Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street (8 page)

Pike was easily fifty pounds heavier than Symanski, though no taller, and his gut rolled over his pants. He wielded the putter like an ax and paced around the room, which was at least fifteen by thirty, with a huge partner’s desk, a seating area with a sofa and three chairs around a coffee table, and golf balls scattered across the floor. He didn’t offer Warren a chair.

“Yes, sir.” Warren was a bit off-balance. Pike’s hostility was like a big, angry wave perennially about to break.

“Now there’s a deeply considered answer. ‘Yes, sir.’ I didn’t see any military service on your résumé there, Wonderboy. I saw Columbia and Cornell. Let me ask you something: Why might you want to work for Weldon?” Pike’s walruslike face loomed closer as he swooped past on his orbit toward the bank of blinking screens behind the great desk. Warren didn’t correct him about having gone to Brown and not Cornell. Pike didn’t seem to be the kind of guy you’d want to correct, to put it mildly.

“Everyone recognizes it is the top trading house on the Street, Mr. Pike. If you want to trade, anyplace else is second best. I want to trade.” Warren tried to sound confident—he knew from reading the newspapers that Weldon and Salomon were always competing to be considered the biggest, ballsiest trading house. He figured a little flattery might ease Pike up a bit.

“
You want to trade. You want to trade
.” Pike’s whiny imitation was halfway between a school-yard taunt and a lament. “What the fuck makes you think you even
know
what it means to trade? What makes you think you know
any
thing? You’re just some goddamn kid who’s going to come in here and be the hottest fucking piece of shit we’ve ever seen, eh?”

Pike reminded Warren of a lot of professional hockey players later on in their careers. He’d seen them at Rangers’ games. Surly, scarred, short-tempered. He could imagine Pike in a Red Wings uniform, trying to smash in the teeth of some first-round draft pick.

“Um, no, sir. I’ve just found trading fascinating, I’m extremely interested in mortgage-backed securities, and—” Warren was about to say he just wanted a chance to get into the system, but Pike cut him off.

“You’ve found trading fascinating. Just exactly what the
fuck
have you traded in your illustrious career, Mr. Hament?” Pike had stopped, bent over, at the screens, perused them, and looked up at Warren.

“Well, I traded metals and some other futures on the COMEX and NYMEX, and a few financial futures through a friend who is a member of the Chicago Board of Trade—”

“Financial futures? Let me tell you, Wonderfuck, you don’t know fuck-all about financial futures. Did you know that I
created
half of the fucking futures contracts? Did you know that? I hate guys like you. Fucking locals. Scalpers.” Pike was pacing again, his voice heavily laced with disgust and anger. “We eat guys like you for fucking lunch. Man, Weldon could just fucking
crush
you like dust if it wanted to, did you know that, you fucking Wonderputz? A bunch of fucking parasites.” Pike seemed ready to pop a blood clot. Warren was nervous for real, beginning to wonder if this was just a “stress” interview, which the placement office had prepared him for, or if Pike actually didn’t like him for some reason.

“Um, Mr. Pike, I didn’t mean to suggest that I could compete with Weldon.… I haven’t traded anything for almost two years.” Warren could see no other option but to be almost submissive.

“Yeah, and if you were ever to work at Weldon, you might never trade anything again. We tell you if you sell or trade or wash windows, we tell you when you have to go to the bathroom. You fuckwads think you know it all. You know jack shit. Jack
fucking
shit.” Pike finished his soliloquy by plopping down in his chair, behind the desk, in front of the screens.

“Yessir.” Warren blended the words on purpose. Pike had just said
“if you were ever to work at Weldon.”
That wasn’t the kind of thing you said to someone you didn’t think had a chance. Warren decided to play along and be superhumble. “And that’s exactly why someone like me would consider it a great opportunity to work at Weldon. For the chance to work with experienced pros like you, guys who’ve been through it all and are at the top. Where hard work and some guts might pay off.”

“Ho-ho-ho, Mr. Warren Hament.
Brown
fucking University. I like it. ‘Experienced pros?’ You making a little fun with me, asshole? Very nice, scumbag. I like it. Now get the fuck out of my office.” Pike turned his back on Warren.

