Wall Street Noir

by Peter Spiegelman

  He seemed an interesting man, polite and unafraid to show vulnerability. She could count on one finger the number of male colleagues who would have dared display fear in front of her. On the Street, fear was weakness and weakness was death, and you never let it see the light of day. You battened it down, you plowed it under. You swallowed that bastard whole.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has turned off the seatbelt sign, so you’re free to move about the cabin. However, when you are in your seat, we’d like it if you could keep your seatbelts on. The captain has also indicated that you may use all approved electronic devices, such as laptops …”

  Trisha already had her tray table down, her Dell out of its case and booting up before the flight attendant had gotten past the first sentence of her announcement. She called up the file marked MM/ZIPS/H.1 Six months earlier Paisley Shutter had been retained by Mega-Mart, Inc., one of the world’s largest big box retailers, to look into the feasibility of acquiring PriceStar, Inc. PriceStar was an undercapitalized, debt-heavy, second-rung player in retail space, but the one big asset it possessed was its offshore textile plants. Their profit margin on their in-house clothing lines was the envy of the industry. And now that takeover talks had progressed from flirtation to third base, Trisha was going down to Honduras to make sure all the numbers that her team had given her checked out.

  She owed due diligence not only to Mega-Mart, but to herself. Partnerships at Paisley Shutter didn’t get handed out like Halloween candy, and especially not to women. In fact, Trisha Tanglewood was the first woman under the age of forty to have even sniffed a partnership. Some of her male colleagues had warned her off making the trip at all. They were full of sage advice and playful chiding, but she understood the old-boy code better than they suspected. Her taking this trip not only made her look good, it made them look bad—worse than bad, lazy. Like her dad used to say, “If the crows’re gonna caw anyhow, you might as well give ’em a reason.” Fuck ’em! was the way they said it on the Street.

  “Christ, how do you deal with all those figures?” Pete spoke up, peering at her screen. “Gimme anything more than three digits either side of the decimal point and I’m befuddled.”

  Reflexively, Trisha slammed her laptop closed. She did it with such force that passengers from surrounding rows snapped their heads about to see what had happened.

  “Whoa—sorry about that,” Pete said. “I didn’t mean to peek.”

  “It’s okay,” she lied.

  “No, it’s not. It was rude, and my momma schooled me better than that.” He pressed the call button.

  Trisha didn’t know what to think but said nothing.

  “I’m sorry to bother you,” Pete said when the flight attendant arrived, “but is there an empty seat somewhere? The lady wants to do her work and I’m afraid I’m disturbing her.”

  “That’s not necessary,” Trisha said. “I’m fine.”

  “Well, that’s a good thing,” said the flight attendant, “because we’re out of empty seats. Will there be anything else? … No? Enjoy the rest of your flight.”

  There was a moment of awkward silence before Pete stood up and moved to the front of the cabin. Trisha’s face burned. She felt like an idiot, but what could you do—paranoia was standard equipment in her line of work, like a cell phone or a BlackBerry. How many deals had been poached by someone shoulder surfing at a Starbucks? How many times had she done it herself? Mistrust came with the territory.

  Jesus Christ, Trisha wondered, what had happened to her? Where was the girl who’d won those blue ribbons for her trick riding back home in Wyoming? She stared out at the stars and thought of her father, and of Dancer. They once the two most important things in her world. Dancer was a roan, and to Trisha, the most graceful animal on God’s earth. She had been too young to remember her mother’s death, and Dancer’s was her first encounter with grief. Now everyone who mattered was gone. Suddenly there was little solace in her new title, and little protection in her paranoia.

  “I hope you’ll accept this in the spirit of reconciliation,” Pete said, catching her off guard once again. He carried two plastic glasses filled with champagne.

  “Where did you—”

  “Ssshhhh!” He winked, sitting back down. “It’s a secret.”

  “But how?”

  “I make this flight twice a month, usually up front. Let’s just say the flight attendants and I have an understanding. Cheers.”

  They drank and Trisha found her face forming a smile. It was an unfamiliar feeling.

  “I’m sorry for overreacting,” she said. “Paranoia’s an occupational hazard.”

