Madeline Carter - 01 - Mad Money (11 page)

Before I thought about it too much, I picked
up the phone and dialed the number on the bottom of one of the
press releases.

“Langton Regional, how can I direct your
call?” It was one of those bright, slightly nasal voices that, as
far as I know, answer telephones at large corporations worldwide,
though in regional accents and appropriate languages.

“Martin Hewitt, please,” I said, reading the
public relations flack’s name from the release.

I was on hold for a mercifully brief time
before a youthful male voice burst onto the line.

“Hewitt!” He said briskly, practically
shouting it.

“Hi Martin,” I started brightly. “My name is
Madeline Carter. I’m an LRG shareholder,” it was a recent event, my
becoming a stockholder. But it was still true. And I didn’t feel
the need to mention my mom or Clarissa. “Did you know that there is
a trading halt on Langton’s stock?”

“I did... I do know that. Yes. It’s true.
There is.” It occurred to me right away that he was talking too
much. Of course, there are times when such a piece of information
can be useful. In a business negotiation, for example, when you’re
trying to pay less for something that costs more. If the other guy
starts prattling, you know you’ve got him on the run. Right here
and now, though, having figured that out wasn’t helping me much.
Public relations guys often spend their whole careers on the run,
or a reasonable facsimile. Prattling goes with that territory. In
the second place, unless I asked the right questions, I knew I
probably wouldn’t get Hewitt volunteering anything. PR guys just
aren’t built to blab. Probably part of the whole careers on the run
thing.

I thought I’d try anyway. “Can you tell me
the reason for the halt?”

“Well, um, Miss...”

“Carter,” I supplied again helpfully.

“Well Miss Carter, as you, um, can imagine,
these things can be fairly sensitive in nature, and...”

“... and?”

“Well no, sorry. I’m not at liberty to say.
At the moment. Right now. Maybe I will be later. But not now.
No.”

“Well, perhaps someone else can help me? Mr.
Carmichael Billings, maybe? Will you please forward me to his
extension?”

“No! That is to say, I’m sorry, I won’t be
able to do that. Our phone system doesn’t have that capacity.”

“But he’d probably be able to answer the
question for me?”

“Well, no, maybe not. That is, he might also
not be at liberty to say. As well. But... but if you can be
patient, we are confident that the matter will resolve itself.
Quickly.”

“Well now, see,” I said, ultra-reasonable,
“I don’t want to wait for the matter to resolve itself. I want to
know now. So who do you suggest I talk for answers?”

“I really couldn’t say, Miss...”

“Carter.”

“Miss Carter. But we currently feel
confident that the matter will resolve itself prior to the end of
trading today. By tomorrow morning, at the latest.”

“Mr. Hewitt,” my voice was honey sweet.
Innocent. “Is it true that Mr. Billings Carmichael is missing?”

There was a longish pause before he
answered. I presumed he was collecting himself while wishing that
it wasn’t so darn easy for shareholders to get his name and number.
“I can’t comment on that,” he said carefully when he answered.
Another pause, and then. “Where did you hear that?”

“It’s true then?”

“I didn’t say that.” But there was the
teensiest note of wheedling in his voice.

“But you’re obviously concerned that...”

He cut me off. “As I said, we are confident
that the matter of the trading halt will be resolved shortly. Have
a nice day,” he said as he hung up.

Have a nice day.

After I got off the phone, I sat and
pondered for a bit. I felt as if I’d discovered something, I just
wasn’t sure what it was. Sal had said Ernie was missing, and Hewitt
hadn’t denied it, but missing could mean a lot of things. He could
be missing work. He could have missed his off-ramp on the freeway.
He might have dumped LRG at the last minute — before he even
started — for a better job offer. Somehow I doubted all of these
things and the doubt — combined with my continued
self-recriminations, my sudden questioning of my own abilities, the
very real fear of losing all of my working capital and the thought
of my mother’s face — made me, to put it mildly, a little
squirrely. It’s not a feeling I can take sitting down, especially
with the knowledge that the company in question was headquartered
less than an hour down the road from me.

