Tommy and Pat turned dejectedly and went their separate ways, leaving Jenny on the berm by herself. She stretched out her legs and arms, looked straight up, and sighed deeply. As Jenny was rolling her head trying to relieve the tension that had built up in her neck and back, she caught a glimpse of John coming in her direction. She jumped to her feet and started to walk quickly down the sidewalk away from him. John hastened his pace and cut across the softball field to intercept her.
“Come on, don’t take this personally. It’s just business,” John said.
Jenny turned on a dime, and they came face-to-face, Jenny peering down at him slightly. “Not personal? You morons are trying to bury each other.”
“No, we’re not. We’re trying to make big money. That’s all,” John said. “It’s not personal for me, and that’s why I’m going to come out on top.”
“So, you think you have this all figured out?” Jenny asked.
“I think I do. People are spooked by Tommy’s involvement, plus I’m not all emotional about it like your two friends. They’re going to mess this up unless I give them a break,” John said.
“And you would do that, what, for me?”
John was infatuated with Jenny from the moment he saw her with her friends at the hotel restaurant the first night they met. He really did want her approval in some strange sort of way. In addition, there was pragmatism to the idea. He knew this market still had a chance to bury him.
“Yes, if you will do something for me.” John took a long, greedy stare at Jenny, but then his cell phone rang.
“You’re a pig,” Jenny blurted as John’s cell phone continued to ring.
“Hold that thought. Really, I have to grab this,” John said. Jenny had her chance to escape, but for some reason lingered, perhaps wondering about the urgency of the call. She kicked at the ground a bit again, folded her arms, and walked away a few feet. John turned away from her as he started to speak, but she heard him say, “Yes, yes, yes, I know,” and, “I’ll start to cover before it gets there.”
John turned back to Jenny and said, “My apologies, but where were we . . . oh, yes, you were calling me a pig.”
“Yes. Do you really think you have any chance with me?” Jenny said.
“Well, I guess not, but I thought you might want to try to help your friends.”
“What do you mean?”
“One of us doesn’t have to lose everything. If the price of carbon settles in at about the right price, I could offer them a way out.”
“So, you’ll tell me when that time comes?” Jenny asked.
“Possibly, yes. Well, yes. All you need to do is keep an open mind about me,” John said.
“That’s it?”
“Well, and meet me for a drink tonight at the Hilton. I’ll explain it further, and you’ll see I’m not evil and not what Tommy thinks I am. I have a solution to this mess, and I know that Tommy won’t listen to me,” John offered.
“It appears that you have adequately stalked me to know I am staying at the Hilton.”
“I have, and I hope to see you there. A little flexibility could be worth millions of dollars to you and your friends. Sure, I’ll make a lot more, but they won’t lose everything,” John said and headed south, while Jenny walked directly west back toward the hotel. She felt sick at the thought of spending any time or doing anything with John, but why not if Pat comes out of this without losing everything and instead, is set for life?
Jenny knew it wasn’t as simple as one drink, but she knew Pat would do almost anything for her. Jenny headed for the drug store around the corner to pick up some things that she thought she would need and then left a message on John’s cell phone to meet her at a bar near the hotel so they wouldn't run into Pat or Tommy. She could do this, she would do this, for Pat and Mary and the kids.
47
Pat and Tommy both spent Wednesday night obsessing about what would happen the next day and knowing they shouldn’t talk to each other. Tommy was back at his condo. He tried calling Jenny’s cell phone and her hotel room several times. He figured she was pretty mad at him and he knew that Pat needed her more than he did to get through this.
He stared for an hour at a full bottle of vodka and his assortment of prescriptions on the table. He walked around them, occasionally pushing at the pill bottles and rolling them across the table. Finally, knowing he wouldn’t see or talk to Jenny, he poured four pills into his palm and slammed them into his mouth. He reached for a glass of water, but sent it spilling over the table and around the vodka bottle. Frustrated, he grabbed the vodka. As he struggled with the seal on the cap the pills started to dissolve, becoming bitter in his mouth. Finally, he spat them out over the table and watched them dissolve in the spilled water. He placed the still-unopened bottle of vodka in the middle of the mess and went to bed.
Meanwhile, Pat stopped at the first bar that he saw after the three parted company, but after a couple of beers he realized that getting drunk wouldn’t solve anything. Pat swung the bar door open into the unseasonably cold and still night air. His stocky silhouette in the pool table light made him look as if he was made of building blocks. As he took two steps out onto the sidewalk, the door closed with a thud behind him.
The fluorescent outdoor bar sign twitched on and off, making the turn of his head look like an old projector recording. He scanned the streets and parked cars before proceeding. Now he always thought someone was watching. His time in Chicago had changed him. He swung his arms in a graceful arc clearing his own girth and plodded, bull legged, down the street.
Pat tried Jenny’s cell phone and hotel room phone as he walked. Frustrated, he went to the Hilton and knocked on her door. When no one answered, he convinced the manager to open the door, claiming that Jenny was epileptic and might be having a seizure. He half expected to find her there with Tommy. When the room was empty, he was a bit jealous, assuming Tommy and Jenny were off somewhere else together.
