Rigged (4 page)

S
EPTEMBER
10, 2002

I
’m sorry, David. He’s on his way to his son’s swim meet. But I’ll give him the message that you called, I promise. And thanks again for the flowers. You’re such a sweetheart.”

David sighed to himself, the phone heavy against his ear. He rubbed his free hand against his bleary eyes.

“No, Harriet, you’re the sweet one. I think I’ve spent more time this week talking to you than my girlfriend. But at least you still take my calls.”

The woman on the other end of the line laughed. “Flowers today, chocolates yesterday, a photo of yourself on Wednesday with a box of freshly baked cookies—heck, David, you can call me for the next five years if you want. I just wish I had better news for you. But thank you again, and have a nice day.”

David didn’t move the phone right away, even as the dial tone lashed out at his eardrum. This was getting ridiculous.
Beyond ridiculous.
How long could Giovanni keep avoiding him? Seven days of phone calls—sometimes five, six times a day—and the furthest he had gotten was Harriet Farelli, Giovanni’s pleasant if a bit matronly-sounding secretary. And David had tried everything.
First he’d sent résumés, references, transcripts. Then he’d moved on to the flowers and chocolates, resolved to at least win over Harriet, keeper of the phone, if he couldn’t get to Giovanni himself. But now he was beginning to lose hope. Maybe he could get away with bothering Harriet for a few more days, but sooner or later someone at Merrill was going to wonder why he kept making these trips to the shared office attached to the firm’s main library. And he certainly couldn’t have made these calls from his cubicle up on the eighth floor. Not only didn’t he have a door upstairs, he didn’t really have walls or even much of a desk either. Just a chair, a computer, and a phone in full view of the thirty-five other first-year Merrill slaves—and worse yet, his cubicle was just a few yards away from the open-door office of his tight-ass thirty-year-old boss, who would have loved nothing more than to make an example of David in the first week to scare the hell out of the other firsties. No, David was better off risking suspicion by sneaking off to the library every few hours on some bullshit “research” excuse than getting himself fired by making these calls from his cubicle.

He leaned back in his chair, twirling the phone in front of him. The library office was small and stark—just a wooden desk, a few bookshelves, a pair of IBM workstations, and the phone. Still, David would have died for an office like this, somewhere he could just go and think, away from the constant noise of the banking floors. The other first-years were okay guys, he guessed; a few of them he knew from HBS, and the rest were pretty much carbon copies from Wharton, Stanford, MIT—wherever they were churning out kids like him, poor saps who’d entered business school at exactly the wrong moment in history. David often wondered where he’d have ended up if those fuckers hadn’t chosen to crash those planes right at the start of his final year at HBS. Certainly he wouldn’t have been at Merrill making seventy-five thousand per annum the hard way.

Pushing papers and making cold calls would have been heaven compared to what his job had actually turned out to be. By the
end of the first day, he had been shifted from investment analysis to private banking. When he’d first heard the words, he’d thought maybe he was getting a break. Maybe he’d be meeting with celebrities and professional athletes and rich CEOs, discussing their investments. But he’d been dead wrong. His boss had him visiting old-age homes, sitting down with ninety-year-olds talking about retirement funds. He was spending his evenings reading up on IRAs and estate planning, and his days trucking across town to places he could only describe as death’s waiting rooms. It was quite literally the worst job he could have imagined.

The only bright light in his professional life was that robin’s-egg-blue card taped to the underside of his cubicle. Every morning at 6:00
A.M.
, a full hour before the other first-years arrived, he took the card out, stared at the name and number, and hurried to the library to make that first phone call. And every morning it had gone the same way.
Mr. Giovanni’s in meetings all day today, he won’t be able to fit you in. Mr. Giovanni’s on his way to Chicago for a lunch. He won’t be back in the city until tomorrow. Mr. Giovanni is playing racquetball this afternoon. He won’t be getting any messages from some punk-ass kid he met at some dinner, a kid he’s probably already forgotten about….

David closed his eyes, put the phone back in its cradle, and lowered his head to the desk. The wood felt cold against his cheek, and he could hear the quiet whir of the IBMs through the bones in his skull. He was at a loss for what to try next. More flowers? Maybe some jewelry? Fuck, he’d already won Harriet over. She’d probably go on a date with him by now if he were single—and maybe a decade or two older. How was he going to get past her to that bastard in the big office—

A high-pitched ring reverberated through the desk and nearly made David cough up that morning’s coffee. He lurched back, almost overturning his chair in the process. Then he stared at the phone. In seven days, the hunk of plastic had never rung. David hadn’t even realized that the thing could take incoming calls. For a moment, he wondered if he should answer it. He looked back
over his shoulder, at the closed door. He hadn’t seen anyone else in the library as he’d made his way to the office. He shrugged and reached for the receiver.