I looked back over that morning’s first LRG
news release and the name “Ernest Carmichael Billings” jumped out
at me again. A little, half-baked plan was starting to form and I
contemplated the intelligence of what I was thinking. But then,
what the hell? What are ex-lovers for if not to answer questions?
And, anyway, I
did
have a valid reason to call him. More or
less. There had been that less than idyllic year back at school and
the drink last week and his “good tip.” Besides, if my information
from Sal and my gut reaction about what Hewitt had said were true,
it wasn’t likely I’d get Ernie on the telephone anyway. But how
would I feel about myself if I didn’t even try? My mom’s face
floated in front of my eyes again. I punched the redial button on
my phone before I could stop myself.

“Langton Regional, how can I direct your
call?” It sounded like a recording of the voice I’d heard when I
called the PR guy, Hewitt.

“Ernest Carmichael Billings, please.”

Was I getting paranoid? Jumping at shadows?
But it seemed to me that the receptionist’s voice got a little more
distant, if that were possible. Sort of evasive, without
evasiveness being required. “I’m sorry, Mr. Billings isn't in the
office at the moment. Can I have him return your call?”

Not in the office?
I wanted to shout
it. How could he not be in the office? They’d just made an
announcement. It was his first official day on the job. Not exactly
the right day for a three martini lunch or a nooner, was it? I, of
course, said none of this. Here is what I did say: “When do you
expect him?”

And, here again, I imagined I heard a hedge.
“I’m not precisely certain.”

“He didn’t leave word?”

“No. Sorry. But I can take a message
and...”

“Wait though: it’s his first day on the job
and you’re telling me you don’t know where he is?” I said it calm,
but there was a cut to it.

“No, but a message...”

“I’m an old friend. From Boston. Is he
reachable by cell phone?” Did I even have the teensiest idea that
this line — true though it may be — would work? No. I did not. Any
receptionist who gave me that information should be fired on the
spot. Shot, even. This one was in no danger. In fact, having
recovered from the hard line I was taking, she was having no more
of me. I couldn’t blame her: I would have put up with less of me
than she had.

“I’m sorry, Miss,” and I could tell she
wasn’t. “If you’re not going to leave a message, I’ll be forced to
terminate this call.”

Telephones are so safe, aren’t they? So
pleasingly anonymous? “So now you’re the Terminator?” I quipped
before I hung up, feeling pleased with myself for about 42 seconds.
Because all of that had gotten me exactly... nowhere. And anyway,
really, what was so weird about him
not
being in the office?
Sure, Sal had said he was missing and Hewitt had sounded — to my
prejudiced ear — somewhat cagey, but there were any number of
places Ernie could be that had nothing to do with being missing. He
could be at home changing his children’s diapers — because, of
course, there seemed no possibility that Ernest Carmichael Billings
wouldn’t have children by now. (Though the diaper part was probably
stretching it: he’d have
people
to do that.) Or he could be
on the golf course. Or in a boardroom. Driving to a meeting. And
yet, none of this really made sense. Sure: he might be “in a
meeting” or “unable to come to the telephone,” or “not taking
calls, can I direct you to someone else in the company” (with the
words “someone less important” left silent). But the day that a
publicly traded company with a less than sterling recent record
chose to announce a new CEO, you’d think that said new CEO would be
somewhere on the premises, holding court or rolling heads or
otherwise making his presence felt so that the damn stock would go
up. That was how it was supposed to work. That’s what he’d implied
to me at Club Zanzibar that night. That’s what I wanted him doing
now.

But here, on the heels of their big
announcement, a trading halt. Which could mean any number of
things; most of them not good. The most obvious possibility — and
the least likely considering the nature of this company — was that
they’d somehow and suddenly run afoul of the Securities and
Exchange Commission. But it just didn’t seem like that kind of
company. Or they might have botched some sort of official
paperwork. And, here again, it didn’t seem likely. For one thing,
the Ernest Carmichael Billings that I knew wouldn’t have gotten
himself mixed up with an operation that wasn’t doing things the
right way. For him, even wrong things had to be done the right way.
He would have done his own sort of due diligence before signing
on.

