by Peter Israel
The Great White, at the time, applauded the decision—the Great White is very hands-on, too, or likes to think he is—but who knows, maybe it was a mistake. Hey, if I’d been on the thirty-ninth all along, maybe I wouldn’t have to deduce what’s coming down, secondhand, from Annabelle Morgan and hints dropped by others, and the great glum, doom-filled quiet that prevails in the Aquarium this Tuesday morning in October.
It’s like a morgue, a deep-sea catacomb. It’s like the middle of the night or a weekend except the phones are blinking, the CRT’s humming, and people are at their desks. But not talking. Human bodies, living, breathing—but barely. I can feel the pall, the droop. Eye contact at a minimum.
Hey, what the fuck’s going on? For Christ’s sake, aren’t I their honcho, their cheerleader, their wet nurse all rolled into one?
Not today. Today I’m Them. I’m a shark.
I get it out of Howie. Another kid from Dartmouth, tall and gangly—they don’t make shirtsleeves long enough for MacFarlane’s arms. I culled him from the surviving trainees last year. I thought he had the makings of a seller. He did. I check him on Mulcahy—yes, he’s already done Mulcahy—then pull him off the line.
“What the fuck’s going on?” I ask him in my office.
“You don’t know?” he challenges back.
“I don’t know squat,” I say. “You tell me.”
He stares at me a minute. I can see the Adam’s apple bobble in his throat.
“Either you don’t,” he says finally, “or you’re a bigger son of a bitch than I thought.”
“I’ve been called worse, babe,” I say. “Let’s have it.”
“It,” at least according to MacFarlane, is going to be a bloodbath. The Aquarium is already calling it Bloody Wednesday. According to MacFarlane, there’s going to be a deep slice right through the whole company, every department, from the mailroom up to and including managing directors. According to MacFarlane, they’re cutting checks in New Jersey even as we speak—New Jersey’s our backroom—and Schwartzenberg is out there, personally overseeing the operation.
I grill him. What does he know firsthand? It turns out he knows shit firsthand. But it’s all around, he protests. So-and-so has heard this, so-and-so that. There’s a hit list, he says. Someone he knows—an anonymous source—claims to have seen it.
I chalk it up to the Aquarium, at least for his benefit. In that frenzied, sealed-in atmosphere, rumors sprout, and die, like fungi. Maybe one or two people are getting canned, maybe more, but by the time the Aquarium is done with it, it’s Bloody Wednesday.
I chalk it up to the Street. It’s been going on all year—ten percent cuts, twenty in one or two places—and you hear the kids getting off on severance packages and personal bankruptcy instead of BMW’s and Rolexes. Probably people MacFarlane went to school with are lining up for unemployment.
Sure it’s enough to make you jump at shadows. Who wouldn’t jump?
But aren’t we insulated? Mr. Average Joe Investor, who got blown out of the market in ’87, has never been our customer. What does The Cross give a shit if he’s still on the sidelines? We still have our S&L’s (those that haven’t gone under), and the commercials, the insurance guys, the pension funds, the credit unions, assorted other heavy hitters.
MacFarlane just said something that didn’t register. Maybe it didn’t register because I’m thinking: Aren’t we insulated in other ways too? But that’s for me to know and Howie to guess at. The way I guessed at it, once upon a time.
“I’m sorry,” I say, “run that by me again?”
“I said: ‘For God’s sake, Bear, you don’t have to recruit me.’”
I stare at him a second. Then burst out laughing. He has me there. What I’ve just laid on him is a version of my recruiting speech, the same one I used earlier in the year. (Yeah, they put me on the committee, what the hell are you going to do?) And Howie should know, shouldn’t he? Didn’t I make him work on the sucker?
“I’m sorry, babe,” I say. “I get carried away. But it’s true, you know? And do you think any of my guys would get canned without my knowing about it? Look, I still say it’s bullcock, but I’ll make some calls. If there’s anything there, I’ll let you know. Meanwhile, the meter’s running, and if all we can do is sit here, schmoozing each other, aren’t we stealing our fucking salaries?”
