The Gods of Greenwich

by Norb Vonnegut

  Jimmy struggled to show respect. He remembered his firm’s Mr. Coffee machine, the one Emi bought at Walmart for $19.99. “I bet you can make moonshine in that thing.”

  “Our coffee is stronger,” Cy replied, “and it tastes better.”

  The workout room contained a stationary bike, weight machine, and another fifty-two-inch screen. Using the pool cue, Leeser pointed to a door at the rear of the room. He explained, “Back there we’ve got showers, lockers, and a sauna big enough to host client meetings.”

  “Do you laminate the PowerPoint handouts?” Cusack deadpanned.

  “No place like a sauna to close the sale,” answered Leeser, choking the pool cue with a gnarled grip. “Just turn up the steam and serve martinis.”

  Over the next thirty-two minutes Cusack met two accountants, several junior research assistants, and Kennedy from Compliance. He visited with Nikki, who sat outside Leeser’s office, her head hidden by a computer screen and a bank of chest-high files surrounding the workstation.

  “Let me know if you need anything,” she offered. “I’ll book flights and catch your phone during the day, if you’re not around.”

  “Thanks, Nikki. You’re the best.”

  “And this is your new home, Jimmy,” said Leeser, gesturing to a door next to his own office.

  At that moment Shannon’s huge bulk filled the frame. “All clear,” he advised Leeser, not looking at Cusack.

  “Good,” Cy replied.

  Shannon glanced at Cusack’s two-star button, the big man’s expression colder than a gouty piranha. He turned and asked, “You need anything else, boss?”

  “All set,” said Leeser, and Shannon left.

  “What’s ‘clear’?” Jimmy asked.

  “Your office. We sweep for bugs.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Our competitors will do anything to get an edge, Jimmy. Even if it means bribing employees or sifting through the trash.”

  “Ever have a problem?”

  “Not yet. Our bonuses keep people honest.”

  “You were relaxed,” countered Cusack, “when you hired me.”

  “You waited a few days before starting.”

  “So.”

  “You checked out just fine.” Leeser smiled broadly. His brown eyes gleamed.

  Cusack suddenly felt violated. He tried to mask his reaction. But the crooked smile came too late.

  “What can I say?” asked Cy with a matter-of-fact voice. “People in our industry will do anything to be right one time.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What were your fees?”

  “Two and twenty like everybody else,” said Cusack.

  “Your fund was two hundred million. If you’re up fifty percent in one year, you keep twenty million dollars. You can break the rules once, retire, and tell the world to kiss the sand off your ass.”

  “It works in reverse, Cy. One bad year, and we’re out of business.”

  “Loyalty is fucking extinct,” Leeser agreed wistfully.

  “Hey, you can’t quit now,” pressed Cusack, half in jest. “I just started.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Jimmy. I love this game.” Passing the pool cue back and forth between hands, wielding it like a relay-race baton, Leeser added, “We’re creating long-term value at LeeWell Capital.”

  * * *

  On his first day, Cusack began working in earnest forty-five minutes after the markets closed. He sat alone in his office, eyeing a stack of papers and bubbling with optimism. He felt safe but refused to kick back.

  Cusack sifted through his pile and found LeeWell’s portfolio of stocks. Within thirty seconds his eyes widened, his jaw dropped, and he whistled under his breath:

  “You’ve got to be kidding, Cy.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  TUESDAY, APRIL 29

  BENTWING AT $61.88

  Bentwing Energy totaled 30 percent of LeeWell Capital’s portfolio. It was a huge stake, especially when many consider 5 percent a full position. Every swing of one dollar in Bentwing’s share price added or subtracted $4 million to the fund.

  The stock was like a toddler near the swimming pool. Cusack checked for company news first thing in the morning. When talking on the phone, he found his eyes drifting toward the ticker symbol BEG. And with a black marker, he scribbled Bentwing $78.79 on an envelope and taped it to his computer LCD. That was the share price necessary to get a bonus.

