The Legacy Page 2

  “I’m doing fine, Lewis,” Cole repeated.

  “Really?” Gebauer gummed an unlit Cuban cigar from a box he had smuggled into New York through Kennedy Airport after a trip to Paris. “That’s not what I hear.” Gebauer enjoyed kicking people when they were down. It was entertainment for him, it made the day go faster.

  Cole had been forced to sit next to Gebauer since his first day on the trading floor, and he had grown to detest the man just as everyone else did. Now he recognized that Gebauer was bored with the afternoon lull and was simply trying to start an argument in order to make the time pass more quickly. In these situations it was sometimes effective to launch a preemptive strike. “I’m surprised you can hear anything, with all of that protein sprouting from your ears.”

  Two traders on the other side of the desk snickered loudly at the ear-hair crack. Cole was fast with a comeback, not someone you dueled with carelessly.

  “I hear you’ve got a big fat mortgage on that Upper West Side penthouse condominium you bought two years ago,” Gebauer sneered, adding specifics to his verbal attack. He had no intention of backing down. “And I hear you haven’t gotten a bonus since George Bush was president,” he exaggerated. “Thanks to that, you’re way behind on your Mount Everest-size mortgage.” Gebauer’s pulse quickened as he recounted the information recently conveyed to him by the man with an ugly scar cutting through his left cheek.

  Cole tried hard to focus on the computer screens and ignore Gebauer, but the numbers in front of him blurred as the question raced through his mind. How the hell did Gebauer know about the bonus and the mortgage? Only Gilchrist’s top executives knew he’d been shut out of the bonus pool last year, and he hadn’t told anyone on the trading floor he even owned an apartment, much less a penthouse with a huge mortgage. He stole another glance at Gebauer. Several times over the last few days, papers on Cole’s desk seemed to have been rearranged when he returned to the trading floor after procuring one of the six Diet Cokes he drank daily. Surely, he realized, Gebauer must be responsible.

  “Young blood with the sabre tongue isn’t talking much now,” Gebauer crowed.

  One of the traders on the other side of the desk stood up and stretched casually, using the opportunity to glance over the computer monitors and phone banks at Cole to judge for himself whether Gebauer’s mortgage missile was on target—trading floors thrive on gossip—but there was no way to tell for certain. Cole’s face remained impassive.

  “And I hear your honey has the same problem I do, lover boy,” Gebauer continued, full of confidence now that Cole had gone silent. “I hear she likes girls, if you get my drift,” he said, smiling lewdly.

  Cole’s right hand slowly contracted into a fist. He could send Gebauer into next week with one right to the jaw and probably earn a standing ovation from everyone on the floor. He swiveled in his seat, as if to take a swing, just as one of his ten phone lines began blinking. He stared at the blinking light for a few moments before finally unclasping his hand. Forget Gebauer, he told himself. The guy isn’t worth it.

  Cole punched the blinking line instead of Gebauer and grabbed the receiver. “Hello.”

  “Who is this?” The voice was cold.

  “Cole Egan,” he answered, forcing himself to be cordial. Gilchrist senior executives sometimes buzzed the trading floor just to see how quickly calls were being answered.

  “What is your middle name, Mr. Egan?”

  Cole was instantly annoyed. “Who the hell wants to know?” In the background he heard someone shout a warning about an imminent announcement by the Federal Reserve and pressed his palm over the ear not covered by the phone to drown out the growing din. “Who are you?”

  “Tell me your middle name,” the voice insisted.

  The noise level on the floor rose to a dull roar as a senior Fed official appeared on the many television monitors positioned around the Gilchrist trading floor. Cole hesitated, torn between the chaos erupting around him and something in the voice at the other end of the line.

  “Your middle name,” the voice demanded.

  “Sage,” Cole snapped, impatient to cut off the caller. Like any good trader, he sensed a tempest bearing down on his portfolio and knew he should be directing his full attention to that right now, not the call. “What’s it to you?”

