The Underwriting (40 page)

Nick swallowed, closing his eyes as the room started to spin.
Stay calm,
he told himself, but the world went dark and his forehead hit the floor with a thud.

Tiffany's enormous breasts were the first thing Nick saw when he came to. “What happened?” he grunted, as she dabbed a towel on his forehead.

“You fainted, Nick,” she said. “Do you remember?”

He shook his head, but then Phil's voice came back and he closed his eyes again. “How long was I out?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“Is the stock trading yet?”

She shook her head. “Do you feel okay?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. His heartbeat felt manageable and his brain was starting to clear.

“I've been trying to call Todd and Tara but neither is answering.”

“It's okay,” he said. “We can't cancel the IPO anyway.”

“But the news about—”

“We can't cancel the IPO, Tiffany,” he said more firmly.

Nick had a two-million-dollar loan. If they canceled the IPO, that loan became a two-million-dollar debt that would start compounding at 25 percent annual interest six months from now, which he had no way to repay. But if the deal went through, his two and a half million shares would have some value, and the price would have to drop down to a dollar for him to not have enough to repay the loan and start clean. Even with the information about the database, surely there were enough investors out there who saw potential in a rebound to keep the price above a dollar.

“What about Phil?” Tiffany asked carefully.

“Let Phil think it was too late.”

He climbed into his chair and carefully read the
New York Times
article, start to finish.

It must have been Juan who told. Which was good, because no one would believe him once they found out he'd been fired for violating users' private information. Rachel could write a story explaining how Juan was nothing more than an angry programmer trying to blame his former employer for his own misconduct.

The thought made his brain resettle. Everything was going to be fine. And if Phil couldn't see that, then Phil wasn't the hero Nick thought he was.

Nick refreshed his Yahoo Finance browser and the stock information loaded. The ticker symbol HOOK appeared, priced at $33.25.

“Okay,” he said, reaching for the champagne again, “here we go.”

A seventy-five-cent loss wasn't the end of the world. He had six months to make it back, after all.

He waited fifteen seconds, the time it took for Yahoo to refresh its tickers, and refreshed the screen.

$33.08

He swallowed while he waited another fifteen seconds.

$31.17

Another fifteen seconds.

$29.12

Another fifteen seconds.

ERR.

Nick looked at the screen, pulling it closer to his face. “What?” He refreshed the screen, but got ERR again.

“Where is Todd?” he screamed at Tiffany, his pulse shooting up again. “What does ERR mean?”

“I don't know,” Tiffany said helplessly, calling Todd again, but still unable to reach him. What good was she?

He looked at the screen: ERR. Refresh. ERR. Refresh. ERR.

“Here,” Tiffany said, turning her iPad toward him, where she was streaming CNBC's coverage.

“Trading has halted on the NASDAQ for shares of Hook, which hit the exchange about twenty minutes ago, and we're getting reports it's because of a computer glitch . . .” The female reporter stopped to listen to something coming in through her earpiece.

“Yes, it seems the computers that are trading Hook have actually crashed as a result of an unprecedented number of sell requests. A story posted on the
New York Times
website this morning reported on a security breach in Hook's systems that appears to be linked to the Kelly Jacobson murder, and the market seems to be having a literally catastrophic reaction.”

Nick swallowed, clenching his jaw. He could feel the tears start to form in his eyes.
Don't cry, don't cry, don't cry
, he willed himself, repeating the mantra he used to repeat when he was eight and the kids at school were being mean.

“This is good.” Tiffany's hand was on his.

“How?” Nick shook his head as he felt the wetness work its way past his lids.

“It's good,” Tiffany insisted. “Great, actually.”

“What do you know,” he spat, like an angry toddler. “You're a secretary.”

“Nick,” she said, ignoring his jab, “if trading's stopped, it'll give the market time to settle down. People will start to gain perspective, and they'll see this isn't worth panicking over.”

“But—”

“But, nothing,” she interrupted. “This gives you time,” she said, “which is exactly what you need.”

Nick felt the tears retract and he took a deep breath in, nodding silently.

“They're halting trading for the rest of the day,” she reported from the iPad she was watching. “They think it might take up to two days to get the system up and running again.”

“Two days?”

“Yes.” She smiled, leaning forward. “That gives you two whole days to straighten this out.”

“You're right.” He nodded, sitting up straighter. “Get Rachel Liu on the phone.”

“It's going to cost you,” Rachel answered without any pleasantries, as if she'd been waiting for the phone to ring.

“How much?” he asked.

“Two million a day,” she said. “Cash, obviously.”

“You know I can't give you that right now,” he said. “Come on, Rachel, after all the business I've given you, you're really going to—”

“Call me when you change your mind.” She hung up the phone.

Nick took a breath and dialed her number back. “Fine,” he said. The price today didn't matter to Hook: the company itself raised over two billion dollars last night. He might as well spend it on this.

“Okay,” she answered. “Here's my proposal: We deny it entirely. Say we knew nothing about the database or the hacker and force whoever told to come forward and hang themselves,” she explained. “And then we say we'll cooperate with officials so long as they see fit, but it's our preference to shut down the database entirely and preserve user security.”

“Okay,” he said.

“I'll send a statement to you by end of day to have your lawyers review.”

“Okay,” he said again.

“Just one thing,” Rachel said, her voice turning more serious. “Nick, you have to promise me there's no way it can ever come out that you knew.”

“There's nothing.”

“Are you absolutely sure?” she asked. “No e-mails, no voice messages, no texts? If we do this and they found out you knew, you're a hell of a lot worse off than you are right now.”

