The Banker's Dilemma: She promised him Paris in the spring

by Roman Klee

  THE

  BANKER’S DILEMMA

  ROMAN KLĚE

  The New Love of Money Story

  www.romanklee.com

  Ex-Wall Streeter Nathan DeAngelis, is facing a race against time to stop the dark forces of finance from making a killing.

  Because someone’s in the crosshairs of an assassin’s rifle.

  Nathan thinks he knows the name of the target, the time and place of the hit.

  Wall Street thinks it knows of a way to profit.

  But if Nathan gets his timing right, he can solve the Banker’s Dilemma and win his heart’s desire.

  Δ = T +1

  Nathan felt the outline of the key in his shirt pocket and stared at his cell phone. He dispensed with the three-finger rule and refilled his glass, forgetting to add soda. Ever since he was a young boy, just the smell of the devil’s water made him want to vomit.

  The very first sip triggered his gag reflex. But he persisted, got used to the burn and waited for the finish.

  Pic ‘n’ mix … ethanol … dihydrogen monoxide …

  He was more convinced than ever that the wall at the far end of his kitchen was turning a paler shade of green. And he recalled reading somewhere, how whiskey plus painkillers produced a synergistic effect, whatever that meant.

  Mix ‘n’ match you hillbilly … OxyContin … oxycodone hydrochloride … benzoylmethylecgonine …

  For several months, Nathan had been going to different drugstores, buying just two packs of generic paracetamol with each visit. Strangely, he started to penny pinch when there was no longer any point.

  On the north corner of Washington Square, he haggled with a dealer for the last time over another eight-ball. And no crappy weed, buddy.

  Remember: put Adam’s Song on loop and press the pound key followed by the number one. You’ll be sorry when I’m gone.

  He locked away his stash in the bottom drawer of his rosewood credenza, safe in the knowledge it would be more than enough when the time came to retrieve it.

  And that moment was fast approaching.

  He wanted to leave things in some kind of order and started with his credit cards, laying them out in front of him and ranking them according to the size of their unpaid balances.

  From the top: a Black Titanium Amex Centurion Card, in the name of Mr. Nathan A. DeAngelis.

  By invite only the letter said. Plus a joining a fee and annual charge, which on its own was enough to cover a nice weekend break. Using the card to buy a new Nero Carbonio metallic Maserati Quattroporte V8, with a Bianco Polare leather interior, was probably a rash move.

  But if Nathan didn’t meet the minimum annual spending limit, they took the card away. And as the saying went, once you’ve tried black, there’s no going back. He loved speed, Italian design and the intoxicating smell of new leather.

  Next in line: two Amex Platinum cards, a carbon graphite Visa Black Card, a Diners Card, a Platinum MasterCard. Store cards for Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Harrods.

  There were others, but Nathan had already cut them up and little pieces of shiny plastic now lay strewn around the room. Shards of glass encircled the trash can, where the smashed frame of his Harvard diploma lay.

  Earlier in the day, he used a sharp knife to spear the smiling faces of his former Hoboken High School classmates, the ones voted the Most Creative, Most Outgoing, Most Athletic, Best Smile, Best Eyes, Most Likely To Be Remembered and Most Likely To Succeed: Nathan DeAngelis. And then he burned the albatross of a yearbook in the kitchen sink.

  Finally, there was the JetSet card.

  Nathan’s wife had a phobia about using public toilets, especially on planes. So he signed up for the fractional air plan to keep her happy and impress his friends; a plane on demand, with its own unlimited supply of antibacterial wipes.

  And the package worked out cheaper than the one offered by his personal Centurion concierge.

  All in all, the total amount of outstanding balances ran to hundreds of thousands of dollars. The interest charges could buy a brand-new small Mercedes every month.

  How … how had this happened?

  There was no point in leaving a letter. Especially not a hand written one. Nathan’s writing had deteriorated so much, it was now just a mass of loops and scrawls. Some days even he couldn’t decipher what he wrote. There was no need to explain. Where had it all gone wrong?

  It was never just one thing.

  The S.E.C. investigation was brutal. After six months of inquiries, he thought they’d given him a break. His firm agreed to an out-of-court settlement and the guys from the government dropped all criminal charges. But in reality it was just the beginning of his troubles, because they singled him out and aggressively pursued him through the civil courts.

  Nathan was made the whipping boy and fired. They handed him the legal minimum payoff, his boss supplying the throw away line, “Sue us if you think you’re up for it. I know we are.”

  This was the guy Nathan had sweated blood for, sacrificed weekends, vacations and a normal family life. He’d taken the vow of professional omertà, he was a true believer in the Solomon Way. And he was bound by the unwritten rule that everyone on the Street knew: No one ever left Solomon Brothers—they always asked you to leave first.