  “The fault was mine, but no more apologizing. Deal?”

  “Deal.”

  They shook on it. Trisha held onto his hand a little longer this time. This silly encounter was the first relief she’d had in months. She even felt a bit of a buzz. This man had that rare quality of both relaxing and exciting her.

  “What do you do that you’re down here twice a month?”

  “I’m sort of in HR.”

  “Human resources? Who with?”

  “I’m on my own, really—a consultant.”

  “A headhunter?”

  “Sort of. It’s a little more complicated.”

  “Interesting?”

  “Challenging, more like. Now, what about you—you do lot of business travel as part of your mysterious banking business?”

  Trisha laughed. “No mystery—just visiting clients. And, yes, I travel a lot, though not to Latin America before.”

  “You like it—the travel part, I mean?”

  It was a simple question—a throwaway question from one stranger to another, to be answered without thinking—but it brought Trisha up short. New York, Seattle, Toulouse, Tegucigalpa—they were, she now realized, all the same to her. One airport, one Town Car, one conference room, identical to all the rest, and how different really was her apartment from a hotel room? Did she mind the travel? What the hell else was she going to do with her life? What else was there to it? It took her nearly a minute to answer.

  “I don’t … It’s … it’s part of the job,” she said finally. Just a few words, but she felt as if she’d said too much. She wanted to look away, but those speckled blue eyes held her

  Dutton nodded. “It wears on you after a while, though, doesn’t it? The strange food, the strange smells, the money, the language—everything’s an effort. And there’s always something to look out for. The water, local customs, the neighborhood you’re in—you’re always on your guard, and especially down here. You can never just relax. You can never rest.”

  Trisha Tanglewood felt her throat close up and her eyes start to burn, and she managed to wrench her gaze from Dutton’s to the inside of her champagne glass. She took a sip, and then a full swallow. Dutton put a hand on her arm, and she flinched.

  “You all right, Trisha?” His voice was a comforting rumble. “I didn’t put my foot in it again, did I? You looked so sad for a minute there—homesick almost.”

  His eyes found Trisha’s again, and she felt utterly exposed. Homesick? Didn’t you need a home for that? For Trisha, home was where the money was—Hong Kong, Tokyo, the fifth circle of Hell, wherever—it washed around the world, and she followed in its wake. Suddenly her life in New York seemed so empty and insubstantial—all her acquaintances spectral and hollow and half a step from spinning into space. Certainly the men she saw were no anchors—their main concerns had to do with finding the hippest new proxies for the size of their dicks. She was sick to death of their finest this and most exclusive that, and she swore sometimes, if she heard another word about the hottest new anything, she’d scream.

  The scariest part was that it had taken a total stranger to recognize the sadness in her. Sure, there had been condolences when her father died—the Take-as-much-time-as-you-need speech from the senior partners, and the Let-me-know-if-there’s-anything-I-can-dos from her colleagues. But it was all pro forma—the thing that one did, l
ike mucking the stalls at day’s end. And here was this total stranger …

  “My daddy died about a year ago,” she found herself confessing in her spontaneously returned Laramie accent. “My momma died when I was little, so it was just me and him forever.”

  “Sorry doesn’t come close, does it? Listen, I’m gonna be in Teguze for about a week, and it’s a city I know pretty well. Why don’t you let me show it to you, or at least take you to dinner? I’d like to hear about your daddy, if you wouldn’t mind sharing.”

  No “Dinner would be lovely,” Trisha heard herself say, “but I’ve got to go north for a day or two, and then—”

  “I understand,” Pete saved her from the awkward explanation. “You’ve got that mysterious business to do.”

  Trisha managed a smile. “Not so mysterious.”

  Pete smiled back and took out a business card. He scrawled a number across the back. “You can reach me at this number anytime. This way there’s no pressure if you change your mind, and at least we had a pleasant flight together.”

  Trisha looked at it. It wasn’t so much a business card as a calling card. There was his name, a Miami phone number, and a cryptic e-mail address on heavy beige stock. No company name, no snail-mail address, no title. Trisha studied it, hesitating, wondering if she should return the courtesy. He noticed her pause, and let her off the hook again.

