The Buy Side (36 page)

Back underneath the conference room table, I’m terrified. My body shakes. My hands tremble. Why did he just take a photo of me?

I’M IN
my underwear and white T-shirt, shivering, standing barefoot on the front porch of the Queen Anne. The temperature is in the low forties, and the dampness makes it feel colder. It’s still dark out, but I know I have to leave for work soon. There are two empty cocaine bags on the outside dining table, and I open a third. I dig my house key into the bag, scoop as much as I can onto the key, and then snort. Dig, scoop, snort. Dig, scoop, snort.

There’s half of a still-lit cigarette hanging in the ashtray, but I light up a new one. I can feel my heart palpitating. It’s going to explode. I know it. I chug some scotch from the bottle. There’s about a third of it left and I down the whole thing.

The sun begins to rise. I can’t stand to look at it. Inside, the house is only half furnished. There’s one couch, the television, which is still on, and a chair in the living room. I need more cigarettes. I go upstairs. I walk by where Lola’s room used to be. It’s empty. I can’t look
at it. Then I walk over to the master suite closet. Jenn’s side is completely empty—I try to ignore it. I rummage through several coat pockets until I find my Newport cigarettes. I run back downstairs. Without Lola, Jenn, and the dogs around, the house feels dead. I need more coke.

When I check my phone for the time it reads 5:30 a.m. I have to lie down. I grab a pillow from the couch and press it hard against my chest, trying to hold my heart in place. I’m going to die. Next time I look at the clock it’s 5:59 a.m. I have to go to work. I run up to the shower and jump in. My whole body vibrates, and my hands shake like I have palsy. I drop the shampoo and pick it up. I try to squirt some out and the bottle again slips out of my hand. I give up and now stand on the cold tile, naked and dripping wet. I hold my arms tightly to my chest.

Forty miles away, in his Sutton Place co-op, Raj, my old boss from Galleon, is riding his exercise bike, looking out the window onto the East River. He wears a shiny tracksuit and a white towel, which is wrapped around his neck like a brace. Perspiration pours from his forehead. I’ve never been to his apartment but know people who have. They say it’s beautiful. Worth millions, it’s modest, I guess, for a billionaire’s apartment. Judge Judy is one of his neighbors. Of course, he also has an estate in Greenwich. Raj has a trip planned later in the day to England to launch a new $200 million fund. He keeps pedaling.

Still soaking wet from the shower, I pace the nearly empty living room and stare at the phone in my hand. I practice saying hello, but each time I sound like I’m high. I
am
high. I can’t do this. Finally, somehow, I summon the courage, scroll to Jeff’s phone number, and hit Send. With each ring, I fight the urge to disconnect the call. And then I hear his voice: “Yeah,” he says.

“I can’t come in today,” I say.

“Are you okay?” Jeff asks.

At precisely 6:30 a.m., the doorbell to Raj’s apartment rings. No doubt, he’s surprised by the sound. If you live in a Sutton Place co-op, the doorbell almost never rings unannounced. But he’s far more surprised when he opens the door. Standing there in the hall are a half dozen or so federal agents, some wearing FBI windbreakers.

“No,” I tell Jeff. “I’m not okay.” I don’t know how much Jeff knows about my drug use, but I suspect more than I realize. He seems concerned but not shocked. He tells me he’ll call me back. “Jeff, I can’t come in today,” I say again. “Or ever,” I mumble. I hang up the phone and do some more cocaine. I know it’s going to make it worse, but I don’t have a choice. I grab the empty bottle of scotch and suck out the last drops. I make my way back out to the porch and light up another cigarette. The morning sun now bathes the front yard. The lawn hasn’t been mowed since early summer, and the gardens are overrun with weeds. I notice a car parked near the end of my driveway. I saw it drive by the house earlier. I go back into the living room, turn off the television, and shut all the shades.

Under the watchful eyes of the agents, Raj puts on a white dress shirt, open at the collar, a green cardigan, and a blue blazer. When he finishes dressing, an agent tells him to put his hands behind his back. He feels the cold steel on his wrists and then hears the click of handcuffs locking. The agents ask Raj if he has a gun, if he has any drugs in the house. He thinks they might plant something. His wife and kids are there. It’s a sight they’ll never forget. The agents tell him he’s under arrest for insider trading. They lead him from the apartment and then out of the building.

I’m almost out of cocaine. When my phone pings with a text, I nearly jump off the couch. I can’t look at it. Instead, I clutch the pillow again in fear of my heart exploding. I creep to the living room window
and stand, hidden by the curtain, looking out to the driveway and street beyond. A dark sedan, the same one that was parked in front earlier, I think, slows as it passes by. The driver looks right at me. I stand there frozen, both afraid he can see me and afraid to look away.

Raj sits in an FBI interrogation room. His lawyer is not yet there. He doesn’t need a lawyer. Ethnically, Raj is a Tamil from Sri Lanka. Soldiers in the Tamil Tigers wear chains with cyanide capsules around their necks. They’ll kill themselves before they’re captured. Raj won’t admit a thing. He won’t cooperate. The interrogation goes on for hours. The agents play back wiretaps of Raj’s phone conversations that implicate him. But Raj says nothing.

My cell phone dings again. Then again and again. Texts. A few seconds go by and then the phone dings a few more times. What the fuck is going on? Jesus Christ. I pick up the phone to look at the first message—Raj has been arrested, it says. The next one is the same thing and then another says the FBI has raided Galleon’s office. My phone continues to ding as the messages come flying in.