  And then from out of nowhere the gossip started. Personal emails Nathan had written at work (he denied writing them) appeared in the media. They indicated that he enjoyed S&M sex games and was a regular user of escort services.

  His former work colleagues testified against him. And partners at the firm claimed that his reckless behavior had tarnished Solomon’s good name.

  He was a member of the firm’s A Team, an elite group of super smart nerds who dreamed up ingeniously structured credit products, stamped with the initials CDO. They stuffed them full of liar loans and peddled them to clients, who suddenly re-acquired their state of innocence and could no longer tell the difference between a CDO and HBO.

  But no bonus boosting junkie ever let technicalities get in the way of a fat profit. Nathan may have heard the Wall Street saying, IBG … YBG … I’ll Be Gone … You’ll Be Gone!

  Except he was the sucker left holding the bag.

  When the S.E.C. won its case, the size of the fine was twice what his lawyers said it would be at the outset. Legal fees were four times the figures they quoted.

  They simply said, “We lost and you must pay the other side’s costs and ours on top.”

  Nathan did a quick mental calculation of the hit to his net worth.

  “Hey buddy, look on the bright side! You’re not going to jail. Serve your suspension and you’ll be back on the Street in no time. Thing’s could be worse.”

  Only in Nathan’s opinion, they couldn’t be.

  He was the first to admit he was no fan of country music, but his life was turning out as if he had written one of the classic songs himself—he’d lost his money, his wife, the kids, and his house.

  And the car? What had happened to the car? All along, Nathan was determined his ex would never … never … NEVER get her grasping hands on his Maserati.

  He had defied them once before. The Barbarians turned up outside the wrought-iron gates of his former East Hampton home, baying to be let in and demanding his car keys. He threatened to set the Dobermanns on them and they backed off, though he knew the repo men would continue to hunt him down.

  At the beginning, he told his wife everything would turn out fine because he had more than eno
ugh money set aside to pay off the lawyers and cover the family’s living expenses. Finding a new job would be easy too.

  Nothing would get in the way of the twins completing their education. In the summer, Loretta would graduate from Princeton, her brother Steven from Harvard. They would each do a Masters. Loretta wanted to go to Paris and study at the Sorbonne. Steven would attend the LSE.

  Nearly all Nathan’s attempts to reassure were lies, even if he consoled himself with the thought that they were given with the best of intentions. When his wife learned the truth about the state of his finances, the divorce was not slow in coming. And the children? They would have to cope, they were old enough now.

  The phone vibrated on the leather tooled desktop and a number flashed up on the screen. Nathan didn’t recognize it, but what did that matter? In a moment of self-doubt, he may have once imagined this day might come, but he never really believed it would.

  Nathan assumed the repo men had finally discovered his rundown apartment on the edge of Chinatown. There were no cedar wood lined closets or marble lobbies where Nathan now lived.

  No self-respecting one-percenter, would be seen dead in his new residence.

  And his idea of lying low for a while, clearly wasn’t working. Pressing the pound key on his phone followed by the number one, would let the repo men in.

  They had come again for the Maserati.

  If they imagined for a nanosecond, he’d carefully parked the car in the lot at the back of the building, keys in the ignition, they needed to think again.

  So Nathan was surprised on answering the call to hear a calm, reassuring voice that made no threats, said nothing confrontational. He listened, not confident he could complete a sentence without slurring his words.

  The call ended.

  Nathan smiled for the first time in ages. The news was so much better than he dared to expect. He imagined himself once again settling back into his Bianco Polare leather driving seat, totally relaxed, eyes closed, inhaling deeply.

  And he no longer needed the drawer key.

  At least not for now.

  Δ = T +2

  The view from the sundeck was to die for. Nathan looked at the glittering steel and glass temples occupied by Wall Street’s finest and felt a pang of envy. He picked out the spire of the old Cities Service Building, recalling the name was changed after some big-shot insurance company acquired it.

  Nathan recognized the sky scraper because about a year earlier, he had attended a farewell drinks reception in the observation gallery for a Solomon colleague. (The guy later became the deputy secretary of state.) Nathan remembered a compass design in the center of the mid-night blue terrazzo floor and a golden globe they used as a bar to serve champagne from.

  The Figa d’Oro turned, passed Battery Park and carried on up the Hudson. Nathan realized they were about to enter familiar territory; Hoboken was coming up on the left.

  Then he wondered whether he should mingle more with the other guests. But this whole party thing on a yacht was over the top.

  To start with, a dwarf-sized courier dressed head to foot in white, had delivered his invite enclosed in a gold covered box. When Nathan opened it, out dropped a pair of white leather deck shoes (from the Ralph Lauren custom collection) together with a gold leaf edged card.