  “No card necessary. Remember, no pressure.”

  After two more glasses of champagne, Pete Dutton drifted off into sleep. For her part, Trisha went back to her work, occasionally twirling Pete’s card in her fingers and smiling. Yes, he reminded her of her daddy, but there was something else about him, something sweet and comfortable, but also a little bit elusive. She liked it. The boys on the Street all fancied themselves masters of the universe, but disarmed of their Pings and their squash rackets they were a relatively impotent bunch. Impotent was the last word she would associate with Pete Dutton. When she put his card away on final approach to Toncontín International, Trisha noticed she was more than a little wet.

  If anyone wanted to see where all those textile jobs from Georgia and North Carolina had gone, they’d just have to hop a plane from Tegucigalpa to San Pedro Sula in the northwest of Honduras. That’s where Trisha Tanglewood spent her first two days in-country, and where PriceStar, Inc. had its main textile plants, or maquilas, as the locals called them. But PriceStar was just one of many firms to set up shop in the free trade zones. Driving in from the airport, Trisha saw Oshkosh B’Gosh, Maidenform, Hanes, and Wrangler factories, and more than a few South Korean and Taiwanese plants. Mile after mile, the long, low structures slid across her car window, and by the time the driver pulled up to the largest of the PriceStar buildings, Trisha had begun to think of the whole country as one big free trade zone. But vast as these plants were, Trisha knew, and as fixed in the landscape as they seemed, they’d empty out tomorrow if it suddenly became cheaper to work in Thailand or Tibet. It was simply smart business.

  If she didn’t know better, Trisha would have thought San Pedro Sula was the patron saint of inertia. There seemed to be shackles on the hands of the clocks as she ground through two days of meetings with her team and the PriceStar executives. She was struggling to pay attention, and found herself thinking that maybe her colleagues in New York had been right. You could pore over the same spreadsheets in Manhattan, and with a lot better air-conditioning. By 3 p.m. on her first day, Trisha was almost regretting making a show of her meticulousness.

  As a matter of courtesy and protocol, she strolled the factory floor with the Honduran operations manager, a PriceStar exec, and a Paisley Shutter analyst named Ellis Quantrill. Although he was a member of her team, Trisha wasn’t terribly fond of Quantrill. Just thirty, WASP-ishly handsome, and bred for success, Ellis fancied himself quite the shark. He made no secret of his desire to go very far, very fast, and at any cost … any cost to others. She’d seen his type before, the eaglet hatched first who pushes its brother out of the nest. What Ellis hadn’t learned yet was that there is always a bigger eaglet. Always.

  Their relationship was rocky from the start. At first, Ellis had tried to be the teacher’s pet—solicitous and deferential to the point of obsequious. Then he’d tried to make himself her indispensable ally and coconspirator—always ready to share a confidence, always fishing for one in return, and always the latest in rumors, speculation, and snarky political gossip from across the firm. When neither approach had gotten him far, he’d taken a different—riskier—tack: coming on to Trisha at the golf outing last May. He’d kissed her hard on the mouth behind the pro shop at the country club in Armonk, and Trisha laughed in his face. On reflection, she realized she’d have done better to slap him. That was the peculiar thing about Ellis’s type: They’d eat dogshit to get ahead, but not if anyone was watching. Personal embarrassment was intolerable. From that ill-fated kiss forward, Ellis Quantrill had put Trisha Tanglewood in his crosshairs. She knew it, and he knew she knew it.

  The factory was clean and modern. Most of the machinery was new, and what wasn’t, was perfectly maintained. The workers sat in neat rows, and they moved quickly. Still, the production area was terribly noisy. There were a lot of hand gestures and head shakes, and very little speaking. Near the end of the tour, Ellis tapped Trisha on the shoulder and shepherded her into an empty break room. Christ, she thought, what now? Some new ploy to curry favor? Was he going to profess his love this time? That would be a novel approach. They took off their ear protection.

  “Noisy, isn’t it?” he said.

  “What do you want, Ellis?” Trisha enjoyed being curt with him.