Warren took a second to figure out how to respond. He just went with it. “Might you tell me where I could find Mr. Dressler?” Carl Dressler, head of mortgages, was the next name on the list. Warren would be ten minutes early. Pike had been playing with him—the Cornell “mistake” was some kind of test.

“Out there. Call that fat little faggot Polack. He’s your nursemaid, isn’t he?” Pike pointed toward the trading floor.

“Thanks. Nice to meet you.” Warren was soaked with sweat, but had the sense that Pike liked to see how potential hires stood up under the abuse.

Pike flashed him a grin. “The pleasure was all mine, son. Close the door, wouldya?”

Warren stood outside the office for a moment to regroup. The onslaught of crudeness, vulgarity, hostility, and bigotry was not what he had expected, even in a stress interview, but he felt he’d done okay. Being around the crudeness of the commodities exchange had built up some immunity, but the relative peace and decency at Columbia had made it a bit of a shock.

He headed back toward the reception desk, where he asked for Symanski. The receptionist handed him the phone.

“Did you love him, big guy? Was he great?” Symanski was obviously eating, his words muffled.

“Terrific. It was a lovefest. Thanks for the tip. What should I do now? Go see Dressler or just hang myself in the bathroom?” Warren was trying to adopt the collegial tone. “You free to bring me over?”

“Save that for later. Carl’s on the floor. I see him from here. Wait. I’ll get him. Meet us in the office two down from Pike’s. Just wait there.”

Warren hung up and backtracked. As he passed Pike’s office again, he saw him putting at the distant sofa leg and noticed a collection of balls, all five feet or more short, and all left. He went into the open office down two doors.

After Warren had spent a few minutes alone thinking things over, Carl Dressler walked in and shook his hand. Dressler ran the mortgage-backed-securities department, which was clearly the hottest area in the firm. Word had it they were making money hand over fist. He was surprisingly muscular, with long, thick hair, but an incongruously, nasal voice with a San Fernando Valley twang. He peered at Warren through round, wire-rimmed glasses.

“Hi. I’m Carl Dressler, I run the mortgage desk. I see you’re at Columbia.” He pulled up a chair and gestured for Warren to sit.

“Yes, sir. I graduate in May,” Warren answered neutrally.

“What do you think you might like to do?” Dressler s manner was so different from Pike’s, Warren had to take a second just to slow down from the frantic assault to a civilized interview.

“I think I might like to trade mortgages for you, Mr. Dressler.” Warren couldn’t help but smile when he said that because he believed he meant it. He instantly felt comfortable with Dressler and already liked him.

“What makes you think that? And call me Carl.” Dressler steepled his fingers and pressed the spire against his pursed lips as he focused on Warren.

“It’s obvious the two growth areas on the Street are mortgages and structured products. It’s between Weldon, Salomon, and First Boston for best in both businesses, and I personally think Weldon’s going to come out on top.” Warren’s conversation with Austin Karr and his reading were paying off.

“Why’s that?” Dressler had a small grin on his face.

“Because of you. And Pete Giambi. Between your desk and his research, I don’t see who can beat you. I’d love to be a part of that.” Warren tried to make his enthusiasm sound as real as it felt.

“You’ve done a little homework.” Dressler suddenly shifted the topic. “Where are you from?”

“I grew up mostly on the East End of Long Island and then upstate.”

“Upstate?”

“In a town called Millbrook—it’s near Poughkeepsie.”

“I know Millbrook,” Dressler said, waving his hand. “It’s where a few of the investment bankers keep their wives’ horses.” He added derisively, “Are you some kind of polo player?”

“Not really, sir. I ride a little because I used to take care of people’s horses during the summer. My dad was a tennis coach and liked to buy and sell houses. My mother’s a teacher.”

“She moved around with your father?”

“No. Actually, they were divorced a long time ago. I spent the school year with my dad in Millbrook and then on the East End, and summers with my mom in Manhattan. She had the summers off, and my dad had to travel a lot.”

“What kind of teacher?”

Warren was surprised at how curious Dressler was about his family. “She was an art history professor at NYU.”

“Impressive. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

“Yes. I have an older brother, Danny. He’s a doctor—actually a cancer researcher in Houston. He’s older than me. He went to boarding school, so I didn’t see much of him after sixth grade.”

“Are you married?”

“No. I have a great girlfriend at Columbia, though.”

