Warren Murphy: Syndication Rites

"iHola!" she said with quiet menace. In the background, a man spoke Spanish in slow, measured tones.

"There has been a catastrophe!" Rodriguez wailed. "Many of the movimiento are dead." He quickly described the grisly scene in the garage.

"Who did this?" she demanded once he was through. The white-hot rage roiling below the barely controlled surface threatened to crack the ice in her tone. So softly did she say the words that her Spanish accent seemed to disappear, lost in her swelling anger.

"I don't know," Rodriguez cried. "A man. He was thin, with short hair. He wore a T-shirt. I couldn't really see that well. It was dark." Something suddenly came to him. "But his wrists were thick. Very thick. Like the trunk of a tree."

There was a soft intake of air on the other end of the line. In the ensuing moment of silence, the muffled man's voice continued to drone in the background. When the woman finally spoke, there was fresh menace in her tone.

"I've met him before," she snarled.

Rodriguez was surprised. "What do you want me to do?"

Her voice was perfectly level. "He is a threat to my goals. I will find him, then you will kill him." The oblivious man continued to drone continuously in the background as she slammed down the phone in Rolando's ear.

Chapter 3

Lippincott, Forsythe, Butler had been the most prestigious brokerage house on Wall Street since before the time horse-drawn surreys filled the muddy lane that would one day become the most famous financial district on Earth.

Legend had it that an agent of LFB brokered the original purchase deal for the island of Manhattan between the Dutch governor general and the indigenous Indian tribe. It was a testament to the reputation of this distinguished old house that the story was not dismissed out of hand as apocryphal.

The firm occupied one of the original Lippincott buildings in lower Manhattan. There were several. Pricey real estate was easy to come by to the family that had practically dived like lemmings over the side of the Mayflower in order to shout dibs over much of the new country.

Over the years, the Lippincott family-along with its poorer millionaire relatives, the Butlers and Forsythes-had weathered all the financial storms of a young nation.

It was a comfort of sorts to all who worked for the Lippincott family of corporations to know that the businesses for which they spent their days slaving would last long after they had passed from this realm into the next.

Lawrence Fine was just the sort of employee to derive such solace. Whenever he passed through the opulent lobby and rode the gilded elevator up to the fourteenth floor, Lawrence marveled at his small role in financial history.

The founding Lippincotts had worked in buildings on this very location. Of course the original structures had been replaced over the years, but beneath the tar and concrete of Manhattan was the same soil trod upon by builders of a commercial empire that had stretched across centuries. Atop that same hardpacked earth, future Lippincott generations would preside over financial markets yet to develop.

There was history here. In a sense, the entire economic history of America. Lawrence Fine usually felt it as a palpable presence around him. Usually. But not this day.

This day he found the lobby a garish distraction and the elevator a confining box pulled too far off the ground by too-slender cables. Why did it remind him of a coffin?

On the fourteenth floor, Lawrence stepped into the recycled air of the main LFB offices. His head swam as he made his way down the hallway and into the rows of cubicles.

In strategic locations around the floor, scrolling electronic boards kept track of the movements of the

New York Stock Exchange. Company abbreviations and numbers ran across the long rectangular boxes from left to right, moving so quickly only a trained eye could see anything more than just an endless yellow blur. Lawrence Fine possessed such an eye.

The scroll on one board was nearing the end of its repetitive cycle. Flashing quickly, it reached the Rs.

Behind his wireless glasses, watery eyes took in the latest information. Although he had just come from the trading floor, information could change in a heartbeat.

Pausing, Lawrence watched the latest data on the company that most concerned him fly by. When it did, he breathed a relieved sigh. Up a quarter point in the past ten minutes.

Lawrence started through the cubicle aisle. His leather briefcase swung in alternate time to his pumping legs.

Behind him, heads stuck out from cubicles. It was a morning ritual. The taunts trailed behind him. "Nyuk-nyuk-nyuk."

"Soitenly, Moe."

"You had a hallucination. No, I had a hunk of pipe."

The words were meant to be insulting. However, as usual he had no idea what they meant. This morning, Lawrence Fine didn't care. He had a very important meeting to get to.

They had given him his own office while he was working with this special client. For the past three years, this had been a career goal, but thanks to the client he'd been given, Lawrence found himself missing his old cubicle.

He stepped from the cubicle sea and into the adjacent hallway. The vague sick-building smell was replaced by an odor of rich wood and leather.

Lawrence had only just stepped into the corridor when he caught sight of the man coming toward him.

His heart sank.

He didn't need this. Not today.

It was Arthur Finch. Distantly related to the Butlers, Finch had been with the firm for only three months and had already moved from the cubicles to a small office. The privilege of breeding.

Finch's face broke into a broad smile when he spied Lawrence coming toward him.

"Hey, Moe, where'd you get the sunglasses?" LFB's latest management trainee called down the hall to Lawrence.

Lawrence frowned at the non sequitur. He hardly ever knew what Finch was talking about.

"I'm not wearing sunglasses."

"Of course not, knucklehead," Finch smiled. They were side by side now. Finch was still wearing the same idiot's grin he had sported since the moment he learned Lawrence's name. He was the one who had inspired the taunts from the other workers during his three months of goofing off in the cubicles. When he'd left, the jokes had stayed. It was a quarter of a year later, and Lawrence still didn't want to admit that he hadn't the foggiest idea what everyone was laughing about.

"Hey, I saw the Corleones a few minutes ago," Finch said, stopping Lawrence with a palm to the shoulder. With his forefinger, he pressed his nose to one side.

"They're here already?" Lawrence asked anxiously.

Finch nodded. "They brought a washtub full of cement. One of them wanted to know your shoe size."

Lawrence tensed visibly. "You shouldn't make fun of them," he whispered.

"Why? They can't hear me."

"Please," Lawrence begged. "And they're not thugs." He pulled out a handkerchief, wiping sweat from his forehead.

"Gee whiz, Larry, lighten up."

Larry. All his life he'd been Lawrence. That had stopped the minute Finch showed up at the brokerage house.

"Excuse me," Lawrence said. He stepped around Arthur Finch. Spine rigid, he marched down the hall. "If they try any funny stuff, start a pie fight and escape in the confusion," Finch called after him.

Doing a quick one-legged shuffle, the Butler progeny backed up. Spinning, Arthur Finch marched merrily down the hall in the direction opposite the terrified Lawrence Fine.

Lawrence arrived at his small office thirty seconds later. When he opened the door, his nostrils were assaulted by the sickeningly familiar mixture of noxious colognes.

There were three men in the room. Two were huge mountains of flesh and muscle. They stood just inside the door. The third was an oily little man in a shiny blue suit. He sat in a chair before the tidy oak desk.