in his book gave him the insider’s advantage-he knew the volume of buy orders just below the current market, the number of sell orders just above it. Specialists like Capps were forbidden to divulge the contents of their notebooks to anyone but Exchange officers and the SEC.

Of the men on the trading floor, market specialists like Capps made up at least one-fourth of the population. The specialist’s function was to “make a market” for one or more listed stocks. Every stock listed on the Big Board had at least one specialist, sworn to “maintain a fair and orderly market” by buying or selling against the trend of the market.

Regulations were strict: the specialist couldn’t be an officer of any company he handled on the floor; he was not allowed to operate for his own personal account if he had any public bids or offers-they always had to come first-but he was required to trade for his own account when it was necessary to keep the market balanced. The specialist split his commissions with brokers, made his income on profits in trading his own account. It was his duty to execute stop orders for clients-to buy if the stock was rising, or to sell (to prevent further loss) if the stock was falling.

The rules were stringent; but it was not unheard of for a specialist to get nervous when the market started to slide-to start selling fast, to get in ahead of the public, which would keep buying the stock until the news caught up on the tape. Nothing, in this gambling casino, was guaranteed; nothing was certain.

In all this bustle and press, Russ Hastings was supposed to be traffic cop and detective all at once. It was his job, the SEC’s job, not to police the price of shares, but to make sure investors were informed of all activity that might have an effect on stocks. “Full disclosure”-that was the SEC’s aim, and its limitation. The government agency could not prevent an idiot from forming a corporation and selling shares for the express purpose of hijacking airplanes to Cuba. It could only see to it that the corporation openly declared its intent, its assets, its liabilities, and its structure.

Jostled by fast-moving traders, Hastings kept shifting his stance; he felt awkward, as if he had wandered into a football play by mistake. He watched Herb Capps conclude a trade and come forward smiling. Capps’s amiability was a shell which ended a fraction of an inch beneath the surface, beyond which there seemed no clue to his real personality. The Exchange, having put all its specialists through the strenuous screening process of examinations and investigations, assumed Capps and all the rest of them were trustworthy; but one couldn’t always go by that. Capps could easily be a rock of honor; he could just as easily be a thief.

Capps said, “Still waiting for me?”

“I’m curious about NCI.”

Capps’s smile switched on, confidential and neighborly. “Look, I know you’re a bit of a rookie, maybe you haven’t seen this kind of activity before, and you’re wondering about it. Believe me, it goes on all the time.”

“Maybe. Don’t you think NCI’s too big to be acting like a volatile penny stock?”

“Three, four points in a couple of weeks? I wouldn’t call that volatile.”

“It is when you’re talking about a blue chip that’s exactly the same company it was a month ago. It’s been moving against the averages, remember. Look, maybe I’m green, but a violent upheaval in the stock of a giant like NCI could snowball the whole market into a mess.”

The bald man gave him a dry look. “You’re trying to build a mountain where you haven’t even got a molehill. Look, here’s my book-records of the past few weeks. Look for yourself, if you want.”

It was exactly what he wanted. He had wondered if he could goad Capps into offering his book without being asked for it; he had succeeded, but it would have meant more if he had failed. By proffering the book, Capps was proving nothing. Either he had nothing to hide or he was clever enough to be one jump ahead-and there was no way to determine which it was.

Hastings gave the book a quick riffling through and said, “You’ll have to interpret.”

“Sure. We all use our own shorthand. I haven’t got time to give you a complete translation, but let’s see if we can-yes, here. A block trade, ten thousand shares, bought by a broker in Montreal. I happen to know that one was bought for the portfolio of a Canadian mutual fund. Back here, let’s see-two weeks ago today, two lots of twenty thousand shares each. First one bought by the Vancouver Trust, second one bought by an Ottawa broker in a street name-could be any client, of course.”

“All Canadian? Why all the Canadian interest?”

