"Fire him for what?"
"For one thing, he didn't go to work very often, and for another, there was talk that when he did show up for work, he did a lot of business his customers didn't know about. You know what I mean?"
Joey shook his head, "no."
"Stockbrokers work on commission. The more stocks and bonds and stuff they buy and sell, the more money they make. So, if they aren't too ethical, they call their customers up and suggest they sell something he hears is going to go down, and buy something else he hears is going to go up, and maybe his information isn't so kosher. He did a lot of that at Merrill Lynch, but that isn't all. If they have customers that are buying and selling a lot, so their monthly statements are pretty complicated, what some of those guys do-what Ketcham got caught doing-is making trades their customers didn't order."
"Explain that to me," Joey said.
"Like you own five thousand shares of, say, General Motors. Ketcham would sell, say, a thousand shares one day, and buy it back the next. And get a commission selling it, and another commission buying it back."
"The customers don't notice?"
"A lot of the customers don't keep good records," Chason explained. "They get their statement, it says they sold a thousand shares at fifty bucks, and then, a day later, they bought a thousand shares at forty-seven-fifty, which means they picked up twenty-five hundred bucks less the commissions, why ask questions?"
"What if they sold the stock at forty-seven-fifty, and then bought it back at fifty, and they lost twenty-five hundred? Don't that ring bells that something ain't kosher?"
"From what I hear, believe it or not, most people don't catch on right away. The company itself catches more salesmen doing stuff like that than the customers do. And that's what happened to Mr. Ketcham at Merrill Lynch. The company-they call the people who do it 'internal auditors'-caught him."
"But they didn't fire him?" Joey asked. "You said he resigned, right?"
"Like I said, I can't prove this happened to him at Merrill Lynch, but this is the way something like this works, all right? The internal auditors catch a guy doing something like this, what can they do? If they fire the guy because he's been making unauthorized trades for his customer, and they tell the customer, the customer is going to be pissed, right? And take his business some other place, and tell all his friends what Merrill Lynch, or whoever, has done to him. "
"Yeah," Joey said, considering that. "So what do they do?"
"They call the guy in, tell him that they have enough on him to get him kicked out of the stockbroker business for life, and that the smart thing for him to do is have his desk cleaned out by five o'clock, keep his mouth shut, and if he gets another job, to straighten up and fly right. You get the picture."
"Jesus, you just can't trust anybody these days, can you?" Joey said.
"There's more crooks out of jail than in," Chason said.
"So he went to this company in Bala Cynwyd, you're telling me, and started this shit all over?"
"No. Not exactly. He's about to get canned from Wendell, Wilson for not producing. That means not selling or buying enough for his customers. The reason he's not producing enough is that he comes to work late, leaves early, or doesn't come to work at all. You can only get away with telling the boss you were 'developing business' on the golf course, which is why you weren't at work, if you actually produce the business."
"If he's not 'producing business,' what's he living on, if he's working on commission?"
"That's what I wondered," Chason said. "He lives good. He pays a lot of money for his apartment, drives a fancy car, dresses good, and he's got a girlfriend who probably costs him a lot of money."
"You mean a hooker?"
"No, I mean one of those Main Line beauties, who expect to be taken to expensive restaurants, and weekends at the shore. Like that."
"How do you know about the girlfriend?" Tony asked.
Chason took a small notebook from his pocket.
"Her name is Cynthia Longwood," he said. "Her father is Randolph Longwood, the builder."
"I heard the name," Joey said.
"Anyway, they have been running around for some time. So I wondered how he was paying for all this, and started asking some questions around. I got to tell you again, Joey, that I can't prove any of this, it's just…"
Joey Fiorello indicated with his hands that he understood the caveat.
"If I was a betting man, Joey, which I don't happen to be, I'd give odds that this sleazeball is into drugs. Maybe not big time, but not small time, either."
"No shit?"
"It all fits, if you think about it."
"You tell me."
"If somebody has an armful of that shit, everything is rosy. You don't give a shit about anything. You don't feel like going to work, you don't go to work. Everything will be all right. And if you do go to work, you put some shit up your nose, it turns you into a fucking genius. You're too smart to get caught buying and selling stocks and bonds nobody told you to. You understand?"
"I'm getting the picture."
"You get your hands on, say, twenty thousand dollars' worth of heroin, or cocaine, any of the high-class stuff, if you know where to get it and where to sell it, you keep out what you need to shove in your own arm, or up your own, and your girlfriend's, nose-"
"You think his girlfriend is a junkie?"
"I didn't hear anything like that. But I would be surprised if she didn't do some 'recreational drugs.' That's pretty common among people like that. You heard what happened to the Detweiler girl, her father owns half of Nesfoods?"
Joey Fiorello shook his head, "no."
"I know who they are," Joey said. "What about the girl?"
"She stuck a needle in her arm in Chestnut Hill and was dead before she could take it out."
"No shit?"
"Killed her like that," Chason said, snapping his fingers. "Anyway, after you put aside whatever shit you need for yourself and your girlfriend, you sell the rest. You put away enough money to buy another twenty thousand worth later on, and you live good on what's left over."
"And you think Ketcham is doing this?"
"Like I said, I can't prove it, but yeah, Joey, I'd bet on it."
"Can I ask you a personal question, Phil?"
"You can ask," Chason said. "But I won't promise to answer."
"You're a retired police officer," Joey said. "You get this feeling about somebody like this, dealing drugs, doing what you think he's doing with the stockbroker business, you feel you got to tell the cops?"
"No," Chason said. "For one thing, like I said, I can't prove any of this. And for another, if I did, they'd probably tell me to mind my own business."
"What do you think his chances are of getting caught dealing drugs?"
"He'll get caught eventually," Chason said. "If he don't get killed first, in some drug deal gone bad, or kill himself, the way that Detweiler girl did."
"Well, one thing for sure," Joey said. "We don't want this son of a bitch walking around the lot, do we?"
"I wouldn't if I was you, Joey," Chason said.
"Phil, I don't want anybody to know I was even thinking of giving this son of a bitch a job. It would be embarrassing, if you know what I mean."
"What I do, Joey, like it says in the phone book, is confidential investigations. What I told you, you paid for. It's yours. I just forgot everything I told you."
"I appreciate that, Phil," Joey said.
Chason nodded his head.
"How long did it take you to come up with all this, Phil?"
"No longer than usual. I'm going to bill you for ten hours, plus, I think, about sixty bucks in expenses."
"Two things, Phil. First of all, I think it took you like twenty hours," Joey said. "And I figure you had maybe two hundred in expenses."