I GOT HOME minutes before the Kid and Heather arrived.

The Kid came in the door first, looking borderline meltdown. The eyes were darting, his fingers were beating an odd rhythm on the palms of his hands, and he was doing the one-note hum without ever seeming to take a breath. I went into a near meltdown of my own. I wanted to hold him and comfort him, I was afraid of the coming explosion, and I felt guilty that a moment before I had been happy and not thinking of my son.

Heather followed him in. “He’s okay, Mr. Stafford. Really. Actually, he’s doing really well. We just ran into Mrs. Montefiore in the elevator.”

When the Ansonia converted to condominiums, enough of the opera community that had always called it home stuck around and kept the place interesting. The Kid loved music, but some of the Ansonia’s characters were a bit larger than life—operatic—with all the trappings of divadom. Mrs. Montefiore spoke in arias, projecting to the back of the house in any setting. She was also a big woman—in every direction—and dressed to be noticed, in brilliantly colored caftans and hibiscus-print muumuus. She wore too much dangly jewelry and seemed to douse herself in Tabu each morning. For a five-year-old autistic child, being in an elevator with her was like being locked in a closet with Godzilla.

“Maybe I should read to him,” I said, looking wildly about for one of his car books.

“He’s coping, Mr. Stafford. Let him.” She crouched next to him and spoke in his direction, but not directly at him. “He’s home now. He’s in his safe place.” She turned to me. “The finger thing is healthy. Stimming. It helps him focus.”

Heather had a tattoo of an ornate butterfly trapped in barbed wire on her arm that made me uncomfortable every time I looked at it. But she had the magic when it came to the Kid.

The Kid took a breath and began pacing. He walked from the front door to the living room window, to the door to his room, and back to the start. He did the circuit three times, his fingers flicking impossibly fast the whole time, keeping exactly to the same course, the same steps, each time. And with each lap, he became less stressed. He stopped next to Heather and turned to me.

“Hello, Jason.” He spoke in his little robot voice—no inflection or emphasis. Heather, the school, and I were all coaching him on the basics of social interplay. He had surprised us all by being a quick study.

“Hey, Kid. Rough day?”

“Fine.” A quick study, but still as communicative as a teenager.

“How was school?”

He thought about the question for a very long minute. It was too non-specific. I thought of amending it, but he answered first.

“Fine.” And he turned and walked into his room. A perfectly normal American child.

—

SPUD LOOKED EXHAUSTED. I must have looked worse; he at least had youth, natural good looks, and all of his hair.

It was four o’clock on Thursday afternoon and we had been plowing through trades all day, with only short breaks for coffee and bathroom. The mountains of computer printouts had moved from one side of the room to the other.

“We are wasting our time,” I announced. My neck muscles were so tight I thought I was developing a hump.

Spud leaned back in his chair. “Maybe we’re finding out there’s nothing there.”

I didn’t believe it. “I need a different approach. Context. I need to speak to those other traders.”

“You’ve got a full day with them tomorrow.”

I nodded. “Tell me something. Barilla told me that Sanders was not a big producer for his first two years. Then this year he suddenly explodes. He’s a power hitter. Six months later, he’s dead and the SEC is asking questions. Why didn’t someone check up on him earlier?”

Spud shook his head. “No one asks why when you’re making money.”

“Nyah. It’s a natural question. Some junior trader comes along and thinks he discovered the money tree, the first thing you ask is ‘How are you making it?’”

“It wasn’t anything illegal. Everybody knew what he was doing.”

“Spud, lad. Have you been holding out on me?”

“No! Really, there’s nothing to tell. He made a few big bets early on this year. The big guys on the desk knew all about it. He checked with them first.”

“Tell me.”

“Brian thought the market had been too quiet for too long—we were due for a shakeout. When the shit finally hit the fan, he figured two things would happen. First, volatility would explode. So he loaded up on options. It was the cheapest way to get the most leverage out of the trade. He cleared over five mil on that trade alone.”

“Wasn’t he over his risk limits?”

“Yeah, but the big guys knew. They let him.”

Risk limits are internal controls—the SEC wouldn’t have cared. “What else?”

“He figured the most vulnerable part of the market was still housing. Mortgages. He wasn’t supposed to trade in that stuff, but he made a good case. So they let him go short a few hundred mil or so.”

“The guys in risk management weren’t all over him?”

“The senior guys on the desk backed him up. I think they had the same trade on.”

Again. Nothing illegal. It was fairly typical internal rule-bending but nothing that should have brought in the regulators.

“It was that big options trade that showed me there were missing trades.”

“Say again.”

“All those trades that were hidden in the system? The Arrowhead trades.”

“Yeah, I remember. And this big trade, where he cleared millions, was one of those?”

“The unwind, yeah. Arrowhead took him out of the whole position. Brian was psyched. I thought he left some money on the table, too. Arrowhead probably made a half-mil or so themselves.”

“Goddamnit!” If I’d known what questions to ask, I could have saved myself a lot of time and headaches. “Spud, that client keeps coming up. I want you to pull every Arrowhead trade. We’re going to look at them all over again.”

“Not again.”

“Think of it as penance for holding out on me,” I said.

“I wasn’t holding out.” There was no passion in his denial. “I don’t know why anybody would care.”

“I don’t either. But I don’t think Barilla had any idea this was going on. Stockman certainly didn’t. It may all be quite legal, but it keeps failing the sniff test. I’m not letting go until I know everything about those trades.”

He made a show of looking at his watch. “And you want me to start now?”

“Got a date?”

“As a matter of fact. Remember? I’m supposed to meet Lowell Barrington for drinks.” Sanders’ buddy over on the stock side.

“All right,” I sighed. “Soften him up for me. Do what you can on the Arrowhead trades before you leave. We’ll pick it up again in the morning.”

I stood up and tossed my empty coffee cup into the trash.

“And you’re cutting out?” He sounded more teasing than aggrieved.

“Privileges of age and seniority.”

“Got a date?”

“As a matter of fact . . .”