by Ben Mezrich
Instead of a response, Giovanni reached out and gave him a full embrace. Then he headed for the door, Reston right behind him.
“You keep your head down and do whatever the fuck Nicky tells you to do,” Giovanni said as he exited the room. “And, David, don’t ever forget: there’s a lot more to be scared of around here than bears.”
With that, David was left alone in his office.
Windows, walls, and a door. His own goddamn office.
The rest of the day went by so fast, David didn’t even mind the fact that he was still boxing up his cubicle when Harriet passed by on her way home—a sure sign that he was the last one left standing, aside from the security guards and an odd janitor or two. He was so engulfed in the boxes and his own thoughts that it took him a moment to realize Harriet had paused behind him, looking over his shoulders at his piles of crap and multiple binders of unfinished projects. Then she shook her head.
“I feel like my little boy’s moving away to college or something,” she said, offering a sad smile. “I kind of liked having you out here. Now you’ll have a door that you can close, and I won’t have anyone to bitch at when I’m PMS-ing.”
David grinned at her. As far as he could tell, Harriet was the only one Reston and Giovanni had told about the change that was coming tomorrow—although she’d only mentioned it once to David during the day, when he’d caught her tearing up on her way back from lunch. Giovanni’s leaving had been a huge blow to her, since she’d been working for him for such a long time. But she seemed genuinely proud that David was moving up so fast—and she seemed at worst neutral on Reston’s temporary ascension to the Merc’s highest office.
“You know my door is always open to you,” David res ponded, still in disbelief that he’d have an actual door, let alone one that he could close. “And I could use a good bitching-out once or twice a week, just to keep me grounded.”
Harriet gave him a little hug, then started back toward the elevators.
“Try not to stay all night again,” she said as she disappeared from view. “It’s after ten already. If this keeps up, my boyfriend is going to run away with your girlfriend, and then where will we be? Stuck with each other for good?”
David laughed and went back to boxing up his things. The job was taking longer than it should have because he was having trouble concentrating. He was boiling up inside with his good news—and dying to tell someone, especially Serena and his parents. He hadn’t yet informed them of his good news because he didn’t think it was the sort of thing you announced over the phone. And since Giovanni and Reston weren’t making any noise about it until tomorrow, he figured it was best to keep things quiet while he was still in the building. With all the security the place had, God only knew who was listening.
Ten minutes later, he finally gave up on trying to sort through the files stacked next to his desk and simply jammed them all into the last available cardboard box. Then he grabbed his jacket off his chair and headed toward the elevator.
The fifteenth floor was like a ghost town; Harriet had obviously hit the main lights on her way out, and only a few errant lamps kept the place even remotely aglow.
David reached the elevator and hit the button for the lobby, then yanked his coat on over his shoulders. The lights above the elevator doors indicated that it was on its way down from the lounge upstairs, only a few floors away. David had just begun to straighten his lapels when the elevator doors slid open—and he suddenly found himself face to face with Dominick Gallo.
The Don twirled his still smoldering cigar, then stepped to one side, making room.
“On your way home, Mr. Vice President of Strategy?”
Christ. David considered taking the stairs. But he knew he had no choice now; Gallo wasn’t going to let him off that easy. He gritted his teeth and stepped into the metal box, a bare few feet from the old trader. The air inside the elevator was heavy with a noxious mixed scent of cigar, whiskey, and aftershave. David tried to breathe shallow as the elevator doors slid shut in front of him—leaving him truly alone with Gallo for the first time since he’d arrived at the Merc.
“You must be pretty excited,” Gallo said, putting the cigar back in his mouth.
David glanced at him, realizing for the first time that he was a good head taller than the old man—even counting the three inches of wiry silver hair sprouting up from Gallo’s head. Still, the Don was such a presence, it felt like there was barely room for both of them in the elevator.
“I guess even secrets travel fast around here,” David responded, returning his gaze to the elevator doors. He was counting seconds in his head, wishing that the damn box could go a little faster.
“Nothing goes on here without me knowing about it.”
Gallo was facing him head-on now, that cigar pumping up and down. Even by way of his peripheral vision, David could tell that the man was fuming. His deep-set eyes had narrowed in their concentric pockets of blackened skin, and his yellowed teeth were visible all the way to the gums.
