Rigged

by Ben Mezrich

  The next hour went by like a blur as David did his best to keep up with the conversation while wolfing down a piece of steak big enough to hang from a meat hook. True to his word, Giovanni kept the dialogue away from business—which was a good thing considering that David was so far below these men in terms of pecking order, he should have been wearing an apron and telling them about the dessert specials. During the meal, David spent much of the time taking mental notes about Giovanni and the others—especially Reston. He still didn’t really know what the Mercantile Exchange was all about, nor did he have any idea what Giovanni and Reston did as chairman and president. But he could tell, even from the nonbusiness conversation, that Reston was sharp, polished, probably a genius. He had a bit of a Texas accent and a little bit of cowboy toughness in his speech patterns, but even so, David could see that the man was as smart as anyone he had gone to school with. From snippets of conversation, he found out a bit about the man’s history. Ten years ago, in his midtwenties, Reston had been some sort of rock-star trader for an oil company in Houston when he’d been invited by an associate he’d met at a conference to work at the Merc. He’d taken the opportunity, even though it had meant a huge pay cut and a major change in lifestyle. He’d quickly risen in prominence, making a small fortune on the trading floor—and catching Giovanni’s eye. Giovanni, who’d first made his fortune in real estate and then doubled it on the trading floor, had already grown to prominence as a key member of the board that ran the Merc. Recognizing Reston’s abilities, the older man had yanked him under his wing. Together, they had built a power base among the board, and when Giovanni had been elected chairman, it hadn’t taken long for him to get Reston the president’s seat, despite the Texan’s age.

  Reston seemed like a straight shooter, brilliant but also hard as nails. David noticed that Reston was somewhat ignoring him during the meal, not openly—nothing rude—but he never seemed to address David directly. It kind of reminded David of the kids at Oxford who wanted nothing to do with the little shit from Brooklyn, so they just pretended he wasn’t there. David couldn’t help wondering if Reston was going to be a problem.

  After the meal was finally cleared away, the billionaire and the consultant demigod excused themselves, and David found himself left alone at the table with Giovanni and Reston. Giovanni quickly ordered another round of scotch; it would be David’s fourth—difficult, but hopefully not disastrous. He’d learned to drink at Oxford, of course, but he’d lost some of his skills over the past two years.

  When the drinks arrived, Reston surprised David by suddenly turning to face him head on, his own drink raised.

  “So, kid,” he said, which seemed kind of funny considering he didn’t look that much older than David, “what do you know about the Merc Exchange? The NYMEX?”

  David touched his scotch to Reston’s, then took a long sip. He could feel Giovanni watching, amused.

  Maybe it was the booze, or maybe it was the massive hunk of meat in his stomach, but David decided it was time to stop being intimidated by these guys just because they were richer, more powerful, smarter—well, goddamn intimidating.

  “Not a damn thing,” he answered.

  Reston laughed.

  “Good fucking answer. Well, it’s not rocket science. An exchange is like a soccer field. It’s where the game takes place. We’re the officials who make sure that the game is played fairly, that everyone follows the rules. The NYMEX started as a potato exchange. That’s right, people came to us to trade potato contracts. Then orange juice and sugar.”

  “And now?” David asked.

  “Energy,” Reston said, slamming his emptied glass of scotch onto the table in front of him. “Ener-fucking-gy.”

  “Nick,” Giovanni chided, “you always gotta complicate things. Oil, David. We trade oil on the NYMEX. Oil is energy, yeah, but it’s more than that. Oil is money. Oil is power. Oil is everything. That’s why we’re the most important institution in the city—fuck it, in the world.”

  David leaned back in his chair, watching the two of them as they played off each other.

  “Nine-eleven,” Reston said, waving a hand above his head as if conjuring it all with one gesture. “You know what one of the first businesses in New York City that reopened after the disaster was? The NYMEX. Not the banks, not the supermarkets, not the schools. The Merc. Because oil is the lifeblood of this country. Our economy runs on it. Hell, oil is the new currency.”

  “And you guys trade oil,” David said, but Giovanni shook his head.

