The Buy Side (35 page)

The next hour is excruciating. I have a bag of coke in my pocket. I call Jenn and Lola to say good night. After an hour of watching television, I yawn. “I think I’m gonna call it a night,” I say. Gus and Lori exchange a look. “I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” I say to Gus. “Thanks again for letting me stay here.”

Sometime past two a.m. I need alcohol to bring me down. Earlier, I saw a bottle of wine in the refrigerator. I tiptoe out to the kitchen. I can’t see anything. It’s pitch-black. I use my hands to feel for the dining room table. I know it’s right in front of my bedroom. My eyes start to adjust. I can feel the change from wood floors to tile on my bare feet. I wave my hand to feel for the refrigerator. I pull the handle slowly, careful to make as little noise as possible. But the seal breaking sounds like Velcro ripping. A triangle of light spills from the fridge. I grab the bottle of wine from the bottom shelf, pull out the cork, and lift it to my lips. I chug as much as I can, and then take another hit. As I put the bottle back in, I feel someone behind me. I turn to see Lori standing there watching me. She doesn’t say a word. She runs back into her room. Jesus, she scared the shit out of me.

Five minutes later, I’m back in the bedroom and there’s a knock on the door. “You have to leave,” Gus says. He’s fucking joking, I think. It’s two thirty in the morning. “You can’t do this in my apartment anymore.”

“Do what?” I ask.

“Turney, we know you’ve been doing coke—you’ve been doing it every time you stay here.”

“So what?” I say. “You and me have done a ton of blow together.”

“It’s different now. You’ve been to rehab, and you’ve admitted you have a problem. I want you to be okay, and I’m not going to let you do it here.”

“Fuck you,” I say to him. “Without me, you wouldn’t have this fucking apartment.”

“I’ll let you stay until the morning,” he says. “Then you have to go.”

How long ago was it that Gus introduced himself as Turbo and climbed into the back of the limo? How long ago was it that I gave
him his first order and promised Rich and Melinda he wasn’t a squirrel? Fuck him.

I’m driving home from work a week or so later. I haven’t used much in that time. I know I have to stop. My biggest fear is Jenn finding out, and yet all I can think about is having one last run. I had a conversation with my accountant. I told him that my partners stopped paying rent on our Jersey City Fatburger location. “That’ll get your landlord’s attention,” Jerry said. I see my million-dollar investment in my rearview mirror fluttering down the Long Island Expressway, as if someone had opened a suitcase and emptied it out of the back window. I can’t believe this is happening to me. I need to tell Jenn. I need someone to feel bad for me.

Jenn is in the garden when I pull into the driveway—not in the vegetable garden down by the pool, the one so fertile that it sometimes produces another round of crops again after a harvest; not in the nearby butterfly bush garden, the one with electric-pink flowers, wild strawberries, and a hybrid apple tree; and not in the rose garden, which has seven or eight different colored roses and blooms as big as softballs. No, she’s in the flower garden near the house, the one with a mind of its own, the one that sprouts types of flowers we don’t remember planting. She’s kneeling in the dirt and wearing clam-digger jeans and one of my old white button-downs. She holds a gardening spade in her hand, and her forehead glistens a bit from perspiration. I get out of my car and walk toward her. “I think my Fatburger investment is a zero,” I say. No response. “I’m gonna lose a million dollars, I think.”

“That’s too bad,” she says as she pulls a giant weed out of the ground.

“Where’s Lola?” I ask.

“At my mom’s,” she says, wiping her brow with the arm holding the spade but not looking at me.

“Cool,” I say with a hopeful smile. “What do you want to do?”

“I have plans,” she says as she digs around a hydrangea. “There are some leftovers in the fridge.”

I’m Christopher Walken in the last scene of
The Deer Hunter
. Behind Jenn, the sun is beginning to set. The garden and lawn glimmer in the softening light.

I think she knows I’m using again.

ON MONDAY
, September 29, 2008, I’m in the office watching CSPAN as Congress votes on whether or not to rescue Wall Street: one vote yes, then a no, a yes, a no, a no, and another no. About ten minutes into it, I look at Jeff slumped at his desk. We’d thought it was a layup. There wasn’t a chance that Congress wouldn’t pass TARP. And now we both know the bailout vote is going to fail. We’re positioned with very little exposure—short slightly with some long positions mixed in. As each no vote comes in we start to short more and more. I’d insisted, after a round of conference calls with my Fatburger partners, that we short commercial real estate stocks, and the firm stands to make money on this calamity. But Jeff is far from happy.

There’s a saying on Wall Street that those who have a short bias were abused as children. Rooting against the rest of the Street is isolation in its purest form. I’d spent so much of my buy side career flying above the fray, making money without trampling on anyone. And
here I am in the place that I’d for so long despised. Lehman Brothers, the fourth-largest bank in America, has already filed for bankruptcy. People I’ve known and partied with are now taking subway rides, carrying cardboard boxes filled with what’s left of their working careers. Merrill Lynch has been sold for 50 percent of the value it held just months before. And I’m shorting the market, no longer playing the game for the game’s sake but for keeps—for the money. I feel hollow. I lost my innocence a long time ago, but this feels different. Any remnants of a soul I possessed seem to be disappearing with the market.

As the congressional vote concludes, Jeff sits quietly, looking at the television in disbelief. He realizes before I do that being long or short doesn’t matter anymore. Wall Street money is worthless now. After the vote, the bottom falls out of the market. The Dow has its worst day ever. The next day the cover of the
New York Daily News
has a large red arrow pointing down with the number 777 emblazoned across it.