He leaves, shaking his head—either I’m the asshole, or he is. Fair enough. If he’s right, then the only thing I can figure out is that, tomorrow morning at nine-thirty, the Great White is going to give me a quota: This many stay, Bear, this many go, you do your own dirty laundry.
But that makes no sense either. Look at the record, Leon, I tell him in my mind. There’s not a swinging dick among them who hasn’t made us a bundle, by any measurement. If you’re really talking about contribution to the bottom line, then my guys are fucking untouchable.
Besides, that’s not the Great White’s style. Leon Gamble is strictly management-by-intimidation. The more I think about it, the more I think that, if there’s going to be a bloodbath, he’ll want it known, inside The Cross and out, that he’s looked every sacrifice in the eyeballs. Even if it takes him from sunrise to sunset.
With Schwartzenberg at his elbow in case someone brings up a legal question?
I make some inside calls. It’s one of those mornings, though. Is half the thirty-ninth floor already out to lunch, at ten-thirty?
Out of a few stray spores does paranoia grow.
I make some outside calls.
I call Penzil.
As well as being my tennis partner and train buddy, he’s as plugged in as anybody I know on the Street. Maybe he’s got to be. A sawed-off runt, ex-Marine, Fordham Law—that’s love-forty, game, set, and match, in Skull & Bones country. Plus he’s older than most associates. But Joe’s going to make partner at Lambert Laughin Spain or bust his gut trying.
“What’s up, Bear?” he says. “You guys already made your nut for the day?”
Old gag.
“You hearing anything about us? The Cross, I mean? Like the great shakeout coming?”
“How would I hear something like that and you not?”
“There’re rumors flying all over the place. Something about a hit list. And Gamble wants to see me tomorrow morning.”
“Oh, c’mon, Bear. You? Either it’s a slow day over there, or somebody’s put something in your coffee.”
I agree with him. Still.
He’s heard nothing, he says, but he promises to make a call or two—discreet ones, he says—and let me know if he finds out anything.
He calls back within the hour.
“I think you’d better talk to your rabbi,” he says.
I stand up in my chair.
“Why?” I say. “You mean something is happening?”
“Just what I said.”
“Come on, Joe! For Christ’s sake, you’re my best friend! What do you hear, who’d you hear it from?”
“I can’t, Bear.”
Then the full import of it hits home.
“You mean it’s me too?” I say, unbelieving.
“Just do what I say. We’ll talk later.”
And he’s gone. Joseph E. Penzil, Esq.
My rabbi.
That’s what Penzil’s always called him. Not even Penzil knows his identity.
I spend the afternoon in a state of shock, trying to raise him. I call at one—out to lunch; at two—not back yet; at three—yes, he’s back, but tied up in a meeting.
Do I really not want to leave a number where he can reach me?
No, it’s okay, I’ll call back later.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Elgin, I’ve given him your message. Are you sure there’s nothing I can help you with?”
Elgin’s my code name, for when I had to call him at work.
“No. Just tell him it’s pretty urgent. I’ll call back.”
I try to raise Penzil again—maybe I can squeeze something more out of him—but he’s out of the office, gone fo
r the day. So is everybody else, it seems. Except me. And my rabbi.
He’s the one who insisted on the code names, all the hush-hush stuff. The way he once put it, Wall Street is networks within networks—that’s how it operates—and the most effective ones are those the fewest people know about. Georgie calls him my CIA crony. Once I asked him if he himself had ever done a turn at the Company. He only laughed, shaking his head, said, “But I knew a number of people who did. Probably I could have, too. In my day, they used to recruit the campuses quite openly, alongside Procter & Gamble, Merrill Lynch, other Fortune Fives.”
Francis Hale Holbrook, Dartmouth ’56.
When you get down to it, how much else do I know about him?
It doesn’t matter. What matters is that, twice during my career at The Cross, at crunch time, I went to him and lightning came out of the bottle.
Finally, near five, I raise him. No, he’s heard nothing about imminent events at Shaw Cross. If I want—but is it really that urgent?—he can arrange to meet me later. He’ll have to do some juggling.
It’s really that urgent, I tell him.