  “No, we run the exchange. The traders trade. Both Nick and I used to be traders. I spent twenty-five years on the floor. Nick put in ten. The traders technically own the NYMEX. But we run it.”

  David nodded. He had a vague notion about the trading world—Merrill Lynch had traders too, guys in suits and suspenders who spent their days on the chaotic New York Stock Exchange, shouting out the orders that were sent down to them via phone and computer from the big boys in the corner offices. Even though he’d been to business school, David knew very little about their work—really just what he’d seen in movies and on TV. But Giovanni and Reston were talking about traders who traded oil, which he guessed was a very different game. Even the word itself, oil, invoked emotion, considering how much it was talked about in the news and on the streets.

  “So the traders control the price of oil,” David started, putting it all together.

  “No,” Reston corrected. “Like on any exchange, supply and demand control the price of oil. The traders try to predict that price, try to react to that price, and try like hell to get rich from that price.”

  “Look,” Giovanni suddenly interrupted, “don’t worry about that right now. Worry about it on Monday, because starting Monday, you work for me.”

  David stared at him. Giovanni finished his scotch, stood up, and walked away from the table, heading right for the restaurant’s front door. David watched in shock, realizing that Giovanni wasn’t coming back. Just like that—starting Monday, you work for me—no title, no salary, just the statement hanging in the air.

  Reston grinned at him.

  “You don’t get it, do you? He wants you to be one of ‘Giovanni’s Kids.’ Make some fucking phone calls, ask around. This is what he does. He finds young guys like you, senses energy in them. He trains you on the Merc and eventually puts you in charge of one of his companies. It’s a golden fucking ticket. But you only have twenty-four hours to decide.”

  Reston reached into his pocket and pulled out a wad of hundreddollar bills. He rose from his seat, throwing the bills onto the table to cover the check.

  “Usually I grow to hate the kids Giovanni throws at me. Little Ivy League brats who end up being way more work than they’re worth. A huge fucking waste of my time. The Merc isn’t something you learn about in some classroom. It’s a battlefield. So don’t take this on lightly. Russo, you know what the difference is between oil and potatoes?”

  He leaned close, grinning like a Cheshire cat.

  “Nobody fights wars over potatoes.”

  Six hours later, David sat on the floor of his apartment, his cordless phone resting precipitously on his lap. The lights were off, the small, spartanly furnished living room bathed in the pseudo-darkness of Midtown at 2:00 a.m. He could hear Serena’s quiet breathing from the bedroom; she had fallen asleep sometime after midnight, after listening to him agonize about the decision for nearly three straight hours. He knew he had a whole day to decide—but he also knew that he wouldn’t get a second of sleep until he made the call, one way or the other.

  He took a deep breath and dialed Giovanni’s office number. Straight to voice mail, Harriet’s matronly voice echoing in his ear:

  “Leave a message for Mr. Giovanni after the tone.”

  David ran a hand through his hair, the decision made.

  “Mr. Giovanni, I’m quitting my job at Merrill tomorrow. I’ll be there Monday morning.”

  He could barely fucking believe it.

  H
e was now, officially, one of Giovanni’s Kids.

  Chapter 6

  September 15, 2002

  Monday morning, 8:59 a.m.

  At first, silence.

  A moment frozen in time, like a reflection caught on a pane

  of glass. Air choked with electric tension, every atomic particle seemingly on the verge of sudden and catastrophic motion. A massive hall with impossibly high ceilings, a warren of low computer tables and cubicled workstations spiraling out from a halfdozen circular pits. And the pits themselves, a few feet descended into the floor of the hall, crowded with men in strange bright jackets—blazers in patterns ranging from dark solids and pastels to intricate stripes and even plaids, some approximating a Jackson Pollock of swirls and even spots, all the colors of the rainbow. A rainbow frozen and hushed like the air around, pregnant with anticipation, exhilaration—and maybe even a little fear.

  Then—chaos.

