Final Option

Evie needed braces, whatever. We could always count on him.”
    “Obviously you didn’t find him a hard man to work for.”
    “I wouldn’t say that,” she exclaimed with a chuckle. “He had the devil’s temper, and when he said jump you’d better jump. But he was the boss, and he never meant any of the bad things he said. I just let it roll off me like water off a duck’s back.”
    “Did Mr. Hexter ask you to pull information together for me regarding the most recent CFTC business? I’m looking for copies of documents regarding his trading account and the Deodar Commodities account.”
    “I pulled the customer file for Deodar Commodities and had accounting print out a trading record for the two account numbers he gave me Thursday morning, if that’s what you mean.”
    “Did he tell you what they were for?”
    “I assumed he wanted them for his regular bull session with Tim that afternoon.”
    “Bull session?” I inquired.
    “They called it that as a joke. You know, a bear market is a declining market, and a bull market is a rising one. Every day Mr. Hexter met with Tim for an hour after the close. Once, a couple of years ago, I asked him about what they were doing in there and he answered, ‘Catching the bull and taking him by the horns.’ The joke stuck, and we started calling their daily meeting the bull session.”
    “What did they really do during their meeting?“
    “They’d go through the day’s trades. I don’t know if you ever saw Mr. Hexter while the markets were open, but he was something to see. He’d trade thousands of contracts, barking out instructions to Tim to relay to Carl. He kept everything in his head—he joked that he didn’t need a computer because he’d been born with one between his ears, and I believed him—but it was hard for everybody else to keep up. Every day at four Tim would go into Mr. Hexter’s office and check the written record of the trades against what Mr. Hexter had done that day. When they were done reviewing the contracts, Mr. Hexter would leave, and Tim would stay and make sure that all the mistakes were corrected. Then he’d drop the final version at the Hexters’ on his way home at night in case Mr. Hexter wanted to trade Globex overnight or do something in the European currency markets in the early morning.”
    “And they did this every day?” I asked, thinking ruefully of the four o’clock meetings that Bart Hexter had made with me, no doubt never intending to keep them.
    “Oh yes. Mr. Hexter was very superstitious. He called it his lucky schedule and would get furious if anything or anybody changed it. Every so often it took Tim too long to do the Friday report—on Fridays he not only had to do the daily trades but also the summary for the week—and he’d have to bring it out to the Hexters’ on Saturday morning. It would take days for Mr. Hexter to get over it.”
    “So you delivered the information Mr. Hexter requested on Thursday in time for the regular four o’clock meeting?” I said, pressing on.
    “Well, I think I had it ready a few minutes late because when I brought it in they’d already begun reviewing the trades. Poor Tim. There must have been a lot of discrepancies because Mr. Hexter was already screaming at him.”
    “What was he angry about?”
    “I have no idea. He was just like that. Something would set him off—a clerical error or a missed trade— and he’d get into a rage that would take days to end. It really didn’t make sense to wonder about why. We all understood that, especially Tim. Working so closely with his uncle, he bore the brunt of his temper. But Mr. Hexter loved him like a son.
    “I know for a fact that Mr. Hexter helped him out with the terrible mess when Tim’s father died. That was just like Mr. Hexter—all shouting and temper, but when it came right down to it, he was there to help when all the people with their sweet talk and polite ways were long gone.”
    “Do you have any idea what happened to the material?”
    “This morning Barton Jr. told me it was for the CFTC matter you were handling, so I assume Mr. Hexter took it home with him for your Sunday meeting.”
    “I was at his house right after he died,” I told her. “I looked through his things. I didn’t find any of the material you mentioned anywhere.” I sighed.
    “Did you look in his briefcase?” asked the dead man’s secretary.
    “Yes. It was practically empty. I suppose the police must have taken