What the Hand: A Novel About the End of the World and Beyond

by Stockwell, Todd

  I pointed to her nearly empty bag. “It doesn’t look like I’ll miss very much.”

  She pulled her elbow from my grip. “I have to go.”

  “Sorry. Look, I apologize for all that business with the company. There was nothing left, Mary.”

  “Maybe you and Justin spent it all on your big houses, and your cars, and your booze.” This wasn’t the pushover I remembered.

  “I’m sorry. I really am. I was an idiot. I have some extra food and things at the house. I want you to have it.”

  “I don’t want it. You can share it with your creepy friend.”

  “Are you talking about Justin?”

  “Yeah, your partner.” she said.

  “I haven’t seen him in years.”

  “Why does he have my records? Why is he harassing me?”

  “What are you talking about?” I had no clue.

  “I think you know what I’m talking about. Always thick as thieves, you two.”

  “I haven’t seen him. I swear, Mary. What is going on?”

  She didn’t answer. She ran off mumbling after that, something about us leaving her alone. I was dumbfounded.

  ***

  But the morning after Wiley was shot, after I prayed most of the night asking for a solution, I finally understood. And his name was all I could think about the rest of the day: Justin Lister.

  What else would he be doing? He was the greatest salesman I ever met. He could sell Irish to a leprechaun. He taught me every sales trick in the book. Moreover, he was an opportunist. There was only one place to find opportunity then. He would have sold himself to the New World Order. Now I understood why I hadn’t been hauled in and beaten to death by the Minions. Good old Justin. I had my answer. The Lord does work in mysterious ways.

  11

  For better or worse, and mostly worse, Justin Lister had been my friend. It wasn’t that he was awful and I was good, but that we were both awful, and more awful when we were together.

  ***

  Now I drove the same route I once commuted daily, to the building that housed our old company. I hadn’t seen Justin in a long time, but we didn’t separate on horrible terms. I never blamed him for the company failing. His spending was out of control; he’d pushed for expansion when we weren’t stable; hired a mediocre manager to do his job because he wanted to play golf most days; partied most nights, so he was only half there when he was at work; and a bunch of other mistakes that sped up the company’s demise, but I was complicit in all of it; moreover, I was a partner in all of it.

  Besides, we made tons of money just like he said we would. We just spent it like drunken sailors with three months to live. And none of it would have mattered anyway. Once the housing market collapsed and the banks stopped lending, we were too big not to fail.

  ***

  “Too big to fail” was a term made popular after the Obama Administration bailed out the banks and Wall Street firms responsible for the housing collapse. Where did the term come from? The companies needing the bailouts made it up. Eventually, they would all come to realize that no one except God was too big to fail.

  ***

  I didn’t blame Justin for wrecking my family, either. I did that all on my own. I just couldn’t hang out with him anymore because he had become like a mirror to me, a reminder of all I had destroyed.

  ***

  I passed our old offices, now abandoned, having been damaged beyond repair in the Great Earthquake. I was heading downtown to where two new buildings contained the headquarters of the New World Order. I wasn’t nervous. I would be very nervous, in fact terrified, the next time I saw him, but this time I was quite calm. We had been through so much together, and in that respect, we would always be brothers of a sort.

  Once I’d figured out Justin was working for the New World Order, he was easy enough to find. The New World Order was no longer shy about what they were doing or who was working for them, so it was a simple matter of pulling up the employee directory on their website. Justin didn’t know I was coming. I knew the lines were monitored and thought it better not to phone first.

  I parked away from the building and walked the four blocks. Beyond the cold stares of the security guards in the lobby, I wasn’t bothered, so I found the directory and proceeded to his department on the eighteenth floor. His title was Compliance Minister, which was ironic because compliance was the last thing Justin was interested in during his lending career.

  The elevator opened to a varnished cherry wall, emblazoned in gold letters that read New World Order Compliance Ministry. I skirted the wall, walking past a series of smaller offices till I came to an open door at the end of the corridor. A secretary sat at a small desk near the door, and she began to ask me something, but I told her I was an old friend and moved past her. I could hear the loud, familiar voice, so I stood in the doorway and waited. Justin Lister was always on the phone. It used to drive me crazy. It was weird seeing him again; it brought back all the memories, good and bad.

  ***

  My shaky career path brought me to the offices of Mercury Mortgage, where Justin hired and trained me to be a loan officer and salesman. Before that I had been a bookmaker, soldier, cab driver, high school teacher, and real estate investor of sorts.

  ***

  The Army taught me discipline—which I mostly ignored—but, more importantly, it gave me an education. We had so much down time at the base, and there wasn’t much to do that was productive, except to take the college courses offered at the Base Education Center by the University of Oklahoma. After I was discharged, I took the credits I’d earned and the money from the G.I. Bill and applied to the Political Science program on their main campus.

  I rented a cheap, one room apartment in Oklahoma City, drove a taxi most of the night, and went to classes four days a week. I finished my Bachelor’s degree in two years and stuck around two more to get a teaching credential.