  It began with a bell. Piercing, metallic, a sound that cut through the tense air and instantly shattered the metaphorical glass. Suddenly, the room exploded. The men in the Jackson Pollock jackets were shouting and physically shoving each other, jockeying for position. Hands were up in the air, fists clenching tiny slips of paper, hoarse voices shouting to be heard over the scuff of shoes, the whir of computers, and the metallic echo of the bell. The fists swung back and forth, the voices cried out, and the tiny slips of paper rained down toward the floor like confetti. Above it all, lights flashed and numbers splayed out across a magnificent, luminescent digital board that hung, precariously, from the ceiling.

  “Welcome to the asylum,” Reston whispered in David’s ear as they stood at the edge of the biggest of the pits, watching the chaos. David jumped back just in time to keep from getting clocked by a wildly gesturing trader in a barber-pole jacket. Reston grinned at him. The asylum. David thought it was a pretty good description of the place. Barely a blip on the radar of the outside world, this frantic trading floor known as the NYMEX was like nothing he had ever seen before. It had taken him twenty minutes slogging up and down the windswept streets of Lower Manhattan to find the place. Finally a cop standing in front of a barricade that had probably been up since 9/11 pointed the way. Lodged in one of the most secure buildings on earth—protected by dozens of armed guards, multiple X-ray scanners, a veritable pincushion of security cameras—and located at the very southernmost tip of Manhattan—as far south as David could go without tasting the Hudson—it was really like something out of a Hollywood movie. Reston had met him by the scanners in the lobby, then led him straight to the trading floor.

  “May as well start at the heart,” he’d said simply, “then work our way up to the brain and the soul.”

  The heart of the Merc seemed like a cardiac arrest waiting to happen. The traders in their brightly colored jackets were shouting so loud that their voices blended into one ear-shattering roar. The slips of paper that represented the only real record of their trades were already ankle-deep across the floor, and it was only a few minutes into the trading day.

  “Christ,” David said. “How does this possibly work?” “Biggest casino in the world. These meatheads are trading billions of dollars a day. It looks like pure chaos, but it’s coordinated.”

  As Reston was talking, one of the meatier of the bunch turned to face them from the pit. A kid really, probably not even David’s age, in a red-and-orange-striped jacket.

  “Hey, Nicky,” he shouted, his voice raspy and used. “I see you brought your girlfriend to work with you.”

  “That’s right, Vitzi,” Reston responded. “This pretty thing is David Russo. Giovanni’s newest pain in my ass. This one’s a Harvard boy.”

  David groaned inwardly. He knew, instinctively, how that was going to go over. Looking around the room at the traders, he felt like he’d suddenly raced backward in time to his childhood split between Staten Island and Brooklyn, to the family reunions and grade-school playgrounds and neighborhood streets. Giovanni and Reston hadn’t been kidding about the makeup of the trading floor. Their ages seemed to range from early twenties to late forties—even a few fifties and sixties in the mix—and it was almost entirely male. Tough guys, from the looks of them, despite their Day-Glo-colored clothes.

  Two more of the traders turned around to look at David, both young men in their twenties like Vitzi, both obviously Italian and more than a little rough around the edges. One was burly, with a protruding paunch and wild brown hair. The other was thin and lanky, with at least two days’ beard growth on his jaw.

  “Just what we need. Another rocket scientist. How long did the last one make it? A week?”

  “I think his mommy came to rescue him by day three,” Vitzi joked back.

  David felt like he was about to get eaten alive. He wanted to respond, nip this shit right from the start—maybe even swing at one of them just to set things right—but he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t want to get fired five minutes into his first day. Especially considering the bridge at Merrill was still burning, and, as far as he could tell, the financial job market hadn’t gotten any better over the weekend.

  Reston responded before he had a chance. “I’m guessing this one is gone by tomorrow, but I’m hoping he makes it a bit longer. Nothing worse for me than having to deal with you boneheads face-to-face.”

  With that, he led David off the trading floor, straight to a bank of elevators. Once they were secure in the ascending steel box, Reston turned to look at him.

  “Those guys are right, you know. You can take your Harvard degree and shove it up your ass.”

  David felt his cheeks turning red. This was going great so far.

  “This place bleeds Brooklyn,” Reston continued as the digital numbers on the elevator readout blinked upward. “This place sweats Queens. This isn’t the New York Stock Exchange. You can’t just get a fancy degree and apply for a job at the Merc. This place is an apprenticeship system, like a fraternity, with secret handshakes and hazing rituals. Those guys are going to call you my girlfriend until you prove to them that you’re not.”