After work on Tuesday, I get on the shuttle at Grand Central. The subway rattles and screeches. A homeless man sits directly across the car from me. He wears layers of torn and soiled clothing. He has black plastic bags for shoes. He scratches his crotch as he stares at me. His eyes are like brown marbles: glassy and hard. I try not to make eye contact, but I can’t help myself. Every few seconds, I’m drawn to his burning glare. He sees into my soul, and the intimacy is unbearable. Finally, the train pulls into Times Square. I stand by the door, waiting for it to open. I turn one more time to look at him. “You’re not alone,” he says in a deep, resonating voice.

I walk up to Hell’s Kitchen, where James now lives. His apartment is elegantly dirty. There are empty beer bottles sitting on coffee and end tables, the ashtrays are filled to overflowing, and there are
porn magazines strewn about. And yet, somehow, it doesn’t seem offensive. It feels a bit unreal, like the set of a play. It’s also filled with all of James’s Wall Street toys: a huge flat-screen, an Xbox, golf clubs, expensive wristwatches, photos of him in the Hamptons, and the keys to his Porsche hanging from a cabinet in the kitchen.

Along with his girlfriend, who sits tightly next to him on the couch, James has already started in on the cocaine. He introduces me to Jessica, who looks like a stripper: fake blond hair, huge fake boobs, and tons of clownish makeup. I just want to get my coke and get out of here. I sit down to be polite. They slide a plate full of cocaine over to me and I snort three quick lines. James tells me Jessica has some friends she can invite over. “Nah, I’m okay,” I say. “I need to go meet some people.” I know they know I’m lying, but fuck them. I don’t care. Just give me my cocaine and leave me alone.

Thirty minutes later I’m out the door. I’m wandering around Hell’s Kitchen looking for a bar where no one will know me. On Ninth Avenue I find a hole-in-the-wall. When my eyes adjust to the darkness, I realize I’m the youngest person here by twenty years except the female bartender, who looks tired and lonely even in the bar’s dim light. When she smiles at me, I see that her teeth are brown and crooked. There are a half dozen or so men at the bar. I sit next to a guy who holds on to his longneck with two gnarly hands. He peels at the label with a ragged, dirty thumbnail and mumbles something to the bottle. I order tequila on the rocks—I don’t care what kind. There is no music playing. This isn’t so bad.

AFTER WORK
I’m on Fiftieth Street when someone grabs my arm. I get pulled away from the crowded sidewalk. It’s Slaine. I haven’t seen him in years. His shirt—it’s loose. I’ve never seen him in a shirt that wasn’t skintight. There are rumors on the street—Gus had told me—that the SEC is investigating Raj, that they have or had someone on the inside of Galleon wearing a wire. Is Slaine wearing a wire? He asks me how Berkowitz is treating me. He knows Jeff from the old days, he says. Then he asks what kind of trades I’m working on, if I have any tips for him. It’s a normal question under any other circumstance, but as I look again at his shirt, I can’t get away fast enough. “Hey, man, it was great to see you, but I gotta go to a meeting.”

“This is how you treat the guy who gave you your start?” he says.

“I’m sorry,” I say. I’m afraid to say anything, and James is waiting for me with my coke.

Later the same night I’m back at work. The conference room is dark. Lights from the offices across the street cast weak shafts across the floor. I know I can’t sleep, but I have to stay somewhere. It’s around three a.m. I crawl under the large table and set the alarm on my phone for six a.m.: just in case. I close my eyes. I place my hands on top of my shaved head. I can feel the tiny stubbles on my fingers. What happened?

In March, Jenn finally told me she’d had enough. We put the house up for sale. She said she couldn’t do it anymore, that she wanted me out of the house. But I can’t afford to rent an apartment, let alone a hotel room for a night. I’ve been sleeping on couches, driving back and forth to get new clothes and spending the weekends in Huntington Bay.

Chase closed our home equity loan. I’m out of money. Even though the firm did exceptionally well in 2008, up 10 percent, my bonus was tiny compared to what I’m used to. We don’t manage enough money. My salary doesn’t cover our mortgage, and I still have to feed our family.

I can’t sleep. I get up every fifteen minutes. I walk around the perimeter of the office. I go into the bathroom to look at myself. I have to look presentable when everyone shows up to work. My face is drained, my eyes are bloodshot, but with my shaved head and clean clothes in my overnight bag, no one will know I didn’t shower.

We haven’t had a single offer on the house. We can’t give it away. I need to go home. I’ll go home tomorrow after work. I need to see Lola. I need more clean clothes. I wouldn’t be in this mess if Gus hadn’t kicked me out of his apartment. Last week I tried to stay there without his permission. The doorman doesn’t know I’m not allowed up. But when I got there at three a.m., the apartment was locked. I tried to
sleep on the cold tile of the bike room off of the apartment. The room where everyone throws their garbage down the trash chute.

Everyone has turned their back on me. I’ve stayed with two different friends who don’t work on Wall Street. Both are named Kelly. After a week, they both told me I had to leave. They told me they weren’t going to enable me. They told me I had to tell my boss and go back to rehab. They’re wrong. I’m going to quit, starting right now.

I go back to the conference room to lie underneath the table. I need a cigarette. I grab my ID off the table so I can get back into the office. Downstairs I make my way over to Third Avenue to light up. I need to come down. I need alcohol. I need something. I’d better smoke two while I’m down here. I light up a second one. A few blocks away I see a man riding a bike. He looks much too large to be riding it—like seven feet tall. He’s an African American with a huge afro. He’s shirtless and he’s pedaling up Third. He’s getting closer and closer, and he stares at me. He’s about ten feet away when I see him pull something out of his shorts pocket. He’s almost to me. Then I see his phone. He points the camera directly at me. We’re a foot away from each other and he snaps a picture.