She straightened, her face returning to the blank mask of a server. “But I’m just a waitress,” she said. “I’d probably just put it under my mattress.” She turned and walked away, disappearing into the bustle of the kitchen.
Victor sat frozen. The ice in his scotch had melted. “She’s crazy,” Brad said, laughing nervously. “She’s just spouting nonsense. Red Creek. EPA raids. She probably read some conspiracy theory on Reddit. Vic. Victor.” Victor was not listening. His heart was hammering against his ribs. It was not just what she said. It was the specificity. Red Creek LLC. He knew that name. He had seen it in the footnotes of the due-diligence report, buried on page four hundred, listed as a consulting partner. He had dismissed it as irrelevant overhead. How did a waitress at a steakhouse know about a shell company buried in a confidential merger document?
“Get the car,” Victor said, snatching his phone. “What? We haven’t eaten.” “Get the damn car, Brad.” Victor roared, causing heads to turn across the restaurant. He dialed his head analyst as he sprinted toward the exit. “Johnson, wake up. I don’t care what time it is. Get me everything we have on Triton’s environmental compliance. Specifically, look for a vendor payment dispute involving a company called Red Creek. Do it now.”
Victor burst out into the cool night air of Manhattan, his breath coming in short gasps. He looked back through the window of the Gilded Talon. He could see the kitchen doors swinging. He did not know who Selena was. But as the cold dread settled in his stomach, he realized one thing. The joke was over.
The drive back to the Callaway Capital offices in Midtown was a blur of red taillights and panic. Victor sat in the back of his Maybach, his laptop open, refreshing the pre-market indicators for the Asian exchanges. Triton was holding steady for now. “You’re overreacting,” Brad said from the seat next to him. “Vic, think about it. She’s a waitress. If she knew anything real, she wouldn’t be serving oysters.” “She knew about the swap agreement, Brad,” Victor snapped without looking up. “Only three people know the terms of that leverage. Me, my CFO, and the rep at Goldman. How the hell did she know the strike price for the margin call?” “Maybe she overheard you. You have a loud voice.” “I never discuss strike prices in public. Never.”
Victor’s phone buzzed. It was Johnson, his lead analyst. “Talk to me,” Victor said, answering on the first ring. “Mr. Callaway, it’s weird.” Johnson sounded shaken. “I can’t find anything on Red Creek in the official channels, but I dug into some local county court filings in Nevada, like you asked. There’s a sealed docket filed yesterday afternoon. The plaintiff is the Environmental Protection Agency.” Victor felt the blood drain from his face. “Is Triton named?” “I can’t see the defendant. It’s sealed. But the filing location is the exact county where Triton’s mine is supposed to be.”
Victor hung up. The waitress was right. He burst into his office on the fortieth floor. The trading floor was empty, bathed in the blue glow of standby monitors. He ran to his terminal and began typing furiously. He had to unwind the position. If he sold now in the dark pools, he could get out with a minor loss, maybe twenty million. He could survive twenty million. But if he waited until the market opened and the news broke, he was dead.