Lowell Rothstein was thirty-eight years old, darkly handsome, with wavy black hair and brown eyes he liked to think of as soulful. He was wearing a suit hand-tailored for him at Chipp’s, and smoking a Dunhill cigarette he had just lighted with a gold Dunhill lighter. A gold Rolex watch ticked off minutes on his slender wrist. His partner, Joseph Phelps, was a year older, a plain-looking man going bald at the back of his head, wearing a rumpled gray flannel suit and black shoes that badly needed polish. He looked extremely worried. He sounded worried, too.
“Why does she want to see us?” he asked, and shook his head. “All the way from Arizona?” He shook his head again. “Her brother’s here selling some paintings, isn’t he? Do you think this is just a social visit?”
“The Kidds don’t make social visits,” Rothstein said.
Phelps glanced at the clock on his partner’s desk. “What time did she say?”
“Eleven,” Rothstein said. “Relax, will you?”
“The very rich make me nervous,” Phelps said.
“The very poor make me nervous,” Rothstein said. “Or at least the ones who can’t forget they were poor.”
“I was poor, yes,” Phelps said. “Very.”
“You’re not poor now.”
“I’m not rich, either. I still look at the right-hand side of the menu, do you know that?”
“What?”
“Where the prices are. My fondest wish is that one day I’ll be able to go into a restaurant and order whatever I want — without first having to check the right-hand side of the menu.”
“That poor you’re not,” Rothstein said.
“The stench lingers,” Phelps said. “I live on Sutton Place now. I’ve got a summer home in the Hamptons, but I can still smell Sheepshead Bay. Money scares me, Lowell. Because it can all disappear in a minute.”
“You’re in the wrong business,” Rothstein said.
“What time did she say? Did you tell me what time?”
“Eleven.”
“It’s already ten past.”
“The privilege of the very rich,” Rothstein said, and shrugged.
The buzzer on his desk sounded. He reached over and stabbed at a button.
“Yes?”
“Miss Kidd to see you,” his secretary said.
“Send her right in, Jenny,” Rothstein said. “Relax,” he told his partner.
The door opened a moment later. Olivia Kidd, wearing her mink coat open over a dark green Chanel suit, came into the office, her hand extended.
“Lowell,” she said, shaking his hand, “Joe,” shaking his, “I’m sorry I’m late, the holiday traffic is impossible.” She tossed her mink onto one of the leather upholstered armchairs, opened her dispatch case without preamble, and removed from it two sheets of paper. Handing one of the sheets to Rothstein, she said, “You’ve already had a quick look at this, Lowell, but you may want to go over it more leisurely now.” She handed the second sheet to Phelps, who gave his partner a puzzled look. “Joe?” she said. “Read this carefully, won’t you?”
She sat in the armchair, the mink spread under her, crossed her legs, and fished a cigarette from her handbag. Rothstein hurried to light it with his gold Dunhill. Phelps was already looking at the sheet of paper in his hand.
Across the top of it, he read:
Beneath this, and stretched out across the page as column-headings, were the words:
The room was silent as both men continued reading.
“What do you think?” Olivia said at last.
“I don’t understand,” Phelps said, looking up.
“What is it you don’t understand. Joe?”
“Is this what you want? What you actually want?”
“Well, of course it is. Why would...?”
“An average of six hundred contracts a day? Between now and Christmas Eve?”
“That’s right.”
“That’s seven working days. You’re talking forty-two hundred lots.”
“Yes.”
“Twenty-one million ounces.”
“Yes.”
“Divided among three accounts.”
“Corporate accounts,” Olivia said.
“Corporate or otherwise, there are rules. Olivia. Both Comex and the CFTC...”
“Yes, Joe, I know the rules.”
“The Comex reportable position level is two hundred and fifty lots...”
“Yes, I know.”
“And the CFTC requires that we file an oh-one form on anything over a hundred lots.”
“So where’s the problem, Joe, would you please tell me? Fourteen hundred lots in each account is well under the overall six-thousand-lot limit for any principal. We’re not doing anything illegal here. It’s all open and aboveboard.”
“Eventually, we’d have to reveal the principals in each account. Comex would insist on that.”
“We’ll reveal them when we’re asked to reveal them. Jessica’s here, Sarge is here, I’m here. I don’t see any problem. We are not going over the six-thousand-lot limit.”
Phelps was silent for a long while.
“I assume there’s a reason for this,” he said at last.
“There’s a reason for everything, isn’t there?” Olivia said.
“May we know what it is?”
“We’re feeling bullish,” Olivia said, and smiled.
“Do you know how much cash we’re talking here? To put up the margin deposits?”
“We already have it.”
“We’re talking three thousand a contract right now.”
“More or less,” Olivia said.
“That’ll come to something like twelve, thirteen million dollars.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Do you plan to take delivery?”
“No.”
“Well, thank God for that.” Phelps said. “But I still don’t like it. We send our man into the pit to buy that many contracts a day, he’ll have a lot of sharp traders looking over his shoulder.”
“Let them look,” Olivia said, and shrugged.
“Lowell?” Phelps said. “Don’t you agree with me?”
“I’d still like to know why,” Rothstein said. “Is this something Joe and I might like to get into personally?”
“How can I possibly answer that, Lowell?”
“Well... when you say we’re feeling bullish, do you mean the Captain is feeling bullish, too?”
“Most decidedly.”
“Then it might be worth looking into, eh, Joe?”
“I don’t like gambling,” Phelps said.
“We’ll talk about it,” Rothstein said.
“Gentlemen,” Olivia said, and looked at her watch. “Hadn’t you better start working on this?”
“Let me ask you something else, may I?” Rothstein said.
“Certainly.”
“Will you be buying contracts only through Comex? Here in New York? Or will you be using foreign exchanges as well?”
“Why do you want to know that, Lowell?”
“Because that might change the whole complexion of it.”
“In what way?”
“In a way that could determine whether Joe and I want to take positions ourselves.”
“The way Mr. Dodge did?” Olivia asked.
Phelps looked from his partner to Olivia, puzzled again.
“Let me say this,” Olivia said. “The exchanges we use are none of your business. But further, let me say this. Since Kidd International owns twelve percent of Rothstein-Phelps, and since you’ve served us exceptionally well over the years. I would suggest that it might not be remiss for you to take a flyer.” She smiled. “If the price went up to forty dollars an ounce by next December, for example, you’d stand to make a great deal of money on a six-dollar-an-ounce investment.” She smiled beatifically. “Use your own judgment, gentlemen.”