The Squeeze

by Paul Schueller

  The Squeeze

  To my family—the inspirations who drive my life and decisions.

  Introduction

  This is a work of fiction but is based partially on first-hand knowledge and unwitting participation by the author in some fraudulent and corrupt activity in early carbon trading markets. This past reality of inadequate market protections is inconsequential assuming mistakes aren’t repeated in future markets. Any unfathomably unlikely profit associated with this work would go to charitable causes. It’s cliché, but writing is its own reward . . . and therapy.

  1

  Lawyers. Tommy wished he had never met any and knew it would have been far easier to never have dated one. Now he found himself surrounded by them . . . his lawyer and on-and-off girlfriend, Susan Hogan, his business partner John DaFallo’s representation, along with attorneys from the U.S. District Attorney’s office and the Cook County State Attorney’s office.

  Tommy leaned over to consult with Susan. “Lawyers suck,” he whispered.

  “We prefer attorneys, and it’s not our fault you’re in deep shit,” she snapped back.

  The stately conference room at Young & Erickson allowed sweeping views, both north over The Loop and east to Grant Park and Lake Michigan. The room was reflective of the firm’s powerful reputation in Chicago where the biggest firms and their collective egos sought the top floors of the tallest buildings. The expansive views of the sprawling city mirrored the breadth and depth of power that the firm had achieved over more than 100 years in business. Tommy could no longer afford the high-priced help, but past billings from his first successful business and a little prodding from Susan had resulted in pro bono time to guide him through this legal maze. The room, on this late Friday afternoon, had been the setting of Tommy’s personal nightmare as he listened to a variety of Federal and State District Attorneys take turns making accusations and threatening prosecution. They all smelled blood in the water and said virtually the same thing: “Mr. Thomas Gardner, your crimes are egregious, and we intend to pursue this case to the fullest extent possible.” Tommy’s chest tightened, and he dabbed beads of sweat with his cuff as he listened to the seemingly never ending drone.

  Tommy noted that all opposing counsel were younger and better dressed than he was with the notable exception of a physically unkempt man in an equally unkempt suit sitting at the far end of the room. Tommy assumed he’d hear something from him soon, but the procession of attorneys mercifully ended. The U.S. District Attorney then slid a single sheet of paper across the table to Tommy’s lead counsel, a rotund senior partner and Susan’s boss, Sam Meyers. Sam shouldered his way a bit closer to the conference room table like a walrus positioning for prime rock real estate. He appeared to study the paper intently, although Susan and Tommy figured it might be for effect.

  “We will get back to you tomorrow on your offer,” Sam stated, but to no one in particular.

  The lead attorneys requested that they respond by noon, even though it was Saturday. Everyone just wanted this wrapped up quickly.

  Tommy’s business partner, John DeFallo, wasn’t present. He had taken on the brunt of dismantling their business over the two previous days when Tommy refused to deal with it. That had earned John the relative luxury of being second down this painful path with the hope that he would gain some insight from the process. John’s attorney had listened intently all day, racking up sizeable fees without lifting a finger.

  He spoke for the first time all day. “May I be copied on that offer, please?”

  Given that the offer wasn’t for his client, the request was met with a collective eye roll and all of the prosecuting attorneys packed up and filed out after a hard day’s work, leaving Tommy with his two attorneys. Susan was thirty, fit, and intense with a long blonde ponytail pulled so tightly that her roots might bleed at any moment. She wore glasses for effect, not need, thinking they countered the blonde stereotype. Her thin nose looked no bigger than a fingertip sticking out past thick, dark-rimmed glasses. She wanted to make partner at a younger age than anyone in the long history of the firm, and dating Tommy fit with her plans. He was funny in his own strange, dry way, had a thick muscular body, and was cute for a guy who was ten years older than she was. She liked that their relationship wasn’t serious enough to get in the way of her career. She found most guys her age were starting to look for a commitment.

  Susan turned to Sam. “How does the offer look?” she asked bluntly.

  “Pretty damned good,” he responded with a blank stare pasted across his bloated face. “No jail time. No financial penalty. Just a lifetime ban from any commodities market.”

  “I’m basically broke other than still having my condo, and I need to make a living. I don’t deserve a lifetime ban!” Tommy exclaimed.

  “Yeah, you do!” Susan shot back. “Your firm put the carbon trading business on its ass. You set the idea of a cap-and-trade system back five or ten years. Everyone wants you served up on a platter! I mean everyone, from environmental groups to hardcore trading firms and anyone in between. You’ve pissed them all off and that’s hard to do. They don’t have many common enemies.”

  “If it’s such a great offer, why are they making it?” Tommy asked Susan.

  “Because everyone’s embarrassed. Representation from the climate exchanges didn’t even show up today. They all let the feds take the lead.

  No one caught the falsified trades on the exchanges or anywhere else, for that matter.”

  “So, then I have a chance to win,” Tommy inquired eagerly.

  “No. If you drag everyone through a trial, they’ll go out of their way to bury you,” Susan snapped back.

  Tommy turned and looked desperately to Sam for his opinion. “She’s right, and you’re a goddamned moron if you don’t take this deal.”

