The Underwriting (9 page)

“Just basic demographic information about our users—all anonymous, of course. Just things to help prove our market penetration and user engagement.”

“Sure,” Juan said, handing the signed sheet back to Nick.

Nick checked his watch. “Okay, then. I'll let you all get to it.”

Juan glanced at the other two, hoping they knew what they were supposed to get to, and the three left Nick's office.

“I say we check out the bar,” Beau suggested. “I heard it's hip.”

“I think we should get to work,” Neha corrected.

Juan glanced between them, trying to decipher the relationship. “How about I find you both desks, and then I'll give you the tour.”

There were two open computer stations on the long desk where Juan and Brad sat, formerly occupied by a financial analyst who had quit six months in and the general counsel, Glen Fanning, whom Josh had unceremoniously fired three months ago. Glen, who was a fat fifty-year-old with two kids, had been the only thing close to adult supervision at Hook, and no one had been sorry to see him go.

Juan moved a stack of costumes he and Brad had been deciding between for the upcoming company broomball tournament out of one of the chairs. “Will these work?”

The bankers nodded, and Neha took a seat, opening her laptop and burying her nose in some Excel model. Beau lifted an eyebrow, then turned back to Juan. “How about that bar?”

Juan led him across the hall, past the basketball court, and down the stairs to the cafeteria, where the former executive chef for the White House prepared three meals a day for Hook's staff, all free to employees and guests. They proceeded through the game room, full of beanbag chairs, every variety of video game console on the market hooked to large flat-screens, and a custom-designed foosball table. The tiki bar was a long open room that extended to a deck that looked out over the Bay and had, as its centerpiece, a fully stocked, surfboard-shaped bar.

“My man Joey.” Juan fist-pumped the bartender.

“What's happenin'?” Joey returned the friendliness, reaching his tattoo-sleeved arm out to Beau. “I'm Joey.”

“Nice to meet you,” Beau said. “Think I could get a bourbon?”

“Coming up.” Joey turned to his craft.

“So what information is in the database?” Beau asked.

“Oh, we track everything,” Juan said. “Comments, when and where people log in, who they meet up with. All apps do. You can't make your program better if you don't know how people are using it.”

“Is that all in your privacy policy?” Beau asked.

“I guess?” Juan didn't get into that stuff. “We keep information users provide—like names and e-mail addresses—separate from the information we collect about behavior so that none of it's identifiable,” Juan said, then shrugged. “So it doesn't really matter, does it?”

“Bourbon straight up.” Joey returned with Beau's drink.

“God, you all live the life,” he said, looking around the bar and taking it in. “Maybe I should come out here.”

“Do you not like working on Wall Street?” Juan asked.

“I'd have preferred to do what you do.” Beau shrugged. His blue eyes were friendly. “But I didn't exactly have a lot of options, given my family.”

Juan didn't follow. Beau looked really rich, like he came from the kind of family that had nothing but options. “Have you ever coded?” he asked.

“I was a CS minor in undergrad,” he said. “I was decent.”

“Juan!” He turned at the voice and saw Julie walking toward him. “Oh, hi,” she said, noticing Juan's companion. “You're Beau, right?”

“You two met already?” Juan asked. Julie was the Hook receptionist and one of Juan's roommates.

“Yeah, I checked them in this morning.”

“Good to see you again.” Beau lifted his drink to toast her. She blushed and Juan lifted an eyebrow, recognizing Julie's shift into flirtatious mode. Of course Julie would go for a Wall Street guy like Beau.

“So Carey just e-mailed that she got the job in LA so she's definitely moving out at the end of the month, which means we have to have a party ASAP and find a new roommate.”

“I'll post something on Craigslist tonight,” Juan said, “but for now, I've got to get back to work.” He looked at Beau and indicated the guy's half-finished drink. “Feel free to bring that with you.”

“Or Julie can finish showing me around?” Beau said.

“Don't you have work to do, for this deal?”

“Nah—I'm more the sales guy than the executor. My part comes later,” Beau said, turning back to Julie.

Juan rolled his eyes, but neither noticed. “I'll see you back at home then, Jules. Beau, let me know if you need anything.”

CHARLIE

F
RIDAY
, M
ARCH
7; I
STANBUL
, T
URKEY

Charlie threw a pen at the laptop when he saw the e-mail.

“Idiots!” he yelled at the screen, standing from his chair and pushing it back to the desk angrily.

He pulled on a T-shirt and laced up his running shoes, letting the door to the tiny apartment slam as he made his way down the six flights of stairs to the street.

He ran on the road, finding it easier to dodge honking cars and bicycles than beggars and broken sidewalks, and ignored the locals who stared at his unabashed Westernness. It was one thing for a white man like Charlie to set up residence in one of their apartment buildings, but to exercise in public, wearing a dry-fit T-shirt and performance running shoes that cost more than most here made in a month, was an offense that warranted a glare.

