Black Fridays (14 page)

“I like ‘Skeli.’ May I call you Skeli?”

“Aristos feeds me. He’s earned the right to call me Osama if he wants.”

“Is that all it takes?”

“He feeds me really well.”

“So is Wanda another alias?”

She gave a sly smile. “If we’re trading secrets, I get to ask first.”

Wanda reached over and linked our fingers. A woman’s affectionate touch managed to send immediate signals to the more primitive areas of my brain. I couldn’t tell if there was really a promise there, or if my deprived neurons were interpreting any signal as a sexual come-on.

“Okay, but no Deadhead questions, all right?”

“Agreed.”

I braced myself for a question about Angie. The worst buzzkill I could think of.

“What did you do on Wall Street?”

If she knew I had worked on Wall Street, she probably knew the rest of the story. I wanted to take my hand back, but she tightened her fingers and gave me an intense look of interest.

“I used to manage a group of traders. Currencies. Foreign exchange. It’s not very exciting to talk about.” I sounded boorish, I knew. “Sometimes it was exciting doing it.”

She squeezed my hand again, encouraging me to say more.

“But I made a couple of mistakes. I don’t do that anymore. Right now I’m doing private consulting.” I’d always thought of consulting as a joke—another way of saying you were looking for a real job. It might be as close as I was going to get.

“I’ve heard about the mistakes,” she said.

“Oh.” I did manage to retrieve my hand that time. I didn’t want to talk about it. Ever. And certainly not on our first date.

“PaJohn told us. He remembered reading about it in the
Journal
a few years ago.”

“It figures. He’s the only one at the bar who reads anything other than the
Racing Form
.”

“Don’t be mean,” she said, reaching for my hand again. “Nobody cares, you know. And besides, everybody reads the
Post
.”

“I don’t like being discussed.” I sounded angry and defensive. I sounded like a jerk.

“That’s what Vinny said. He told PaJohn that if you ever got around to wanting to talk about it, that was fine, but otherwise everybody should just leave it be.”

I hadn’t expected such sensitivity from the afternoon bar crowd. I realized that said something not so pleasant about me.

“That was nice of him.”

“Yup.”

“But you asked.”

“Yup.” She flashed me her smile again.

I took a deep breath and a leap of faith. “Okay. I spent two years away for a white-collar crime. But I didn’t steal customers’ money. It was an accounting shuffle. A big one. Half a billion dollars.”

Her eyebrows shot up. Put that way, it was an impressive accomplishment—if not quite an achievement.

“When I got caught, I thought they went hard on me, but I’m starting to change my mind.” I couldn’t read her, but I kept on talking. “But if you were to ask me if I regret what I did, or if I would never do it again, I’d have to say the best I can come up with is that I don’t ever want to get caught again.”

It was the first time I had talked so freely to anyone about my recent past—and it surprised me how desperately I wanted to be understood. I was still trying to understand it myself. But at the same time, I left out huge chunks. Things I wasn’t ready to share with anyone just yet.

The next step was hers. If she was some thrill-seeking vampire, just dating an ex-con for the turn-on of a bit of danger, I had probably blown it. And I could live with that. I just hoped she wasn’t the judgmental type, waiting to shut me down, or patronize or even lecture me, as soon as she had extracted my confession.

“So, tell me. Is this a deal breaker or what?”

She put her hand on top of mine again. This time the neuron signals were crystal clear. “I just wanted to know how you went two years without getting laid.”

—

THE DOOR TO
Wanda’s building was plastered with building permits, many of them more than two years old, and a large green dumpster hugged the curb out front. Antique marble lined the entranceway, yet the only light came from a bare bulb dangling from the ceiling. Plaster dust and drying paint clung to the air.

“How’s your stamina, handsome?”

Before I had a chance to embarrass myself with an answer, she continued.

“It’s five flights and the elevator has been under renovation since before the market collapsed.”

“I’ll manage.”

Wanda led the way. She had no trouble. Neither did I. Prison was good for something.