He felt like he was back in college when he had to watch their bond and sexual tension play out. He had Mary now, and the kids, and felt ashamed at his reaction. He called Mary and talked to her the entire walk home. He told Mary everything, and she assured him no matter what happened she would be waiting for him to come home. Their bond had survived the years based on complete honesty. Mary even knew that Pat had a bit of a thing for Jenny for a while back in college but neither ever let Jenny or Tommy know. Pat always told Mary it was ancient history, although she still wondered from time to time.
Once back, he hung up his cell phone, grabbed a beer, and sat in an overstuffed chair. He took a few sips and drifted off to sleep. Mentally and emotionally spent, Pat didn’t move a muscle until first thing in the morning when an incoming call seemingly vibrated both the table next to him where the phone laid and the chair he sat on. It was an assistant to Mark at McKinstry, asking that he join Mark for lunch at his office.
John and Tommy didn’t answer their phones but received similar early Thursday morning voicemail messages. After Mark confirmed with his assistant that the calls to Pat, John, and Tommy had been placed, and that a sit-down lunch was set to take place in the main conference room, he turned his attention to the morning’s trading activity.
Mark had his hedge manager and trading manager with him in his office, and they set up laptops at small tables on each side of the room. No one else entered the room, and buy and sell orders would go out only from the two managers. The entire firm knew what a big day this was; there were millions of dollars of potential bonuses hanging in the balance. People at the firm would be watching their screens like it was the Super Bowl and they had a chance to win a big pool.
Trading opened Thursday with many sellers. Rumors of Tommy’s involvement continued to spread. Now brokers were starting to take care of their less important customers after getting their own needs and their higher profile customers taken care of previously. Mark didn’t flinch.
“Buy. Fill orders fast. I want people thinking there are plenty of
buyers out there.” The pressure from sellers was relentless for the first two hours of trading. The price held nearly flat only because McKinstry put over three hundred million of firm and client money into the market.
Late in the morning, prices moved up nearly five percent as McKinstry continued to buy. Each time one of the two managers suggested pulling back, Mark groused at the thought and just yelled “buy” louder.
Finally, to no one in particular, Mark said, “Where the hell is John? He must not be covering his short positions by buying. That son of a bitch thinks he can outlast me.”
The bulky hedge manager with large pores and gelled comb-over hair jumped in. “Maybe John can outlast us. We are through most of our reserves and soon we’ll start using our lending capacity. We can’t support the prices in the market by buying for much longer.”
“Well, we have to keep buying. That piece of shit has to cover those short positions pretty soon. His bankers have to be all over his ass. He’s got to be buying.” It was almost time for the lunch meeting, so Mark put his suit coat on and headed to the conference room. Just before he got to the door, he turned to his managers. “Buy only what you have to in order to keep the price from falling. There has to be support out there somewhere . . . I can feel it, I know it. We are too damn close to grabbing the market share I . . . ah . . . we need to really be successful in this business.” Mark was so close to owning ten percent of McKinstry he could taste it. He’d have so much “fuck you” money he could say fuck you to his boss Barbara, whenever he wanted.
Mark headed to the conference room to find Pat and Tommy with five impeccably displayed place settings waiting along with pork fillets, boiled potatoes, and steamed carrots. Mark’s philosophy during touchy business meetings was always to class it up enough to stop people from brawling in the gutter. It didn’t always work, but he figured it helped.
Mark had expected four settings but seeing five quickly figured that Barbara had invited herself. He wasn’t surprised as there was a lot of money at stake and she didn’t fully trust him.
Mark joined Pat on the far side of the table opposite of the door and Tommy. Before they could even sit down Barbara entered and introduced herself to Tommy and Pat and sat at the end of the table. She was an open and engaging person with striking gray hair and an infectious smile.
Neither was surprised by her presence, given what they knew of Mark’s stock deal, but were caught off guard by the difference between the first impression she made and the image that Mark had conveyed.
All that was missing was John until he pushed anxiously into the room a few minutes later. The four instinctively stood as a reaction to John’s urgent demeanor. Clearly he hadn’t seen a razor or a brush since yesterday, and he looked like he had a bad hangover. “Sorry I’m late. I, uh, overslept, I guess.”
Mark spoke next. “So, you haven’t seen what’s happened in the market today?”
“No. I wasn’t awake ten minutes ago. Thought I would have better access to information and trades here, so I came straight over. What the hell is going on?”
Tommy couldn’t control himself. He had to tell John. “The market is up over five percent for the day.”
“No fucking way. There was too much bad news out there, unless you guys bought everything in sight,” John said, staring at Mark.
Mark responded quickly. “Of course I can’t answer that, but it does appear there aren’t many sellers left out there, at least at the current price.”
John started to panic. The other three men were surprised to see him looking so disheveled. John said, “Well, then you guys need to sell to me. It’s probably pretty obvious that I need to cover some short positions.”
Pat spoke up. “I’m not really in a position to sell. That might spook the market and besides, I think there’s some upside now.”
“Right, asshole. That upside will be me driving up the market, having to buy to cover my shorts,” John said, now sweating and near hyperventilation.