“Like your little excursions with some of the younger floor traders. You’ve made quite an impression on my boys, kid. Some of them even think of you as one of ’em. But I know better.”
David shrugged his shoulders.
“I’m not trying to cause any problems, sir. Just making friends and trying to learn about the business.”
Gallo cocked his head to the side, then took his cigar out of his mouth and pointed it at David.
“You really want to learn something about this business?”
David glanced at the old man. Part of him wanted to crawl right up through the ceiling panels of the elevator and shimmy up the cable to freedom—but another side of him couldn’t help but take the bait. Maybe, somehow, he could get Gallo to warm to him. Or maybe, at the very least, he could find out why Gallo seemed to hate—and if Giovanni was right, fear—David so much. Anyway, David had never shied away from a challenge in his life. It wasn’t in his personality.
“I’m not here for the morning coffee and bagels.”
“Then let’s go for a little ride,” Gallo responded as the elevator slowed to a stop in the lobby and the doors slid open—and David’s pulse thundered through his veins. “My limo is waiting out front.”
The twenty-minute ride from the Merc deep into the heart of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, had been the most awkward, uncomfortable trip David had ever taken. Gallo had spent the entire time with his ear to his BlackBerry and had only broken away from whatever business he was conducting to gesture at David twice: first, when they were halfway across the Brooklyn Bridge, to point out the view of the Merc from even lower than Lower Manhattan; and then again, when they turned off Eighteenth Avenue and onto a side street, to let David know that they were nearing their destination.
“I grew up one hundred yards from here,” Gallo grunted, slipping his phone back into his overcoat and finally relighting his cigar. “I still own the house where my grandfather washed dishes to pay for a little space in the attic, after he came through Ellis Island. ’Course, I don’t live there anymore. But it stays in the family.”
David nodded, pretending he understood. He watched as the colored awnings and tapered row houses flashed by, taking in the cement stoops, brick-walled storefronts, and dimly lit alleys that lined either side of the narrow avenue. He wasn’t sure exactly where on Eighteenth they had turned off, but he guessed they were just a few blocks north of the Bay Ridge Parkway. Right in the heart of the Italian section of the borough. The most heavily populated Italian neighborhood in the country, it was a community of more than fifty thousand—at least twenty thousand of whom still spoke Italian day to day instead of English.
“My father’s family probably knew yours,” David said. “They might have come over on the same boat.”
Gallo grunted again, then suddenly leaned forward and tapped on the divider in front of him, signaling his driver to stop the car. Then, without another word, he gestured with his cigar toward the door.
; David crawled across the backseat, pushed the door open, and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The street ahead of him was dark and fairly deserted; he wasn’t sure what time it was anymore. He felt a chill that had little to do with the temperature as he watched Gallo come out of the limo behind him. Then Gallo pointed toward a storefront directly ahead of them, a place with smokedglass windows and a slanted, bright green awning. Through the glass David could see huge slabs of meat hanging from hooks. Flanks of beef, twists of Italian sausages, prime cuts of sirloin and pork—
A butcher shop. Gallo had dragged him deep into Brooklyn to see a butcher shop.
David turned to ask what the hell he was doing there—but Gallo just strolled past him and reached for the milked-glass door beneath the awning.
To David’s surprise, the door was unlocked. Gallo stepped inside, leaving David outside on the sidewalk. David glanced back at the limo—then up and down the deserted street. He knew he could probably find a cab back on Eighteenth—but hell, he hadn’t come all this way to turn back now. Maybe Gallo was psychotic, but he was also a multimillionaire, and a powerful player at the Merc. David couldn’t risk angering the man even more than he somehow already had.
He took a deep breath and followed Gallo into the butcher shop.
The first thing that hit him was the smell: the scent of raw meat was so thick, it nearly made him gag. The shop was deserted and small, barely ten feet across, with refrigerated shelves on two sides loaded down with various cuts of beef and pork. Directly across from David was a low counter with a cash register, a pair of stainless steel scales, and a large wooden chopping block. Gallo was to the right of the block, leaning back against the counter. His cigar was still in his mouth, but his hands weren’t empty: he was holding a wooden baseball bat. Not a miniature slugger, like in Giovanni’s office, but the real thing, the heavy wood stained by age and possibly use.