He waited until he got to the water to let his mind go back to the e-mail, taking in the meaning of its content while he took out his frustration on the pavement.

Charlie had joined the Associated Press after graduating from Columbia, where he'd finished his undergraduate degree in three years and spent the fourth getting his M.A. at the journalism school. He'd started college with the vague notion of going into academia, but when 9/11 happened his sophomore year, everything had changed. He'd come back uptown from Ground Zero different, then gone back day after day to volunteer. When he finally had to resettle into university life, he'd enrolled in an Arabic class and never looked back.

He got his first break in 2008, when he was sent on assignment to Tunisia to cover protests. When the Arab Spring began two years later, he was perfectly positioned, and now, at thirty-two, he was one of the AP's top Middle East reporters. He wasn't the smartest, or the best writer, and he lacked the native knowledge of his colleagues, but his willingness to go where the action was and, once there, understand the viewpoint of the Arab-who-resented-the-Western-world had won him trust and respect amongst authorities who now fed him stories before anyone else.

Which is why he'd asked to go back to Talmenes, to investigate rumors of a chemical attack government officials were said to be plotting. He'd sent an impassioned e-mail to his editor, Raj, yesterday, insisting he approve Charlie's return to Syria. He asserted that it was time the AP started reporting
before
things happened so that they might prevent them, instead of writing more pieces about dead bodies after the fact.

And Raj had responded that Charlie should “go home and take a break”? What the hell?

The thought made Charlie run harder. Was Raj trying to push him out? He knew his e-mail had been forward, but he had a right to voice his opinion. He'd given his life to the AP—he'd sacrificed any semblance of a social life, risked his safety and damaged his health in who knew how many ways to get the story. And now they were going to send him home, right in the middle of a civil war that was the culmination of everything Charlie had dedicated his life to understanding? Fuck that.

His phone rang in his headphones and he stopped on the side of the pavement.

“Hello?”

“It's Raj.”

“What the hell was that e-mail?” Charlie snapped.

“I'm just calling to see how you're doing.”

“How I'm doing?” Charlie guffawed. “I'm pissed. I want to go back to Syria.”

“Charlie, what are you doing?” Raj's voice was soft.

“My job!” he said. “Have you forgotten we're in the middle of a civil war?”

“You need a break.”

“Syrians need a break,” Charlie said. “I'll take mine when the violence has stopped.”

“The violence isn't going away whether you're there or not,” Raj said. “Go home and be with your family.”

“I'll see my family at Christmas, like I always do.”

“Jesus, Charlie. How hard has this place made you?”

“Hard enough to go back to Talmenes and figure out what the fuck is going on there before another hundred civilians die. I know my e-mail was forward, but we have to—”

“Are you seriously not even going back for the service?”

“What service?”

Raj was quiet.

“What service?” Charlie repeated.

“Fuck,” Raj said, “I thought you—”

“What?”

“Your sister,” Raj said. “Your sister's dead.”

Charlie's arm dropped from his ear, letting the phone fall to the grass as the call to prayer rang from the mosque behind him, stretching out across the Bosphorus to the sun setting on the horizon beyond, deafening him like an explosion detonating in his brain.

AMANDA

W
EDNESDAY
, M
ARCH
12; N
EW
Y
ORK
, N
EW
Y
ORK

Amanda refreshed her browser.

Nothing.

She stared at the message icon.
Just one more time then back to work
. Her finger hovered above the mouse, willing a red box to appear. A simple
Todd Kent has accepted your friend request
was all she needed.

Click.

Refresh.

Red box!

Her heart beat heavily in her throat. Who said positive imagery didn't work? She opened the message, feeling the sweat in her palms.

Harold Hammonds has invited you to the event I WON A FREE HAPPY HOUR AT MAGGIE'S!!! MARCH 26, 5-7PM!!!!

“Ugh,” she said out loud, turning back to the printout of the shareholder agreement she was proofreading.

She was at her cubicle on the fifty-eighth floor of Crowley Brown. She read two pages of the document, willing herself to concentrate on the activity that made up the majority of her time at the bottom ladder rung of a top-tier New York City law firm. She found a misplaced comma and circled it with satisfaction: “Gotcha!”

The key to being a successful attorney, Amanda had discovered in her two years as a paralegal here, was to not dwell on the lack of importance of anything you did. Rather, you had to focus on creating more complication to breed more unimportant work so you had so many unimportant things to do you didn't have time to think about their unimportance.

Maybe she should go to the party, she thought. Harold Hammonds was one of the least cool guys she knew from Penn undergrad, but she was pretty sure he'd gone to work at a hedge fund, so maybe he'd have cool coworkers?

