"Maybe you'd better go first." I took a sip, savoring the peaty aroma. Let Henderson decompress in his own good time, then sound him out on Noda's chilling proposition. "What are you doing here?"
"Call it modesty and discretion." He turned back.
These were not, as you might infer, the first descriptors that leapt to mind whenever I thought of Bill.
He slid his hand across the bar, extracted another Dunhill from its red pack, and launched a disjointed monologue starting with the goddam traffic in D.C., then proceeding to ditto coming in from LaGuardia.
All this time his cigarette had been poised in readiness. Finally he flicked a sterling silver lighter, the old-fashioned kind, and watched the orange flame glisten off the mirror at our right. "So, old buddy, that's it. All the news that's fit to print. History will record this as the moment yours truly bailed out. I figure it like this. If I can't read the signals myself these days, what in hell am I doing giving advice? Time to hit the silk. Get back to making a living. Don't know how long this circus is going to last, but I figure we'd all better be saddled up and ready to ride, just in case."
As it happens, self-proclaimed ignorance was a crucial ingredient in Henderson's deliberate "country boy" camouflage, designed to disarm the city slickers. I estimated the professional dirt farmer next to me, Armani double-breasted and gold Piaget timepiece, was now worth about forty million, including a chunk of an offshore bank. Yet for it all, he still liked to come across as though he'd just moseyed in and wished somebody would help him through all this fine print.
"Don't bullshit me, Bill." I toyed with my drink. "What you're really saying is you couldn't get anybody else to agree with you."
"Have to admit there were a few trifling differences of opinion about the direction things are headed." He positioned his Dunhill in the ashtray and washed his throat with more Scotch. "You can't cover up the fundamentals with cosmetics. Things like a megabillion trade shortfall, a debt nobody can even count, and a dollar that don't know whether to fish or cut bait. Worst of all, we're still selling the suckers of the world more funny-colored paper than czarist Russia did. There ain't no quick fix for this one." He took another sip, then turned back. "But fuck it. Remember that old saying I used to have about being a lover, not a fighter. I always know when it's time to call in the huntin' dogs and piss on the fire. I'm back in town to stay. I got hold of my boys and they're coming in tomorrow to start getting everything out of mothballs. We're going back on-line."