She stopped at 5A, unlocked the door, and turned to me. “You made it.”

“The only thing keeping me going those last two flights was the sight of your beautiful legs in front of me.”

She flicked her hem upward by about an inch. “There’s more.”

Inside the apartment the floors needed refinishing and the fixtures were showing their age, but the space was huge. My entire apartment would have fit in her living room. There was a formal dining room, an eat-in kitchen, and a hallway leading from the foyer back to the bedrooms. Three of them.

“I’m having a Grand Marnier. Join me?” she said, leading me through to the living room.

Grand Marnier always left me with a splitting headache in the morning. “Yes, thanks.”

I sat on the couch, swirling the liquor in the pony-sized snifter, while Wanda lit candles on the end table and slid a CD into the stereo. I held my breath and braced myself for Brad Paisley or Taylor Swift. It was Norah Jones. I exhaled.

“I just have to ask . . .”

“How the hell does an ex-dancer with no money,” she finished my question, “and now a student with even less, get to have an apartment like this?”

“I hope there’s a good story behind it.”

“No such luck. My ex owns the building. I get to stay here rent-free until he changes his mind. And as long as the real estate market sucks, I’m in the clear. He also pays for my school.”

“Sorry. We weren’t going to talk about our exes,” I said.

“Yeah, but in some neighborhoods, talking about real estate is the same as foreplay.”

A second song came on. Slow and wistful. I put my glass on the table and took Wanda’s hand.

“This I can dance to. Will you join me?”

There was a question in her eye—I must have answered it.

She rose off the couch in a long, fluid glide—as smooth and strong as silk. Our hips swayed, a slow and sensual dance, while I buried my face in her hair, breathing her in. It was all familiar but also new. We fit everywhere it mattered. I placed a single kiss on her bare neck and she gave a tiny shudder.

“Mmmm.” It was half sigh and half growl.

Another song started up, the beat slightly faster. We almost broke apart, but she pulled me to her and we continued to sway to our own music. She pressed against me. I tried to concentrate on the batting order and stats of the Yankees starters. I was two years out of practice. I couldn’t get past Jeter. Wanda giggled.

“What’s that?” I said.

“If that’s going to keep getting in the way, maybe we should do something about it.”

I kissed her. Sweet. Grand Marnier. Wet. Strong.

I let her lead me to the bedroom.

The first time was rushed. When I came—after A-Rod, but long before Jorge—it was a two-year explosion that left me dazed. She looked up at me, pleased with herself and her effect on me.

I felt, for a moment, peace. For the briefest flicker of time, I lost all awareness of prison, an ex-wife, Stockman, the SEC,
The Science and Fiction of Autism
, the oppressive squeeze of money, and the constant awareness that everything for me seemed to have peaked some years before and all the rest was simply walking through the blocking and repeating the lines of a secondary role in my own life. For that split second, I felt like someone else. Me.

She closed her eyes. I kissed her lids and whispered, “Skeli.”

“Hah! You don’t get me that cheap.”

I kissed her on the lips again. Still sweet, but salty now as well. Still wet. Still strong. Still hungry. I felt my body responding.

She giggled again.

I began to pull away, but she held me in place with those perfect legs. “That has to be a world-record recovery time.”

—

I STOOD OVER
the Kid, watching him sleep. I felt blessed.

I loved him no less, nor no more than a few hours before, but the anchor of onerous responsibility had been lifted—a feeling I had not had the courage to acknowledge. I still felt the responsibility, but it was now a banner streaming in the wind, a source of pride.

Sexual release. Kindness. Intimacy. The feeling of a woman’s naked breasts pressed against my bare chest. The freedom of a few hours to begin to love another made me love my son more, not less.

A part of me acknowledged that I did not yet deserve such good fortune.

The Kid gave a mini-snore, something between a gasp and a snuffle, and turned his head toward the faint light reflected from the street below.

