Wall Street Noir

by Peter Spiegelman

  “Good evening, Mr. Jordan,” she said, as Jordan stepped out of the elevator.

  “Um, good evening,” Jordan responded.

  The woman crossed the room to shake his hand. “I’m Sarah Lewis. It’s a pleasure to meet you. Mr. Zhu asked me to look after you. Follow me, please.”

  She led Jordan through a door and down a hallway, the parquet floor creaking under her shoes. At the end of the hall, she slid a key card into the slot beside a door, then held it open for him. By now, he had a good idea of what to expect inside.

  Zhu’s fantasy boudoir wasn’t your average bordello bunk room. Rather, it was a four-room suite, complete with a stocked refrigerator, six-foot bar, seventy-two-inch flat-panel TV, 500-thread count sheets, and, surprise surprise, a plexi-glass Jacuzzi mounted in a floor-to-ceiling glass wall.

  “If you don’t like heights,” Sarah said, while giving him a tour of the bathroom, “I recommend the jets.”

  After showing him around, she lifted the TV remote off the bedside table and held it up.

  “If you would like company,” she said, “click here to bring up our interactive catalog. We would be happy to accommodate any special needs.”

  A video hooker catalog—nice touch. Despite this innovation, Jordan felt a wash of disappointment. He was enjoying the company he already had.

  “What button do I press to ask you to have a drink with me?”

  “We don’t have a button for that,” Sarah Lewis replied. “And I don’t drink on the job. But if that’s one of your special needs, I’ll be happy to pour you one.”

  “I have a lot of special needs,” Jordan said, smiling.

  Since joining Whitney Gilman, Jordan had made it a practice to wake up every morning at 4:55 a.m. He did this seven days a week, on the theory that it had a self-regulating effect on his evening activities. The theory was flimsy—the evenings went on no matter how exhausted he got—but one positive side-effect was that after eight years, Jordan no longer needed an alarm clock. To reduce the risk of falling back to sleep, moreover, he had instituted a policy of standing up the moment he awoke, an aggressive maneuver that often left him grasping for support as blood drained out of his head.

  In the predawn blackness, Jordan awoke and stood up. This time, the brain drain was so severe that he slumped to his knees. Head hanging, palms flat on the rug, he thought he was going to black out, but he kept still and the feeling passed. After several deep breaths, his strength returned, and he lifted himself to his feet—at which point he remembered where he was and why he felt so bad.

  The “where” was Zhu’s fantasy pad, high up in the Hive. The “why” was the lack of sleep and the fact that he was still, indisputably, drunk. Head pounding, Jordan glanced at an easy-chair, the last place he remembered being. The glasses were gone (Lagavulin for him, water for her), as was the jacket draped over the back of the chair. Looking down, he discovered that his clothes were gone too, replaced with silk boxers. He hadn’t undressed—he was pretty sure of that. He also didn’t remember browsing through Zhu’s video catalog. But someone had removed his clothes and tucked him into the bed. And the same someone, he discovered after some shaky steps to the closet, had hung up his suit, shirt, underwear, and socks.

  In the darkness, Jordan picked up his wallet, keys cards, and BlackBerry from the bedside table. Reflexively, he checked the markets and headlines—New York had closed higher—along with his e-mail. In the seven hours since the end of the banquet, eighty-six e-mails had accumulated in his inbox, mostly blasts from the research and trading desks in New York. This was a good sign: He hadn’t yet been canned. He scrolled down the list, looking for anything time-sensitive, and was about to toss the BlackBerry on the bed when he found her note.

  From: Sarah Lewis

  Sarah Lewis Seeing her name brought everything back. Just a few hours earlier, he remembered, she had expertly accommodated (some of) his “special needs,” needs that Zhu’s catalog would only have exacerbated, needs that often intruded in times like these. Despite her repeated attempts to excuse herself, he’d kept asking her to stay. He had even, pathetically, insisted on her watching Casablanca with him, in the hope that it would kindle something. (It hadn’t—and he had fallen asleep during the flashback sequence.) Now, he clicked on the e-mail, and the message filled the screen.

  Hope you slept well, it read. Sorry you missed the end.

