Spud and I were back in the conference room—rumors were rampant, stocks were crashing, and everyone on the trading floor had the hollow-eyed look of earthquake survivors. Spud didn’t look much better. After a few, stress-filled hours of sleep, I fit right in. Zombie central. From the moment the Kid and I stepped out onto Seventy-fourth Street until I passed through the well-guarded front doors of Weld Securities, I was convinced that I was being tailed. The two guys from the night before seemed to materialize in my peripheral vision on street corners, in subway stations, ducking into doorways, only to transform into harmless-looking fellow New Yorkers when I looked directly at them. The Kid had sensed my upset—a situation that had threatened to escalate into a disaster when I couldn’t find him a matching pair of blue socks. I had been pleasantly surprised to find that he didn’t mind mismatched socks on Monday morning, as long as they were both blue.
