The Modern Fae's Guide to Surviving Humanity (23 page)

“I know this place,” Buzz said as they slid into a booth. “I used to come here with my grandfather.”

Janet snorted. “The founding partner of Dedham, Benz, and James, in a dive like this?” She nodded toward the bum slumped over his arms at the next booth. “No way.”

“We used to come here when I visited him for lunch. I think a lot of the partners used to come here.”

“Well, they don't come here anymore.”

The waitress who poured their coffee dimpled when Buzz asked if the place served fresh orange juice. Buzz was cute, even if you didn't know he was rich.

The bum looked up when the waitress left.

“Excuse me,” he rasped in a low voice like paper ripping in the next room. “Did I hear you say your grandfather worked at DBJ?”

Buzz gave the old man his best New York stone face.

“No.”

The bum scratched the back of his head. “I could have sworn I heard you mention Dedham, Benz, and James.”

“You shouldn't have been listening to our conversation.”

“Sorry. But my ears still work, you know. I used to be a trader at DBJ. Cliff Dedham hired me over a drink in this very bar.”

Buzz's face softened. “You knew Clifford Dedham?”

Uh-oh, Janet thought. Time to intervene.

“Come on, Buzz. Let's go. I'm not sure I have enough time for breakfast after all.”

“Go on if you have to. I want to hear what he has to say about my grandfather. It'll only take a second.”

“Cliff Dedham was your grandfather?”

The surprise must have been too much for the old man, because he began to cough before he could say anything more. Wiping his mouth on his sleeve, he came around the front of the booth and perched on the bench at the other side of the table.

Janet grimaced, and moved into the back corner, as far from Buzz and the old man as possible.

“You knew my grandfather?” Buzz asked.

“I was one of the first people he hired.”

“That was like seventy years ago. You don't look that old.”

“Well, I am. It's one of my curses. I'm nearly a hundred and one.”

Janet found it hard to believe that anyone who'd done so obvious a job of pickling himself could still be alive at a hundred and one. He probably hadn't worked for DBJ either, and thought he could cadge a free meal by pretending he had after hearing her talk about the firm.

Buzz didn't seem to doubt him. “So you were there from the start?”

“Yeah, but I didn't last long. Like a lot of traders, I thought I was smarter than everyone else.”

“She's a trader.” Buzz nodded toward Janet.

Janet could have smacked him.

“I never heard of a woman trader,” the old man said, “but then I've been out of the business a long time. I wouldn't think a woman would be able to handle it.”

“Things have changed a lot since your day, grandpa,”
Janet said. “You can't just sign up your college buddies for a couple hundred shares of General Motors any more. Now you have to have ideas.”

The old man laughed, which started him coughing again. When he was finished, he said, “I take it back. You'd have fit in on our desk just fine. But you're wrong if you think it was easy. We were selling stocks and bonds to people during the Depression. I don't care what it's like now, it was worse then. And I was impatient. That's why, when I met a fellow right in this very bar sixty-four years ago, and he started talking about someone he knew who could call the market, I got interested. I should have known better, because I'm Irish. But then, I suppose that's why he told me his story in the first place.”

“Janet's Irish,” Buzz said.

Janet kicked Buzz's shin hard under the table.

The old man turned his attention to Janet. “Then you'd better pay special attention to what I'm about to tell you, or you might find yourself where I am.”

“I doubt it.”

“Maybe. But, if you're like most of the traders I knew, you won't be above taking a shortcut when it's offered. When this fellow told me what happened to him before the Depression in 1929, you can believe I listened. Even if it did sound more like something out of a fairy tale than anything that could happen in New York.

“He didn't come right out and say it, of course. We were Americans, not a couple of boghoppers too stoned to find our way home in the fog. But I knew what he was talking about. I didn't really want to—but I knew. You don't find market tips at the end of the rainbow. Just leprechauns.”

Buzz laughed. Janet rolled her eyes.

