Read Final Option for Free Online Page B

placed him at the helm of a vast fortune, one that touched a great many lives. He stood for a time, quietly weighing the stack of bills in his hand, the first tangible sign of the responsibilities that would soon be heaped upon him.
    I kept the pictures. Barton had been dealt enough for one day. But I was reluctant to return them to the drawer. Who knows who would be next to stumble across them? Rightfully, they should be turned over to the police. But I found the idea repellent. I remembered how Ruskowski had managed to turn even routine questions into leering insults. How was he going to make Pamela Hexter feel when he asked her about the nude pictures that had turned up in her husband’s desk?
    I thought about asking Kurlander for his advice, but the thought of discussing pornographic photographs with the senior partner from trusts and estates gave me the willies. Besides, I knew what he would say—bum them, suppress them, do anything but turn them over to the police. The pictures are unpleasant, and it’s our job to see to it that unpleasantness is swept under the rug. With this in mind, I sealed them in an envelope along with a hastily scribbled note describing where I’d found them. I gave the envelope to the first policeman I saw with instructions to give them to Detective Ruskowski.
     
    I hadn’t realized how glad I’d be to escape the strained atmosphere of the dead man’s house. The reactions of his family to the strange crucible of death had seemed odd. But then again, who knew what constituted normal behavior in the wake of such a tragedy?
    In the car, on my way to my meeting at the Board of Trade, I called Elliott Abelman. Elliott was a private detective and the first person I could think of who might be able to arrange for protection for the Hexter family. I reached him at home and related the morning’s events.
    “Talk about being the attorney to the rich and famous,” he exclaimed.
    “I’m afraid now it’s going to be rich and infamous.“
    “You can say that again. You said he was shot. Did he kill himself?”
    “I don’t know. He was behind the wheel of his Rolls Royce wearing a pair of red satin pajamas with two bullets in his head.”
    “Not an outfit I’d choose for my au revoir. Was he connected with organized crime?”
    “I don’t know. Do you think he might have been?“
    “Everyone says that the mafia launders money through the exchanges, but I haven’t heard anything specific about Hexter. You have to admit that getting it in the head at the end of your own driveway sounds like a professional hit. Do the police have any suspects?“
    “If they do, they aren’t telling me.”
    “Well, I’m sure that Hexter’s pissed off a fair number of people over the years. I never believed that pious family man crap. You know, Mr. Philanthropy. You don’t make the kind of money he did without screwing people.”
    “In futures everybody screws everybody else,” I sighed. “Try telling me something I don’t know already.”
     
    The Board of Trade was deserted on a Sunday, the art deco lobby of polished marble presided over by one bored security guard who took my name without raising his head from the sports page. I took the elevator, its doors emblazoned with bronze sheaves of wheat, to the fourteenth floor.
    If futures are a game, then it is the Clearing Corporation that makes it possible for the game to be played. Futures contracts are traded face-to-face in a system called open outcry. Traders literally scream to each other across the crowded trading pit, communicating their intentions to buy or sell by a combination of shouting and hand signals, like bookies at an English racetrack. Silos of wheat, boxcars of cattle, hundreds of thousands of dollars all change hands in a split second, often acknowledged by no more than a single word or gesture. There is no time to consider whether the person on the other side of the trade has the money or the actual commodity to complete the