  Very personal. No Mr. Jordan, and a tantalizing vagueness too. What “end” was she referring to—the movie or the evening? The note gave Jordan hope that, magic key card or no magic key card, he would see her again.

  Thought you should see this, the note concluded, adding a link to a video file.

  Jordan clicked the link and sat down on the edge of the bed, having no idea what to expect. As the file loaded, he glanced toward the windows. The BlackBerry’s luminescent screen reflected off the dark glass, a glowing spot of blue among the lights of a predawn Shanghai.

  The video began to play, and at first Jordan couldn’t tell what he was seeing. Then the image brightened, and he realized it was the view from an elevator security camera. The elevator doors opened, flooding the image with light, and a man in a suit got in. He inserted a key card into the console, stepped to the back of the elevator, then turned around and looked up toward the camera: Stack.

  The image jiggled as the elevator began moving, and after twenty seconds jiggled again as it came to a halt. Then the doors opened and Stack walked out.

  The scene switched to a waist-level shot of Stack emerging from the elevator into a familiar Victorian room with impressionist paintings and a fire. Recognizing the setting, Jordan’s heart began to race. Had they taped him too? Had the whole Zhu fantasy thing been a setup? Stack approached the camera, reached out to shake the hand of a woman who appeared in the foreground. (Sarah? Jordan couldn’t tell.)

  Next shot: an empty hallway. The woman appeared, walking past the camera—Jordan still couldn’t see her face—and Stack followed behind. At the end of the hall, they paused in front of a door. The woman inserted a key card and opened it. They both disappeared inside.

  Jordan had a queasy notion of what was coming next: a video of his boss in action—a sight he wasn’t anxious to see. He’d also broken out in a sweat. What had he done last night? Was he sure it wasn’t something worth filming? Why had Sarah sent him this, anyway? Was it a warning?

  The scene switched again, and for a moment Jordan was confused. Instead of the Zhu fantasy suite, the room looked like a classroom, with the camera looking out from what would have been the blackboard. The room was empty except for the teacher’s desk and a single pupil, a pretty girl of perhaps eleven or twelve, seated at a desk in the center of the frame. She was dressed in a black skirt and white shirt, the ubiquitous uniform of Japanese grade-school students. (First the banquet, and now this—did Stack have some sort of Japan fetish?) The girl appeared to be copying something from the blackboard: She would look up, look down to write in her notebook, and look up again.

  The classroom door opened, and the “teacher” walked in—and Jordan’s fears were confirmed. The girl stood to bow low to Teacher Stack. Stack strode toward the front of the classroom and sat at the desk, his back to the camera.

  Jordan felt sick. Was this a standard option in Zhu’s video catalog—or one of Stack’s “special needs”? Was this how his hyper-cool, hyper-professional boss spent his leisure hours—indulging in power-trip kiddie fantasies?

  The girl stood beside her chair, head bowed. Teacher Stack rose, picked up a fistful of papers from the desk, and began shaking them at her. He was yelling now, his head and shoulders jerking as he barked. Jordan had never known Stack to so much as raise his voice, so this alone was startling. Stack moved toward the girl, who remained motionless with her head bowed. He stopped in front of her, still yelling. Then, of course, she dropped to her knees.

  A moment later, Jordan was on his knees too, beside Zhu’s luxurious toilet. He gagged, his hands gripping the b
owl, and a Scotch-flavored flame surged up his throat. He swallowed hard, closed his eyes, waited for the next heave. It came, and Jordan expelled it, spraying the porcelain brown. Head hanging, hand groping upwards, he found the handle and pulled. The toilet flushed white, splashing Jordan’s face with cool water. He stood, staggered to the sink, and turned on the tap. He plunged his hands into the stream and doused water on his burning cheeks. Then he leaned on the counter and let water drip from his chalky face into the sink.

