JM01 - Black Maps (15 page)

When he paused, a palpable silence took hold of the apartment. There was no traffic noise, no whirring of the building’s machinery, no humming of appliances. I kept very still and took slow breaths and focused my eyes on the wall behind Burrows, afraid that, like a deer, any stray motion or sound or even the force of my gaze might spook him and break the spell. Burrows leaned forward, his forearms resting on his thighs, the water glass still before him, held in both his hands. He peered inside, as if into a deep well.

“You’d think he was the best friend you’d ever had—smart, funny, worldly, and infinitely understanding of human failings. If you had a vice, a weakness, a little character tic, well, Gerard had plenty too. And whatever yours were, you’d never get even a raised eyebrow from him. Just a wink and a nod, as if to say ‘It’s no big deal. Go ahead. Enjoy. That’s what men do.’ And he’d sit back and wait and watch. To see the kind of women you liked, or men, to see what you envied, what made you bitter, to see what you liked and hated about yourself, to see what lies you told yourself, and, especially, to see what you most coveted. It could take months, years even. He didn’t care. He was patient. It was like tending a garden, he used to say.”

Burrows looked up, and the motion startled me. His eyes were red. “This is too vague, isn’t it? You want to know what he was like, how he did business. You need specifics.” Burrows’s soft, deep voice was steady now, and it stayed that way through all the stories he told me.

Chapter Ten

“Larry—let’s call him Larry—had just moved to town from somewhere in the Midwest, with his brand-new wife in tow. Larry was ambitious, and lucky. He had the world by the balls. And he had no clue at all of what was about to happen to him.” Burrows found the rhythm of his narrative easily, and I got the feeling he’d waited a long time to tell his stories. His tone was ironical and detached. The irony seemed to come naturally to him. He had to work at the detachment.

“Larry had just landed a job trading currency for one of the biggest FX market-makers on the Street. He’d been a rising star at the regional bank that he’d come from, but, after all, it was just a regional bank—a farm team. This was the big league, and the FX market was hot back then. Larry was poised to make some real money. And that was a good thing, because Mrs. Larry, his pretty new wife, had pricey tastes, lofty social aspirations, and a grim resolve. Of the many things she wanted, at the top of her list was a place to live. But not just any place. Mrs. Larry imagined raising a towheaded brood in just the right sort of Manhattan apartment. Something on Park Ave., say, no higher than Eightieth Street, or maybe on Fifth, with a terrace and a nice view of the park.

“Now, Larry had come to town with what he’d thought was a tidy nest egg. But in New York City, in the midst of the real estate boom twenty years ago, it was chump change. Mrs. Larry had set her sights on only the toniest white-glove buildings, places with the pickiest boards . . . places that required that all apartments be purchased in cash. Much more cash than Larry had on hand, and more than he was likely to see—in the best of circumstances—for nearly a year, when his bonus would be paid. This did not please Mrs. Larry, whose strengths ran more to petulance and pouting than to patience. And Mrs. Larry was generous with her displeasure.

“Enter Nassouli. He had started cultivating Larry on the boy’s first day at his new job. We were active in the FX markets, and Gerard made it a point to keep abreast of the comings and goings of traders at all the big market makers. He was especially interested in new, young traders. ‘Fertile ground,’ he called them.

“It took Nassouli all of a lunch with Larry, a dinner with him and the missus, and a boys’ night out at a strip club to suss out the dynamics of Larry’s domestic scene and the powerful forces at work on him there. Larry was a sitting duck. In short order, Nassouli had set himself up as the Larrys’ Big Apple mentor, showing them the ropes, opening doors, introducing them to all the right people and all the right places. Within a week he’d delivered them into the clutches of a realtor friend of his, who proceeded to show Mrs. Larry only top-of-the-line apartments in top-of-the-line buildings, all of which—wonder of wonders—had strict, cash-only policies. Six weeks and a hundred or so apartments later, they had found
the
place—Seventy-fourth and Park, ten rooms, terraces, views—the whole ball of wax. Mrs. Larry would not be denied. Larry’s problems came suddenly to a head.