“David? Did I find you?”

David felt his eyes roll back in his head.
Just what he needed.

“Mom, how the hell did you get this number?”

“A nice young man forwarded me over here when I called the number you gave me last week. Do you have two offices? That’s great, honey, you’re a real Manhattan big-shot now, two offices in one building—”

“I don’t have two offices. This is the library. And I probably shouldn’t be talking to you here.”

David felt like putting his head through the desk. He was pretty sure his mother had been forwarded to the library phone by his boss, as nobody else would have been rude enough to answer his phone. That meant his boss was probably hovering around his cubicle, wondering where he was.
Great.
One week into his first real job, and his mother was already getting him into trouble.

He couldn’t blame her, of course, because he knew her well enough not to be surprised by the call. She had always been a “hands-on” kind of mom. Especially since his father’s accident, the family had been incredibly close-knit. David’s going off to England for the two-year program at Oxford had nearly sent his mother to the hospital with fainting spells. As far as he knew, his mother had never been on an airplane, had never left New York State. It wouldn’t have been a stretch to say she lived through her only son, and it had taken all of David’s resources not to grow into one of
those
types of “only sons.” Although sometimes Serena would argue that even his most herculean efforts hadn’t been enough.

“Well, I just wanted to check in and see how the job is going. And make sure you’re bringing Serena to dinner this Sunday night. You know it’s a very special day for your father.”

David felt his lips tugging down at the corners; he really didn’t want to think about his father’s special day at the moment, be
cause it was still hard for him to accept what had happened and how it had changed things at home. One year of high-intensity therapy finished was no small feat, and his father deserved to celebrate—but David wanted his mind clear to deal with his current dilemma.

“I know, Mom. We’ll be there.”

Before his mom could respond, a loud beep signaled that there was a second call on the line. David raised his eyebrows, wondering how the hell he could get two calls in one day on a phone that had never rung before. Then he realized it was probably his boss. Maybe he was about to get fired. Well, considering that he was supposed to visit two old-age homes later that afternoon, he wasn’t sure that would be such a bad thing. Then again, seventy-five thousand dollars was seventy-five thousand dollars. And even with his scholarship from the Italians, he had loans to pay back.

“I gotta go, Mom,” he said quickly, clicking over to the other call before she could say anything else. “Hello? Just finishing up here, I know I’ve been away from my desk a while and I’m really sorry—”

“David?” a woman’s voice interrupted, and David suddenly realized it was Harriet, Giovanni’s assistant. “You still there? I tried your office number and some unpleasant young man sent me over here.”

David could picture the smoke coming out of his boss’s ears—two calls forwarded over to David in a matter of minutes. He probably thought David was running some sort of phone sex line out of the library. But David didn’t care about his boss at the moment, because if Harriet was calling him back it had to be good news.

“I’m here. Did I get through?”

“Morton’s, in two hours. The table is under his name. Don’t be late.” With that, she hung up.

David slapped the phone down, blood rushing to his ears. Then he looked at his watch. He’d have to cut out of work an hour early. Shit, he’d definitely get in trouble, maybe even fired. But Anthony Giovanni had invited him to dinner.

Or had he?
David couldn’t be sure that Harriet hadn’t simply snuck him onto the reservation. Dinner at Morton’s certainly wasn’t the sort of meeting David had expected when Giovanni had told him to try to get on his schedule.

Well, it didn’t really matter, because David wasn’t going to miss that appointment. Not even an army of Merrill Lynch middle managers armed with rapidly expiring retirement accounts could have kept him away.

G
eography aside, it was hard to tell where Wall Street ended and Morton’s began. The minute David stepped through the door of the hallowed steak house cum financial hangout on Forty-fifth and Fifth, he was accosted by a cacophony of sounds and scents that reminded him of the social outings he’d endured back at HBS. The air was so thick with clouds of cigar smoke that David would have needed a gas mask to make out the old-world Chicago decor, and the overwhelming mixed scent of whiskey, bankers, and roasting dry-aged meat was so intense that he wasn’t sure whether he wanted to salivate or vomit—maybe a little of both.

The place was crowded, even though it was barely 6:00
P.M.
, and it took David nearly five minutes to get the attention of the overdressed, overweight host with the restaurant’s coveted seating chart. Of course, the rotund man didn’t need to consult the chart to direct David toward Giovanni’s table; though there were four corners to the rectangular steak house, there was only one “corner table.”