  I stopped driving a taxi after I got my first teaching job. It was at a Catholic school in Oklahoma. I taught U.S. History, and things were good. The students seemed to like me. They didn’t talk too much or throw stuff at me when I was writing on the chalkboard or anything. But I had already been away for a long time, so after two years, I moved back to Los Angeles, where the only teaching jobs available at the time were at predominately black schools in the inner city.

  For the most part, the students at Douglas High didn’t have any fathers at home. Most had friends and relatives who had been murdered, sometimes right in front of them. Also, this was high school, but a lot of the students were reading at elementary school levels. Many of them hated school anyway and had little respect for anybody because nobody in their lives except maybe their mothers ever did anything decent for them. And they hated authority because their fathers or some policeman would show up occasionally just to lecture them, hassle them, molest them, or smack them around. These kids were also hungry much of the time and rarely had any money unless they stole it or otherwise broke the law to get it. And they were often afraid to walk the streets of their own neighborhoods.

  All this caused them to be shell shocked or otherwise preoccupied. They couldn’t focus on school for the most part, and they especially didn’t like any know-it-all white man telling them about other white guys like George Washington, Theodore Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, or even Abraham Lincoln, who to them, were about as relevant and exciting as a badminton match.

  I really tried to be a good teacher the first couple of years, but they wore me out eventually, and the whole thing is mostly a blur now because I became the walking dead for the next few years, going through the motions, putting the Cs on the F papers to fill the quotas, dumbing down the curriculum, fudging the attendance, and acting like I gave a crap.

  That is, until the last three years when I completely gave up, strolling into class just before the bell rang, popping in a movie, sleeping at my desk, and heading out the door again even before some of the students.

  ***

&nbs
p; I might have lasted till retirement that way, but I became disgusted with myself, so one day I stood up and began teaching again. The students actually listened for a little while—they must have been in shock or something.

  It turns out I had a fire in me. The problem with the fire was that it wasn’t passion. The fire was anger. And when the students sidled back into their old ways, I began ranting and yelling at them. I was going mad. I was that teacher, the crazy one I knew from my own high school.

  Then I lost it completely. It was a Friday, the last period of the day nearly over. I graded papers while the students milled around waiting for the bell to ring. I looked up and spotted a student hanging around the computers in the back of the room acting cagey. I asked him what he was up to, and he ignored me. I asked him again, and he said, “Nothing,” and went back to his seat. I went over there anyway to discover he’d opened three or four hot sauce packets and squirted them all over the computers and keyboards.

  Seven years of pent-up rage exploded in me at that moment. I grabbed the kid by his jacket collar, dragged him across the room, and tossed him about six feet out of the door of my classroom. He rolled on the concrete, scraping his arm.

  His dad, who hadn’t seen a high school since his own expulsion, suddenly became the concerned parent, showing up at the principal’s office every other day to demand my firing, while threatening to file suit against the district.

  ***

  I wasn’t fired. The principal was a drinking buddy of mine, and he managed to calm the guy down. I had to apologize to the student, but that was no big deal—I was sorry about the whole thing anyway.

  But I was done. I finished out the semester and told them I wouldn’t be back. I knew that if I stuck around something else bad was going to happen. My teaching career was over.

  ***

  By that time, Renee and I had been married six years. She took my quitting pretty well. She was good like that. She didn’t worry too much about what I did, as long as I was happy. She made her own money, and I had money saved and some retirement to cash in if it came to that.

  ***

  Gerry, my oldest brother, was always involved in some scheme or entrepreneurial venture. Always legitimate stuff, but schemes nonetheless. He still lived in the Los Angeles area, and knowing I was out of work, he called me up one day to ask me if I wanted in on his latest venture. At the time, a wave of real estate speculation swept the country. His idea seemed sound, to buy a few distressed houses, fix them up, and resell them at a profit. I thought, what the heck, and off we went. It was hard work, but we bought in at the right time because six months later, just after we finished the first house, there was a huge housing boom.

  ***

  This was the beginning of the Illuminati plan to collapse America’s housing market. Once the short term interest-only loans adjusted to the much higher fixed rates, people began borrowing on their own equity to make the house payments. It was unsustainable. The collapse was inevitable.

  ***

  While Gerry and I worked on the houses, I attended a real estate licensing course at night to help with the resale of the properties. We ended up finishing five houses and making a killing off them without paying commissions.

  My brother had guessed the boom wouldn’t last, but at that time it still had a few years left. He decided to move on to another venture. He had always handled the construction end, so I didn’t feel confident going on without him.

  I had some money, but it wouldn’t last forever. I needed a new career. I didn’t like the idea of driving people around to look at houses, so I decided to try my hand at the only other thing my real estate license was good for: lending.

  ***

  I met Justin Lister when I walked into the offices of Mercury Mortgage in response to a newspaper ad he had placed looking for loan officers. He had come from Florida, where his former partners in another mortgage company ousted him for being a complete maniac. He’d convinced the owners of Mercury they needed a lead calling division to acquire more secondary market loans. These were loans that regular banks wouldn’t touch because they were too risky. Justin told them they would make a fortune in rebate and up front charges on these types of loans. They were being sold.

