Peter Spiegelman - Death's little helpers

“Frye?” I asked. He was only slightly surprised.

“Oh, Christ- you’re March, aren’t you?” he said, smiling. I nodded. “And I’m vastly late, I know. Sorry.”

“No problem,” I said, “if we can still talk.”

Frye nodded absently. “As long as you don’t mind doing it in the back of a cab.”

We walked to the corner of Wall and Water, where Frye scared the hell out of me by wading into traffic and waving spastically at every cab in sight. It was an odd technique, and risky, but it was effective. Five minutes later we were rattling northward on the FDR Drive. I was asking questions and, in between listening to messages on his cell phone, Frye was answering them. He was less fond of Danes than Irene Pratt was, and more blunt about it.

“How long did you work for Danes?”

“Too long,” Frye said ruefully. “Five years.”

“I’ve heard he can be a difficult guy.”

Frye smiled. “Whoever told you that was a master of understatement.”

“From which I gather you didn’t get along with him.”

“That depends on your yardstick,” he said. “By the standards of normal human interaction, I’d have to say we got on abysmally. By the Greg standard, though, I suppose I did quite well with him- better than most, in fact.” He pushed a key on his phone and held it to his ear again.

“Which meant what, in practical terms?”

Frye held up a finger and listened intently for a moment, then shook his head. “That we spoke only when necessary and otherwise had as little to do with each other as possible.”

“Not exactly chummy after five years. What was the problem?”

Frye sighed and pocketed his phone. He looked at the East River, bouncing by the cab window. “Greg doesn’t deal well with dissent, Mr. March, and he requires a rather large quotient of deference from his colleagues. As it happens, I’m chronically long the former and short the latter.”

“Is that why you quit?”

“That, and the fact that staying there was doing nothing for my career. Who wants to be the last rat off the ship, after all?”

“I didn’t realize Pace-Loyette was sinking.”

“The firm will survive, I expect, but the research department won’t- not in its current form, at any rate. It’s much diminished already, and it hasn’t hit bottom yet. I am by no means the first person to realize that, and I won’t be the last.”

“Has Danes figured it out?”

“Of course he has, but being Greg, he puts himself at the center of the phenomenon. He sees it as another example of management’s desire to tar his reputation and fix him with blame for all the excesses of the past.”

“Is there any truth to that?”

Frye looked at me and nodded slowly. “Some, perhaps, but mainly the seniors at Pace just want to get on with things; they want to settle their claims and move along. Greg can’t see that; he sees settlement as an admission of guilt- his guilt.”

“So you don’t think he’ll up and leave any time soon?”

“No, not Greg. And until those claims are settled, I don’t know that there’d be many bidders for him. No one wants the baggage.”

“So I gather you two didn’t discuss his vacation plans that last day you were in the office?”

Frye snorted. “Lord, no. Not on that day or any other. As I said, we didn’t have that kind of relationship.”

“Who does he have that kind of relationship with?”

“Friendship? Pleasant acquaintanceship? No one I can think of, though maybe Irene Pratt comes closest. Do you know Pratt?” I made a vaguely affirmative sound. “She’s a diligent soul, and much better at deference than I.” Frye’s phone trilled. He made more excuses to Maureen and entreated her to do the same to whoever was waiting for him uptown, which gave me time to think.

“Forget friends, then,” I said, when he got off the phone. “How about anyone that Danes has pissed off?”

Frye laughed. “That’s quite a list. Greg is a plague on everyone, from the summer interns to half the occupants of the executive suite.”

“He leave any of them particularly mad? Anyone holding a grudge?”

“I couldn’t say, really. People learn to keep their distance when at all possible, and most of those fortunate enough to work directly for Greg develop rather tough hides.”

“What about the ones who don’t?”

Frye gave me a speculative squint. “Greg has a certain radar for them, Mr. March. They seem to attract more than their share of torment, and they don’t stay around long.”

“Which is a polite way of calling Danes a bully.”

“I suppose it is.” Frye smiled innocently.

“Bullies collect enemies, as a rule. Did Danes manage not to, somehow? Did none of these people stay angry with him?”

He shrugged. “None of them stays angry with the weather either, I imagine. And once you know Greg, you realize that’s what he’s like. He’s like a force of nature: a natural bastard. But there’s nothing personal in it- or, rather, it’s personal but indiscriminate. Sooner or later, the rain falls on everyone.” Frye raised an eyebrow. “Why the interest? Do you think Greg’s run afoul of someone? Is that why he hasn’t returned?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know enough to think much of anything yet,” I said. “All I have now are questions. Most of them will come to nothing, but I have to ask.”

“Hell of a job,” he said. I nodded. We were coming up on the UN, and traffic had come nearly to a halt. Frye swore softly and called Maureen again. I thought about some things Irene Pratt had told me. Frye rang off and I had another question for him.

“Winning personality aside, how is Danes as an analyst?”

“Greg is undeniably a very bright guy: keen insights into companies and industries, a very quick study, and a phenomenal memory. I’m the first to admit I learned a lot from him.”

“Though not from his work on Piedmont, I’d guess.”

“That again.” Frye sighed. “People never tire of it. But in truth, it’s unreasonable to expect that Greg- or any other analyst- would have known what Denton Ainsley was up to. Greg may have smiled in a few too many photo ops with Ainsley, and gone on a few too many Piedmont junkets, but that doesn’t make him an accomplice. Foolish, perhaps, or vain, but not complicit.”

“Piedmont was just one bad call; what about the rest? If Danes is so smart, how did he end up so wrong?”

“There are lots of smart people in this business, March, but smart isn’t the whole story. Smart isn’t always enough. You need insight into how the market moves and a feel for the people who move it.”

“Danes doesn’t have that?”

“Everyone has blind spots,” Frye said. “Greg’s, I suppose, are a reluctance to revisit his calls- even in the face of a changing market- and perhaps a certain susceptibility to manipulation by fund managers.”

“I understand the first part more or less, but what does that last bit mean?”

Frye smiled. “One of the things an analyst does is talk to people who hold big positions in the shares of companies they cover. In part they do it to solicit investor views on where the companies are going, and in part it’s to pitch their own ideas. But those conversations can be very tricky things.

“Say, for example, you cover Company X, and Mr. Smith, a hedge fund manager, holds a big stake in X. If you were getting ready to rate X as a strong buy, it would be nice to know that Mr. Smith was going to hold on to his shares of X- or perhaps even increase his position. So before issuing your report, you might go have a chat with Mr. Smith. With me so far?”

I nodded.

“Good. Now, Mr. Smith is no fool. He knows that if Company X gets a buy rating from so eminent an analyst as yourself, its shares are likely to rise. And he knows that if he sells off his position into that run-up, he can make a pretty penny for his fund. So given all that, and being a devilish and manipulative bastard like all his ilk, Mr. Smith might seek to mislead poor gullible you. He might try to convince you that he thinks your ideas about X are brilliant and subtle and altogether sublime and he agrees with them entirely. And if you were so deceived, you might trot back to your office and issue your strong buy report- and find yourself in for a nasty surprise when Smith unloads his position into your nascent rally, momentum swings south, and shares of X tank in a big way.”