Rigged

by Ben Mezrich

  “I’m not missing my first board meeting because of a stomachache,” he said as he pushed the door open. An icy breeze swept into the car from the direction of the river, sending a shiver down his spine. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Maybe you’re just nervous,” Serena responded, her hands still on the steering wheel, but he could tell from the way she said it that she didn’t believe it herself. She knew him better than that. Sure, he got nervous, but he was also the most driven guy either of them knew. Nerves had never brought him down before. And nerves couldn’t possibly explain the waves of nausea that were moving up his body.

  Of all the days to get food poisoning, this had to be the worst. It was like some supernatural sick joke. At least Serena had been able to borrow her sister’s car to drive him down to the Merc—or at least as close as they could get to the bright blue police barriers that kept traffic away from the fortified building—so that he didn’t have to take the subway, which would have been a real adventure, considering how rotten he felt. Anyway, there was no way he was going to miss his second day of work. Especially since Giovanni would be there.

  “I’ll survive,” David said, managing a forced smile. He shut the car door and hurried past the police barricades. More pain shot through his stomach as he half-jogged the two blocks to the front entrance of the Merc, but he refused to acknowledge it, refused to let it slow him down. At the very least, he was determined to make it through the morning. He’d reassess the situation after lunch.

  After getting buzzed through the glass revolving doors, David made short work of the security procedures, passing through the twin metal detectors and showing his brand-new work ID to the armed guards stationed outside the lobby elevators. David also had a trading-floor ID pinned to the lapel of his understated, offthe-rack, gray-blue suit jacket, but he hoped he wouldn’t be seeing the trading floor anytime soon. He doubted his upset stomach would be able to handle the chaos at the moment. It was going to be hard enough coming face to face with Gallo again after the episode of the night before.

  Leaning against a corner of the elevator as it rose upward through the building, David went over the scene again in his head. He’d relayed the entire episode to both Serena and his mother after he’d gotten home from work, and neither of them could believe how over the top the guy had been, or how Reston had simply laughed it off—as if that sort of animosity was expected and even condoned. David was glad his father hadn’t been on the phone as well—knowing him, David figured his advice would have involved a baseball bat and an inevitable assault charge. David knew he got most of his hotheadedness from his father; the women in his life were his counterbalance—or at least as much counterbalance as a fifty-year-old Sicilian fireball and a twentyfive-year-old Latina bombshell could be.

  Both had eventually suggested to David that Gallo’s posturing was just that—a bit of dramatics to impress the traders who worked for him. David had an instinctive feeling that it was more than that—and that the turf war between Giovanni and the board and Gallo and the other traders was real and problematic—but he assumed he would learn how to stay out of the line of fire. Until then, he’d have to keep his eye on Gallo, at least until the guy accepted him, and do his best to prove himself upstairs and downstairs. Despite what Reston and Gallo might think, he wasn’t just another Harvard boy slumming under Giovanni’s wing; he came from the same place as Gallo and the traders, so he was in a unique situation of having a foot in both worlds. If he could figure out how to use his background and his skills, he was certain he could thrive.

  But first, he had to survive his second day at work. The minute he stepped out onto the fifteenth floor, he saw that things were different in the brain on the morning of a board meeting. The place was full of people—mostly men in their forties and fifties, well dressed in suits and ties, all heading toward one of the doors at the end of the long hall lined with cubicles. Harriet was standing in front of her desk, handing each of the men a thick envelope as they passed by. When she saw David coming toward her, she rolled her eyes and waved one of the envelopes in his direction.

  “Notes from last week, new business, holiday pledge drive, etcetera,” she said. He noticed she was chewing gum, and despite the pain that was still rising up from his stomach, he had to smile. He liked her more and more.

  He took the envelope from her and glanced at the steady stream of men in suits.

  “So this is the board?”