  The calculation, Cusack knew, was far from perfect. The rest of the portfolio could do almost anything—rise, fall, or trade sideways. “Bentwing $78.79” kept him focused, however, on the single biggest factor in the portfolio’s health. And unfortunately, the stock had already fallen $1.14 since his first day on the job. Every downtick at BEG, no matter how modest, kindled his growing curiosity about “the secret sauce” and how Leeser minimized risk.

  Did Cy stumble onto something brilliant?

  Cusack had barely taken the job. He could not reveal his doubts. Not to Emi, who shouldered her own issues. Not to colleagues, who heralded him as the new champion on their team. And certainly not to finance buddies, who trolled for weakness and snatched clients every chance they got.

  During his first week at LeeWell—“Bentwing $78.79” forever in the background—Jimmy fielded a staggering number of phone calls. Fellow alums from Columbia, Wharton, and Goldman all wished him “good luck.”

  “I heard you got carried out,” said Peter. He meant carried out on a board, as in the carcass of his deceased fund. “Glad you’re back.”

  “The guys are calling you ‘Cool Hand Cusack,’” Sam reported. He worked at Wexford Plaza, another outpost of the gods, otherwise known as a “hedge fund hotel” because the tenants were all hedge funds.

  Bill and Doug called. So did Rick, which was bizarre because they had not spoken since sophomore year. Fred invited Jimmy for drinks at Barcelona, a mecca for girls’-night-out dinners. “We’ll pound beers and check out the cougars. Last time I was there, a woman whipped out her boobs and dunked them in a couple of martini glasses.”

  Even Sydney, Jimmy’s former assistant, telephoned to say congratulations and gossip about the hedge fund she joined. “My boss is a stitch. He put signs in our bathroom that say ‘Employees must wash hands after touching the money.’”

  Where would I be without Bouvier?

  * * *

  It was Jean Bertrand Bouvier, to be precise. The New Orleans native hired the entire staff from Cusack Capital. He bought all the phones, computers, and furniture, even the old prints of Boston, despite early protests that he would rather “eat dice and spit snake eyes.”

  Bouvier bargained hard through February and March and scratched for every dollar, a lethal blend of Cajun charm and filed teeth. But in the end he took everything and everyone prepackaged and ready to go, assembling a shake-and-bank hedge fund in one fell swoop.

  The deal saved Cusack from personal bankruptcy. Like other entrepreneurs in New York City, he personally guaranteed all his firm’s rent obligations. Bouvier subleased the space at the Empire State Building and took over the $50,000 monthly payments, which totaled $1.2 million through the end of the lease. Crisis averted, problem solved.

  Except for Smitty—his lawyer had to know—Cusack confided his near brush with bankruptcy to only one other person. Even there, his words were more hint than outright revelation. Neither Emi nor his brothers knew. His mother was out of the question.

  * * *

  For all their good wishes during week one, Cusack’s friends would have picked him clean with less remorse than dead men. They were competitors. Hedge funds hired Ivy Leaguers in part for their networks. Grads partied together and swapped ideas back and forth. They talked to friends, always fishing for the next trade to generate big bucks.

  So many had traded the ideology of their youth for a shot at private jets and beach retreats in the Hamptons. They had accepted Hedgistan’s unwritten code that money trumps friendship. They understood the rules and di
smissed backstabbing and betrayal as occupational hazards. It was all part of the game.

  Dimitris “Geek” Georgiou was different. While others pressed for details about LeeWell, Dimitris guided Cusack through the wilds of Hedgistan. The two had been best friends ever since Wharton, where they joined the same study group, commiserated over the Boston Red Sox, and forged an enduring alliance through late nights and the pressures of rigorous academic schedules.

  “Maybe we can start a company together,” both of them said on more than one occasion.

  Dimitris grew up on Columbus Avenue in Boston. His childhood home, wedged midway between South End gentry and West Roxbury gangs, obscured the family’s finances. As a kid, he had no idea whether they were rich or struggling to make ends meet.

  The uncertainty was gone. Dimitris employed a full-time driver, who chauffeured him to a large, Greenwich-based hedge fund every day. He owned a sun-drenched co-op downtown with a 360-degree view of Manhattan, a choice deemed reasonable by other gods given his bachelor status. And the Boston native now frequented poker tournaments in Monte Carlo. According to the rumors, he won a million euros one night from a wealthy Middle Eastern businessman.

