The staffer immediately told him to please hold while she switched the call to Senator O'Donnell.
Actually I'd known Charlie for years, and I also knew the poor guy's wife had some kind of esoteric bone cancer that meant ten thou a month in radiation therapy. So I'd let him set up an account on the side and do some full commission churning in the name of one of Dai Nippon's dummy fronts. Why not?
Then Jack came on the line. "Mr. Mercer, am I to understand you've been handling heavy trades for a Japanese firm?"
"Nothing illegal about that, is there, Senator?" Charlie was growing nervous, suddenly seeing himself under the hot glare of TV lights in Jack's finance committee. "Truthfully, the man I actually deal with is an American attorney here named Walton."
"Matt Walton?" roared Jack.
"You know Matthew, Senator?" inquired Charlie, stunned by the sound of the august public figure abruptly bellowing in his ear.
"Know him? I may kill the prick for not talking to me sooner."
Approximately five seconds after this conversation my phone erupted.
"Tell me, Judas," he yelled, "is it true you're helping them out? I want the goddamn truth and I want it now."
"Jack?" I finally recognized the voice. "Helping who?"
"You know who, you fucker. Our good friends the goddam Japs, that's who. They're--"
"Jack, calm down a second," I interrupted. "It's just possible this whole thing is some kind of scam. Not at all what it seems."
"Talk to me."
"Not over the phone. Client confidentiality. But if you're coming up anytime soon, I'm mad enough to give you a full rundown of all I know, strictly off the record."
"I'm scheduled in on the six o'clock shuttle. Where can we meet?"
"How about the club? I promise you an earful."
"The Centurion?" He inquired sourly. I knew how he hated it.
"Jack, wouldn't kill you to rub elbows now and then with an actual capitalist. Don't worry. There won't be any photos to sully your reputation."
I suggested the place partly to pay my respects to a wounded ward after the day's carnage and partly for Jack's convenience. It was a combined press hangout and "new money" convocation, located just around the corner from his New York office in one of those old mansions right off Fifth, midtown. They'd just begun allowing the fair sex to cross their hallowed doorstep (after a lawsuit), a move certain diehards felt signaled the curtain raiser on the West's Decline. For my own part I'd actually put up Donna for membership as pan of the test case. We eventually established that the Centurion's unwritten membership criteria were actually pretty simple: in addition to being white and male, you also needed to be either rich or well-known. Being all four made you a shoo-in.
A couple of us fortunate enough to have friends on the circuit bench called in a few favors and arranged for a black, female judge to hear the case. The proceeding was over in time for lunch.
"Is eight okay?"
"Done," he said. "I'll be there on the dot."
He was late as usual, but I managed to pass the time. It was enough just to sip a Perrier and observe the shell-shocked faces of golden boy brokers presently mainlining martinis down the bar. Fortunately the place was on the ground floor so nobody could take a dive out a high window, but the crowd had all the insouciance of hookers working a Salvation Army convention. I checked over the room--lots of designer suits topped off by long faces--and wondered how many millions had been dropped that day by those present. Booze was flowing across the mahogany bar as if there were no tomorrow. Maybe there wasn't.
At a quarter to nine Jack O'Donnell marched up the blue marble steps, a man in from the war front.
O'Donnell was a big guy who looked every inch a senator, right down to the thirty-dollar haircut and the eight-hundred-dollar suit. I think it was his overcompensation for being Irish and being crapped on by the Columbia University administration most of his days. A so-so academic, he'd blossomed as a politician--firm handshake and steel eye--and had easily devastated the smooth-talking Long Island party hack the big money had thrown against him. The man was a straight shooter who believed the purpose of capitalism was to make a better place for all Americans, not merely enrich the unscrupulous or crafty few. As a result, his Senate harangues were a lonesome cry in the takeover/arbitrage/leveraging/executive-perk wilderness. His contempt for overpaid investment bankers was exceeded only by his disdain for overpaid corporate CEOs.