David did his best to compose himself as he made his way through the crowded restaurant, navigating carefully between
the tables that seemed dangerously close together, especially considering that most of the waitstaff were obese and most of the clientele were already three whiskeys deep. David hoped he wasn’t sweating too much beneath his herring-gray Brooks Brothers suit. He was pretty sure he had escaped Merrill without his boss noticing his early departure, but the five-block record-breaking journey to the restaurant was a blur of near-death experiences involving taxicabs, pretzel vendors, and tourists. At least now the tourists had something to tell their friends back home about—the crazy fucking kid in a banker’s monkey-suit sprinting through red lights while a guy in a vendor’s apron screamed after him, tossing pretzels at the back of his head.

Somehow he’d made it, with a few minutes to spare. Following the directions the maître d’ had given him, David spotted his quarry, mentally taking in the corner table with quick flicks of his eyes. Anthony Giovanni was seated at the center, his hair and suit immaculate, a glass of scotch at his lips and a cigar in his outstretched right hand. To Giovanni’s left was a man David vaguely recognized from the financial newspapers: Jim Lowell, a preppy, midforties banker and near-billionaire who was currently trying to buy the New York Knicks. To Lowell’s left was another almost familiar face: Doug Masters, the head of a consulting behemoth that had rejected David’s résumé—thank God, as David had no interest in the world of consulting—a few months before he’d landed the Merrill job.

On Giovanni’s other side was a man David didn’t recognize: dark hair, dark eyes, wide shoulders, young—maybe late thirties, definitely under forty—and handsome in a Baldwinesque sort of way. Not exactly Alec, but somewhere on the way to Billy. The unknown man spotted David first, nudging Giovanni in a manner that immediately told David the two were colleagues, if not equals.

“There he is,” Giovanni said, waving his cigar and kicking out the empty chair closest to David. “Right on time and not a hair out of place. Gentlemen, meet my assistant’s newest crush, David Russo.”

David tried not to blush as he shook hands all around, then lowered himself into the free seat, directly across from Giovanni.

“I’m not kidding,” Giovanni continued, grinning. “Harriet’s got your fucking picture taped to the wall above her desk. Chocolate and flowers? I like a kid who gets creative, but now your girlfriend’s got a real fight on her hands.”

David laughed as a waiter placed a glass of scotch in front of him, then passed out poster-sized menus. After the waiter had explained the specials, Giovanni waved him away, then finally introduced the man to his left.

“Nick Reston, youngest president in the history of the Merc Exchange. He’s my right-hand man, and I’d have resigned as chairman long ago if I didn’t have Nick around to keep the fucking traders out of my hair. Now that that’s out of the way, no more business until after we eat. You boys need to realize that to gavones like me and David, eating is religion. You don’t sully religion with business.”

The next hour went by like a blur as David did his best to keep up with the conversation while wolfing down a piece of steak big enough to hang from a meat hook. True to his word, Giovanni kept the dialogue away from business—which was a good thing considering that David was so far below these men in terms of pecking order, he should have been wearing an apron and telling them about the dessert specials. During the meal, David spent much of the time taking mental notes about Giovanni and the others—especially Reston. He still didn’t really know what the Mercantile Exchange was all about, nor did he have any idea what Giovanni and Reston did as chairman and president. But he could tell, even from the nonbusiness conversation, that Reston was sharp, polished, probably a genius. He had a bit of a Texas accent and a little bit of cowboy toughness in his speech patterns, but even so, David could see that the man was as smart as anyone he had gone to school with. From snippets of conversation, he found out a bit about the man’s history. Ten years ago, in his midtwenties, Reston had been some sort of rock-star trader for
an oil company in Houston when he’d been invited by an associate he’d met at a conference to work at the Merc. He’d taken the opportunity, even though it had meant a huge pay cut and a major change in lifestyle. He’d quickly risen in prominence, making a small fortune on the trading floor—and catching Giovanni’s eye. Giovanni, who’d first made his fortune in real estate and then doubled it on the trading floor, had already grown to prominence as a key member of the board that ran the Merc. Recognizing Reston’s abilities, the older man had yanked him under his wing. Together, they had built a power base among the board, and when Giovanni had been elected chairman, it hadn’t taken long for him to get Reston the president’s seat, despite the Texan’s age.

Reston seemed like a straight shooter, brilliant but also hard as nails. David noticed that Reston was somewhat ignoring him during the meal, not openly—nothing rude—but he never seemed to address David directly. It kind of reminded David of the kids at Oxford who wanted nothing to do with the little shit from Brooklyn, so they just pretended he wasn’t there. David couldn’t help wondering if Reston was going to be a problem.

After the meal was finally cleared away, the billionaire and the consultant demigod excused themselves, and David found himself left alone at the table with Giovanni and Reston. Giovanni quickly ordered another round of scotch; it would be David’s fourth—difficult, but hopefully not disastrous. He’d learned to drink at Oxford, of course, but he’d lost some of his skills over the past two years.

When the drinks arrived, Reston surprised David by suddenly turning to face him head on, his own drink raised.