Half an hour later, I call him back. Yes, he’ll meet me for dinner, but not until eight-thirty.
I go uptown to the club, run into a few people I know and back onto the street. They’re all letting it hang out a little, after a day in the trenches, and for once, I’m not up to it. Hey, they’re all employed! For all I know, at nine-thirty tomorrow morning, Big Bear will be kaputski. The more I think about it, the more it makes no sense. The more it makes no sense, the more I need a drink.
I head for a friendly Third Avenue saloon.
The thing is, there are no jobs on Wall Street. The traffic is all one way.
By the time I remember to call Georgie, from Third Avenue, probably I’ve had one or two too many.
“How can you do this to me?” in her most plaintive voice, when I tell her I’m still in the city. “I’m seven months pregnant, and all by myself, and stuck with a kid who won’t go to sleep, and you know how I hate the house alone at night.”
We’ve only lived there six years. We’ve got the whole place wired by a system that cost a sweet ten grand. If a mouse so much as farts in the house when the system’s on, the St. George cops’ll be at the front door inside of five minutes.
But Georgie is Georgie.
I suggest she ask the sitter to stay on.
“Harriet?” she says. “Do you have any idea what time it is?” It’s almost seven. “She’s out of here like a shot at six. Her damned stepfather. You know she won’t work at night!”
Do I? Maybe I do. I’ve never even met the girl. I’m gone when she shows up in the morning; she’s gone by the time I get home.
“Look, Georgie,” I say, “I can’t help myself. Something’s come up.”
“Something always comes up. Do you realize how many nights you’ve been home on time this month?”
I don’t. She reminds me. I remind her that a big part of my job is schmoozing the customers. When they come to New York, they don’t want their Aquarium man, they want Big Bear—and dinner, a Broadway show, the watering holes afterward.
But this is different.
“I’ve got to see Holbrook,” I say.
“Holbrook! For God’s sake, why can’t you talk to him on the phone?”
I decide, on the spur, not to get into it. As far as Georgie’s concerned, the money’s my problem, always has been. As long as the bills get paid—and that includes her gardener, her pool man, her trainer, her housekeeper, her baby-sitter, and all her other assorted cooks and bottle-washers—she doesn’t care where it comes from.
I want it that way too, she’d tell you.
“It’s okay, honey,” I said. “It’s just dinner, and I don’t have the car. Not to worry, I’ll make the eleven-thirty at the outside. I’ll call you when I know.”
“Okay,” she says, her voice small and tight, “you do that.”
She hangs up first.
Later, I walk east—way east, almost to the edge of Sutton Place. I have to get my act together—for the restaurant as well as Holbrook. He doesn’t like disarray. As for the restaurant, it’s the kind of joint almost guaranteed to put guys like me ill at ease—with the menu all in French, and the stuff on trolleys you don’t recognize, and maître d’s and assistant maître d’s hovering, talking rapid-fire French to each other over your head.
When I get there, Holbrook’s already at the table and deep in consultation with the chef, a blue-eyed young Frog in a white hat and apron. They’re organizing our meal together—I’ve never known Holbrook to order off the menu, although he always reads it—and after introductions and handshakes, the chef wiping his hand on his apron first, I sit, order a Scotch from the hovering maître d’, and wait for them to finish.
Francis Hale Holbrook, Dartmouth ’56.
Beyond that, there’s a wife I’ve never met, two children in college (only the younger one—a girl—is up at Hanover), a house in Pound Ridge, another on the Vineyard, a third in Palm Beach.
He likes to sail. Obviously, he’s something of an epicure. He’s also a—what’s the word?
Oenophile.
Physically, he’s hardly changed. When I first met him—it was the winter of ’77, when he tried to recruit me for his company—he reminded me of a diplomat more than a Wall Street buccaneer. He still does. It’s not just the elegance—never a hair out of place, the foulard tie impeccably knotted, the handkerchief in his lapel pocket—but the set of his head, the way he talks. He has one of those narrow, fine-featured, New England faces that never seem to grow old and this clipped, sometimes ironic manner of speaking. On the Street, although his name’s familiar, and his firm’s certainly is—small, specialized, immensely profitable—what you get is, “Holbrook? Oh yeah, they say he’s one smart son of a bitch,” or, closer to the point, “Even the guys who work there don’t know him very well.”