The most frequent non-SEC reason for a halt
to trading was that something was going down that would impact the
stock price one way or the other and, in order to keep insiders out
before the announcement could be made, trading was stopped. And, to
be honest, at this point I would have almost preferred some lost
paperwork scenario to this last possibility. Because that sort of
trading halt at this stage in the game likely meant a plummet would
happen when the halt came off.

Back to the phones. Ernie had told me he’d
moved into the area the month before. I might be able to get a new
residential listing from information. But, even as I dialed, I knew
this was just me trying to make myself feel like I was doing
something.
Ernie was as likely to have a listed phone number
as he was to live in Reseda. And I was right. No listings anywhere
in the greater Los Angeles area — including Reseda — for an Ernest
Carmichael Billings or any corruption thereof. Back to square
one.

By now the markets were closed and I could
safely leave my terminal without all hell breaking loose. Except,
somewhere inside, I was planning hell breaking loose without even
being completely aware of it.

First I called Emily who, as luck would have
it, was home. I told her I was planning on being in town this
afternoon and did she feel like meeting somewhere in West L.A. for
dinner? We agreed to meet at a Mexican place on La Cienega that I’d
heard about and that Emily liked a lot.

Now, just under the freeway and a little bit
west is Culver City: a coincidence that I had created. I put on a
camel-colored business suit — trousers, not a skirt — a black
turtleneck and my best Italian pumps. Do I know I’m going to Culver
City as I dress? Maybe. It’s a possibility. It could happen. But
it’s a kick-ass suit: Prada, left over from my trading days, but
still chic and shapely. At least, enough for L.A.

For me, part of all of this had to do with
my mom. I kept imagining her eyes. That trust. Her unwavering —
albeit in this case unasked for — faith in me. That I knew what I
was doing. That I’d always do the right thing. But another part of
me was running on pure instinct. This is also part of the whole
stock thing. It’s like you’re a jungle animal and there’s nothing
in the world you can rely on besides your instinct. Like you’re a
big cat and you have to be prepared to pounce at the first sign of
movement to make sure you don’t miss dinner. Other times it’s like
you’re some pathetic rodent — or a bird or a rabbit or something
else highly edible — and you just trust your gut and run in order
to avoid being another creature’s dinner. I have been a successful
trader for over 10 years. In me these instincts are so highly honed
sometimes it feels as though I don’t control them. I don’t always
think: I just act, or react, as the situation dictates. And then I
deal with the consequences, in one way or another.

So, at this point, what am I thinking?
Drinks, dinner and maybe clubs with Emily. But somewhere in the
back of my mind is Culver City to find out if Ernie
is
missing and, if he isn’t, to have a one-on-one with him, just to
answer some questions. And, anyway, if rationalized correctly,
Culver City is
precisely
on my way to meet Emily.

Remembering I had told Jennifer I’d talk to
her after the closing bell, I called upstairs. Tasya told me
Jennifer had gone out. I left a message. I figured that whatever
girlish crisis Jennifer had been in a couple of hours ago had
probably passed, but I could catch up with her later.

I took another swipe at my unruly, pale mop,
gave it up for tousled, pushed Tycho onto the deck and followed my
instincts out the door.

Chapter Seven

My canyon sweeps you majestically seaward,
but it’s peaceful. Quiet. It affords you the illusion of living in
some perfectly rural setting. And it’s true: my part of Las Flores
Canyon is delightfully barren of a great many houses. However, the
fact is that both Los Angeles county and the district of Malibu
have declared my neighborhood to be an earthquake zone. Call it
living dangerously and definitely on the edge. If a house slides
down the cliff, it can not be replaced. If an owner wants to tear
down their house and rebuild anew, they won’t get a permit: Las
Flores Canyon, say the geologists, will see a finite amount of time
on this earth in its present form. Those that live here take their
chances. And so it’s a fairly deserted canyon, but those that take
that chance assure themselves that’s the cost of the exclusivity
they enjoy. To a certain degree they’re right. And I’m right,
because I rent. But owning a two million dollar house in the
neighborhood would not be my idea of a good time, especially since
insurance that will protect you — financially — from earthquakes is
expensive and somewhat prickly. And, anyway, two million would buy
a
lot
of stocks.