“If you say so,” Pat offered somewhat cautiously while glancing at the floor, not knowing how far John could be pushed before losing control.
John fired viciously at Tommy. “I know you’re behind this whole thing. Pat’s just your puppet.”
“Not true, but even if it was, who’d blame me? You screwed over our business. I was just trying to do the right thing. Build a business that made a difference, but you had to fuck with it.” Tommy was matching John’s intensity.
“Do the right thing? Make a difference?” John yelled. “Listen to yourself. Always a do-gooder. Always better than the rest of us.”
“That’s not what I said or thought,” Tommy shot back aggressively.
“You’re lying to yourself, you arrogant piece of shit. You had to know something was wrong back then. You had to see the volumes. Look at the money we were making. At some level you had to know, but if you did the wrong things for the right reason, then it was okay.”
Tommy and John continually moved closer together as the conversation escalated, while Pat and Mark looked on anxiously a step back from where they started even though they had the table for protection. Barbara stood her ground risking becoming collateral damage if they went after each other.
Tommy was speechless. This verbal punch in the gut rocked him as if it were physical. He could barely breathe. There was some truth to John’s comments, and Tommy knew it. Pat stared at Tommy with his arms crossed knowing the same thing. Pat clearly understood in that moment that Tommy had abused their friendship more than he previously could have known.
John continued, almost desperate. “And now, look at you.
Manipulating Pat and brokers, marketers, and fund managers. And why? To get back at me? You think we are all money and power whores and now you’re worse than any of us. Congratulations.”
“I’m not making a penny on this. I can’t,” Tommy was trying to stand up for himself, but he was still shaken to the core.
“So that’s how you rationalize it? You can be a vengeful, righteous ass as long as you don’t make money doing it?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Tommy was starting to get his footing again, and wasn’t about to keep taking all of these accusations without a fight.
“Not officially, but we all know . . . and you know what’s funny, I didn’t do a damn thing. I didn’t fix trades and I sure as hell didn’t kill George!”
“You made eighty million dollars watching our business flame out,” Tommy glared at John, hating him for everything that had happened. Hating himself for trusting John.
John was equally mad and thinking of Tommy as nothing more than a self-righteous asshole. He spitefully corrected Tommy, “It was forty million and I was approached by someone who needed cash to put a hedge strategy in place. So we shorted a shitload of carbon that protected my original investment in our company. That was just smart business.
Hell, I thought you were the one cheating me! And did if ever occur to you that maybe George dying really was just an accident?”
“Bullshit. Somebody killed him!” Tommy knew it in his gut and had it confirmed by the thug that had roughed him up. He was pissed that no one else would acknowledge that truth.
“You don’t know that for sure, and you still don’t even know who made the other forty million in Big Mountain Traders do you?”
Tommy grew sheepish again. His confidence waned. “Who?”
“I don’t have time for this anymore. I’ve got to try to save my ass. I need a phone and a quiet room,” John said.
“By all means,” offered Mark. “Help yourself to the conference room across the hall. John put on a headset, starting kneading a stress ball he carried in his suit coat pocket and started dialing. Pat, Tommy, and Mark stared at him through the two glass walls of the hallway separating the two conference rooms. No distance could have been greater.
No one ate a single bite of food. Pat and Tommy said their goodbyes to Mark and Barbara and headed out together into the thick heat of the
afternoon. Nothing either of them could do to help or hurt John at this point. If Pat sold, Mark could, and probably would, flood the market and crater the price just to spite Tommy and Pat. They needed to let Mark and others in the market determine John's fate.
John would likely be scrambling until the market closing and again Friday morning, trying to climb out of a huge hole. If the market price kept climbing, Tommy figured that John might be broke before the market closed on Friday. It didn’t feel as good, nor did it provide the closure Tommy had anticipated. He was more interested now, anyway, in seeing Jenny than worrying about John.
Pat and Tommy received the same message from Jenny at the same time when they turned on their phones. She texted, “Hey, I went back home this morning. Please don’t bother calling until you guys come home. I did everything that I possibly could to help. I can’t watch this anymore.”
Tommy looked over at Pat and said, “Did you see the message from Jenny?”
Pat said, “What? Yes. Did you say something to her last night to piss her off?”
“I didn’t see her last night,” Tommy clarified. “I figured she was with you.”
“No. She must be tired of both of us, but she wasn’t in her room last night,” Pat said.
“How do you know?” Tommy asked.
“Don’t ask,” Pat said. “I wonder where the hell she was.”
“You don't think . . .” Tommy paused, “that she had something to do with John oversleeping, do you?”
“Well somebody must have done something to him. Nobody oversleeps with this kind of money at stake,” Pat said.
“She couldn't have, no way she would do that for us, I hope,” Tommy said, starting to feel sick at the thought of pushing Jenny to such an extreme.
“She could and would,” Pat stated flatty, knowing she was such a good friend to Tommy and Pat she’d do almost anything. “If she did, it could ruin us. It could ruin her. I can’t think about that now. What are you going to do?” Tommy asked. “We could watch carbon prices until the market closes.”
The Squeeze Page 25