  “I’m an acquaintance of your father.”

  The Fed announcement burst like water through a cracking dam, and bedlam exploded as traders shouted orders simultaneously over multiple phones, desperately attempting to take advantage of, or protect themselves from, the interest rate increase suddenly imposed by the central bank. But Cole heard none of it. He had blocked out everything except the icy voice that spoke of his father.

  “I have bad news for you,” the voice continued. There was no sympathy in the tone. “Your father is dead.”

  The news hit Cole like an avalanche, but he gave no indication to the individual at the other end of the line. “I can’t say I’m overcome with grief,” he offered defiantly. He had seen his father only a few times in his life, having been raised by an aunt and uncle after his mother’s death. He had believed all his life that his father never wanted him.

  “I don’t care whether you grieve or not,” the voice said indifferently. “My job was to deliver this message for the agency, and to deliver an envelope to you which is now out front at the reception desk. Goodbye, Mr. Egan.” The line went dead.

  “Hey, Egan!” one of the traders on the other side of the desk yelled. “I’ve got a guy from Merrill Lynch on the line. He says he wants to buy some of your five-year paper. He says you’re probably ready to sell it at this point.”

  “And Nicki’s on line three!” another trader hollered.

  Cole knew he shouldn’t leave the desk right now, not seconds after the Fed announcement, but he had to. The envelope out front involved his father, and anything having to do with his father took precedence over everything else. “Tell both of them I’ll call back!” Cole yelled over his shoulder as he dropped the receiver on the desk and sprinted through the chaos toward the reception area outside the wooden doors at the far end of the room. He dodged a young assistant bringing coffee to the junk bond traders, raced the last few yards to the doors, burst into the reception area and stopped short. There were always visitors milling about here, and he scanned every face carefully, trying to memorize distinctive features of each one. Finally he moved toward the reception desk, and the noise from the trading floor subsided as the door swung shut behind him.

  “Hi, Cole.” Anita Petrocelli smiled cheerfully at him from behind the large desk. She was a young Queens native whose infatuation with Cole was almost as pronounced as the dark mole above her upper lip.

  Cole always looked great, Anita thought, but today a special intensity in his gaze made him look even better. He was tall and broad with rugged features—a strong nose, strong chin and sculpted cheeks. His wavy jet-black hair contrasted starkly with his neatly pressed white cotton dress shirt and matched his onyx cuff links perfectly. His hair was long on top but short on the sides and in the back—not the more conservative style worn by most of the men who prowled Gilchrist’s trading floor. His dimpled smile was alluring and mysterious, as if he were hiding something. The three holes in his left earlobe provided a tiny window into a rebellious adolescence. And his large steel-gray eyes, surrounded by long thick lashes, were the sexiest she had ever seen.

  He had taken her to lunch several times—probably just to be friendly—and through their conversations in the more relaxed atmosphere away from work she had come to know his total abhorrence of conformity simply for conformity’s sake, and his love of being different simply to be different. She had also come to know his considerable appetite for risk. He was constantly wagering on something. The stakes didn’t really matter, and he never took her money if he won the bet. He simply loved to take risks. She found this devil-may-care attit
ude electrifying. So did other women at Gilchrist, she knew. He was quite a package.

  For Anita, the best thing about Cole was that he had made it to his twenty-ninth birthday single. There were rumors that he had a steady girlfriend, but no proof, and without a gold band on his left-hand ring finger she considered him her primary target. Maybe even with one on, she admitted, slightly ashamed of herself. She had made no secret of her attraction to him. He had always told her she was too good for him. She understood this was his way of letting her down gently, but she continued to flirt with him anyway. After all, if she kept hammering long enough, the wall might finally crumble.

  “What can I do for you, Cole?” she asked, batting her eyes playfully.

  “Is there anything out here with my name on it?”

