Black Friday (or Black Market) - James Patterson [56]
When Carroll arrived back at No. 13 Wall, all that remained was for him to clear out his desk and leave the world of pointless stakeouts and twenty-hour work days. It was easy and mostly painless, he thought. Something he probably should have done a long time ago.
He was interrupted by a knock on his door. When he turned, Walter Trentkamp was standing there. The FBI man walked slowly across the room. He leaned against the cluttered desk and sighed loudly.
“I’d quit too if I had an office like this.” Trentkamp frowned. He stared around the room. “I mean, I’ve seen bleak before.”
“What can I do for you, Walter?”
“You can reconsider the decision you made in Washington.”
“Did somebody send you up here? Did they tell you to go talk some sense into Carroll?”
Trentkamp pursed his lips. He shook his head. “What’ll you do now, anyhow?”
“Law,” Carroll lied.
“You’re too old already. Law’s a young man’s game.”
Carroll sighed. Quit, Walter. Quit it right now.
Trentkamp continued to frown. “Nobody knows terrorists the way you do. If you leave, lives will be lost And you know it. So what if your pride is a little wounded right now?”
Carroll sat down hard behind his desk. He hated Walter Trentkamp just then. He hated the idea that another person could see through him so easily. Walter was so goddamn smart. There was an impressive superiority that peeked through his policeman’s facade every now and then. “You’re a manipulative sonofabiteh.”
“Do you think I got where I am without some small understanding of human foibles?” Trentkamp asked. He held his hand out to be shaken. “You’re a cop. Every day you remind me a little more of your father. He was a stubborn bastard, too.”
Carroll hesitated. With his own hand in midair, halfway toward Walter Trentkamp, he hesitated. It was one of those moments when his private world seemed to spin on its own axis. He could choose—right now he had a choice.
He shrugged and shook Trentkamp’s hand.
“Welcome back on board, Archer.”
On board what? Carroll wondered. “One thing I want you to know. When Green Band is settled, I quit.”
“Sure,” Trentkamp said. “That’s understood. Just keep in touch until Green Band is settled.”
“I want to be a free man, Walter.”
“Don’t we all?” Walter Trentkamp asked, and finally smiled. “You’re so fucking cute when you pout.”
Chapter 39
ON THE SECOND FLOOR of No. 13 Wall, Caitlin Dillon sat in dark silhouette on a high wooden stool. Most of the overhead lights in the Crisis Room had been dimmed. She listened to the soothing electronic whirr of half a dozen IBM and Hewlett-Packard computers.
It had been Caitlin’s idea to collect and evaluate all the available newspaper information and police intelligence flowing in over the word processor consoles. The news arrived in sudden, urgent bursts, streams of tiny green letters that came from both the financial sectors and police agencies all around the world.
As she sat there, her eyes hurting from the glare of the screens, she pondered two things.
One was the scary and real possibility of a total financial collapse around the world.
The other was the intricate, the almost hopeless puzzle of her own private life.
Many years before, Caitlin’s father, who was a principled and intelligent investment banker in the Midwest, had tried to stand up to the Wall Street clique of firms. He had lost his battle, lost an unfair fight, and been thrown into bankruptcy. Year after year, Caitlin had listened as he bitterly lectured against the injustice, the unfairness, and sometimes the stupidity built into the American financial system. In the same way that some children grow up wanting to be crusading lawyers, Caitlin had decided that she wanted to help reform the financial system.
She had come East as a kind of avenging angel. She was both fascinated and repelled by the self-contained world of Big Business, and by Wall Street in particular. In