For all my sins, there was my penance, his limbs askew after kicking away the sheets, his face glowing with his mother’s beauty, the picture marred only by a faint spittle of drool that hung from his lip, which, upon reflection, could have mirrored his mother under the right circumstances.

And for the few good deeds I may have done along the way, there, too, was the miracle of my reward. My salvation.

—

THAT FEELING,
that glow, was gone by morning. That’s when the bodies started piling up.

SPUD WAS HUNGOVER.
Most of Wall Street—up to a certain age, which I had passed long since—was hungover. It was Friday morning and that was just part of the cultural norm.

I have heard various explanations for the Thursday-night bacchanal, most having to do with the daily and weekly migratory patterns of commuters—the Bridge and Tunnel crowd—but my favorite had a truer anthropologic ring. As colleges did away with Friday classes, students responded by adding a full third day to the weekend, a ritual they then carried on to their working lives. Whatever the reason, the public should be aware that major financial decisions are regularly made on Friday mornings by people whose brain and other nervous system functions are still suffering the effects of that last round of four-in-the-morning Jägermeister shots.

“What you got for me?” I greeted him brightly. Whenever I had been severely hungover, the thing I hated most was a bright greeting.

He looked at me with red eyes and exhaled an aroma of stale beer and tequila.

“I met up with Lowell Barrington last night.”

The OTC stock trader. He was on my list for early afternoon.

“He bought me a few beers,” he continued.

“And?”

“He wanted to know what you know.”

“What did you say?”

“The truth. There may be something here, maybe not. Arrowhead might have something to do with it. And maybe not.”

“How did he take it?”

“He switched from beer to scotch. Doubles. I think he’s scared shitless.”

“Anything else?”

“Something about having to talk to his father. He was getting a little wobbly by that time. I don’t know what he meant.”

“All right. I guess we’ll find out. Meantime, anything more on the Arrowhead trades?”

“No pattern I can see.”

“Keep looking. I’ll be back. I’ve got to check in with Stockman.”

—

GWEN GAVE ME
one of her best apologetic smiles. I waited. I read all the newspapers. Just as I was about to go back and start over again, Barilla and Jack Avery arrived.

“What’s this about?” Barilla asked me.

“No idea. He’s kept me waiting almost an hour.”

Avery sank onto the couch facing me and said nothing.

Gwen’s intercom buzzed. “You may all go in now.”

I wasn’t comfortable giving my report for an audience. I had suspicions, but no hard facts. All I hoped to get out of the meeting was another week’s work. But with a gang in there, I wasn’t going to be in control.

Stockman didn’t rise, but waved us all to chairs. Barilla and I took the two seats facing his desk. Avery took the couch.

“So, Jason? You have a report for us?” It sounded like a question, but it wasn’t. It was my cue. I was obviously supposed to have a report prepared.

“No. What I’ve got is more questions. And I have some suspicions.”

Avery jumped right in. “If there is nothing there, then you’ve found it. End of story.”

Stockman barely acknowledged him. “Please, continue, Jason,” he murmured, as though he had the script in hand.

“I’m pretty sure those trips to the casino have something to do with it. I need to talk with some of the junior traders. I’ve tried, but it’s been a crazy week.”

“Amen,” Barilla said.

Stockman nodded agreement.

“I’m also concerned that this Arrowhead account might be involved.”

Stockman looked at the other two. “Do either of you know these people?”

Avery looked blank.

“Not really,” Barilla said. “I know that most of the traders don’t like them. They’re pickoff artists, constantly trying to catch somebody offsides. Every young guy has gotten his pants pulled down by those slimeballs once or twice—and even some of the senior guys who should know better.”

“Slimy, then. But illegal?” Stockman asked.

“I have no reason to think so. I mean, I can’t even
prove
they’re slimy. Maybe all their inquiry is legit. Traders make mistakes, but don’t like to admit it.” He nodded to me.

I agreed. “It’s always the client’s fault. I think they teach that in Trading 101.”