  “Yeah, me.” She placed her elbows on the desktop, rested her chin on the back of her hands and batted her eyes again. “I went down to Greenwich Village and had your initials tattooed on a very private part of my anatomy last—”

  “I’m not kidding around, Anita,” Cole interrupted.

  “Boy, you’re grouchy this afternoon.” Her smile disappeared as she scanned the desk quickly. Most days he gave her that dimpled smile she adored and a compliment on her hair or her outfit. “Oh, yeah, here’s something.” She handed him a large brown envelope with his name neatly typed across the front.

  “Who gave this to you?” Cole wanted to know.

  Anita shrugged. “I don’t know. A messenger must have left it here while I was away. I didn’t notice it was here until you said something.”

  Cole turned abruptly and headed toward a small conference room off the reception area before she had finished speaking. She pushed out her lower lip, pouting. Usually he was so polite.

  Cole moved into the conference room, closed the door, ripped open the envelope and poured out its contents—a typed note, an official-looking document and a small key that clattered onto the tabletop. He picked up the key and shoved it into his pocket, then read the note. It made two requests. First, he was to place an obituary notice in the New York Times marking his father’s death. Second, he was to proceed immediately to the Chase Bank branch a few blocks down Fifth Avenue from the Gilchrist Building and retrieve the contents of a safe-deposit box the key would open.

  Cole picked up the official-looking document that had been inside the envelope. It was a death certificate with his father’s name on it. Jim Egan had appeared at Gilchrist’s main reception desk six months ago, unannounced. It was the first time Cole had seen his father since high school graduation. The elder Egan had taken Cole to lunch—a sandwich, chips and a Coke at a delicatessen on Forty-seventh Street. The conversation at the deli had been full of uncomfortable pauses, and there were no great revelations as to the elder Egan’s near-lifelong absence. After lunch the encounter had ended with a strange, forced handshake in front of the Gilchrist Building. Cole had offered a tour of the trading floor, but his father had adamantly refused, then taken off down Fifth Avenue without another word, disappearing into the lunch crowd hurrying along the sidewalk.

  Cole stared at the death certificate. Christ, if he had just known that would be the last time they would ever see each other. He might have pushed harder for answers to the questions plaguing him for so long. And he might have said something to his father that mattered.

  2

  Cole shoved the tape into the VCR. The machine clicked several times and the tape began to roll as he sat down in one of the comfortable chairs positioned in a semicircle before the wide-screen television. He was on eight, two stories below the Gilchrist trading floor, in a screening room the institutional salespeople used for impressing investors with flashy presentations describing companies Gilchrist was about to take public. It was after five o’clock and the floor was deserted, but Cole had locked the door to the screening room anyway.

  The tape had been the only item inside the Chase safe-deposit box. There was no will bequeathing millions, no sheaf of bearer bonds, not even a piece of fine jewelry. Not that Cole really expected any of those things. According to Cole’s aunt, his father’s only sibling, Jim Egan had never been concerned with material possessions. Cole glanced at the rows of videocassettes of old presentations lining the shelves on the far wall, then looked out the window into the darkness of the late autumn evening. Perhaps this tape was a message from the grave explaining why a father had neglected his son for so many years, or a pathetic attempt to evoke pity from someone who no longer cared.

  The tape began with a bright day in a park. Cole watched as a motorcade moved in front of a building and toward the camera. The images seemed eerily familiar, yet he couldn’t quite place them. His eyes narrowed as he gazed at the crowd, the motorcycles and the limousine. The motorcade inched closer, and suddenly Cole snapped his fingers, recognizing the Kennedys and the Connallys inside the open limousine. There was President Kennedy in the backseat waving, Mrs. Kennedy in her pink outfit and matching pillbox hat beside the president, and Governor Connally sitting in the seat directly in front of Kennedy. Of course. It was a copy of the Zapruder film. The film constantly used as part of Kennedy assassination documentaries.