  Images rushed through his head, one after the other—power fantasies that even Stack himself might have warmed to: Jordan as ninja, Jordan as heavyweight champion, Jordan as axe murderer, Jordan as righteous gunslinger. Had he been sober and rested, he might have realized that it was more than just the video fueling his fantasies, that his resentment toward Stack had been building for years. And it might have occurred to him that he hadn’t been fired yet, that he could have misread Stack the night before, that twelve hours—twelve drunken hours—of reeling year-end emotions weren’t worth betting a career on. He might have realized that pictures were worth a thousand words, but others weren’t worth the hard drives they were stored on. But Jordan wasn’t sober, and he wasn’t rested, and he wasn’t thinking any of that. Instead, as the water dripped away, his churning emotions condensed into a single, simple concept: payback.

  Turning from the sink, Jordan strode back into the bedroom and picked up the BlackBerry. Several years earlier, when e-mail scandals had temporarily terrorized Wall Street, a techie friend had taught him how to send e-mails with untraceable return-path information. Thumbs clicking frantically, Jordan logged off the network, logged in again as an administrator, and returned to the e-mail. He copied the video file into a new e-mail. In the “Subject” field, he typed A Message From Alan Stack, and then skipped to the “BCC” field. From a pull-down menu, he selected Global Sales and Trading, a distribution list that included some 11,000 Whitney Gilman professionals worldwide. Then he pressed send

  What does it feel like to walk into your own execution? Jordan was sure he was about to find out. Seven hours earlier, after escaping from Zhu’s lair and returning to his own Hive pad, he had sent Fishman an e-mail implying a hang-over and asking him to take over for the morning. Then he had unplugged every communication device he owned and crawled into bed. When he awoke, just after noon, he had remembered the Stack e-mail and been hit with a bolt of terror and regret: What had he done?

  He had considered camping in his apartment, but figured that, in the event they hadn’t yet traced the e-mail, this would be a dead giveaway. So, he had showered, dressed, and headed for the trading floor. Now, as Jordan approached the desk, he was glad to see that little had changed. Fishman leaned toward him.

  “You’re not going to believe what you missed.”

  “Do tell,” Jordan said, steeling himself.

  As Fishman told it, the e-mail had hit Whitney’s trading floors like a bomb, blowing an otherwise ordinary morning to smithereens. No one knew where it had come from, but the Australia guys had opened it first: A bizarre pederastic-sado-fantasy in which Stack fucked a schoolgirl on a teacher’s desk. Within an hour, the video had bloomed on a thousand desktops in Singapore, Hong Kong, Moscow, Paris, London. The administrators had caught up with it, finally, ripped it off every server in the firm, but not before some bastard had posted it on the Internet. The networks had it now, and had been showing clips all morning, along with profiles of Whitney Gilman and headshots of Stack. The Shanghai government had demanded an apology, as had the Japanese government, and everyone was expecting a similar demand from Beijing. The firm’s Executive Committee had called an emergency meeting in New York in the middle of the night. And Stack! Poor Stack. He’d been picked up by the police at his apartment that morning and taken in for questioning. No one had seen him since.

  As Fishman’s story unfolded, Jordan felt like a kid who had tossed a cigarette in a garbage can and burned down a city. The knot tightened in his chest again, and his hands dampened with sweat.

  “You’ve got to see the video,” Fishman concluded. “It’s some sick shit. I’ll send you the link. Oh, and Reingold’s been calling you.”

  “Reingold?”

  “He’s holed up in Stack’s office, doing damage control. One of Stack’s secretaries keeps calling.”

  “What does Reingold want with me?” Jordan asked, his heart pounding like a kettle drum, sure that this was it.

  “Got me,” Fishman said. “Give her a call.”

  Hand shaking, Jordan dialed Stack’s number. Lauren answered, confirmed that Reingold wanted to see him immediately. Now getting fired seemed like a dream scenario—he’d be lucky if he didn’t get jailed. Jordan stood up and set off across the trading floor, a dead man walking.

  The translucent walls and floor in Stack’s office were dark, the only light coming from a strip of glass behind the desk. Reingold was in Stack’s seat, surrounded by the heads of Asia Wealth Management and Investment Banking, along with the regional general counsel, the head of HR, and the head of PR. Of course the lawyers and HR folks were there: Reingold would need witnesses. Security guards were no doubt waiting just outside the door.

  As Jordan entered, everyone was staring at a speakerphone in the middle of the desk. Reingold looked up.

  “Karl?” he said to the speakerphone. “Emerson Jordan has just walked in.”

