He'd been especially busy this session. When he did come to New York, he spent most of his time up at the West Side apartment of a female aide of his, where they reportedly were polishing a lot of position papers these days. Monday, however, he had only one thing on his mind: how to keep the U.S. monetary system from going belly up. Trouble was, he had no idea what to do. Naturally he immediately canceled his subcommittee hearings for the day—an inquiry into how charge cards and the banks touting them (loving those wonderful loan-shark rates) were lofting consumer debt to dizzying heights. That afternoon he began working on a speech for the Senate floor, a hellfire preachment intended to shame the administration into some kind of action.
After thinking about it awhile, he'd decided that, since all the nervousness in the market was traceable to an apparently total Japanese loss of confidence in U.S. government obligations, he'd have his staff call around concerning what other Japanese moves were underway. He had questions such as: If they're pulling out of Treasuries, are they dumping corporate bonds too? Real estate? Where in blazes is it going to stop?
Simple questions, maybe, but tough ones to attack on short notice, given the clampdown at the source. So his people started making calls, and finally one of them got hold of Charlie Mercer, an Executive VP at Shearson. Purely chance. Did Charlie happen to know any big Japanese players in town?
Well, yes and no, replied Charlie. Strictly off the record, one of his biggest personal clients lately was an attorney here in New York, who always paid with corporate checks bearing the logo of a Japanese-sounding outfit. But it was a purely private arrangement and he was sure . . .
The staffer immediately told him to please hold while she switched the call to Senator O'Donnell.
Actually I'd known Charlie for years, and I also knew the poor guy's wife had some kind of esoteric bone cancer that meant ten thou a month in radiation therapy. So I'd let him set up an account on the side and do some full commission churning in the name of one of Dai Nippon's dummy fronts. Why not?
Then Jack came on the line. "Mr. Mercer, am I to understand you've been handling heavy trades for a Japanese firm?"
"Nothing illegal about that, is there, Senator?" Charlie was growing nervous, suddenly seeing himself under the hot glare of TV lights in Jack's finance committee. "Truthfully, the man I actually deal with is an American attorney here named Walton."
"Matt Walton?" roared Jack.
"You know Matthew, Senator?" inquired Charlie, stunned by the sound of the august public figure abruptly bellowing in his ear.