My rabbi.
Although I turned him down in ’77, we stayed in touch. I see him maybe a couple of times a year, phone calls in between. Old school tie aside, I’ve sometimes wondered what’s in it for him, but all he’s ever said is that he needs to keep tabs on the young Turks in the business.
Dinner is served. I eat because it’s there. I lay it out for him, trying to keep the paranoia out of my voice. I have a few more Scotches. He sips claret, carves his meat.
He’s heard something too. Without the specifics, the word is around that Shaw Cross is cutting back.
“In fact,” he says, “if you hadn’t called this afternoon, I was going to call you.”
From Shaw Cross’s point of view, he’s not surprised. The nature of the beast, he says. The beast, meaning Wall Street, grew fat during the seventies and eighties, not just in the form of salaries, but in office space, information systems and so on. The bloated giants of the industry, he says, were the worst offenders—prodigious waste—and now they’ve panicked. But even comparatively well-run firms like Shaw Cross face it too: a tired economy, a depleted customer base, and cutthroat competition for the remaining investment dollar.
At some point, I say, “All this may be true, Frank, and I’m not disagreeing, but where does it leave me? As far as I know, at nine-thirty tomorrow morning, Leon Gamble’s going to bite my legs off at the knees!”
“Are you sure?” he asks, unperturbed.
“Reasonably sure.”
“How can you be, if you haven’t talked to him yet?”
“I have my sources.”
“Good ones?”
“I think so. I hear there’s a list, a long one, and I’m on it.”
He thinks about it a moment.
“Putting aside the question of whether or not that would make sense from Shaw Cross’s point of view, can they do that?”
“What, fire me? Sure they can.”
“Really? I thought you had an employment agreement.”
“I do. It terminates in January.”
“So that at th
e very least, they’ve got to pay you from now till then?”
“That’s right. Ninety days, give or take.” With taxes coming up, I think, and a house that’s worth less now than its mortgage, and a wad of bills to choke a fucking horse.
“What’s the renewal clause in your agreement? I assume it has one.”
“Yeah. Ninety days. Their option to renew. They’ve got to let me know ninety days before termination.”
“I see. And they’ve said nothing to you before now?”
“Not in so many words,” I answer. “The truth is, I never thought about it.” And for Christ’s sake, why should I have? I’m a fucking fixture, like the furniture. There’s something else on the tip of my tongue too: that if it ever comes to hardball, I can give them a very hairy time. But Holbrook is Holbrook; down and dirty’s not his style. Instead I say, “You’re right, Frank. I won’t know anything for sure till nine-thirty tomorrow morning. But haven’t you always told me: anticipate? Try to see what’s coming and be ready for it?”
He nods, smiles his tight New England smile.
“Touché,” he says. Then: “And so? What do you see coming?”
He’s waiting for me, fork raised, still smiling faintly. Maybe it’s been too long a day, but I’m missing his point.
“I think I’m about to be fired,” I blurt out. “Tomorrow morning. That’s about as far as I can see right now.”
His eyebrows go up, the fork lowers.
“I was thinking a little longer term,” he says. “Let me phrase it differently. What do you see Larry Coffey doing with the rest of his life? Is he going to stay a hired hand, if a highly paid one? At Shaw Cross? Elsewhere?”
For just a second, I think he’s about to offer me a job.
No. On the contrary, he says that, as far as he’s concerned, he’d jump at early retirement, if he could only find someone to offer it to him. I take this as a joke—isn’t he CEO of Holbrook & Company?—but he means it too. For antediluvians like himself, he says, the game is about played out anyway. But for me?
“All I’m suggesting, Larry, is that you raise your sights a little. Nobody can say what the investment business of tomorrow is going to look like, but for young people with brains, experience, connections, times of crisis are also times of incredible opportunity. Maybe in your current state of mind, all you can see—understandably enough—is your head on the block and the sword in the air and a bunch of bills to be paid. By the way, when’s your new baby due?”