The Buy Side (10 page)

This same scenario, albeit with different stocks and banks, happens with regularity at Galleon. We buy a stock in the morning and, depending on how it performs, decide in the afternoon which account it should go in. It’s never an issue with investors because the performance in the main fund is always good. If investors saw the performance of the admiral’s fund, believe me, they would start asking lots of questions. But they haven’t.

I know what we’re doing isn’t right. There must be some fiduciary responsibility. But the way the money begins piling up is intoxicating. There are times that I take out my calculator to figure out how much I’m making. On good days I might make five grand. If I had the money, I could make more from investing in the admiral’s account than from what Galleon is paying me.

A FEW
weeks later, I’m in the office and it’s slow. Gary is out at a charity golf event, Raj is at an outside meeting, and Slaine is in the conference room on a call. I’m working on a spreadsheet, a guest list for a party Galleon is planning. I begin to call our sales traders to find out if they plan to attend and if they’ll be bringing anyone. I can also add five names of my own, I’m told—but only those people who supply good information. I guess that leaves out my roommates. Then I notice one of our outside lights ringing. “Galleon,” I say after one ring. The voice on the line is muffled, like they’re whispering something to me. Again I say “Galleon,” and this time I can barely make it out: “Is Gary there?”

“No,” I say. “He’s out of the office.” A few silent moments go by.

I’m just about to hang up when I hear the whisperer’s voice again: “Is Raj there?”

“Sorry,” I say. “He’s off the desk—can I help?” I can hear him
breathing. His voice makes me imagine a trench coat and a phone booth. Very mysterious.

Finally, Mr. Whisper’s voice is a bit more intelligible. “Jefferies is going to upgrade Amazon in six minutes,” it says. Then I hear a click, and just like that he’s gone. I have no name, no phone number, and no idea if the information is correct. I glance at the clock on my computer. It’s 12:59 p.m. I don’t know who to tell or even if I should tell anyone. Mr. Whisper could be some kind of whack-job, or maybe this is one of Gary’s sick jokes. As crazy as it sounds, Rosenbach is capable of pulling a stunt that would cost the firm money just to get a laugh at my expense. I look back at the clock. It’s one sharp. Thoughts start to swirl in my head. Maybe I’ll just buy some AMZN and see if it’s upgraded. But then, just as quickly, I decide not to. This doesn’t make sense. Who calls in the middle of the day and talks like he’s a character in some Bond movie? The minutes on my computer clock are moving like seconds: its 1:02. But if I don’t buy any AMZN and he’s right, will Mr. Whisper call Raj or Gary later expecting a pat on the back?
Fuck
. It’s 1:03. I have two minutes to decide. I catch Keryn’s eye and give her a quick recap. “Who was he?” she asks. I have no idea, I say. She shrugs and goes back to work. It’s 1:04. Screw it, I say to myself. I buy 100,000 shares of Amazon and push back in my chair. I hope Mr. Whisper knows what he’s doing.

Exactly at 1:05 p.m., AMZN stock starts to move up. At first it’s a quick fifty cents and then, seconds later, it’s up two dollars. The Jefferies light starts to ring and I pick it up. He tells me they’re upgrading AMZN. I want to say I know, but I thank him and hang up. As I watch the stock go up the idea that I might have done something illegal seeps into my thoughts but lasts only for the briefest of moments. This is how it’s done, I reassure myself. Every day, Gary and Raj pound it into my head that I need to get an edge. This is what they’re talking
about. Every time the outside wire rings I’m going to pick it up. I want to talk to Mr. Whisper.

The stock is up almost five dollars when Raj walks through the front door. I wait until he gets into his office. There I tell him about the call from Mr. Whisper and that I bought 100,000 shares. Our P&L shows a profit of $500k. He looks down at his computer screen and begins to giggle. Raj is a big giggler, especially when things break his way. I ask him if he wants me to sell the stock or hold on to it. “I got it,” he says, smiling. For the first time in my Galleon career, I feel less like a clerk and more like a trader. After the Amazon trade, I realize that nothing in the world of hedge funds happens by accident. It’s all about getting information the fastest, and however you can. If I’m going to make money, real money, buy side money, then I need to find some way of creating my own edge.