I’m numb. Oh my god. It all makes sense. The FBI is coming to get me. I run to find the plate with evidence of cocaine on it, furiously scrub the plate in the kitchen, then run to the bathroom and flush the remaining cocaine. It can’t be about Galleon. I did nothing wrong. A catalog of trades flips through my thoughts. Nortel, I think. No, it can’t be that. I didn’t know anything. It was so long ago. Am I guilty of insider trading? They’ve been watching me. They know I give out commissions for drugs. The White House! Fuck, that’s it. The rat Randy told me about. They have photos of me getting the handoffs from James on street corners. I’m so fucked. They’re coming for me.

I look out the window again. I see two dark sedans driving slowly up the street. There are a few guys in the car. I see the turn signal come on. They’re pulling into my driveway. Holy shit, run! I think. Where?
I have nowhere to go. Maybe if I pretend I’m not home. The cars are halfway up the driveway. I know it’s the FBI. I’m going to jail. This is it. Don’t admit anything. You didn’t do anything wrong. But I did
everything
wrong. I look in the mirror in the entrance area near the front door. I’m rail thin. I’m still in my underwear and T-shirt. My eyes bulge above the black rings below them. This is who I am; this is what I’ve become. I hear car doors slam.

I can see three men in suits get out of the car. I have to face them. I open the door and walk outside. The angle of the morning sun now almost blinds me. I can barely make out the three figures walking up my driveway. I’m too high to cry. I no longer have any fight, and in this surrender I feel the slightest of comforts, like a drowning man who gives in to the inevitability of his watery death. I’ve long since lost control of my life. I’ve lost everything during my time on the buy side: my relationships, my money, and, most important, my self-respect. Now my freedom. I thought I was good at my job but I was wrong. Real success on Wall Street is measured not in bonus or salary but in photographs on desks of children wearing soccer uniforms and caps and gowns. Success on Wall Street is measured the same way it’s measured by a factory worker, a math teacher, or an engineer with four children in Maine.

When the three figures walk into the shade cast by the house, I can finally make out their familiar faces. Relief quickly collapses into dread. A fractured memory of texting Kevin last night spills from my thoughts. When he looks me over, in my bare feet and underwear, a small smile of concern and empathy comes to his face. He’s here with Chris, and another guy named Jim whom I’d met at meetings. “You need to go away,” Kevin says, his crystal-clear blue eyes holding me like some type of force field. I can’t stand the truth of them, but can’t look away.

My mind immediately starts searching for an excuse: I can’t go for thirty days, I think. What about my job, the mortgage? How will I explain it to Lola? Yet “Okay” is all I manage to say, and with that one word I feel an overwhelming sense of relief.

“A guy goes to rehab once and everyone’s rooting for him. A guy goes to rehab a second time and people start to drop off,” he says. His words are honest and genuine. I believe what he’s saying. “We’ll always be here for you, man. But I promise you, if this keeps going on, people are gonna drop and drop fast.” I feel like they already have.

Somewhere, deep inside, I know it’s over, all of it: my drug use, my drinking, and the Turney I created for the buy side. I think of my daughter and all the moments I’ve already missed in her life. “Everything’s going to be okay,” Kevin says as he puts his arm around my slumped shoulders. I want to believe him, more than anything.

AS THE
taxi from LaGuardia Airport nears the house, I’m excited when I see Jenn’s car parked in the driveway. My muscles tense. I’d spoken to her just yesterday from the Recovery Place, a rehab in Fort Lauderdale, and asked if I could see Lola when I got home. They’ve been staying at her mother’s house. But as I pay the cabbie and then pull my large bag from the trunk and throw it on the porch, my stomach knots. I don’t know how my daughter will react when she sees me. The thirty days I’ve been gone seem like an eternity.

Through the screen window, I can see Lola and Jenn playing in the kitchen. As I open the front door, Lola looks up and recognition brightens her face. She rushes toward me. “Daddy!” she screams, a sound as beautiful as any I’ve ever heard. I hold her tight. She radiates a warmth so pure, it instantly dissolves my anxiety. How could I have ever jeopardized something so precious? Jenn once asked me if I loved cocaine more than Lola. I answered with righteous indignation: “How
can you ask that?” I never thought it was one or the other. I thought I could control it; I’d just do a little. It’d be different the next time. It never was. And each high dragged me further from my daughter. I believe the things they told me in rehab and meetings, that I’m powerless over drugs and alcohol and once I start with either, I give up control of my life. But there’s also right and wrong. As I hold Lola, I never want to make the wrong choice again. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Jenn starting to cry.

The next day, the day before Thanksgiving, I call Jeff to tell him I’m ready to come back to work. I’d spoken to him a few times when I was in Florida, and he was very supportive—he paid me the whole time I was away. I tell him I’ll be in on Friday. I remember when I moved to the city in 1994, Larry, the guy in the Raccoon Lodge, said, “Always work the day after Thanksgiving: it makes you look like a hero.” I’m ready to be the hero. But Jeff tells me to take the rest of the week off and he’ll see me on Monday. I can tell by his tone something is up.

On Monday morning, I’m at the office early, scrubbed clean and pressed. Everything looks a little sharper, a little brighter to me, as if the building has changed the lighting to a slightly higher wattage. And I’m nervous. Over the last ten years or so, my life has been a kind of bipolar existence, with wild swings from false bravado to the lowest self-esteem. Rehab and recovery from drug addiction stuck a pin in the bravado, leaving me vulnerable and in self-doubt. I’m worried about how people will treat me, especially Jeff.