Broken Bonds

938-3902. That was the telephone number for the equity-trading desk at Cantor Fitzgerald, on the 104th Floor of the World Trade Center's North Tower. I dialed it every morning to reach my brother, Matt, one of the firm's most promising and successful young traders.

We'd chat in the few minutes before the market opened and our day got hectic. On the morning of Sept 11, I had been trying to line up an interview with a mutual fund manager, with little success. I had no time to shoot the breeze with Matt on the phone, so I didn't get a chance to call him.

I would never speak to him again. ...