“I know you don't believe me,” the old man said. “But
it's true. You see if it isn't. The day after a big move in the market, at least five percent, go down to the bottom of Wall Street and look for a rainbow. If there is one, follow it. It doesn't do any good to try on a day when there hasn't been a big move or there isn't any rainbow. You have to have both.”

“Give me a break.” Janet poked the top of the table with her forefinger. “If you found a leprechaun, why is it you're an old drunk and Cliff Dedham was the big success? Leprechauns give you wishes, right?”

“They do. Unless you take the pot of gold. The guy I talked to took the gold. That's what I should have done, but it was 1937, and the leprechaun didn't actually have a pot of gold. Just a lot of old bearer bonds that weren't worth five cents on the dollar. So I thought I was being smart when I took the wishes. Ha.

“Never take the wishes when you meet a leprechaun. Always take the cash. Even if it isn't as much as you'd hoped for.”

“So what did you wish for?”

“Long life. You can see that came true.” The old man tapped his chest, and went into another fit of coughing.

“What else? You must have gotten some money.”

The old man nodded. “I thought I was being clever. Instead of asking for a hundred million three year treasury notes, I thought I'd go for the whole hog. I wished for the ability to call the market.”

“That's a pretty good wish.”

“I thought so, but the leprechaun spotted the catch pretty easily. I can call the market, all right: I just can't time it. Even now, I can tell you the next big move will be down. But I can't tell whether the bear will start tomorrow or eighteen months from now.”

“Everyone knows the next move will be down,” Janet scoffed. “The Dow's gone up for twenty years. By definition, the next move has to be down.”

The old man nodded. “Exactly.”

“What was your third wish?”

“That was the worst. And what happened then should have warned me what was coming. You see, my girl and I had just broken up, and I was feeling pretty bad, so I wished she'd change her mind and marry me.”

Buzz frowned in sympathy. “I'll bet I know what happened next. A month after she married you, she ran off with your best friend.”

“It was worse than that. She got hit by a bus getting out of a cab the night of our honeymoon. I killed her.”

“Jesus.” Despite her certainty the old man had made up the whole story, Janet was horrified. But if there was a kernel of truth anywhere in the tale, it was probably the part about his wife. Something awful must have happened to the guy or he wouldn't be such a wreck.

Her cell phone rang. Not knowing how to commiserate with a bum, Janet was glad for the interruption, but it was only her regular alarm, set to warn her she needed to be at work in half an hour in case she'd overslept.

She turned to Buzz. “I have to go.”

Buzz took two hundred-dollar bills out of his wallet and handed them to the old man. “Get yourself a good meal and a new coat,” he said.

The old man folded the bills deftly. “Your grandfather was a fine man,” he said.

The rain had stopped when they went back outside. Dawn had risen. A rainbow bloomed over Brooklyn, its colors vivid. Janet shaded her hand against the sunrise, and followed the arch over the elevated part of the FDR
and the tops of the buildings behind her. The rainbow's peak disappeared in gray clouds, but the bottom looked like it came down somewhere near Wall Street. The Stock Exchange, perhaps, or the Twin Towers.

“Did the market have a big move yesterday?” Buzz asked.

“Six and a half percent. Down.” Janet frowned as she realized why Buzz was asking. “You can't be serious.”

“Why not? Let's have some fun.”

“What, wandering around Wall Street at six-thirty in the morning is your idea of fun? I have to be at work in half an hour.”

“Come on, Janet. I don't think we're actually going to find a leprechaun any more than you do. But when was the last time you saw a rainbow in New York? We'll never get a chance like this again.”

She followed him reluctantly. They climbed Wall Street with the arch looming high above their right shoulders. Turning onto William, they hurried three more blocks to Maiden Lane. More splendid than the entrance to the most magnificent casino, the end of the rainbow splashed brilliantly over a shoe outlet one more block away.

“Jesus.” Janet pointed at the stone building running the length of the block on the left hand side. “That's the Federal Reserve.”