“Who knows. Maybe somebody started to float a rumor up there. NCI’s got several industrial plants in Quebec and Ontario. Diesel engines, earth-moving equipment, chemicals, that kind of stuff. I’ve heard some talk myself, that NCI’s going to be bidding on the construction job at the new Alaska Slope oil fields. Nothing to it, far as I know, but that’s all it ever takes, you know-a little loose talk.”

“What’s this one-nine thousand shares?”

Capps looked over his shoulder. “Three weeks back. That was local, here in New York. The broker’s Hackman and Greene.”

“Who was the client?”

“I’d have to ask Hackman and Greene. That’s their floor trader right over there-want me to ask him?”

“If you don’t mind,” Hastings said, and watched Capps move away through the throng, eyes forever darting to the raised fists and fingers which communicated coded information like semaphore signals across the noisy, crowded floor. Traders swirled around Hastings. Slips of paper fluttered to the floor around his feet. The bedlam made him dizzy. Capps returned with another man in tow-a tall gaunt old man with yellowish-white hair and a face that looked as if it had been slept in. “Paul Meaghan, of Hackman and Greene,” Capps said, and introduced Hastings. The old man shook hands, unsmiling; Capps spun away to meet a customer, and Meaghan said, “You wanted some information?”

“About an NCI purchase you made three weeks ago, nine thousand shares.”

Meaghan flipped through his notebook. “I have it here. You wanted the price?”

“No. The name of the client.”

Meaghan gave him a sharp look but thought better of asking why; he said, “I have it down for a Miss Carol McCloud. You’d have to get her address from our main office.”

Hastings made a note of the name. “Have you bought any other blocks of NCI in the past few weeks?”

“Sure. I suppose everybody has. What is this, a spot check?”

“Call it that.”

The old man’s glance flicked across the crowd, not willing to miss any business; he consulted his notebook at brief intervals and spoke in gusts: “Well, the largest block we’ve bought recently was twenty-five thousand shares, in the street name. I believe it was for one of the Swiss investment trusts. Then, I’ve got a note here on fifteen thousand shares just last Friday for the McGill Niagara Fund.”

“That’s a Canadian fund?”

“Of course. Nothing to do with the university, though. Here’s one, seventy-five hundred shares we bought for the Claiborne Fund-that’s New York, of course, old Howard Claiborne of Bierce, Claiborne amp; Myers. Here’s five thousand shares in the street name again-I don’t remember who the client was, probably one of our regulars. Here’s a purchase last week, ten thousand shares sold to Salvatore Senna at a Montreal address. I recall that one because I’d never heard the name before, and you don’t usually associate Italian names with French Canada. Then, let’s see, two weeks ago five thousand shares for the street name, a Swiss account on that one-no name, just a number, you know how they work. Then I’ve got-”

“Okay,” Hastings said. “I wonder if you’d do something for me after the market closes today. Have your secretary make up a list of all sales of NCI to Canadian clients in the past thirty days and send the list over to my office. Would you do that?”

“No trouble. Is this something I should know about?”

“No. As you said, it’s just a spot check. A pattern survey of the market, you know?”

Meaghan, not quite satisfied with that vague explanation, nodded and walked away, carrying one of Hastings’ business cards. Hastings intercepted Herb Capps on his way across the floor and left with him a request for a list of Canadian purchases of NCI similar to the one he’d asked of Meaghan; he went on through the throng, hearing vaguely the pretty tourist guide’s glib spiel on the balcony above; he made his way outside. The sidewalks were too narrow to hold the crowds; people walked in the streets, herded by slow-moving cars. At the Broadway corner, trucks stood jammed into the intersection. Stifled in the surging crowd, he felt momentarily as if he had lost his identity, as if he had been turned loose in a foreign country without passport and unable to speak the tongue. Hands pocketed and shoulders lifted in defense toward the crowd that pushed itself against the shell of his enforced indifference, he walked along with false nonchalance, thinking of Diane and all the things that had gone wrong in his life. In moments like this he was not able to shake the feeling of being somehow in the wrong place-as if there was, somewhere, a right place.