“A father who taught tennis, and a mother who teaches art history. She must be something of a scholar. How did you wind up here? Why are you looking to become a trader?” Dressler’s tone was mild and inquisitive, almost psychiatric.

“I kind of wandered into it through a friend who got me trading on the COMEX and NYMEX.” Warren’s answer was rehearsed, but he managed to make it sound fresh. “Also orange juice and metals. I made some money, and I liked it, but it’s very limited, and you really need big capital to be anything more than a little scalper. So, I decided to go back for my MBA. I did well enough to pay for school and a couple of vacations, and now, here I am.”

“What did you learn in business school? Why did you go?”

Warren laughed a little. “I wasn’t exactly sure why I went until this semester, to be honest. I knew I wanted to do something different, but I didn’t know exactly what or for whom. A trader from Merrill advised me B-school would be useful. When I learned about MBS in Professor Fisher’s class, I realized that was what I had been looking for. Something that demanded thought and analysis and wasn’t just making wild bets on the markets, or slowly working your way up some corporate hierarchy. And besides, without an MBA, I doubt your recruiting office would have scheduled me at all. I guess I could have found a cheaper way to learn about fixed-income markets, but school was fun—there seemed to be more girls than tests.” Warren liked Dressler’s manner and found it easy to talk to him.

“So, you majored in English literature in college, traded some futures and made a few bucks, then went back to business school and now you want to trade bonds. Seems logical. Why not? Do you really know anything about mortgages? Do you have any idea what real trading is all about?”

“Well, I knew my dad was always having trouble getting a mortgage,” Warren joked, and Dressler chuckled. “I’ve done a lot of studying. Read about optionality and the different prepayment models. How every MBS pool has unique characteristics, and there are real opportunities to make money through hard work, not just dumb luck or guts. I was a competitive tennis player, and I learned the hard way that really succeeding usually means really applying yourself. I am willing to work harder than anyone when the rewards are there. And, honestly, I want to find a way to make a lot of money that doesn’t require ten years of working up some kind of political ladder. I understand a bit about MBS coupon spreads and relative value. But at the end of the day, trading mortgages seems to me to be all about understanding prepayments. After that, I figure that sales and trading is all about communicating, and that’s something I’ve always been able to do reasonably well.”

“That’s a pretty good answer, and a pretty long one.” Dressler smiled. “Yeah, you definitely have the communication thing down. How’d the communicating go with Bill Pike?”

“I think I got his message,” Warren said with a regretful look.

“Nahhh! Pike doesn’t really hate you, he just resents all the young kids coming in here every day. He’s a dinosaur. He loves to rattle rookies.” Dressler shifted in his seat, and Warren sensed that the interview was just about over.

“Well, he succeeded. But he still pulls all of his putts short left. Maybe I could help him with that.” Warren smiled as he said it.

Dressler met his gaze, smiled back at him, and nodded. “Maybe you could, at that.”

Warren started thinking about his name under the Weldon letterhead.

seven

After his interview with Dressler, Warren worked through four more sessions. The men got younger and obviously less senior as he progressed. He’d enjoyed talking with Jed Leeds, a young mortgage trader, and Hart Campbell, a new salesman who had graduated from Wharton a year before. The last name on Warren’s list was Pete Giambi, and after fifteen minutes discussing everything from the Philadelphia Flyers to prepayment models, futures, and forward pricing, Giambi, the head of mortgage research, cut off the interview.

“Who else are you talking to on the Street?” His high forehead and round glasses imparted a slight sense of age to the youthful face, and a small smile curled Pete’s lip.

“Well, I was planning on seeing Goldman and Salomon, but Weldon is my first interview and my first choice.” Warren decided to commit because he felt his day was going well, and he genuinely liked Giambi. He was enthusiastic, obviously brilliant, and they had a lot of common interests. And Weldon was everyone’s choice as the “hot” firm for new MBA’s—a bulge bracket leader that allowed Associates to advance quickly in growth areas.

“Let me ask you something. If we offered you a job right now, would you take it?”

“I’m not sure. That wouldn’t exactly be smart of me, I don’t think. I mean, what good trader wouldn’t check out the interest away at other firms?” Warren had picked up some of the trading lingo from Leeds, whose speech was peppered with it.