David Duffy - In for a Ruble

“This connected or unconnected to Nosferatu’s bug?”

“Unconnected, it appears. Only happens a few times. Three in August. Then again in November. Then December thirtieth. That’s it.”

“How much should we tell Leitz?”

“He’s your client,” he said and hung up. That’s Foos.

If Nosferatu had anyone watching 140 West Forty-eighth Street, I wasn’t going to spot him or her in the morning crowd that filled the block, so I walked straight to the door of Leitz’s building, head down. The lobby guard asked my destination, checked my New York driver’s license, grimaced at my battered face and dispatched me to the forty-second floor. A pretty twenty-something receptionist sent me up a staircase to conference room A. She didn’t do any better job of disguising her unease.

The conference room overlooked the trading floor, which at a few minutes after nine, appeared fully staffed by some forty men and women with an average age of thirty-two, all in various stages of undress. Midwinter, but they were all wearing T-shirts, tank tops, capri pants, some in gym shorts. A few wore shoes. The Gillette company wasn’t making much money on razor blades. Paper plates holding the remains of breakfast, more fruit and bran than bacon and eggs, littered the desks. The heat was on high. I took off my jacket as the door opened behind me.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Leitz’s voice boomed from behind. “Everybody does. Fact is, there’s more pure brain power on that floor than eight Manhattan projects combined.”

“Brain or bran?”

He laughed his big laugh. “Both. I hire brains not suits. I feed ’em, I don’t care what they eat. Coffee?”

“Black.”

I turned as he went to the sideboard to pour. He was dressed in the same cashmere sweater, corduroys, and handmade shoes as the other day. Foos leaned against the door jam, grinning. He’d got there early to soften up his friend, I hoped.

Leitz handed me a mug. “Foos said you took some heat at my expense. I see he wasn’t exaggerating. I’m sorry. I wasn’t expecting anything like that.”

I shrugged. “Neither of us were.”

“I’m sorry, in any event. Foos also says you have news.”

Foos and I had discussed how to break this news last night, before I stumbled the two blocks home to my apartment. We agreed the direct approach was best—or least worst. I was still prepared to go with the plan but, remembering the warnings about the temper, I took my coffee to a chair on the far side of the table.

I said, “I bugged your computers last night. We’ve had access to your entire network for the last twelve hours.”

The big face turned red. “Not possible.”

“Not only possible, but easy.”

Two big hands balled themselves into fists the size of cantaloupes. Eruption was a spark away.

“NO! You’ve only had… I don’t believe it!”

I tossed some pages across the table. “Here are e-mails you sent this morning. Behind those are the spreadsheets one of your branny brains was working on at seven fifteen. You’ve got some interesting trading positions too. I printed it all for easy reference.”

“He’s telling it straight,” Foos said.

Leitz glanced at the papers just long enough to see they were what I said. He threw them aside, and the fists pounded the table, which was granite and had to weigh several hundred pounds. It shifted on its stand. He turned to Foos.

“GODDAMMIT! You told me…”

“I told you the perimeter was secure and it is,” Foos said. “You weren’t hacked.”

“Then… WHAT?” Leitz swung his glare back to me. The jowls shook, the eyes fired. I wouldn’t have wanted to be one of the half-clothed mathematical geniuses reporting a losing trade to this boss. Something about the needlessness of the rage made me want to rub it in, but that also could have been getting beat up, not to mention my overall frame of mind.

“Pedestrian. I bribed a member of your cleaning crew. He put a wireless recording device on a box on your trading floor. That gave us access to everything.”

“ Cleaning crew ?”

“Simplest way in. I could have used a half-dozen others.” Leitz’s fists rose again but stopped in midair. He stood and went to the phone on the sideboard. Foos was looking unusually uncomfortable.

“Don’t,” I said.

“DON’T WHAT?”

“Don’t call whomever you’re calling to tell them to fire the cleaning crew. The next one will be just as easy to penetrate. All it took was a thousand dollars—and I probably overpaid since it was your money.”

The phone flew straight at my head until the cord jerked it back and it clattered onto the tabletop. That didn’t stop me from ducking.

“Leitz! Chill!” Foos said.

Leitz looked at the phone, then at his empty hand. He shook his big head.

“Sorry.”

So far the direct approach was working like a charm. I looked around to see what else he could throw. Foos read my mind.

“Sebastian, sit down. We’re on your side. There’s more.”

Leitz took his seat. He appeared deflated, almost like a punctured balloon. He’d been broken into, and as anyone would, he felt violated.

“What more?” he said.

Nosferatu’s blows ached. I thought about whether I needed this. I looked across at Foos. His face was impassive. But he was out of the line of fire.

“Someone else planted a bug just like mine—eight weeks ago.”

The red face turned purple. The outsized cheeks blew out like Dizzy Gillespie’s chops, except there was no joy in this visage. The fists disappeared beneath the tabletop. I planted my feet on the carpet.

Leitz started to stand. Muscles stressed beneath the sweater as the tabletop rose. Coffee cups, coffee, pads and pencils, staplers and paper clips slid in my direction. I pushed the wheels of my chair back to the glass wall before three hundred pounds of granite slab flipped in slow motion, teetered at the top of the arc, and landed at my feet with a thump. It missed my knees by inches.

Foos vacated the doorway as Leitz stomped out.

“I warned you about the temper,” he said.

“You also told me to go for maximum impact.”

I stood, mainly to make sure I still could. No one on the trading floor below paid the least attention to any of us.

We waited about ten minutes, giving Leitz time to cool off, before going down to his office on the floor below. Foos seemed to know his way around. I asked him if he still advocated the direct approach. He grunted in response.

The office was all glass. Two large windows looked south and east over Manhattan and on to Queens. Interior panes faced the trading floor. Leitz was at his desk, another stone table, on the phone. He hit a switch as we walked in and the inside glass turned frosty opaque. I stopped by the door, keeping my distance. He noted where I was standing and shook his head. His voice was tight and tense. He was fighting the temper and winning, for the moment.

“All right, yes, dammit, I’ll call him,” he said into the receiver. “As soon as I finish this meeting.… No, I have no idea.… Yes, I know, but… Not like this, not now.”

He put down the phone. “Sorry. Some issues with my son at his school. I owe you an apology,” he said to me. “I’ve always had a bad temper. Sometimes it gets the better of me.”

“Damned near got the better of me,” I said.

“You’re right. I have no excuse. I’m a very competitive person. I hate to lose. I hate the idea of being compromised. Especially by someone who cheats.”

“I didn’t cheat. You asked me to find a way into your system.”

“I didn’t mean it the way it sounded. I was referring to the other guy. Our agreement stands, of course. I’ll have the Repin delivered.”