She looked up Maggie's: it was on Forty-seventh Street, three blocks from L.Cecil. Her throat tightened again: maybe Todd would be there. Maybe that was his local bar, his after-work spot. Maybe he'd walk in and she'd be at a table, looking professional but sexy, with her jacket off and her head back, laughing at something Harold had said. And Todd would see her, having fun with all of Harold's hedge fund colleagues, and then he'd be jealous and finally see what he hadn't seen before.

Are you done yet?

An internal instant message appeared from the second-year associate on the case, Kerry. Amanda looked up: Kerry was sitting in the cubicle next to her, literally an arm's length away, staring at her screen with her earphones in.

“No,” she said out loud to Kerry.

“I'm sorry?” Kerry took an earbud out, bothered. “What did you say?”

Amanda glared at her. “I said no, I'm not done with the document.”

Kerry lifted her eyebrow disapprovingly and turned back to her screen.

That
was what Amanda had to avoid. Kerry might have a JD from Harvard Law, but she was still single. And twenty-nine. In New York. It was a death sentence.

Amanda saw the way things shifted when women reached a certain age in this city. As girls crept toward thirty, their dying eggs seemed to excrete desperation, and men could smell it a mile away. Before they knew it, they were Amanda's mother: living alone in Florida dating losers, spending their money on creams and fad diets in a futile attempt to recoup the youth they squandered on men they'd failed to fix.

And so, as important as the work in front of her might be, it was more important that Amanda lock something down before she turned twenty-seven and everything started going to hell. That gave her a year and five months.

Plenty of time
, she assured herself, turning back to the document.

Or was it? She'd already been in New York for two and a half years and Todd was the only close-to-a-boyfriend she'd had. Her roommate Cindy was probably marrying her boyfriend from college, and her other roommate, Claudia, didn't need to worry because she was from the Upper East Side and always had a string of attractive, eligible bachelors ready to procreate with her blue blood.

What did Amanda have? Great boobs, she knew that. And a killer metabolism that kept her skinny without exercising, which meant she also didn't have man-arms like a lot of the women in New York. She was ambitious, but not so career-obsessed that she wouldn't quit working to raise her kids, to whom she would contribute Ivy League–worthy intelligence.

She rolled her eyes in frustration: there was no reason she didn't deserve Todd. She was the right girl for him, she just had to show him that. And to show him that, she had to see him, and she couldn't leave that up to chance in a city as busy as New York.

She opened Facebook again and sent him a message:

Hey—totally random, but I've got a happy hour at Maggie's the Wednesday after next, March 26. You should stop by if you're free. Will be fun. A.

She read it again. And again.

Send.

TODD

W
EDNESDAY
, M
ARCH
12; N
EW
Y
ORK
, N
EW
Y
ORK

“We've got to work on your Hook profile, T Two.”

Todd glanced up from his laptop at Beau, who was shaking his head at his iPhone, then across at Tara, who had stopped typing.

“Are you talking to me?” she asked.

Todd had had his assistant reserve a conference room on the twenty-seventh floor for the team so they could work together and Todd could keep track of what everyone was doing. They'd gotten back to New York on Sunday and the room hadn't been empty since: they were all working around the clock to get things ready for the IPO, fueled by Harvey's demand that the deal be done by May 8.

Todd was still furious with Harvey for going behind his back to negotiate the fee. And 1 percent? It was a fucking joke. It only affirmed Harvey's diminishing power and his desperation to maintain some sense of significance by undermining the real talent in the firm. It made Todd sick, and more motivated than ever to nail the deal so that he could take all the credit and neutralize any senior manager who tried to stand in his way.

Todd rolled his neck to release the tension. He couldn't get worked up over Harvey—there was too much else to think about. He needed to get the S-1 together and send it to the SEC. From there, the deal would be announced publicly and attention would start to flood in; then the road show, the pricing call, and the big day when they'd ring the opening bell on NASDAQ and all make millions.

“Yeah.” Beau squinted at his iPhone without looking up. “T Two. Tara Taylor. Get it?” He waited for her to be impressed with his cleverness. “Anyway,” he went on, “you've only got eighteen reviews. Twelve hundred eighty-three views, but only eighteen reviews. What gives?”

Tara shrugged. She seemed to genuinely not know her stats. “I don't really use it,” she said, going back to her computer.

“Boyfriend?” Beau asked.

“No.” She looked up and gave him a polite
Please shut up
smile.

“Aren't you, like, thirty?” Beau pressed. “Better get on it.”

“I'm twenty-eight.” She finally looked up. When she saw the playfulness in Beau's smile, she laughed, cracking.

Beau grinned, pleased with himself for lightening the seriousness in the room.

“How many views have you got, Todd?” Beau asked.