“So, kid,” he said, which seemed kind of funny considering he didn’t look that much older than David, “what do you know about the Merc Exchange? The NYMEX?”

David touched his scotch to Reston’s, then took a long sip. He could feel Giovanni watching, amused.

Maybe it was the booze, or maybe it was the massive hunk of meat in his stomach, but David decided it was time to stop
being intimidated by these guys just because they were richer, more powerful, smarter—well, goddamn
intimidating.

“Not a damn thing,” he answered.

Reston laughed.

“Good fucking answer. Well, it’s not rocket science. An exchange is like a soccer field. It’s where the game takes place. We’re the officials who make sure that the game is played fairly, that everyone follows the rules. The NYMEX started as a potato exchange. That’s right, people came to us to trade potato contracts. Then orange juice and sugar.”

“And now?” David asked.

“Energy,” Reston said, slamming his emptied glass of scotch onto the table in front of him. “Ener-fucking-gy.”

“Nick,” Giovanni chided, “you always gotta complicate things. Oil, David. We trade oil on the NYMEX. Oil is energy, yeah, but it’s more than that. Oil is money. Oil is power. Oil is everything. That’s why we’re the most important institution in the city—fuck it, in the world.”

David leaned back in his chair, watching the two of them as they played off each other.

“Nine-eleven,” Reston said, waving a hand above his head as if conjuring it all with one gesture. “You know what one of the first businesses in New York City that reopened after the disaster was? The NYMEX. Not the banks, not the supermarkets, not the schools. The Merc. Because oil is the lifeblood of this country. Our economy runs on it. Hell, oil is the new currency.”

“And you guys trade oil,” David said, but Giovanni shook his head.

“No, we run the exchange. The traders trade. Both Nick and I used to be traders. I spent twenty-five years on the floor. Nick put in ten. The traders technically own the NYMEX. But we run it.”

David nodded. He had a vague notion about the trading world—Merrill Lynch had traders too, guys in suits and suspenders who spent their days on the chaotic New York Stock Exchange, shouting out the orders that were sent down to them
via phone and computer from the big boys in the corner offices. Even though he’d been to business school, David knew very little about their work—really just what he’d seen in movies and on TV. But Giovanni and Reston were talking about traders who traded oil, which he guessed was a very different game. Even the word itself,
oil,
invoked emotion, considering how much it was talked about in the news and on the streets.

“So the traders control the price of oil,” David started, putting it all together.

“No,” Reston corrected. “Like on any exchange, supply and demand control the price of oil. The traders try to predict that price, try to react to that price, and try like hell to get rich from that price.”

“Look,” Giovanni suddenly interrupted, “don’t worry about that right now. Worry about it on Monday, because starting Monday, you work for me.”

David stared at him. Giovanni finished his scotch, stood up, and walked away from the table, heading right for the restaurant’s front door. David watched in shock, realizing that Giovanni wasn’t coming back. Just like that—
starting Monday, you work for me
—no title, no salary, just the statement hanging in the air.

Reston grinned at him.

“You don’t get it, do you? He wants you to be one of ‘Giovanni’s Kids.’ Make some fucking phone calls, ask around. This is what he does. He finds young guys like you, senses energy in them. He trains you on the Merc and eventually puts you in charge of one of his companies. It’s a golden fucking ticket. But you only have twenty-four hours to decide.”

Reston reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of hundred-dollar bills. He rose from his seat, throwing the bills onto the table to cover the check.

“Usually I grow to hate the kids Giovanni throws at me. Little Ivy League brats who end up being way more work than they’re worth. A huge fucking waste of my time. The Merc isn’t something you learn about in some classroom. It’s a battlefield. So
don’t take this on lightly. Russo, you know what the difference is between oil and potatoes?”

He leaned close, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

“Nobody fights wars over potatoes.”

S
IX HOURS LATER,
David sat on the floor of his apartment, his cordless phone resting precipitously on his lap. The lights were off, the small, spartanly furnished living room bathed in the pseudo-darkness of Midtown at 2:00
A.M.
He could hear Serena’s quiet breathing from the bedroom; she had fallen asleep sometime after midnight, after listening to him agonize about the decision for nearly three straight hours. He knew he had a whole day to decide—but he also knew that he wouldn’t get a second of sleep until he made the call, one way or the other.

He took a deep breath and dialed Giovanni’s office number. Straight to voice mail, Harriet’s matronly voice echoing in his ear:

“Leave a message for Mr. Giovanni after the tone.”

David ran a hand through his hair, the decision made.

“Mr. Giovanni, I’m quitting my job at Merrill tomorrow. I’ll be there Monday morning.”

He could barely fucking believe it.

He was now, officially, one of Giovanni’s Kids.