“So all I have is an opinion. I wouldn’t bet the farm on it,” Barilla finished.

Stockman turned back to me.

“So, where are we? Maybe we should just invite the SEC in right away. Brave it out.”

I wanted that second week’s check.

“There is one thing.” I turned to Barilla. “Did you know that Sanders was doing unauthorized trades?”

His face turned to stone.

“Not illegal trades,” I explained to Stockman. “Just trades that were not his normal bread and butter.”

“What is this, Gene?”

Avery smelled the blood in the water. He leaned forward on the couch as though he might leap forward at any moment and slap the cuffs on Barilla.

“I don’t know,” Barilla said carefully. “I’d bet there’s some good explanation, though. What do the senior guys in that group say?”

“They can’t seem to find the time to talk with me.” I turned to Stockman. “They keep putting me off.”

The steam coming off Barilla could have powered a small city.

Stockman turned to Avery. “Jack? Your opinion? I’m inclined to give this another week.”

Avery looked for a moment as though he were unsure how to play it. Then he became animated. “I disagree. Let’s stick to the issues—this is some sideshow. Stafford and I have both been over all of Sanders’ trades. There’s nothing there.”

Stockman nodded distractedly, as though he was only half listening. “No, there’s too much at stake here. If there’s anything at all irregular, I want to see it first. We can afford the few bucks we’re paying Mr. Stafford. Gene? I want you to look into this business of the unauthorized trades. And tell your people to make some time for this. Now. Today. Understood?”

I didn’t look at Barilla. I was afraid that if I met his eye, I’d turn to stone.

“Meantime I will have a word with the sales manager. I’ll see if he has any better read on the client.”

Avery broke in. “Would it help if I spoke with the account direct?”

Stockman answered very politely, as though correcting a favored, but flawed child. “A call from the head of compliance might be considered a bit over the top, Jack. It could be construed in all the wrong ways. Let’s not rush ahead of ourselves.”

The meeting was over. I had another good-sized check coming, but I had the feeling I was going to pay for it.

Avery brushed past us on the way out and disappeared. Barilla and I were alone facing the elevators.

“You ever pull that on me again, I will have your ass. I don’t like getting blindsided on my own turf.”

“I have tried to talk with those guys. They blew me off.”

“Why didn’t you come to me?”

He was right.

“And what the fuck is this with the ‘unauthorized trades’? Where did that bullshit come from?”

“I didn’t make it up. Supposedly, your senior team knew all about it.”

“Fine. Then how about you, me, and the three of them all meet up in my office in ten minutes?” It was not a request.

I had an appointment to start interviewing the other junior traders. “I’ll be there.”

Barilla was seriously pissed, and if he was clean, he had every right to be. But the bitch of it was, a guilty man would have played it just the same way.

—

IN MY DAYS
back at Case, the mortgage department was so huge they had their own trading floor. They had people who did nothing but work with originating banks—the small, local banks who actually made the loans and who then sold them upstream to Case, Fannie Mae, or one of the other mega-banks. There were salesmen who serviced only a single client and yet produced millions in commissions each year. Traders specialized in ARMs, dwarfs, IOs, POs, balloons, private label, and Z-bonds. All of which were meaningless to me and to most of the employees outside the gated community of mortgage securitization.

At Weld, the mortgage department would have fit in a good-sized walk-in closet. There were six very stressed traders in one corner of the floor, huddled together like the last standing survivors at the Little Big Horn.

“I’m looking for Sudhir,” I said. “Sudhir Patel?”

One of the two women traders looked up from her computer and gestured to the other side of the aisle.

Sudhir looked like a dusky-colored rabbit. He was thin, almost to the point of emaciation, and was a week or two overdue for a haircut. I judged him to be in his mid-twenties, but he looked years younger. Almost prepubescent. Except for the area around his eyes. The stress lines were those of a fifty-year-old bond trader, not the junior guy on the desk.

“Sudhir?”

He nodded, not quite meeting my eye.