“Ah, but there was his great, good friend Gerard, with such an easy solution to it all: a personal loan to the Larrys for the amount in question. And just to make sure that Larry’s financial statements would pass muster before even the pickiest co-op board, Nassouli would pay the loan into an account—in Larry’s name—at MWB. This account would have a very large balance and would appear, to whoever might ask, to have held this balance for quite some time. On top of all this, for good measure, Nassouli could arrange for some impressive letters of recommendation for the Larrys—from prominent people, famous people even, people who hadn’t a clue as to who the Larrys were, but who owed Gerard some heavy favors.

“Larry offered only token resistance, and charming, affable, worldly, plugged-in Gerard blew through it like tissue paper. ‘Not to worry, dear boy, really. You have a cash-flow problem—a timing issue. This is just a bridge loan. Happens all the time . . . this is how things get done here in the big city.’ And as must happen in such cases, Larry was complicit in his own corruption. He believed what Nassouli told him—bought into it all—because Nassouli told him precisely what he’d wanted to hear. And that was all it took to make Larry a party to fraud and conspiracy and violations of who knows how many of his employer’s rules of conduct.

“Two months later, the Larrys had closed on the place. Mrs. Larry was pleased, but it passed quickly. Now she had to grapple with renovation and decoration, and this left Larry, once again, to grapple with his lack of cash. But again, kindly Uncle Gerard came to the rescue. ‘Remember that account at MWB—the one in your name? Just think of it as a credit line, dear boy, draw what you need . . . pay it back later . . . whenever you can.’ Larry didn’t muster even token resistance this time. Then
later
came.

“Bonus time eventually rolled around. Larry had had a great year, and the FX markets continued to be hot, so his bonus was a big one. But not big enough to settle accounts with Nassouli. Between the purchase of the apartment and his wife’s many improvements, Larry was deep in the hole. But money wasn’t what Gerard was looking for. What he had in mind instead was having a tame FX trader in his pocket, someone on a major market-making desk, someone who, every now and then, could do some little favors for him. Like providing some ‘insight’ into his bank’s positions and trading strategies, or executing the occasional off-market trade. Nine months after his first lunch with Gerard Nassouli, that’s what Larry became.

“He was one of maybe a dozen pet traders that Gerard had on file back then. Except in the particulars, the basic story was always the same. And with every ‘favor’ they did for Nassouli, they got in deeper and deeper, until they were completely his creatures.” Burrows shook his head a little.

“Not one of them was particularly likeable. You couldn’t really feel sorry for them. It was a simple quid pro quo. They’d made their deals with the devil, and they got what they’d deserved. A few of them seemed actually happy with the arrangement. But for most of them . . . it consumed them. You could see it happen over the course of months and years. It was like a cancer. At first it was a little secret thing, a small, dark corner, a little hunger that had to be fed, and not very often. But they’d get in deeper and the hunger would grow and grow and be more insistent, until the rest of their lives became irrelevant, and only the secret thing remained.

“Last I heard of Larry, he was living in Florida, working in boat sales, without Mrs. Larry. I heard she was still in New York, but somebody else’s problem now.” Burrows paused and took a small sip of water. My legs were stiff and I had a crick in my neck, but still I was reluctant to move. “Moe’s story is a little different,” Burrows continued in his soft rumble.

“Moe was a senior vice president at a prestigious investment bank, one of the last partnerships left on the Street. He had spent his whole career at the place, and he’d done well—by any standard other than Wall Street’s. He’d made good—though not important—money. He’d gotten decent assignments, though not the choicest ones. But Moe had grown troubled. It had occurred to him one day as he sat in a meeting, the oldest by at least five years of everyone in the room, that his career had come quietly to a halt. People who’d been his peers two or three years before had gone on to make partner. Others whom he had recruited from business school were now sitting at the table with him, as equals. When confronted by Moe, in the oblique fashion that such things were discussed at his firm, his boss confirmed his fears. Yes, several of the partners felt that Moe was unready; some felt that he might be forever unready. They all acknowledged that he was superb at following someone else’s lead, but wondered if he himself had a
strategic vision.
Could he think outside the box?