  “Just a quick word about tonight.”

  “What about tonight?”

  “We’ve set up a thing this evening—”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa—the only thing I’m doing tonight is getting in my bed by 8.”

  Ellis grimaced in mock pain. “It’s set already. No clients—just you and the team, for drinks, dinner, more drinks—very casual. You know the drill.”

  “Christ, Ellis, why the hell didn’t you run it by me first? I can barely keep my eyes open as it is; no way I’m going to—”

  “I know you’re beat, but it’s important to them. I don’t care one way or the other myself, but these guys have been down here for weeks now, working sixteen-hour days. A night out with the new skipper—a chance to let their hair down, maybe collect a few attaboys—it’ll mean a lot to these kids.” Trisha shook her head, but Ellis was undeterred. “And it won’t hurt you, either, to build some support amongst the rank and file—a little grassroots loyalty.” She kept shaking her head, but more slowly. Ellis gave her one his ironic frat-boy grins, and a tone to match. “Come on, chief—don’t pussy out on me. Have another coffee, and be a man.”

  Fucking Ellis, Trisha thought, and forced a thin smile in return. “I’m back at the hotel by midnight, or it’s your ass.”

  Trisha had only the lowest expectations when it came to enforced camaraderie, but—while she wasn’t about to suckle Ellis Quantrill to her bosom—she had to admit that the evening wasn’t horrible, at least not to start with. The Paisley Shutter team that had worked so hard on the Mega-Mart—PriceStar project assembled in an Asian restaurant that featured a mix of Thai, Korean, and Japanese foods. A bizarre setting in the midst of northwest Honduras, to be sure, but just one more blur to set atop all the other blurs that had become Trisha’s over-caffeinated day. Someone—Ellis probably—knew that she rode, and the team presented Trisha with a miniature saddle, smaller than her cell phone, as a souvenir. It was an exquisite piece of local craftsmanship, and it was even Western-style. Saki and champagne and local beer flowed freely, and Ellis made a point of keeping his distance. Trisha caught just glimpses of him, and only now and then. She appreciated his restraint.

  As things wound down, the men in the group did the Cuban cigar thing, while the women gathered around Trisha to give her the lowdown on shopping and restaurants back in Tegucigalpa. Trisha found hers
elf engaged by the conversation and felt something like her old self again. It was the longest time she’d gone without thinking of her dad in months.

  “But there’s one thing,” Pam Richter, a junior analyst, said, her voice turning suddenly serious. “When you’re in Teguz or anywhere in-country, you don’t want to—”

  “Come on, Pammy, don’t spoil the evening with this shit,” chided Maggie Wilson, a five-year Paisley Shutter vet. “It’s nonsense and Trisha’s only going to be here a few days.”

  Trisha waved away Maggie’s concern. “No, go ahead, Pam,” she said.

  “It’s not safe for American women to walk the streets alone in certain parts of the cities, especially after dark.”

  “Why only American women?” Trisha asked. “Baby thieves!” Pam blurted.

  “What?”

  “It’s a Central American urban legend. You know, like the one back home—about a couple who snatch a kid in Toys ‘R’ Us and change his clothes in the bathroom and dye his hair. The baby thieves myth is even bigger here, and in Guatemala too.”

  “I’ve never heard that one,” Trisha said. “I only know about the poodle in the microwave.”

  “Well, boss, here the myths and legends are a little more … um, radical. Here the story goes that rich American women fly down, pick out their babies, have the mothers executed, and ship the kids back to the States to raise as their own.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Trisha breathed. “That’s … horrible.”

  “It’s also a load of crap,” Maggie said. “Whenever the government feels threatened, or the economy takes a hit, they spread these rumors around. The good old U.S. of A. still makes one hell of a convenient scapegoat. And it’s not like our government hasn’t screwed with folks down here before. The trouble is, the rumors linger even after they’ve served their political purposes—and especially in the poorest areas.”

  “That’s why it’s not safe,” Pam said, and then she read her boss’s face. “Shit, I freaked you out, didn’t I? I’m sorry to have mentioned it. I …”