“There's nothing,” he repeated.

“Okay,” she said. “I'll get started, then.”

He hung up the phone and looked at Tiffany. “Can you call Phil and tell him it's under control?”

“Where are you going?” she asked as he stood up from the chair.

“I need to be alone for a little bit.”

TARA

T
HURSDAY
, M
AY
15; N
EW
Y
ORK
, N
EW
Y
ORK

Tara woke up to nothing.

She rolled onto her back and let the events replay. She recounted the pricing call and the long night calming angry brokers and her confession to Charlie and her call to Nick and her final e-mail announcing her resignation. She waited for her stomach to get queasy about what it all meant, but it didn't, and she realized she wasn't scared.

Her head ached, a dull pain pushing against her temples, which she'd read was a side effect of going off the Celexa. She didn't mind it. She got up without checking her e-mail and took a shower without going for a run, letting the water fall longer on her body than she needed it to.

She pulled on jeans, a T-shirt and flats and left the apartment without putting on makeup.

She walked down Charles Street and turned onto Hudson and went to the bagel shop she'd heard was delicious but had never gone to because bagels were full of empty calories. She walked north, stopping to buy a coffee at one of the street carts to see if it really came in a blue cup and only cost a dollar. It did.

She climbed the steps from Gansevoort up to the High Line and sat on a bench. The cream cheese had melted on the toasted bagel and she chewed it slowly, watching a man take a picture of his wife, who wore a fanny pack and an “I was on the Today Show!” sticker on her David Letterman T-shirt.

“Can I get one of you together?” Tara asked the man, who turned at her voice, pulling his camera closer toward him the way tourists do in New York, automatically suspicious when someone offers to help.

But he looked at her and the melted cream cheese on her fingers and relaxed. “Sure,” he said in a Texan drawl, “that'd be great.”

She put down the bagel and took several photos, including one of them kissing, which she decided was sweet, not gross or annoying.

“See,” Tara heard the woman say to her husband as they walked away, “I told you not all New Yorkers are mean.”

Tara finished her bagel and continued walking north.

When she got to midtown she watched the suits hurry back and forth, like ants scurrying, each carrying his speck of sand with blind faith in the seriousness of his mission, all working together to build a sand empire, without worrying what would happen if the rains came.

That's what people who hated Wall Street didn't understand. They thought bankers and brokers were malicious—that they were purposefully lying to make a profit for themselves. It wasn't true: in reality, everyone on Wall Street was just too focused on his piece of sand to see the bigger picture. However much subprime mortgage brokers had deceived the people they sold bad products to in the years leading up to the crash, they'd deceived themselves just as much. Not into thinking what they were doing was
good
, but into thinking it's
the way things were
. Their crime wasn't that they'd been evil, it was that they'd settled for a shitty system.

Her mind drifted to Charlie and she thought she'd like to talk to him about it—talk to him about anything, really, if she ever saw him again. She'd searched her in-box for his e-mail after her meeting with Catherine on Sunday, and replied asking to meet, then, noticing he was with the Associated Press, looked up his reports. She'd blushed two hours later when she realized how engrossed she'd become in his writing.

They had nothing in common, save Kelly—she understood why he didn't like her, but she still wanted him to. He was different from the men she knew: all his reporting was infused with a passionate need for justice that had nothing to do with money. She respected that kind of courage, even though it made her feel foolish for ever thinking that quitting a cushy banking job was a risk.

She took out her iPhone to listen to music and saw fifty-eight missed calls. She scrolled the list to see if there were any that were important, but they were all from Todd or Nick or Catherine or the 212.464 extension she knew meant L.Cecil. There was, though, a text message from Callum, which she opened.

Her throat burned as she reread the message. How could he be so casual when he was in love with someone else?
Because
he was in love with someone else, that's how. She cringed, knowing he'd never had real feelings for her—from the very first meeting he'd treated her as a project: a grown man giving advice to a young woman who needed perspective.

But in the process she'd become putty in his hands. He'd made her feel supported and appreciated and secure—to the point where she'd cried like a child in his arms, letting all her emotions spill out at his feet.

And as much as she wanted to hate him now—now that she knew he'd been cheating the whole time, letting her be vulnerable while he kept his own secrets separate—she couldn't. Because he'd been right: she had needed perspective, and he had given it to her. He may not be everything that she wanted him to be or hoped he was, but he'd been the only one in the world, including herself, who had ever made her feel . . . not judged.

She felt the tears well up but forced them away. She'd learned a lot, she'd gained a lot, she was a better person for it. And that was enough. It had to be enough.

She read the message one more time, then deleted it, along with Callum's contact information, and put in her headphones, letting James Blake's velvety voice fill her ears and make a soundtrack to the city's movements and her new start.

The text alert beeped in her headphones and she felt her heart clench as she looked back down at the phone, but smiled when she saw it was from Terrence:

Her friendships: that was another thing she was resolved to start giving the attention they deserved, along with her family and her dating life and her happiness.

She wandered to Columbus Circle and through Central Park to the Frick, where she decided to see the art she'd missed at the L.Cecil event.

George E's portraits were all photographs that he'd painted over to mimic Instagram filters. She read the commentary about social media, obfuscation of truth and the new world of self-invention, wondering where the real reason for the exhibit—that the Frick needed to attract a younger audience if it had any hope of surviving—was recorded.

She wandered to the West Gallery and her breath caught when she stood before the Turner canvas, mesmerized by the blues and yellows.

“This one's dusk.”

“What?” Tara turned, startled, at the voice of an old woman beside her.