  Tommy realized how hard it had always been for him to get straight answers from the legal profession. They were great at hedging and pointing out “ifs” and “it depends” while racking up billable hours, but not this time. “I get it. I’ll take the deal. I assume that you will have some small edits, and I’ll sign tomorrow. So, what happens to my partner?” Tommy said, looking at Susan.

  “John will likely get a similar offer. Maybe even better, as all the shit pointed to you. And he’ll take it. There are too many people who just want to forget you guys ever existed.”

  Hated from the right to the left, Tommy thought to himself. How the hell did that happen? He had always considered himself a pretty good combination of driven and ethical, maybe even socially responsible. Now he had no business and no money. Tommy said his goodbyes to Sam and Susan and begrudgingly pressed the elevator button to go down. After slumping in the corner, the elevator doors opened, and Tommy struggled out onto Wabash Street and into a gloomy late winter day in Chicago. He headed east a couple of blocks to take a walk in Grant Park. The rain fell so lightly that it didn’t make a sound. Tommy’s chest felt like it was in a vice. Any defiance had been drained from his body by the attorneys’ accusations and the pressure of the day. He thought he would take the time alone to figure out how he ended up so screwed. It probably started when his first business had successfully ended just over two years earlier.

  2

  The Chicago skyline didn’t look any better now that he was a newly minted multimillionaire than it did when he was poor, and his hangover certainly didn’t hurt less. Tommy Gardner had sold his first business, a PR firm that concentrated on improving the green and clean image of its clients a couple of weeks earlier. He had enough money to be ecstatic, but he never felt worse. Tommy stopped at a street-side newsstand and stared at his picture on the cover of a local business magazine that had done a piece on the sale of his business. He saw a big nose, oversized ears, and a receding hairlin
e. Tommy could always find the worst in himself and others. The reality was a man of about forty with slightly thinning blonde and gray hair, strong, fit and from outward appearances, aging quite well. His blue eyes darted as he reached in his pocket feeling for his Xanax bottle; a couple of pills might help his outlook on the day. The bottle was empty after doubling up on pills since he sold the business, and he slammed it down onto the sidewalk. He glared at the bottle as it rolled into the gutter, then glanced back at the picture in disgust and headed to the pharmacy for a refill.

  It didn’t help that there was no one with whom to celebrate his newfound wealth. He thought often about how different and better it would have been if his business partner, Paul Smith, was there to celebrate their mutual success. Paul had been a ten percent owner in the business, but he was more of a partner in the success than that ownership indicated, and he was also a friend. He had either drowned or died of hypothermia in the Chicago River in an accident on a very cold winter night just months earlier. It was part of the reason Tommy sold, as the business just wasn’t the same for him without Paul there. Paul’s stock had transferred to Tommy upon his death. Paul had no family, so Tommy kept the money, but it never felt right.

  He loved Chicago, and now with a little time, thought he’d look at it fresh and see if the city could cheer him up. The best way to do that, he thought, was making random L stops and walking around. He spent most of his adult life on the Red and Brown Line trains and thought that maybe he needed to venture out a bit.

  Tommy found that not owning a car was liberating. It was great to get around without having to own something that could break, and it certainly didn’t hurt the green business image he had cultivated. He had spent a dozen years helping companies figure out ways to reduce their carbon footprint and clean up their image; it was time for something different. He just didn’t know what.

  Today he was meeting Susan for lunch at a little café just off the Belmont stop. It was the first day of the year they could sit outside to eat. Spring rains had scrubbed the city clean of the dirt and grime of the receding snow.

  Sometimes Tommy wondered if he loved Chicago because it was just as bipolar as he was, with the city and its inhabitants caught in a trap of ironic contrasts. Parks seemingly and simultaneously giving birth to trees as well as monoliths of steel and glass. People so poor they would eat the table scraps of people so rich that their left-overs could feed many. Yet they all shared the same streets and space and time with barely a nod to the twists that may have sent their lives in such dramatically different directions.

  Susan, who had helped Tommy close the sale of his business, was wide-eyed, cute and full of energy. She was a fitness freak who bounced more than walked. Tommy always felt like her constant highs helped him deal with his lows. That held true for the most part, and was only a problem the few times when he was “up.” Then their energy level clashed . . . too many hormones and brain synapses firing to be easily managed.

  “Hi, hun. Are you enjoying your new freedom?” she bubbled.

  “Surprisingly, not at all. The rest of Chicago is still working, and I’ve just been wandering from one L stop to another.”

  “So you really want me to feel sorry for you?” she teased.

  “No. I’ll roam Chicago for a few more days and then start figuring

  out what to do next. Maybe I’ll try writing,” Tommy responded.

  “Do you even know how to write?”

  “Sure, everyone does.”

  “I mean, have you ever written anything? Even a short story?”

  “Well, no.”

  “Oh.” Susan was unusually terse.

  “Sounds like maybe I need to put a bit more thought into this.”

  Susan didn’t respond, hoping her silence would further drive home the point. As they ordered and ate without speaking, Susan saw the flaw in her logic since Tommy was never troubled by awkward silence.