  Cole watched for a few moments longer, then shook his head, confused by what he saw on the tape. In the Zapruder film President Kennedy was on the side of the limousine closer to the camera. Here he was on the side away from the camera. Governor Connally should have been on the camera side as well. Everything was reversed. Abraham Zapruder had filmed from the other side of Dealey Plaza. Cole’s pulse jumped as the realization struck him: this wasn’t the Zapruder film.

  The limousine continued rolling and the picture began to move slightly up and down, as if the person shooting the footage was running alongside the vehicle. Suddenly President Kennedy lurched forward as a bullet smashed into his upper back. The impact jerked Kennedy’s elbows up and out and pulled his hands toward his neck, an involuntary neurological reaction to the inch-and-a-quarter copper-jacketed bullet damaging his spinal cord. Still the picture moved with the vehicle as Kennedy’s body stiffened and Connally began to react to his own wounds. Suddenly the picture stopped its subtle up-and-down motion, and Cole realized that the person making the film had ceased trying to keep up with the limousine. Then the killing shot came, tearing the president’s head apart with appalling force.

  “God,” Cole murmured. It was shocking footage, so shocking he almost forgot the seven-million-dollar hit his portfolio had taken in the aftermath of the Fed announcement this afternoon.

  On the screen there was instant pandemonium with people racing everywhere. The camera followed the limousine as it sped away, then panned back to the spot at which the killing shot had struck the president. People were sprinting across the street toward the grassy knoll, then the screen went dark.

  “The end,” Cole said aloud.

  But it wasn’t the end. A face suddenly appeared on the screen. “Jesus Christ,” Cole whispered, moving forward to the edge of his seat. The face on the screen was his father’s, much younger than the face he had sat across from at lunch six months ago, but obviously Jim Egan’s. Then darkness enveloped the screen once more.

  Cole knelt down in front of the television, rewound the tape and played it again. As the limousine drifted slowly ahead, he noticed something he hadn’t seen before—a rifle barrel protruding over the fence behind the grassy knoll. There could be no mistaking what it was, so clear were the images. Almost instantly a tiny puff of white smoke burst from the end of the gun, and the crimson halo appeared immediately as the president’s head snapped back toward the camera. “Damn.” Cole recoiled as blood and skull fragments and brain matter spattered the air, and pandemonium broke loose once more.

  He stopped the tape, rewound it and played it again—this time in slow motion—watching intently as he knelt on the floor, his eyes only inches from the screen. He pressed the button time after time, moving the tape ahead inch
by inch. There was the rifle protruding over the fence, the puff of smoke, the president’s head snapping back toward the camera and exploding, the rifle disappearing behind the five-foot-high fence and the president slumping down toward Mrs. Kennedy. Everything coming within a few cataclysmic seconds. Then the limousine moved away, people panicked, momentary darkness shrouded the screen, his father’s angry face appeared and finally there was permanent darkness.

  Cole tried to swallow but couldn’t. His mouth was bone dry.

  He rewound the tape to the puff of smoke and froze it there, mesmerized, his eyes riveted to the rifle. Was this Badge Man? That was the name attributed to a blurry figure apparently clad in a Dallas police uniform standing behind the fence and visible in certain photographs taken of the grassy knoll just before the killing shot—a blurry figure seen by conspiracy fanatics so anxious for subterfuge to exist that they were willing to see anything in a picture as long as it tilted the assassination answer toward something darker than one madman firing a Mannlicher-Carcano out the sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository.

  Cole touched the screen where the rifle lay over the fence. He had never put much stock in conspiracy speculation about the assassination. It was irrational to think that, if in fact a conspiracy had really existed, after all these years nothing of substance would have come to light. People couldn’t keep secrets, that was human nature. But here was proof of the conspiracy. Absolute proof of suspicions that had tormented people for decades. Confirmation beyond all doubt that John F. Kennedy had indeed ridden the open limousine into a killing zone that November day in Dealey Plaza. Confirmation that Lee Harvey Oswald hadn’t acted alone, if at all.