Mickey Schiff stood next to him. Bolden grabbed him by the shoulders and shoved him into the guard holding the gun. Bolden followed close behind, keeping an arm on Schiff’s back, sandwiching the guard between Schiff and the wall.
“Stop it, Tommy. No!” yelled Sol Weiss.
Pistol held high, the guard fought to slide past Schiff. Bolden clubbed the outstretched hand. The gun fell to the floor.
The second guard was working his pistol free.
Bolden knocked Schiff aside and scooped the gun off the floor as Sol Weiss rushed to get in between the parties. “Put your guns away,” he shouted, waving his hands. “This is Tommy Bolden. I won’t have it. I won’t.”
“Gun!” shouted the first guard.
“Drop the weapon!” shouted the second guard, raising his pistol.
“Stop it! All of you!” shouted Weiss.
And then amid the disorder, a gunshot exploded.
A kaleidoscope of blood and gore splattered the window.
Sol Weiss turned unevenly. For a moment, he stood shaking, trembling violently, his mouth working like a fish’s, a choking noise rising from him, his eyes dreamy, unfocused.
“Sol!” cried Bolden.
Weiss slid to the floor, a ribbon of blood streaming from the crater in the center of his forehead.
18
Bolden shoved his way past the stunned onlookers into the hall. Past Schiff, past Althea, past the other decent, familiar faces he’d worked with for the past six years. No one said a word. No one tried to stop him. The silence lasted five seconds, before a woman screamed.
Bolden started to run. To his left, glassed-in offices like his own ran to the corner of the building. To the right, the floor was divided into cramped two-person work areas that housed the firm’s analysts and associates. Between each was a small nook filled with filing cabinets, copying machines, and, occasionally, a space for an executive secretary. The philosophy was to force employees at all levels out of their offices and into common spaces, where they could work on projects together. Cross-pollination, they called it.
Everyone on this side of the floor had heard the gunshot. Those who hadn’t gathered outside Bolden’s office were either standing or cowering by their desks. Every other person had a phone to their cheek. They knew the drill. Gunshot. Call 911. One more red-blooded American gone postal.
A few came after him, timidly at first. Seeing the guards in pursuit, several more joined the fray. Bolden could feel rather than see them. He wasn’t taking time to look.
Damn you, Sol, he cursed silently. You had no business acting the hero. What were you thinking getting between me and a man with a gun?
Turning a corner, he ran down the corridor that bisected the forty-second floor. The hallway was dimly lit. He passed the coatroom, the snack area with its array of upscale vending machines, the shoeshine closet, and finally, the washrooms. Whatever else happened, he knew that he would never work at Harrington Weiss again. He hadn’t shot Weiss, but it didn’t matter. Just like it didn’t matter that he’d never laid a hand on Diana Chambers. The fact that Weiss was killed in his office was enough. Bolden was tainted.
Ahead, twin white doors separated the work area from the public area. He passed through them and emerged into the firm’s reception area.
By now security had been notified and the elevators had been taken out of service. Every redcoat in the building would be waiting for him downstairs. An interior flight of stairs curved in a graceful spiral down to forty-one-the trading floor and the directors’ fitness room. From forty-one, the stairs descended one more flight to the executive dining area. Harrington Weiss took up ten floors in all. Sol Weiss and the top brass were on forty-three. You could access the floor only by an internal elevator on forty-one and forty-two. From the lobby, you needed the proper key.
Bolden bounded down the stairs three at a time. Hitting forty-one, he bumped into two traders from the derivatives desk. “Sol’s been shot!” he said breathlessly. “Get up there. He needs help.”
The two men ran up the stairs and Bolden could hear shouts of confusion as they collided with his posse.
Forty-one was a universe unto itself. The trading floor was an unboundaried work area spanning the width of the building. Desks ran in parallel lines like yardage markers on a football field. Corps of traders sat, stood, argued, bantered, joked, and cajoled, but never loitered. No one ventured out of sight of their trading screens and their telephones. It was just after eight, so added to this mix was a wandering band of vendors peddling breakfast burritos, energy bars, bagels, lox, fruit, and plenty of Red Bull and diet Coke.
Bolden dived into the throng, running with his head down, his shoulders hunched. A few of his friends laughed at him, others pointed. Most paid him no attention whatsoever. They’d seen stranger things in their time.
The trading floor was organized according to instruments traded. Skirting the edge of the floor, he passed the desks for U.S. stocks, foreign stocks, then currencies. Bonds were divided up among corporates, convertibles, or “converts,” and municipals, or “munis.” Spotting Bolden, several men called out to him, but Bolden didn’t answer. An old saw said that if a guy hadn’t found a living trading bonds, he’d be driving a truck on the Jersey Turnpike. From the foul language shouted at Bolden, you’d think it still held true. In fact, ninety percent of the men and women on the floor held MBAs from Ivy League schools.
Bolden ran past the derivatives desk, where no one paid him any heed at all. The derivatives team was made up of the firm’s quant jocks and rocket scientists. MBAs weren’t the norm, but PhDs in quantum physics and pure mathematics. Human life-forms didn’t register for these guys. Just numbers. Most of them were Indian, Chinese, or Russian. So many, in fact, that their patch of the woods had been dubbed the UN.
The good thing about trading was that the hours were civilized. You started at seven and went home at five. The bad thing was that you started at seven and went home at five without leaving the trading floor. Lunches outside the building were a rarity. Many a trader had passed nearly every daylight hour of a thirty-year career walking the same ten-by-ten square of carpeting. Bolden preferred his fourteen-hour days, weekly plane travel to visit target companies, and twice-yearly boondoggles with clients to St. Andrews, the island of Nevis, or helicopter skiing in the Bugaboos. That life was gone, he reminded himself.
Glassed-in offices reserved for department heads lined the interior wall. To a man, the executives were engaged on the phone or in meetings. Just then, he spotted Andy O’Connell, who ran converts, dropping his phone and rushing out of his office. O’Connell stood in the center of the corridor, waving his arms as if to distract a charging bull. “I’ve got him,” he shouted, pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his nose. Bolden lowered his shoulders and straight-armed the slight trader. O’Connell tumbled to the carpet.
News of Sol Weiss’s murder had hit the floor like a tidal wave. One second, no one knew a thing. The next, a wild silence leveled the place, everyone sharing shocked looks, whispering, holding back tears while reaching for their phones to confirm it was true.
Bolden wasn’t sure where he was going, only that running was preferable to stopping. Stopping meant getting caught. And getting caught was not an option for an innocent man. He needed distance. Distance and time.
“Thomas!” It was Mickey Schiff. The man had a voice like a bullhorn. He stood back a ways, by the corridor leading to the elevators. He placed his hands on his hips. “Come now, Tom. Don’t run!” The stance said it all. The elevators were blocked off. The entrances to and from the building secure.