  Knowing that she would need to propel the conversation, she asked Tommy, “Can I see you tonight?”

  “Sure. You want to meet at my place when you’re done with work?”

  “I’ll see you then.” Susan stood, having eaten only half of her turkey wrap, pecked Tommy on the cheek, and motored down the sidewalk back toward the Belmont stop for the Red and Brown Line trains. He watched her for half a block picturing the tattoo across her back, precisely at her bra line, where only an intimate partner would ever know it existed.

  Carpe quid est cupio—Latin for cease what you want. It still intimidated him at times.

  Tommy spent the rest of the afternoon walking south to the Loop, then back north along the lake, through Boys Town, then finally to his condo a few blocks south of Wrigley Field. He thought a lot about Susan on his walk. They had dated for over a year, but if either of them was really busy, they wouldn’t see each other for weeks at a time except to hook up for a couple of drinks and sex. Other than their mutual attraction, the only other connection they had was Tommy counting on Susan to help him deal with a world he wanted to, but couldn’t always control.

  Most people thought Tommy was engaging enough because he could be charismatic if he tried, but even making eye contact was something that didn’t come naturally to him. He understood his flaws and could manage them, and he read people well. This hid his near-continuous monitoring of situations and avoidance of settings that would cause stress or an uncomfortable personal interaction. He preferred conversations that led to a decision, direction, or otherwise had utility to them. Small talk was only tolerated with a few people with whom he had a personal relationship.

  In work settings, he would do anything short of faking a seizure to get out of some conversations. Tommy had a running list in his head of fictional or real upcoming appointments, meetings, haircuts, and other things to escape from conversations that were a waste of time. If it was about learning, gaining new experience, or helping others, he had all day. If someone wanted to tell him how often they groom their dog and what he eats, he would pull an excuse from his arsenal and move on. Life was too short to waste it on the trivial; however, to others he conveyed serial impatience more than productive urgency.

  Tommy also compulsively controlled any need for public speaking—not easy for a guy who had run a public relations business, working with companies to improve their environmental images. He was fine in small groups around a table, but ten or twenty people staring in his direction unnerved him. Even larger groups were only manageable by popping a propranolol or any other beta blockers that he could get his hands on.

  Just like with conversation time-wasters, he needed a way to bail out of almost any public situation if he wasn’t properly medicated. Each day became a minefield to navigate. He felt so relieved to sell the business and move on that the first night as a non-business owner he had been so relaxed, or drunk, that he had wet his bed.

  Tommy was already growing bored. Susan’s work schedule and his gut feeling that she could only tolerate his presence two or three times a week left him with lots of free time. The writing idea wasn’t likely to go anywhere fast. Pretty naive to think that he could just be a writer, but you have to be naive or crazy to do some of the things that Tommy did. He was both.

  His magazine picture from his business sale had led to a few calls and voicemails, mostly from financial planners and insurance salesmen along with a couple from people he knew in passing. The only one he decided to call back was a Chicago-area business operator whose name everyone recognized. Tommy listened to the message on his cell phone a second time to get the phone number right.

  “Hi, this is John DeFallo. I saw your picture and business sale announcement. Congratulations. I have an idea about how you and I may be able to help lead the carbon trading business into the future and maybe make some money in the process. You can reach me at Idea Innovations. The number is 312-555-1212.” Tommy was flattered that such a high-profile businessman in the city would call. He returned the call, and they agreed to meet at John’s office the ne
xt day.

  When the elevator door opened to the tenth-floor lobby of Idea Innovations, it looked more like an Apple Store than an office. The contrast of the old building’s exposed brick and modern furniture looked natural. Tommy announced himself to the receptionist. John emerged quickly, his energy level palpable as they moved toward each other. John looked like he did everything urgently, like he could suck the light out of a nearby candle just by inhaling. He had salt-and-pepper hair combed straight back and gelled, looking more Wall Street than anything else, even before noting the custom fit of his dark suit. What little could be seen of his narrow eyes were hazel and focused. Ears tight to his head and the slicked back hair gave him an aerodynamic look that matched a personality designed to cut through life quickly.

  At six feet, Tommy was a couple of inches taller and more physically powerful but had less of a presence than John. John commanded the room, the attention, and Tommy’s interest. He looked Tommy right in the eye and said, “Thanks for coming. I have a proposition for you today.

  Let’s sit down in the boardroom.” Tommy had no idea what a Silicon Valley boardroom looked like, other than it must look like this, minus the view out onto Jackson Street, just west of Michigan. John continued.

  “We could take hours or days to get to know each other, or I can propose a deal, right here, right now. Then, if you like it, we can go through the personal match dance, or you cannot like it and then, we’ve both saved a bunch of time. Does that work for you, Tommy?”

  Not wanting to slow the train down, Tommy said, “That works.”

  “Great. I know of you and your reputation—golden boy, friend of the environment first, capitalist a distant second. Hell, I’ll bet you were in business just to do the right thing for your clients and making some money just, well, kind of happened. You are the perfect guy to most effectively drive monetizing carbon markets. I am a capitalist first and foremost, but respect what a little green marketing can do.”