David stood there, staring at the bat, as Gallo looked up at him.
“My grandfather swept the floors here when he was twelve years old. He came to this country, and he swept blood and meat and bone so that he could make enough money to buy food for his brothers and sisters. For six years, he swept this fucking floor.”
Gallo’s wrinkled arms strained as he lifted the bat a few inches into the air.
“Two days before his eighteenth birthday, the owner of the shop took a delivery of thirty milk crates from a cousin in the dairy business; he couldn’t move the crates, so he asked my grandfather to take care of it. My grandfather took the milk to the trading exchange across the river. There he discovered a new life for himself. And he gave that life to my father. And my father gave that life to me.”
David shifted his weight from foot to foot, trying to think of something to say. He wasn’t sure what Gallo was trying to tell him—but he had a feeling it had little to do with him specifically and more to do with Giovanni, Reston, and what they represented. Gallo had brought him to Brooklyn to make a point.
Before David could come up with any words, Gallo raised the bat again.
“You know what this is?”
David swallowed. Gallo grinned at him from behind his cigar.
“I’m not going to hit you, kid. I’m just asking you a question. Do you know what this is?”
David shrugged.
“I think so.”
“No, you don’t know a fucking thing.”
He tapped the baseball bat against the floor, then stared right at David.
“This is Bensonhurst. This is Brooklyn. This says that you don’t walk into my neighborhood and try to take what’s mine.”
Gallo opened his gnarled hand and let the baseball bat clatter to the floor. Then he took a step forward, straightening the lapels of his overcoat. David instinctively took a small step back. For the first time, he understood exactly why Gallo hated him so much. Like this butcher shop, the Merc was Gallo’s neighborhood. Reston and Giovanni were trying to take that neighborhood away from him. Automating the exchange, internationalizing the trade of oil—any steps toward modernization were a direct threat to Gallo and what his family had built. Gallo truly was a dinosaur. He probably couldn’t even turn on a computer, much less use it to trade oil. Reston—and by extension, David—was threatening Gallo’s way of life. His neighborhood.
David knew he needed to defuse the situation—quickly. He repeated what he’d said earlier in the elevator.
“I’m not here to cause any problems—”
“Bullshit,” Gallo interrupted. “Giovanni and that rat Mick of his, Reston, they’ve got you spying on my boys. But that don’t make any difference to me. My blood has been running through that exchange for more than a hundred years. And don’t you ever forget—no matter who’s sitting up there in the corner office, I run the Merc.”
Even from across the butcher shop, David could feel the man’s breath against his skin. David wanted to get the hell out of there—but he wasn’t going to turn his back on the old man. Instead, he shrugged again, clasping his hands behind his back.
“I’m sure you’re right. I’m just trying to get by, like everyone else.”
Gallo choked out a laugh. With his right hand, he reached into his overcoat and pulled out a thin manila envelope. Then he looked right at David.
“I hope, for your sake, that’s true. I really do. Because I don’t think you know who you’re dealing with. See, I keep an eye on my traders—and anyone who gets close to them.”
He suddenly held the envelope up in front of David’s face.
“Which means I’m keeping an eye on you too, Harvard boy. And I don’t care what position they give you, you’re still Giovanni’s little shit to me. So watch your toes, little shit. You can bet I’m watching ’em. Every fucking day.”
Gallo let the envelope fall to the floor in front of David. Then he walked right past him, heading for the door.
David waited until Gallo was gone, the door swinging shut behind him, before he bent down to pick up the envelope. His stomach churned as he undid the clasp and removed a single black-and-white photograph. A sheen of sweat broke out across the back of his neck as he turned it over in his hands.
The photo had been taken by some sort of telescopic lens, from a distance that had to have been at least a hundred feet, maybe even more. Still, David had no problem making out the image—because it was as crisp and clear as the day on which it had been taken.
A mane of cascading curls. A hand resting gently beneath the crook of a chin, a Harvard ring clearly visible on one finger.
It was a picture of him and Serena, kissing outside the Gucci store on Fifth Avenue.