In the weeks leading up to the party, the hype has the office, and those jockeying for an invite, worked into a lather. One thing’s for sure: it isn’t going to be your average Wall Street social. That a buy side firm is entertaining the sell side is, by itself, unique. It’s always the other way around. But Raj doesn’t want to just entertain them; he wants the party to be remembered. The firm has rented a massive dance space—it can accommodate a thousand—in Midtown called the Supper Club. Though the party is the hottest ticket on the Street, the guest list isn’t exactly restrictive. If you cover us, back us up, or can help us in any way, you get an invite.

One morning, the guy Raj hired to plan the party and arrange for the talent, which includes the headliner Donna Summer, walks in the door. There’s something about him, a hip-looking, tall dude with shaggy blond hair, that I like immediately. Maybe it’s his entrepreneurial manner, or that his company seems ultracreative—along with having him plan the whole party, Raj has also commissioned him to
write a rap theme song for Galleon—or maybe he represents a non-Wall Street part of me I’ve almost completely forgotten. He introduces himself as Jesse Itzler, and then I realize he also goes by the rap name Jesse Jaymes.

“Hey, Jesse,” one of my desk-mates yells out. “Turney here is a rapper.” I turn a baby girl’s nursery shade of pink. “That so,” he says, nodding his head in approval. “What’s your rap name?”

I contemplate choking on a pen cap so I don’t have to tell him. I remember in 1991 watching
Yo! MTV Raps
and seeing his videos “Shake It Like a White Girl” and “College Girls Are Easy.” I know he’s won an Emmy for “I Love This Game,” a rap song he wrote for the NBA, and he also wrote the New York Knicks theme song, “Go New York Go.”

“Cleveland D,” I say, finally.

“Nice,” he says.

Now, calling me a rapper is, to say the least, a bit of a stretch. It’s true, I love hip-hop. And it’s also true that in 1988 I formed a rap group called Maximum Intensity with my best friend, Nathaniel, who called himself Live T. Most of our other friends hated rap music. But we were in high school in Kennebunk, certainly one of the most un-hip-hop places on earth, and we mostly performed in Nathaniel’s barn to an audience of zero.

A couple of days later, the phone rings at the desk and it’s Jesse. He wants to know if I’ll help him with the lyrics for the Galleon theme song. “Really?!” I say, in an embarrassingly high-pitched voice. But I follow up with a very manly “Sure, love to.” After all, though it might be a big jump from Nathaniel’s barn, when will another opportunity like this come along?

I meet Jesse at the studio a week before the party. It’s on the Upper West Side in the basement of a building. I’m not sure I’m in the right
place until I find the buzzer, above which a small tag reads
MILLROSE MUSIC
. I walk down the rickety staircase. The carpet is dark, the walls are dingy, and the whole place smells musty, but the studio looks professional. There’s a couple of recording booths, with the engineer’s table in the middle and a couch and chairs in the back. The engineer sees me and says, “ ’Sup?”

With only a week to write, record, and produce the song, I don’t understand how he’s going to get it done in time. I prepared for our meeting for a week—or rather, I
worried
about our meeting for a week. I wanted to prepare, but I didn’t know where to start. I’ve come up with one idea for the hook, but it seems foolish now. I sit on the couch and Jesse sits on a chair across from me and begins asking me questions about Galleon: what it’s like to work there, what’s Wall Street’s perception of the firm. I tell him one of the names the Street calls Galleon is “the good ship.” And that’s when my one idea pops out of my mouth. Why don’t we sample the song “On the Good Ship Lollipop” but change the lyrics to “On the Good Ship Galleon”?

His face breaks into a smile. “Cleveland D!” he belts, his head pumping up and down. I breathe a sigh of relief.