  ***

  My interview with the Justin Lister was the easiest interview I’d ever had. I hardly said a word. He talked and talked, and he didn’t ask me one question he didn’t already know the answer to. He asked questions like, “If I told you that you were going to make $100,000 in your first year here, what would you say?” And I answered something like, “That would be great!” And he said, “Wrong, you should have said you were going to make twice that.”

  And he talked some more. I didn’t remember but a fraction of what he said by the time it was over. But I had the job, and I had a date and time to report for training as a loan officer. I had been sold.

  ***

  Turns out, he didn’t care what I said. He didn’t care about my work history or my degree. He didn’t even care that I had a real estate license. As long as I wasn’t a complete moron, he was just looking for another body to fill his training course. The job itself would weed out the undesirables.

  ***

  My vision of a loan officer was of wearing a suit and tie, escorting a client into a corner office at some quiet bank, showing them to a comfortable chair in front of an elegant wooden desk, sitting them down to discuss the bank’s various loan products.

  This was not to be. What Justin had in mind for us was a boiler room. He had been given one large room full of dozens of tiny desks with phones. The room was attached to a private office at the far end of the bottom floor of Mercury Mortgage. Justin occupied the private office, which had a window into the boiler room, where he could gaze out to ensure we were constantly dialing.

  After all, lead calling was a numbers game. One hundred phone calls meant thirty contacts, which meant ten packages sent to prospective clients, which meant three returns, which meant one deal. The training had been in three parts: Product Knowledge—all about crappy loans; Applications and Qualifications—all about applying for and receiving crappy loans; and Lead Management—all about selling crappy loans.

  ***

  Most of the loans we sold were refinance loans, meaning someone would take their perfectly good loan and turn it into one of our lousy ones. Why did they do it? Because we told them it was a good idea, and because they would get a big check and lower their monthly payments. They could even pay off all their credit cards with one of our loans.

  This was great—for about three years anyway. What did these borrowers end up with after three years? They owed more money on their house at a much higher interest rate, leaving them an ungodly mortgage payment. And they had spent the big check, so they were forced to max out their credit cards again to pay for it all.

  You’re welcome. Thank you for your business.

  ***

  The Lead Management portion of the training consisted of a segment titled Handling Objections. This was training in how to respond to someone having legitimate concerns about the loan you were trying to sell and asking legitimate questions about those concerns. We’d all sit around the boiler room firing questions and comments at each other, practicing the patented rebuttals Justin had provided. It went something like this:

  Prospect: Isn’t it bad to pay only interest?

  Loan Rep: Even with a conventional loan, you’d be paying mostly interest during the first few years. With the market rising the way it is, you’ll be increasing your equity anyway. Take advantage of the lower payments now and we can refinance you again in a couple of years.

  Prospect: How much will this loan cost me?

  Loan Rep: Cost? I’m going to save you on your monthly payments and put a big fat check in your pocket.

  Prospect: I’m not interested.

  Loan Rep: What is it that you’re not interested in? A lower interest rate? Lower monthly payments? Paying off your high interest credit cards?
The big fat check I’m going to put in your pocket?

  Prospect: My credit is horrible right now.

  Loan Rep: As long as you have a job, I can get you a loan.

  Prospect: I’m out of work.

  Loan Rep: Then we definitely need to talk. Right now you need to lower your monthly payments. I have the perfect loan. I can get you a hundred percent financing. You won’t need to show any income. It’s our no income, no asset loan. We call it the NINJA because it’s perfect for a smart yet limited investor like you.

  …And on and on.

  ***

  Justin’s Handling Objections training was flagrantly dishonest. I was a natural. I excelled. In fact, I excelled in all the Loan Officer Training courses.

  Like lead calling, Loan Officer Training was a numbers game. Forty hires meant thirty would show up for training. Thirty trainees meant twenty would finish. Twenty on the phone meant ten would last a month. Ten trainees sticking it out meant five successful loan officers. Five successful loan officers meant one killer.

  I was a killer. A killer had to be fanatically persistent. A good loan officer made 100 to 150 calls a day. I made 250. This was tedious work. Perhaps the long hours in my backyard growing up, pulling the never-ending crop of weeds for my father, had prepared me. A killer had to love rejection. My father and my drill sergeant instilled that quality in me. Finally, a killer had to believe his own lies. That was easy. That was all me.

  ***

  I made close to $40,000 in my first three months as a loan officer, and I was just getting started. My fourth month was looking to be my biggest yet. Justin Lister took me under his wing. This meant that he took me to happy hour with him—every night of the week. I told him I needed to be back at the office making phone calls. He told me not to worry about it. He told me he had bigger plans for us. My work suffered.

  ***

  Justin laid it all out for me over a dozen vodka tonics. He wasn’t planning on managing his division for much longer. Why should the owners of Mercury Mortgage make all the real money off his know-how? I thought we were making great money. He called it chicken feed. He said we should be making ten times what we were being paid. He was going to start his own mortgage brokerage. He needed a partner. He needed a backer. He’d been spending all his money suing his former partners. He was going to get millions out of the case, he said. He knew I had money from my real estate investments and the