  Rail thin, wavy black hair and outsized nose, Coke-bottle glasses—Dimitris stood five foot eight with stand-tall inserts stuffed inside his Gucci loafers. His Wharton classmates nicknamed him “Greek” for a few months. Dimitris was, after all, the son of first-generation immigrants from the Hellenic Republic. He claimed to be the third cousin of Steven Demetre Georgiou, who later changed his name to Cat Stevens.

  “Greek” gave way to “Geek,” perhaps because he wore pocket protectors inside his rumpled Armani jackets. Or maybe it was the short-sleeve shirts, forever stained no matter what the laundry tried. Geek’s polos belonged in labs with bubbling beakers rather than in offices brimming with Bloomberg terminals and LCD displays. Except for one thing. The shirts cost $350 each.

  There was also the matter of language. Geek, a Yale double major in math and computer sciences, spoke an incomprehensible language cobbled together from physics, finance, and words nobody used. Cusack sometimes wished his friend came with subtitles.

  “I’m closing my fund,” Cusack informed him back in February.

  “Why, what happened?”

  “Bank stocks, among other things.”

  “Did conformal invariant deformations get you, Jimmy?”

  “Yeah, if Caleb Phelps is a ‘deformation.’”

  During Cusack’s first week at LeeWell, the two spoke by phone every day. It was Geek who helped Cusack work through his silent misgivings. “Your head trader knows how you hedge. Right, Jimmy?”

  “Of course. Otherwise, Victor can’t execute on strategy.” Cusack sounded confident but his answer was a guess. He was afraid “Dunno” might sound stupid or naive—unacceptable no matter how loyal his friend.

  “That’s a good sign,” concluded Geek. “Your boss has an inner circle. Once you bag a few clients, he’ll tell you how he hedges.”

  “How can I sell what I don’t understand?” Cusack shifted awkwardly. “It’s a chicken-or-egg problem.”

  Geek immediately detected the uneasy vibe. He pressed forward anyway, long aware of Cusack’s reticence. “Will Victor tell you?”

  “No way. The guy’s a loose cannon.”

  “Then it’s simple,” said Geek. “Make sure Cy attends your pitches. He can finesse the tough questions from prospects. After a while, he’ll need you more than you need him.”

  “That’s good thinking.”

  “I got your y-axis.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your back, Jimmy. I got your back.”

  WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30

  BENTWING TRADING AT $60.49

  Leeser brooded inside his office, drumming his fingers and eyeing a chart. The door was closed, and he was annoyed. His fund was outperforming the Dow. But so what. The index was down 3.2 percent, and his portfolio barely in the black. Something was wrong. The way Bentwing had traded off its highs. The way Hafnarbanki had rallied.

  “Shit,” he said, recognizing the caller ID on his cell phone.

  “How you doing, Cy?”

  He hated his partner’s drawl. For that matter he hated the South, and its stinking heat and all the fuss about mildew plantations like New Orleans or Charleston or any of the other Southern cities. Cy never crossed the Mason-Dixon line. It was too damn hot down there. “What’s up?”

  “Have you met Cusack’s father-in-law?”

  “Are you crazy?” Leeser snapped. “Jimmy hasn’t found the bathroom yet. Let’s stick to our plan.”

  “You’re wasting time.”

  “Who asked you?” he bristled.

  “Funny you should mention that. It’s time we discuss a few things.”

  “Like what?” Leeser grimaced, fully aware of what was coming. His partner held all the cards.

  “My share.”

  Twenty minutes later, Cy clicked off his cell phone in the blackest mood he had known in a long, long time. “I don’t need this shit,” he muttered under his breath. Over and over he echoed his partner’s words:

  “‘I want. I want. I want.’”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  TUESDAY, MAY 6

  BENTWING AT $61.61

  “I’m scared.”

  Those words were not how Cusack expected to wake. Most workdays his alarm clock shrieked, and he smacked it silly with the palm of his hand. Most workdays he mumbled something groggy and ugly, usually one letter for every hour slept. Which can be a problem when you hit the sack at one A.M. and the clock is glowing five A.M. and your sleep-startled wife wonders what the fuck happened when “darn” is not the four-letter expletive that comes to mind or mouth. Today it was Emi who nudged her James awake.