“Me?” Todd cocked a brow. He'd last checked Hook this morning, on the way into the office. He'd had eight new messages and 432 new views since last night. “I don't know, seventy thousand or so?” Not true: it was 83,612, but he could afford to be modest.

“Okay, big shot.” Tara pretended not to be impressed with Todd's stats and turned back to Beau, her long brown hair falling over her shoulder as she tilted her head. She looked particularly pretty today, which Todd assumed was for his benefit. “What do I need to do?”

“Well . . .” Beau adjusted himself in his seat and sat up seriously. Neha glanced up from her computer long enough to show she wished they would shut up.

“For starters, you have to rate more guys,” Beau instructed. “Here, let me see your phone.” He grabbed it before she could protest and clicked open the app.

“Hey!” she said.

“Password?” he asked.

“Jetgirls two thousand three,” she said.

Beau lifted an eyebrow.

“West Side Story
.
”
Todd didn't realize he'd said it out loud until he saw them looking at him. “She was in
West Side Story
in college,” he explained to Beau. “My buddy Tom was in it, so I had to go see.” Then he turned to Tara. “And you were very good. That dance number.” He gestured with his hands.

She laughed again.

“Whatever,” he said and went back to his computer.

Beau was into Tara's Hook app now, flipping through and tapping like a pro.

“What are you doing?” She reached across the table for the phone.

“I rated Todd and me each as tens, hope that's okay.” He pulled the phone out of her reach. “The only way you're going to get more people to see you is if you rate more people,” he said. “I'm helping you out here, T Two!” His voice was comical and easygoing, the voice of a guy bred to be the charismatic life of the party.

“But I don't need help,” she insisted. “I promise, I don't use it.”

“You're twenty-eight and single! You have two years left before you go crazy and men don't date you anymore,” Beau said energetically. “The time is now, T Two!”

“Not through Hook,” Tara said, making a face. “It's gross.”

“Why?”

“I don't want to meet up with some stranger just because he's close by,” Tara said.

“And also liked your profile,” Beau corrected.

“A guy liking my profile has more to do with how desperate he is to get laid at that moment than anything to do with me.”

“No different from real life,” Beau said.

“Don't tell me that,” Tara said.

“It's true. Right, Todd?” Beau asked him.

“I'm going to pass on this one.”

“At least in real life you can get a sense of a person's energy,” Tara said. “It's not just about a photo that's probably doctored anyway.”

“Don't worry, I'm fixing your photos, too.” Beau ignored her philosophy, refocused on her phone. “What's this one?” He rotated the screen to face them.

“Do
not
put that on there,” she said.

Beau handed the phone to Todd. It was a black-and-white photo of a girl's naked back, one arm pulling a sheet across her bare chest as she looked at the sunlight streaming through the window.

He felt his jaw drop. Was that Tara?

Tara leaned over and grabbed the phone from Todd's hand, their eyes meeting as he looked from photo to model before she blushed and put the phone facedown on the table without saying anything.

“Really? No explanation?” Beau's blue eyes were smiling.

Todd was no longer pretending to work, his mind racing to understand the side of Stanford grad–turned–L.Cecil banker Tara Taylor that posed for nude photos.

“I took a photography class once and a classmate of mine needed models to practice on,” she said defensively, putting the phone back in her bag.

“Sure,” Beau said.

“Anyway,” Tara said, closing her laptop, “I have to go.”

“Another photo shoot?” Todd grinned. He was definitely sleeping with her now.

Tara straightened her skirt. “I've got a meeting.”

“With who?” Beau asked.

“Callum Rees.”

“What?” Todd's face lost its smile. Callum Rees was the billionaire serial entrepreneur who had given Josh Hart a hundred thousand dollars when Hook was just getting started, making him the company's largest non-employee individual shareholder. He was also a notorious international playboy. “Why are you meeting with Callum Rees?”

“He e-mailed me to set up a meeting,” Tara said. “I'm not sure why.”

“Where?” Todd asked.

“Downtown,” she said.

He started to stand. “I'll come with you.”

Tara put up a hand. “I'm sorry, why?”

“I'm the coverage banker on this deal,” Todd said. “I should be meeting him as much as you should.”

“He e-mailed me,” she said firmly. “I'll handle it.”

“Why?” he said a bit too angrily, realizing Callum, not him, was the impetus for her looking pretty today. “Are you trying to get a date out of it?”

“No,” she said.

“Then why are you dressed up, meeting an unmarried man downtown at eight o'clock?”

“I am meeting a
client
with a huge stake in our deal, when and where he was available to meet,” she corrected without apology.

“Tara, I think you need to seriously consider what this could look like,” Todd said, meaning it.

“And I think you need to seriously consider why you perceive it as looking like anything other than me doing my job.”