Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [39]
“Monserrat had nothing to do with it! He doesn’t understand it either.… Nobody understands what the bombings are all about. He’s looking for Green Band too! Monserrat is looking for them too!”
“How do you know that, Isabella? How do you know what Monserrat is doing? You must have seen him!”
The woman clapped the palm of one hand across her hollow, darkened eyes. “I haven’t seen him. I don’t see him. Not ever.”
“Then how do you know?”
“There are messages. There are whispers in private places. Nobody sees Monserrat.”
“Where is he, Isabella? Is he here in New York? Where the hell is he?”
The woman stubbornly shook her head. “I don’t know that either.”
“What does Monserrat look like these days?”
“How should I know? He changes. Monserrat is always changing sometimes dark hair, a moustache. Sometimes gray hair. Dark glasses. Sometimes a beard.” She paused. “Monserrat doesn’t have a face.”
Now, conscious of having said too much, Isabella Marqueza had begun to sob. Carroll sat back and finally let his head rest against the grimy office wall. She didn’t know anything more; he was almost certain he’d gone as far into her as he could possibly go.
Nobody knew anything about Green Band.
Only that wasn’t possible.
Somebody had to know what the hell Green Band wanted
Who, though?
Chapter 28
FADED, YELLOWING NEWSPAPERS, at least a dozen different ones dated October 25, 1929, were haphazardly spread across a heavy oak library-style work table. The thirty- and forty-point headlines seemed as jarring now as they must have been fifty-odd years before.
WORST STOCK CRASH EVER; 12,894,650-SHARE DAY SWAMPS MARKET; LEADERS CONFER, FIND CONDITIONS SOUND.
WALL STREET PANIC! RECORD SELLING OF STOCKS! HEAVY FALL IN PRICES!
STOCK PRICES SLUMP $14,000,000,000 IN NATION-WIDE STAMPEDE TO UNLOAD; BANKERS TO SUPPORT MARKET TODAY.
PRICES OF STOCKS CRASH IN HEAVY LIQUIDATION, TOTAL DROP OF BILLIONS.
TWO MILLION SIX HUNDRED THOUSAND SHARES SOLD IN THE FINAL HOUR IN RECORD DECLINE!
MANY INDIVIDUAL ACCOUNTS WIPED OUT COMPLETELY!
WHEAT SMASHED! CHICAGO PIT IN TURMOIL.
HOOVER PROMISES BUSINESS OF THE COUNTRY IS STILL SOUND AND PROSPEROUS!
Caitlin Dillon finally stood up from the work table and its musty newspaper clippings. She stretched her arms high over her head and sighed. She was on the fifth floor of No. 13 Wall, with Anton Birnbaum from the New York Stock Exchange Steering Committee.
Birnbaum was one of America’s financial geniuses. If anyone understood that precarious castle of cards called Wall Street, it was Birnbaum. He had started, Caitlin knew, as an office boy at the age of eleven. Then he’d worked his way up through the market hierarchy to control his own investment house. Even at eighty-three his mind remained as sharp as a blade; a mischievous light still burned in his eyes.
Caitlin had met Anton Birnbaum years before while she was still at Wharton. Her thesis adviser had invited the Financier for a guest lecture during her final year. After one of his iconoclastic talks, Birnbaum had consented to private sessions with a few of the business school’s students. One of them turned out to be Caitlin, about whom Birnbaum told her adviser: “She is extremely intense. Her only flaw is that she is beautiful. I mean that quite seriously. It will be a problem for her on Wall Street. It will be a serious handicap.”
When Caitlin graduated from Wharton, Anton Birnbaum hired her as an assistant at his firm. Within a year, Caitlin was one of his assistants. Unlike many of the people he hired, Caitlin would disagree with the great Financier when she felt he was off base.
During that period Caitlin also began to make the Wall Street and Washington connections she needed for the future. Her first job with Birnbaum provided an education she couldn’t have paid to receive. Caitlin found the Financier impossible to work for, but somehow she worked for him, which proved to Birnbaum that she was as outstanding as he had initially thought she was.
“Anton, who would benefit from a Stock Market crash right