  Cusack had fallen into a rhythm of long days at LeeWell and short nights with his wife. The couple had not spoken since yesterday morning. Emi was already asleep Monday when he returned from a strategy dinner with Cy and Victor. Something was eating the boss last night, while the three were eating the $125 Akaushi Kobe shell steak at Polpo, a restaurant in Greenwich.

  Now something was eating Emi. She was lying awake in their tan-and-white bedroom, wrestling with her fears. She jostled Cusack a second time and then a third. He jolted awake, consciousness whisking his brain like a potato peeler.

  Did Emi figure out our finances?

  “What’s wrong, sweetie?” asked Cusack, blinking awake, steeling himself for trouble.

  “What if I don’t recognize our baby?”

  Cusack breathed easier. He reached over and rubbed his wife’s belly. Emi was not showing, but he could feel the thickness of her stomach. When she crossed the three-month mark with no problems, they would both heave a sigh of relief.

  “Trust me, you’ll know Yaz.” Cusack had nicknamed their unborn baby after the Red Sox slugger Carl Yastrzemski. “You’ll know the way he smells. The way he moves and searches you out with his big blue eyes. Moms clobber prosopagnosia every time.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I know these things,” he said, fully awake, confident and reassuring with the crooked smile sometimes mistaken for a smirk. “Besides, if there’s ever a problem, we’ll tattoo a pair of red socks under Yaz’s belly button.”

  Emi eeked and hit him with a goose-down pillow. “We’re having a girl. And no tattoo shop is touching my daughter.”

  The girl-versus-boy banter, Cusack knew, comforted Emi and eased her fears about prosopagnosia. Most workdays, Emi fell back asleep after their playful discussion. She left around 7:30 A.M. for the Bronx Zoo and life among the reptiles—feedings, habitat checks, research.

  Emi’s fears were growing more acute, though. The insomnia was new. And Cusack, despite his words to the contrary, had no clue whether recognition would be a problem.

  During his glory years at Goldman, Jimmy would have purchased a Tiffany baby bracelet engraved with YAZ. It would be her sign, a tool si
milar to the two-star pin. Cusack had sworn off all discretionary expenses, though. He was hoarding every spare dollar in case LeeWell failed to earn 10 percent. Bentwing, at $61.61, was only a few dollars higher than the $59.09 where it began the year. The stock was losing ground on the $78.79 target taped to Cusack’s computer terminal.

  Emi stayed awake instead of rolling over and falling back asleep. “We need to talk about something else.”

  “Is there a problem?”

  “My parents invited us to visit this weekend.”

  “Oh.”

  “I know that ‘oh,’ and I don’t like it. It’s time you make peace with Dad.”

  Cusack said nothing.

  “Mom and I can’t figure out how to get you guys to talk. You know Dad won’t take the initiative.”

  “That’s like asking Darth Caleb to abandon the Death Star.”

  “Not funny, James.”

  MONDAY, MAY 19

  BENTWING AT $66.30

  Ólafur was tired of hanging back. He had better things to do. And as far as he was concerned, patience was a euphemism for cowardice. Over a month had elapsed since Guðjohnsen approved the attack on LeeWell Capital. Still no action on that front.

  Some days the banker fantasized about cornering Leeser in a room, punching the guy’s spleen, kicking his groin, and kneeing his back where neck turns into spine. That was to get started. The Icelander was furious at Leeser for shorting Hafnarbanki. The shares had only climbed seventy-six kronur since the Qataris started buying.

  Ólafur dialed Snorasson, Hafnarbanki’s chief economist. “When will energy prices break?”

  “Soon,” he replied. “Soon.”

  “Same answer I get every week.” Ólafur clicked off the phone, grumbling, “Screw it,” as his receiver banged the cradle.

  He had been careful. And careful bugged him. There was no such thing as a risk-free trade. There were casualties in all wars. Virgil may have been a pacifist, but he was the one who asked, “Why should fear seize the limbs before the trumpet sounds?” Aggressors, the guys who pounced during uncertainty, prevailed in the capital markets.