I start to relax and the lyrics began to flow: “It’s the Good Ship Galleon … When Wall Street has a rally on … When traders trade … Everybody in the place gets paid …” Shirley Temple would be proud. Jesse has a female vocalist lay down the chorus. Then, with all of my notes and suggestions, he gets into the booth and starts to rap. I’m in awe. In less than twenty minutes, he’s done. “Your turn,” he says. Jesse had suggested I rap a few lines, or in his words, eight bars. At first I was excited, but now I’m nervous. I think about Nathaniel and all those afternoons and evenings we spent practicing, mimicking the latest hit or coming up with our own rhymes. I need to do this.

The engineer plays the track of Jesse’s last line so I’ll know where
to jump in. I have to finish his line and rhyme it with “CNBC.” Here’s what I do: “And me, Cleveland D …,” I begin. “Hit me, bid me, I need liquidity … Stopped me on five? Stupidity … I’m at Galleon where it all connects, trading healthcare and biotech …” When I finish, the producer looks at me with an “Are you serious?” expression. He plays it back and I sound awful, like a tone-deaf robot. I might have to change my rap name to Tone Duff. I try it again with little improvement. Nine more times we lay it down. And nine more times the producer shakes his head back and forth. Finally, on the eleventh try, he shrugs and my first (and only, to this point) rap recording is born. So I don’t sound like Chuck D or Jay Z or even Vanilla Ice—I still have a CD I can send home to Nathaniel, which he can play as loud as he wants, silencing all the haters in Maine.

The night of the Galleon party, I’m at a bar across the street from the Supper Club. Baby Arm asked me to meet him beforehand. He said he had a present for me. He walks in after I get my first beer. Shockingly, he’s wearing a sport coat: black, expensive, Armani maybe. But when he turns his back I see the coat is embroidered with a white Chinese dragon. “Turney Motherfucking Duff,” he says. He grabs me by the shoulders and forces me to hug him. He’s either unaware or doesn’t care about the beer I spill on him. Baby Arm orders a Heineken and some shots and then tells me to hold out my hand. He slaps something into my palm. I look down and it’s a tiny two-inch ziplock bag with white stuff packed into it. “Go nuts,” he says. I’m not quite sure what to do. I put it into my pocket and ask him how his day was. After we complete most of our small talk, he asks, “Are you gonna hit that in the bathroom or what?” I smile and set my beer down. I enter a private stall, lock the door, and reach into my pocket. I’ve never seen coke before. All I know is, when I was in high school, Len Bias, the college basketball star, used it and his heart stopped working, and also if you
had a suitcase full of it, it was pretty much guaranteed that Don Johnson was going to knock down your door and blast a few bullet holes into your chest. I’m not even sure how to use it. Should I pour it out? Is he going to ask for it back? Will he know how much I did? I have to do something with it. Am I supposed to do the whole thing? I touch it with my finger and put a tiny bit on my tongue. My entire mouth goes numb. I close the bag and stuff it back into my pocket. I head back to the bar. Baby Arm waits a few moments and asks for it back. “Let’s hit this party,” he says. We leave our half-full beers on the bar. I hope he doesn’t realize I didn’t take any of the cocaine.

The party’s insane. Seven hours later I’m standing outside. I see Baby Arm getting into his car. He stops when he sees me and walks over. “You need any more?” he says, pointing to his pocket.

“No thanks,” I say.

“Hell of a party, man,” he says. “Fucking epic.” He holds up his copy of the CD and shakes it like it’s hot. “The Good Ship Galleon” is a hit. Everyone receives a copy, and I hear people singing the catchy chorus: “… put your money on Galleon.”

Baby Arm seats himself in the back of his town car but leaves the door open.

“A hedge fund with a rap song can only mean one thing,” he says.

“What’s that?”

“Party’s over.”

As great as the night has been, as unlimited as Wall Street’s ceiling seems, something feels prescient about Baby Arm’s words. All I can think of, though, is that for me, the party
isn’t
over. It’s just about to begin. As the sell side streams out into the street, I hear some of them call my name. “Great tune, Turney,” they say. And, all of a sudden, I feel my edge beginning to form.