  Karl, Jordan assumed, was Karl Eichenwald, Whitney’s CEO.

  “Hello, Mr. Jordan,” said Eichenwald’s disembodied but unmistakable voice. “Glad you could join us on this fucking peach of an evening.”

  “Emerson,” Reingold said, “we’ve got a situation here, so we’ll be brief. Other than myself, I believe you were the last one to see Alan last night. I’ve told everyone how we rode back from the banquet together. After that, Alan and I went upstairs for a nightcap, and then Alan headed off—to his apartment, I thought. Did you see Alan again last night?”

  So they were going to interrogate him first. Interrogate him, find out what he knew, then shoot him.

  “No,” Jordan said.

  The general counsel jumped in.

  “Was he behaving normally on the ride home? Was he drunk?”

  “Not that I noticed,” said Jordan.

  “Any idea where the video was shot?”

  Jordan’s heart skipped. “No,” he lied.

  “Any idea who would have sent this video around?”

  “No.”

  “Well, whoever it was ought to be fried alive!” Eichenwald’s voice boomed. “Stack’s in need of some serious therapy, but whoever spammed this thing around has fucked the rest of us. Issue the statement. I’ll do a press conference in the morning.”

  “I’m not sure that’s wise, sir,” the general counsel said. “We haven’t authenticated the video. We haven’t interviewed Stack. We haven’t even gotten all the basic facts.”

  Authenticated the video?” Eichenwald boomed. “What the fuck is there to authenticate? The head of our Asian trading organization is on four networks banging a twelve-year-old!”

  The speakerphone chirped as Eichenwald hung up.

  “Well, I guess we’re done,” another voice said through the speakerphone, one Jordan didn’t recognize. “Thanks for the rapid response. Can’t say I agree with the Chinese about living in interesting times.”

  “Hopefully, they’ll be less interesting in the morning,” Reingold said.

  The speakerphone chirped several times in succession: the rest of the board disconnecting.

  Reingold looked up. “Thanks, everyone.”

  The executives rose and filed past Jordan toward the door.

  Reingold stood up and walked toward him. “There’s one other thing we need to discuss,” he said. Jordan’s heart raced again, as Reingold placed a hand on his shoulder. “I have to go apologize to Shanghai’s mayor on the firm’s behalf, so I don’t have much time. I’ve spoken to most of our big clients this morning, including X.D. I’ve explained th
e situation, told them that, regardless of what happens, they’ll be in good hands. And they will be.”

  Why the preamble? Jordan wondered.

  “No matter what else happens,” Reingold continued, “Stack’s done. For now, he’s on administrative leave, but I suspect he won’t be coming back. We need a new head of Asian trading. And I’m looking at him.”

  “Excuse me?” Jordan said.

  “The press release will be on the wire in ten minutes. Eichenwald has already approved it. He wanted me to congratulate you on his behalf. Our clients are happy with our choice—they’re ready to help you however they can. X.D., especially, would be eager to hear from you this afternoon.”

  “I’m not sure what to say,” Jordan replied, meaning it.

  “Give it time,” Reingold said, patting Jordan’s shoulder again, turning toward the door. “Congratulations, Emerson. I’ll be out of your new office this afternoon. Enjoy it. And don’t let me down.”

  For the first time in his life, it seemed, Fishman wasn’t completely in the loop. He had been busy, though, thinking everything through. When Jordan sat down, still in shock, Fishman was positively bursting.

  “So, is Reingold on cloud nine, or what?”

  “I’m sorry?” Jordan said.

  “You’ve just had a private meeting with our next CEO,” Fishman said, “a man who until this morning was an also-ran.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Remember Beston? The heir apparent? Well, the reason Beston made the late surge to the front of the CEO lottery was because of Stack. Stack had lost confidence in Reingold, and threw in with Beston. But now Stack’s toxic, and everyone who ever knew him is running for the fumigator. There’s no way Beston can distance himself. So that leaves Reingold, the man who was suspicious of Stack to begin with. He’s our new CEO.”

  “Interesting,” Jordan said, his heart pounding again.

  “Yes,” said Fishman. “And I have a feeling we’re going to be seeing a lot of him.”