“I’m Stafford. We’re supposed to have an eleven-thirty, but I have to push it back. Is that a problem?”

I thought he was going to start crying.

“What is this about? I don’t know if I am allowed to talk with you.” He had the bravado of a scared middle-schooler. Delivered in a round, Cambridge-educated accent, it was almost funny.

“I’m going to be talking to all of Brian Sanders’ friends. It’s not the Inquisition.”

“I barely knew the man.”

This was such an obvious lie, so easily disproved, that I snapped in anger. “Enough. I’ll be back in”—I checked my watch—“half an hour. Then I want to hear all about Atlantic City, Arrowhead, and the whole deal. Got it? Don’t waste my fucking time.”

He went pale and sweat appeared on his upper lip. I thought he might heave right there.

“Half an hour,” I repeated. I turned and hurried to Barilla’s office. I had the feeling that if I were even seconds late, he would gladly feed me to the sharks.

—

WE ALL ARRIVED
together. Barilla’s office got crowded quickly—there were only two chairs facing the desk. I rested a hip on the bookcase. The three honchos from the proprietary trading group were all people I recognized.

Richard Wheeler had joined a start-up hedge fund back in the mid-eighties and retired ten years later after appearing on the cover of
Fortune
magazine—twice. Weld must have offered him an incredible deal to return to the fray.

Cornelius “Neil” Wilkinson had been at Case when I was there. He still wore a bow tie and suit every day—I imagined he wore them all weekend as well—and glasses so delicate they looked as though they would disintegrate if he sneezed. In almost any gathering he would have been the smartest guy in the room. He had briefly made himself famous by marrying a Miss Venezuela runner-up with a degree from the London School of Economics. He met her while working in London. But he’d had an odd career, never quite in the right seat at the right time. He had done all right, I supposed, but he hadn’t made one-tenth the money a lot of less smart guys had. Neil was the case in point for the traders’ prayer: “I’d rather be lucky than smart.”

Kirsten Miller also wore a suit. A men’s-cut suit. She wore no makeup and her hair appeared to have been styled by a misogynist. Like most women on Wall Street, she had been screwed over and passed over any number of times—most egregiously by one of the Street’s oldest, most prestigious firms. But she had fought them in court and won—collecting an eight-figure settlement. Her victory was Pyrrhic, however. She had been virtually unemployable after that. I was surprised that Weld would have taken the chance on her. But she was at least Neil’s equal for pure brainpower, and she had a lust for trading anything that moved.

It was an intimidating group.

Barilla started as soon as we were settled. “This is Jason Stafford. Anybody know him?”

All three nodded. Neil smiled.

“He’s here looking into this shit about Sanders. He tells me that you aren’t giving him your full cooperation.”

I wanted to cringe. That wasn’t the way I would have expressed it. All three were staring at me coldly, any positive or even neutral feelings had been tossed aside.

Wheeler answered for them all. “It’s been a busy week, Gene. We have a lot of balls in the air. I told him we would make time for him this afternoon.” He looked over at me. “We still plan on that.”

“He just told me—in a meeting upstairs with Bill Stockman and the compliance guy—that Sanders was doing some unauthorized trading. Which leaves me with two questions: Did you people know what he was doing? And why didn’t I know?”

Neil spoke first. “Yes, we knew. And, excuse me, we didn’t tell you because it just wasn’t that big a deal.”

“Not a big deal? I just checked his position reports from last spring. The kid was short a hundred million dollars in agency bonds and mortgages. You didn’t think I needed to know that some junior trader was out there spinning the roulette wheel?”

“A hundred was his limit,” Neil said. “We told him that, and he stuck to it. Really, Gene, it didn’t seem a lot to us.”

“You three throw around billions and we let you because, all told, you have over seventy years of experience. That’s not the same as letting the new guy just whip ’em around.”

Wheeler stepped in. “We monitored him closely. Kirsten checked his position three or four times a day.”

Barilla made to interrupt, but Wheeler held up a hand and continued.