“Well, Moe started thinking, alright. About all of the years he had put in at the firm, about all the time he’d spent on the road, about how he’d uprooted his family with moves across the world, the havoc he had wreaked on his oldest son . . . pulling him out of high school just as he was entering senior year, how venomous his daughter had been. And, when he had a few drinks in him, and then a few more, he thought about some of the people who had made partner in recent years while he had languished. All that thinking left Moe a troubled man, a bitter man, an angry man. Nassouli was drawn to him like a fly to shit.

“Moe and Nassouli met while Moe was out following someone else’s lead. In this case, it was prospecting for clients among some Latin American companies that ran big U.S. operations—part of his firm’s strategy to build a franchise in the emerging markets. As it turned out, MWB handled a lot of meat-and-potatoes banking for these firms, at home and in the States. Nassouli caught the odor of discontent coming off Moe the first time they met, and a week later he took him to lunch. But Moe was no wet-behind-the-ears trader, and Nassouli saw that right away. His was an older and wiser head, and he would take a different kind of handling. No cramped, sweaty groping in the backseat for Moe, Nassouli understood, no quick feels in the cloakroom. No, Moe would need finesse. Moe would need romance.

“At first, Gerard was all business. ‘Our clients were impressed by your firm’s many capabilities . . .’ and so forth. Of course, he seasoned it with some discreet flattery. ‘They were quite pleased to have had access to so senior an executive as you, someone with such experience and insight into the markets . . .’ Then, he dangled the hope that some actual business might be coming Moe’s way. ‘Yes, they are quite interested in talking further, but it would be important to them that they continue their discussions directly with you.’ It was pure bullshit, of course, but it served Nassouli’s purpose—Moe was hooked.

“Over the next several months, Nassouli arranged for Moe to have many quite promising—but ultimately inconclusive—meetings with MWB’s Latin American clients. I don’t know if it dawned on Moe that these sessions were all strangely similar: a room full of attentive, nodding heads, plenty of smiles, a few easy questions that he could hit out of the park, more nodding heads, but slowly and with great significance this time, like he had just explained quantum mechanics to them, then an expensive meal, more smiles, and then . . . nothing . . . nothing more firm than a promise to meet again. Interspersed with these elaborate teases were invitations to be Gerard’s guest at some very high-end social functions—events that Moe had never been to before, but only heard about the day after, from the partners at his firm who regularly attended. Suddenly B-list Moe was on Gerard’s A list. Cinderella was off to the ball.

“After months of courting, when the meetings with the Latins had gotten Moe all hot and bothered, and the mad social whirl had turned his head ever so slightly, it was time to get serious. Nassouli’s pass at Moe took the form of a plea for Moe’s sage advice. Gerard confided that MWB had been trying to build an investment banking business, but that it had become clear to them that they lacked talent at the top. Did Moe know of anyone with the experience, vision, and drive to build such a business? Moe’s first thought was ‘How about me?’ And he said this— discreetly, of course. To which Gerard’s response was to be stunned, even a bit embarrassed. ‘Naturally, we would jump at the chance to get someone of your caliber and accomplishment, but it never occurred to us that you would walk away from a partnership.’ He was quite the actor, that Gerard.

“It was Moe’s turn to be embarrassed. After some stammering and stumbling, and aided by some single-malt lubrication deftly applied by Gerard, Moe revealed that partnership was not a certainty for him. Now Nassouli was even more stunned, and indignant on his friend’s behalf. ‘How can this be? To ignore a man of your keen intelligence, skill, insight—it’s shameful!’ Moe—who was quite well oiled by then—at first had no answer to these questions. ‘Something to do with
visions
and
boxes
’ was all he could say. But then it all came tumbling out—the damaged pride, the anger and bitterness, the sense of betrayal. It was music to Nassouli’s ears.

“Now that he knew Moe’s problem, Nassouli knew just what sweet nothings to whisper. The firm’s gripe with Moe was lack of vision, that he didn’t paint on a big enough canvas; the firm’s strategy was to build an emerging markets franchise; MWB wanted to build an investment banking business. All well and good, said Gerard, here’s a bold stroke for the partners. And he laid it all out for his good friend Moe: a strategic alliance between Moe’s firm and MWB in the emerging markets, one that would let his firm tap into MWB’s huge network and customer base in those markets—give them an instant presence—and an instant clientele.