Black Fridays by Michael Sears Read Free Book Online

of money.
    “Make it Tuesday and you’re done.” I could find a late flight back on Monday.
    “Done. Come to my office. I’ll expect you at nine-thirty Tuesday morning. And thank you.”
    I did the Dirty Bird touchdown dance around the living room.
    There was money coming in. I was on top of the world. Persuading Angie to return seemed possible. Anything was possible.
    I went across the street and stopped at the oldest wine store in America to pick up something a little special to take to dinner at my Pop’s. I ogled the Bordeaux—the seven-hundred-dollar Mouton Rothschild, the three-hundred-dollar Cos. I almost bought a ninety-dollar Barolo—it was on sale and I was sure it would be worth twice that in a year or two. Finally, I settled on a twenty-dollar California merlot. Times had changed.

STOCKMAN KEPT ME waiting outside his office for over an hour. I didn’t sweat it. It was his dime and it felt like the first time I had sat down in days. Maybe he thought he was punishing me—I had kept him waiting a full week after my trip to Louisiana. The meeting with Angie had not gone as well as I’d hoped. I read through both the
Journal
and the
Financial Times
to reacclimatize myself to the world I was about to reenter. But my mind was elsewhere—on the rotting carcass of my marriage. I must have been scowling fiercely.
    “Mr. Stafford?” Stockman’s secretary was standing over me. “Are you all right?”
    I looked up at her kind face. Gwendolyn could have been forty or sixty—it was impossible to tell. She radiated calm, patience, and sympathy. And efficiency. “Thank you. I’m fine. It’s been an unusual week.”
    She smiled and I felt blessed. “We all have them.” She cleared her throat. “Mr. Stockman will see you now,” she said.
    “Thanks.” I stood up, shook off the memories, and prepared to go to work.
    She ushered me into the great man’s presence.
    “Jay! Sorry to keep you waiting. Forgive me, it won’t happen again. I had Volcker on the phone.”
    Paul Volcker. The most respected lion ever to have presided over the Federal Reserve. MISTER Volcker, to you, chump, I thought.
    “We go back, you know.”
    I wouldn’t know. I had never spoken to Paul Volcker in my life, but I doubted he and Stockman had any history more intimate than maybe having shared an elevator one day.
    Bill Stockman still dressed too well. His hair was combed, blow-dried, and brushed into a mini-pompadour that added an inch to his height. His desk sat on a three-inch riser—it helped a little, but when he stood up he still knew he was short.
    The view behind him was as good as it gets in New York. The harbor and the lower bay were laid out forty floors below. The Statue of Liberty. Ellis Island. The Verrazano Bridge. The rusting remains of the Brooklyn Navy Yard. To the east were Brooklyn, Queens, and the rest of Long Island, so flat that it was possible to imagine the curvature of the earth. To the west was New Jersey. Enough said.
    “You’ve got a great view.”
    He looked over his shoulder, as though surprised that there was anything worth looking at there. “I’m afraid I never have much time for it.”
    He turned on a practiced, Broadway smile. “You’re looking good, Jason.”
    I wasn’t. I was older, grayer, my jacket was a size too small for my current build, and I was red-eyed from lack of sleep for the past week.
    He looked good. Unchanged. He was probably waiting for me to say so. I didn’t.
    “So? Your affairs in order? Are you ready to get started?”
    It was a pointed question—pointed, hooked, and barbed. I was a week late. He wanted no confidential explanations, he just wanted to remind me that I now owed him one.
    I ceded the point. “Thank you for the extra time. I’m here. I’m ready to go.”
    “May you live in interesting times. Isn’t that what the Chinese say? Let’s hope this next tax package puts some sense back into the markets.” The line sounded well practiced.
    I didn’t