  “Everybody’s here. There are thirty of them altogether. And the Don, of course, who always makes an appearance. He’s inside already. Mr. Giovanni too. You probably should have gotten here a little earlier today, but you’ll know better next time.”

  David nodded. He would have gotten there earlier if he hadn’t been busy throwing up in a corner of the parking garage where Serena’s sister stored the VW. He glanced past Harriet at a blank spot on the wall above her desk.

  “What happened to my picture, Harriet? Are you moving on to someone else already? I thought I’d last in your heart at least a week.”

  Harriet smiled, then shrugged. “Actually, it was gone when I got to work. I guess Mr. Giovanni wanted to make room for another kid, just in case you don’t work out.”

  David was pretty sure she was joking.

  “I’ll bring you a new one if I last the month,” he said, and he moved past her with a wink.

  The fifteenth floor’s main board room was pretty much what David had expected, having spent a fair amount of time in similar rooms at various investment banks and consulting companies during the hellish job interview process before business school graduation. Rectangular, antiseptic, with high ceilings and stark white walls, except for one side that was nearly all tinted glass, overlooking the river down below. A huge oak table, surrounded by high-backed matching wooden chairs, took up most of the room. Most of the seats were already occupied; a good dozen more men had also congregated at the back of the room, where a table of bagels, doughnuts, and trays loaded with Styrofoam cups of coffee had been set up.

  David quickly located Giovanni at the head of the table, deep in conference with Reston, who was leaning over his right shoulder. Mendelson was a few seats down from Reston; David would have had to go under the table to see if Mendelson was still barefoot, but he had no reason to believe otherwise. Mendelson saw him, smiled, then pointed to a chair that was placed a few feet behind Giovanni’s commanding position, right beneath a huge, blank blackboard. David silently thanked the older trader and quickly made his way toward the chair.

  Giovanni saw him as he passed by and gave him a quick wink and a thumbs-up. David smiled back, relieved that the daggers in his stomach had momentarily subsided. Maybe whatever he had eaten had finally surrendered, and anatomical peace had been restored.

  As David lowered himself into his seat beneath the blackboard, his eyes wandered to the far end of the long wooden table, directly across from Giovanni’s roost. It didn’t take him long to spot Gallo: the dilapidated crown of steel-gray hair, the deep-set dark eyes, and, of course, the cigar clamped between his teeth. Gallo was also the only man in the room not wearing a suit; he had traded his zebra-striped jacket for what looked to be a velour zippered pullover. David could only guess that the man was wearing matching sweatpants. Christ, what his father would have said at the sight of the old-school multimillionaire powerbroker. Gallo really was something right out of the goddamn Sopranos.

  Giovanni cleared his throat, and the board members milling around the breakfast table quickly took their seats. Reston started the meeting off by reading from a prepared list of items, most of which David did not understand because they had to do with regulatory policies and day-to-day exchange business. It wasn’t until Reston got into the more esoteric subject of where the exchange was heading that David really perked up and listened. A difficult task, considering that his stomach had started bubbling again, and there was now a strange rushing sound deep in his ears.

  “As you all know,” Reston was saying, “the f
uture is coming at us pretty fast. Trading software is getting more sophisticated by the day, and it won’t be long until a fully automated energy exchange is possible—”

  “Over my dead body.”

  Even through the rushing in his ears, David recognized the voice immediately. It had been seared into his skull the night before. Gallo had both hands splayed out on the wooden table in front of him and was giving Reston and Giovanni a look of pure hatred.

  “I said ‘possible,’” Reston repeated. “Whether we want to go in that direction or not is something to study and discuss—”

  “Study and discuss all you want,” Gallo interrupted again. “Meanwhile, we traders will continue to trade, making millions for ourselves and for you fat cats up here.”

  There were whispers moving around the room as other board members glanced at Gallo angrily but didn’t dare to speak up. Giovanni put a hand on Reston’s shoulder, then smiled across the table at Gallo.