Buzz's eyes widened. “I thought the Federal Reserve was in Washington.”

“There are twelve branches of the Federal Reserve, all over the country. This is the one with the gold.”

“The gold?”

“Five million tons. More gold than anyplace else in the world.”

“Wow. It really is the end of the rainbow.”

He was off down Maiden Lane before Janet could stop him. This time she didn't even think about not following. The coincidences were starting to enter the far reaches of probability, and Janet was too good a trader to let luck like that pass her by, no matter how absurd the odds.

Buzz had stopped to look at a subway grate standing wide open in the sidewalk in front of the shoe store when she caught up with him.

“Something else you don't see every day,” he said.

Janet peered into the darkness under the street. “You want me to go down there?”

“You see anything else around here that might lead to a leprechaun?”

Janet looked up and down the walls of the long stone building. Black bars as thick as her calves covered the windows. Really, there was no way there could be leprechauns in the Federal Reserve, but they would have to go inside if they wanted to find out.

“You first,” she said.

Buzz descended gallantly. Janet followed, finding a handrail just below the street. The metal steps ended in slick stone.

“Which way?” she asked.

Buzz pointed toward a faint light glowing down the tunnel about half a block away.

They went from light to light. When Buzz offered Janet his hand, she took it. She found his grip uncomfortably reassuring in the ick and dampness.

She couldn't pinpoint the moment exactly, but at some point the world shifted. The smell was different. Earthy, rather than disgusting, like a hole in a garden rather than a city sewer. Still, when something long and
thin brushed the top of her head, she shrieked. But it was only a root hanging from the roof.

She saw more roots ahead. Lots of them. But where had the roots or the dirt come from? The nearest trees were in City Hall Park, five blocks away.

“This is weird,” Buzz said.

“We must have come the wrong way.”

But they had already come far enough to see that the next light wasn't a bare bulb at all. It was an iron sconce, with a warm, flickering candle.

Janet couldn't help herself. Maybe there really was a leprechaun on the other side of the wooden door just beyond the candle. It sure as hell wasn't the Federal Reserve. And if there was a leprechaun, Janet was certain she'd do a much better job trading with it than the old man had. There was a saying on Wall Street, bulls win, bears win, but pigs lose. The old man had been piggish, and had lost. Janet had no desire to be piggish at all.

She let go of Buzz's hand and walked toward the door.

“Janet, are you insane?”

“I'm going in.”

The door was short, not much taller than she was; Buzz would have to stoop to get through. The knob was on the left side, large, and carved to look like a small head. As Janet reached for it, it craned away and fixed her with an iron eye.

“Oi! What d'you think you're doin'?”

The knob's brogue was as pure as Thomas Mitchell's. No, this definitely wasn't the Federal Reserve or City Hall.

“Can't I go in?” she asked.

“O'course you can go in. But what's that got to do with pawin' at me?”

“I thought you were a doorknob.”

“I am a doorknob. D'you take me for a spittoon?”

“How can I turn you, if I can't touch you?”

“You might try askin'. Politely.”

“May I go inside? Please?”

“T'would be my pleasure, lass.”

The door opened into a cozy living room like something out of a book Janet might have read as a child. A pair of armchairs faced a cheery hearth; a bright fire gleamed on the grate. A small side table between the chairs sported a large glass half filled with what smelled like stout. The ring of foam on the rim of the glass suggested it had recently been sampled.

“What is it?” a strangely familiar voice asked from one of the chairs.

“You've a guest, Jacko,” the doorknob answered. “Two, p'raps, if the other musters the stones to follow the lass.”

A man's face looked around the side of the nearest chair. Given that she'd almost recognized the voice, Janet shouldn't have been surprised that she recognized the face. But she was. Halloran was the last person she'd expected to see. The bushy red eyebrows and gigantic nose were unmistakable, even if he was smoking a pipe that looked like an ornate table leg, and wearing small square glasses.

He was just as surprised as she was, but caught his pipe before it hit the floor.