Chapter 19
November 25, 2002
For the third time in ten minutes, Khaled’s life flashed before him. Eyes wide with fear, screams lost in the fierce sand-tipped wind whipping across his face, he felt himself go completely airborne, his body suddenly contorting as he struggled vainly to keep his grip on the searing hot vinyl seat beneath him. There was a moment of complete weightlessness—and then he felt a hand catch him by the wrist and, with almost inhuman strength, yank him back down.
He crashed against the passenger side of the open-topped jeep and wrapped both arms around the flailing twist of rope that passed for a seatbelt. Then he turned to stare at the man who’d just saved his life—not coincidently, the same man who was continuing to endanger it as well.
The Pakistani was hunched over the jeep’s steering wheel, one hand on the gear shift between them, the other adjusting a pair of overly large driving goggles. Most of the man’s dark face was obscured by the goggles and a bright yellow, turtle-shell-shaped construction hat that had been pulled down low over his thick black hair, but beneath a thick, bushy, brown mustache, he was grinning like a madman, his teeth abnormally white in the glare from the midday desert sun.
“That was a good one,” the Pakistani shouted over the wind.
“I think we got five feet into the air. You should really hold on to that seatbelt, young sir. As you
can see, the path can be quite treacherous.”
Khaled turned back to the mud-spattered windshield, peering out at the brown scar of mud and sand that supposedly counted as a “path.” Treacherous was the understatement of the century. And it certainly didn’t help that the jeep was traveling at close to seventy miles per hour, or that the Pakistani seemed to be purposefully aiming at the errant dunes that intermittently marred the way.
Still, it had been Khaled’s choice to take the tour, and he had known from the minute he met the Pakistani manager at the complex’s main helipad that the man was a character. Dressed in dirty white overalls, with that yellow construction helmet and that same maniacal smile, the man had first introduced himself as Saumya Das, an old friend of Khaled’s uncle, and then had proceeded to tell Khaled a story about the sheik and a party in London that involved a cricket bat thrown through a secondstory window and a pair of Slovakian models taking turns behind the wheel of the sheik’s Lamborghini—resulting in the car being driven into a ditch, the Slovakians hitchhiking back to the hotel, and the car being lost for three weeks. Khaled hadn’t doubted the accuracy of the story—he knew there were many similar stories involving his uncle, as the public sheik was extremely different from the one Khaled knew in private—but he’d had trouble picturing the sheik hanging out with the five-footfour, mud-spattered Pakistani. Still, he’d been grateful that the man volunteered to show him around, especially considering that Khaled’s expedition to the neighboring country of Qatar had been so last-minute and that he’d arrived at the fairly remote location in the middle of the small country without any real notice other than a single phone call from his office at the Ministry of Finance. Without any real hesitation, he’d gladly accepted the jeep tour of the Pakistani’s complex. Of course, that was before he’d witnessed the man’s questionable driving skills. Now that they were circling the Dukhan oil field for the second time, Khaled wished that he had opted for a video tour in the man’s air-conditioned office instead. At the moment, Khaled felt like he’d just stepped off the front line of a war. His hair was sticking straight up from his head, and his clothes were soaked in sweat. There was sand lodged in every possible crevice, and his skin burned where it had made contact with the jeep’s seats and the metal roll bar above his head. The desert sun was high in the sky, and the temperature had to be more than 120 degrees. The steady blasts of wind did nothing to cool the air around him, and if it wasn’t for the thin scarf that Khaled had wrapped around his mouth, he doubted he’d have been able to breathe at all. And from the looks of things, he was certain he’d be trapped in the jeep with the crazed Pakistani for some time to come. It had taken an entire hour to get around the massive complex the first time, and the Pakistani was obviously trying for a better time in their second pass. Perhaps it was one of the ways the men who worked in the desert oil field passed the time—or maybe the Pakistani really was insane, a product of days spent laboring in the searing heat of the Qatar desert and nights dreaming about parties staffed with sheiks and Slovakian prostitutes. Well, Khaled thought to himself as the jeep took another hairpin turn and he held on to the “seatbelt” for dear life, you wanted inspiration. If this place doesn’t inspire you, you might already be dead.