  David wanted to melt into the elevator wall. When he’d met Reston at Morton’s, he’d sensed some animosity, but he’d assumed that it was something he’d be able to work through. He wasn’t so sure anymore.

  “That meathead Vitzi,” Reston continued, “is one of the hottest kids on the floor right now. And he came from fucking nowhere. He’d tell you himself—if he wasn’t doing this, he’d be selling shoes. Grew up on the street in Bensonhurst, stealing car radios and knocking over ATM machines. Somehow stayed out of jail long enough to worm his way into a clerk job here—maybe a cousin or an uncle brought him in. Got paid ten thousand a year to be someone’s bitch—the shittiest fucking job in the world. But he was smart, sharp as a fucking tack. Now he’s playing in the game—and if all goes well, he’ll make fucking millions.”

  David blinked, taking it all in as best he could.

  “I get it. They’re going to haze the hell out of me until I prove myself. You went through this in the beginning too?”

  Reston laughed. “Hey, don’t lump me in with you, Harvard. I’m an Irish kid from Plano, Texas. I nearly flunked out of high school and got into college because I’m good at throwing a baseball. After college, I found out I was good at something else— trading. When I got the offer from the Merc, I’d never been out of Texas—but I hopped on a plane the next day.”

  David tried to imagine getting on that plane, heading off toward the unknown; it wasn’t that hard for him, considering that he’d done the same thing when he’d gone to England, crossing an ocean for the first time.

  “I met my wife on the flight to my first interview,” Reston said. “I became a trader and a New Yorker all in one week. I got my ass handed to me so many times by this place and this city, fuck, you have no idea.”

  “But you hung in there,” David said. He wasn’t just kissing ass, he was truly a bit unnerved by the chaos of the trading floor, and especially the character of the
traders he’d seen. He hadn’t expected Ivy Leaguers, but he hadn’t expected a high school locker room either.

  “They have a saying here: from garbagemen to millionaires. Guys like me and Giovanni and Vitzi come to this place with nothing, scratching and clawing our way through the front door. And if we’re smart, if we’re lucky, if we’ve got the balls—we get rich beyond our wildest dreams.”

  David didn’t know if it was hyperbole or bravado, but if Giovanni was any indication, there had to be some truth to the saying. David had to admit that he liked the sound of it: garbagemen to millionaires.

  “Well, it won’t be the first place I’ve ever been where my education was a negative. That trading floor looked like my family reunion.”

  Maybe he’d have to revert to the person his parents had spent a hundred grand to get rid of—but David wasn’t going to give up as easily as the last Giovanni Kid.

  “Well, don’t throw away your gray matter just yet, boyo, because your office isn’t in the heart of the Merc.”

  The elevator came to a stop, and Reston pointed to the digital readout.

  “Fifteenth floor. This is where you work. The brain.”

  Chapter 7

  The first thing David noticed as he stepped out onto the fifteenth floor was that it was quiet. Wonderfully, soothingly quiet—such a stark contrast from the trading pits downstairs that it was hard to believe both were encased in the same fortresslike building. The second thing he noticed was that straight ahead, at the end of a long, carpeted hallway banked on either side by low cubicles, hung a picture of himself. Eye level, maybe a little crooked, directly above a glass desk behind which sat the woman he’d been picturing for an entire week. He hadn’t been that far off considering that he’d been working only from her voice. She was matronly but pretty, more curves than edges, with overflowing, reddish-brown hair barely controlled by what seemed to be a mix of hair spray, barrettes, and prayer. Though she was wearing a gray suit that looked expensive, her thick makeup and bloodred lipstick and nails told David that she had probably grown up on the same streets as his cousins—well, maybe not Brooklyn, but probably New Jersey. And if she was anything like David’s cousins, although she seemed sweet as sugar, she’d probably have no problem clawing your eyeballs out if you looked at her the wrong way. At the moment, she was all smiles, already up and out of her chair by the time David and Reston had made it halfway down the long carpeted hall.