  “We’re not here to argue about the future, just to take a look at where it’s heading. We might just already have the most efficient way the world knows to price oil—for all the chaos, I know as well as you that the system works. A perfect market, in a way, with purposefully imperfect parts. But that doesn’t mean we stick our heads in the sand. We keep our eyes open, we study the changes that are happening around us, and we react if we have to.”

  Gallo rolled his eyes, then tapped cigar ash toward the carpet.

  “Whatever floats your boat. Have your new Harvard kid write up a few hundred pages for all of us to look at. I’m still using the papers your last kid drew up to insulate my beach house.”

  There was laughter all around. David would have blushed at yet another mention of his degree had not the rush in his ears suddenly become a dull roar. It was so bad that when he felt a buzz in his pants pocket he thought maybe it was something else internal erupting—then realized it was actually his BlackBerry going off. He thought about ignoring it, but then decided that the tension was so obvious between Giovanni and Gallo, nobody in the room would be looking at him.

  He slid the BlackBerry out of his pocket and glanced at the screen. To his surprise, the text was from Reston:

  You look like shit.

  David looked up, but Reston was facing the other direction. David reached a hand to his forehead—and felt a sheen of sweat so thick it drenched his sleeve. The roar in his ears was so loud now that he could barely hear Giovanni responding to Gallo— something about the exchange needing to get out of the dark ages—and then he couldn’t hear anything at all because the daggers of pain in his stomach suddenly exploded in full force. He felt like he was being torn in half. He screamed, then saw the floor rising up at him. The next thing he knew he was lying on his back on the carpet, surrounded by board members. He struggled to focus and found himself staring right at a pair of bare feet.

  Then Reston had one of his arms and Mendelson the other, and they quickly half-dragged, half-led him out of the boardroom. Giovanni was a few feet behind, shouting into his cell phone, something about having the car ready to take David straight to the hospital. David tried to say something, but Harriet put a damp washcloth over his face and took over for Reston and Mendelson. She was obviously much stronger than she looked, as she had no problem guiding him into the elevator. David’s last view of the fifteenth floor was from behind the washcloth: the board members peering out through the open boardroom door, while Reston, Mendelson, and Giovanni returned to the meeting, Giovanni shouting at the gawkers that everything was under control. Then the elevator doors slid shut, and David was alone with his pain, mortification, and Harriet.

  “Don’t worry, Mr. Giovanni’s limo is waiting by the lobby doors. The driver will take you right to the hospital. I got your mother’s number from your employment forms, and she already called your girlfriend. I’m sure you’re going to be okay.”

  David tried to thank her, but the pain was so intense that it took all of his strength not to curl up on the floor. After an eternity in the elevator, they finally reached the lobby. As Harriet handed him off to a pair of security guards to take him to the limo, she whispered in his ear:

  “Now that’s what I call making a first impression. First time I’ve seen the Don drop his cigar in fifteen years.”

  David didn’t have time to enjoy her sense of humor, as suddenly his knees buckled and his world went pitch-black.

  Chapter 11

  David came awake to the sound of classical music.

  He was lying flat on his back with a piano on his chest and thick white tape over his eyes. Someone was repeatedly kicking him in the stomach, and he was pretty sure at least two other people were busily drilling holes in his skull.

  Or at least that’s what it felt like. In actuality, when he finally managed to force open his stuck-together eyelids, he saw that he was lying in a hospital bed with an IV line in each arm and bandages covering most of his bare stomach. Bright fluorescent ceiling lights brought tears to his dry eyes, and he had to blink a few thousand times before he could barely make out the rest of the small private hospital room through the haze of his anesthesia hangover; the stark white walls with poorly placed artwork, the shelves that seemed to be lined with medical equipment, the TV hanging from a telescoping arm attached to the ceiling, the small, shuttered window with bars on the outside. He wasn’t sure what the bars were for, but the way his stomach felt, he was kind of glad jumping to his death wasn’t really a viable option. Of course, even without the bars, he would have had to make it past Serena, who was standing at the edge of his bed, a concerned look on her face. She had something in her hands, a strange, tubelike device with a bag on one end made out of bright red plastic. David blinked again, wondering if his vision was still fucked up from the anesthesia, but he couldn’t quite make out what the object was.

