At a table near the back of the Tribeca bar the bankers from Bear Stearns and JP Morgan were laughing about the Merrill Lynch turd attack. The rumor had spread late in the evening that it wasn't a fixed income research analyst who stomped in his own crap and spread it around the 19th floor of Merrill Lynch's headquarters at the World Financial Center. Everyone at the table now believed that it was an equity trader who blamed the folks at fixed income for his diminutive bonus.

"He shit on them because they shit on him," the pretty girl who improbably works as a bond trader said.

We haven't been able to identify the perpetrator, and the officialdom of Merrill aren't talking about this anymore. So we can't say whether this rumor has the story right but for the turmoil inside Merrill the facts of the case are beside the point. All of Wall Street has heard the story, and many now believe that it was a strike by the equities traders (or was it brokers?) against the bond buys. And the bond guys are contemplating revenge.

A few hours later, at a bar farther north and east, a few guys who work a fixed income desk at Merrill were leaning against a mahogany bar and drinking mahogany liquid poured over ice. In accordance with long standing tradition, at this point in the night they should have been be throwing hungry glances at the more than slightly drunk girls who looked like they learned how to wear their hair from MTV's the Hills. But on this Friday they were distracted by thoughts of revenge. How best could they strike back against the those who had delivered his scatological protest memo to their floor? It may have just been one guy but entire groups were now verbally targeted. Clever ideas were bandied about but the main concern was how to deliver the most damage without getting caught.

We asked whether it might not be best to let this pass without retaliation but there had been too much laughter earlier that day, and too much Scotch later that night, for such pacifist thoughts to take hold. There will be revenge, one and all pledged. We left them at the bar and wondered whether John Thain knew what his soldiers were planning, and whether or not he could find away to stop them before they make their move.