Anyway, we settled into the leather chairs of the back room while he ordered a medicinal Scotch, double. After his nerves stabilized a bit, I suggested he let me give him an informal rundown of what little I knew.
"High goddam time." He grimly extracted a notebook.
"Jack, here's the _mea culpa_. I now confess before God and you that I've been a very uneasy point man for an outfit that calls itself Dai Nippon, International. They have been playing a little game with interest-rate futures and currency forwards in quantities that stagger the mind. Thus far, however, their activity has been strictly legal and right out there for everybody to watch. I also tried to warn anybody who would listen. Consequently any of our financial analysts who didn't see this brouhaha coming a mile away has been suffering a severe rectal-cranial inversion."
He snorted and pulled at his drink. "Okay, since you seem to know so much about this Dai Nippon outfit, care to clue me in on what's down the road?"
"Jack, I think the answer is one nobody's figured." Then I delivered my brand-new theory.
He stared at me skeptically, sipping at his drink. "Good God, you've gone off the deep end, Walton. I always assumed it would happen someday."
"Jack, from what I hear, none of the big Japanese securities dealers here will even pick up their phone. What does that tell you? They're softening us up using the weapon the market dreads the most. Uncertainty. What better way to terrify the Street? Christ, let somebody start a rumor the President has a toothache, and they practically have to shut down trading."
"Matt, nobody's going to believe your crazy scenario.
Matter of fact, I don't either. It's too wild. I'll tell you what most people are saying. All the news shows tonight hauled out our doomsday economists, Lester Thurow and his ilk, to declare we had this one coming. The consensus going around is the Japanese are finally fed up hearing us bellyache about trade barriers; so they've decided to treat us to a pointed demonstration concerning exactly who needs who. That's all. Japan now controls America's destiny. But since a few people here still have the idea we won the last war, Tokyo just wants to make sure we get our history straightened out."
Could be, I answered. But I still thought everybody was missing the forest for the trees. Then I went on to describe Noda's building, his high-security computer setup. Nobody would install an elaborate headquarters like that merely to get your attention.
He listened in uncharacteristic silence, beginning to appear a little more convinced. "Well, let's run with your cockamamie theory a second." He rattled his ice cubes, a habit of his I always found distracting. "Say something bigger is coming up, and this is just the pre-game warm- up. What can we do?"
My suggestion, that the President close down all our financial markets immediately to keep Noda's hands off them, was not received enthusiastically.
"You want me to stand up in the Senate and propose that?" His already ruddy cheeks were beginning to redden even more as he glared around the paneled room. "Matt, I'd be tarred and feathered by every stockholder in the country."
Maybe so, I said. But what about Noda's vast Third Avenue nerve center? His supercomputer? The Uzis? It had ominous portent. "Tell you the truth, Jack, I'm not even sure I should be talking to you. After what happened today, that guy scares hell out of me."
We ran through the known facts a couple of times more, not getting any closer to agreeing on the big picture. Finally he summed up his own fears: "In my view, we weathered the October '87 crash because the Fed still had some control over liquidity. When money started disappearing out of the market, they just printed more. They countered deflation with inflation, kept the dollar in balance. This time, though, we've lost all three pillars under our financial house--stocks, bonds, and the dollar. There's nothing the government can do to stop this one."
At that moment there was a tap on my shoulder, and I looked up to see Eduardo, the club's recent attempt at Hispanic affirmative action, handing me a cordless phone. Then I remembered I'd set up things downtown to forward calls to the bar. The next sounds in my ear were the mellifluous profanities of Dr. William Henderson.
Bill had just gotten off a plane after spending a few days loosening up at the Sandy Lane in Barbados, assaulting its reserves of Sugar Cane Brandy, and he was mad as hell. His "Georgia Mafia" had been caught flat-footed. Why hadn't I warned him that the Japs had scheduled this move? Surely I must have had an inkling. He would have shorted the market and scored a pile.