  “You’ve got some interesting work friends, David. They could have just sent flowers.”

  Then David realized with a start that the thing Serena was holding was an enema. He looked past her, again taking in the small hospital room, and realized that his eyes had played tricks on him—that wasn’t art on the walls or medical devices on the shelves. Enemas, literally hundreds of them, were piled up in every corner of the small hospital room, covering the windowsill and the shelves, hanging from the walls like makeshift modern art.

  David let his head fall back on the pillow. He almost had to laugh, even though it hurt to even think about laughing. His appendix bursts, he nearly dies on the way to the hospital—and some sick fuck fills his room with enemas? Scratch that, it had to have taken half a dozen people to outfit his room like this—and to do it all while he was in surgery, getting his abdomen suctioned out—Christ, whoever was behind this was really twisted.

  “How do you know it was someone from work?” David finally managed, coughing out the words.

  Serena walked around the side of the bed and held something over his head, so that he could see without moving from the pillow.

  It was the black-and-white picture from above Harriet’s desk. David’s face had been disfigured by a note written across his forehead in bright red indelible ink: welcome to the merc.

  Beneath the scrawl was a signature. It took David a few seconds to make a name out of the dramatic, swirling letters: dominick “the don” gallo.

  David tried to raise a hand to take the picture from her, but the IV line held him back. He was too weak to crumple the thing into a ball anyway. He could hardly believe Gallo had done something so juvenile—but then, that seemed to be the culture of the traders. Giovanni had put the picture up on Harriet’s wall in the first place, after all. David decided he’d just have to write the enemas off as a form of hazing. Still, he was pretty sure it was going to be a story he’d have to live down for the rest of his time at the Merc. Keeling over in the middle of his first board meeting, then having his hospital room filled with enemas. He was only glad that his mother wasn’t there to see the practical joke. Though she and his father
would certainly be there within the hour—Serena was going to have a hell of a job getting rid of the evidence before they arrived.

  “I know,” Serena said, as if reading his mind. “I’ll get some orderlies to help me clear it out. David, are you sure that this job is really for you?”

  David gritted his teeth. He was guessing that both his father and mother would be asking the same question when they arrived. Not only was the Merc obviously full of maniacs, but David was taking a pay cut to be there. And Giovanni, his hero— well, the man had gotten David to the hospital and had obviously called ahead, because one of the top surgeons in New York had been waiting when David arrived. The doctor had explained what was going on even as the anesthesiologist was putting him under—that he was about to have an emergency appendectomy, that they were lucky to have gotten to him in time. But it wasn’t Giovanni waiting in the hospital room for him when he woke up—it was Serena and Gallo’s enemas.

  Mindful of the IV tubes, David reached for Serena’s hand. Her skin felt warm, and he could see the concern in the corners of her dark eyes.

  “This could have happened anywhere. It was just bad luck—” “I’m not talking about your appendix,” she said, shaking her dark curls. “David, this Gallo, and the traders, and even Giovanni. When you told me about them, I thought you were exaggerating. Now I see that you weren’t. If you had gotten sick at Merrill, you think this would be the response? I feel like you’re taking a long step back.”

  David gave her hand a little tug. She leaned forward so that he could touch her lips with his.

  “I’ve got to at least give it a little more time,” he said.

  The truth was, there was no way he was going to quit after two days. Because that’s exactly what Gallo and the other traders probably expected him to do. Even Reston, he guessed, wouldn’t have been that unhappy to see him go. To them, he was just Giovanni’s new kid. A pawn in the strange political battle between the board and the trading floor. A Harvard geek who’d taken a wrong turn somewhere and somehow ended up in the middle of a street fight.