  There was also a hand-written note: Hope I got the size right. Apologies if I didn’t. Email Krystal or Beth and they’ll fix you up with the right pair. AO.

  The card invited Nathan to a White Shoe Party aboard the Figa d’Oro, an event no guy in his right mind ever missed. Orofino even got Nathan’s shoe size correct—what were the odds on that?

  Then there was the guest list and Antonio’s insistence on using the Golden Ratio, which in his book was calculated as one to ten—there had to be no fewer than ten ladies for every male guest, each one of model quality.

  Needless to say, this involved a lot of flicking through head and body shot catalogs and calling around agencies, but the money was good for an evening’s work, so few said no.

  Two of Antonio’s favorites were frolicking in the hot tub, behind Nathan. Earlier in the evening he heard Antonio introduce them as numero uno and numero due, his top two girls, though of course there were many others he could call on whenever he felt like it.

  And now they were taking turns to slowly rub each other’s backs with body lotion, as if they were performing some kind of initiation ritual.

  They asked Nathan if he wanted to give them a hand.

  He grinned, but declined their offer. Because at that moment, all he could think about was another kind of ritual that happened at Solomon Brothers, late on Friday afternoons, when the traders on the Delta Zedd hedging desk got bored.

  As a forfeit, the last person on their team to make it into the office that morning, had to stand in the middle of the trading floor, and eat an extra large pickle coated in layers of slightly scented hand lotion.

  Then with synchronized precision, the traders activated the stopwatches on their Tag Heuers, Breitlings, Patek Philippes and Rolexes. They had already made a book, placing bets on how long before the projectile vomiting started.

  The shortest gap was ninety seconds. On one occasion, copious quantities of stomach contents were splattered all over an Armani Privé suit jacket.

  Later when it was discovered that the jacket belonged to the head of equity sales (he left it behind by mistake after a meeting) the traders’ little game was banned for six long boring summer weeks.

  As Nathan looked on, the girls unhooked each other’s bikini tops and he needed no imagination to work out what would happen next. And soon they were joined, by half-a-dozen more slender bronzed beauties.

  Antonio believed in practicing what he preached. Being an Italian-American, he had to keep up the standards of the Bunga Bunga party, however tough the economic environment.

  Nathan turned and moving closer to the handrail, looked down on the lower deck. A small group of guys had gathered and he assumed they were comparing notes on which girls to select for later in the evening.

  Except they were not. The conversation was being dominated by a tall Latino guy, who wore a white shawl collar tuxedo. He appeared to have already consumed large quantities of Cristal and cocaine, which Orofino’s little helpers had skillfully piled high on silver platters.

  “Hey buddy, gimme a job … ya know like yours, with a cozy corner office, expense account dining and the easy pay pension plan. Life’s tough, I have to wash my dishes by hand. How about it?”

  Todd Brinkley was taken aback by the directness of Sandro Cacciatore’s question. He was about to give the guy the brush off, when Cacciatore continued, “I want every day to be a zero loss trade day. Why not? Because I guess I’d make it big with a bunch of oh-so-kool zero loss trade days. Whaddaya say banker dude … ka-ching anyone?”

  Brinkley just about managed to reply, “Sorry pal, you’re talking to the wrong guy …”

  “I wanna fill my boots with your easy peasy money. Ya know what I mean … please gimme a job, I wanna bankrupt my bank and pocket four hundred million bucks—ka-ching!”

  “Hey, there’s no need to get all bent out of shape. And I don’t like people calling me a banker, right?”

  But Brinkley’s demand that Cacciatore forget his occupation made no difference. The guy in the white tuxedo, felt obliged to speak his mind.

  “I wanna screw all the dumb-ass sub-primers, those suckers you force fed with their own liar mortgages. Talk about making lemons into lemonade. I wanna say screw you, friggin’ jerks, cash in my stock options. Buy a new condo in Palm Beach with a view of the golf course. Atlantic Drive will do just fine. Get a yacht … park it at the end of my lot … my own private jetty. Bet ya customers are checking out the Miami boat show!”

  “I don’t mean to be rude, but buddy why don’t you go screw yourself!”

 
But Cacciatore was in no way deterred. He intended to get it all out in the open. “I wanna job with a fine executive chair and large couch, I wanna choose the pattern on my Persian rug. And I wanna personal assistant sitting outside. Ya know, young, blonde, bee sting lips and blue eyes. The kind who likes to lie back and spread her legs. Ya know … a spreader who gets her thrills when I dump a big load of dictation in her lap. Top dog, banker dude!”

  By now Brinkley could feel the color rising in his cheeks. Physical violence had never been his weapon of first choice. He used other people to remove irritating jerks who got in his way or were no longer useful.

  “Look jack ass, I’m no banker, right! And I don’t want anyone calling me one!”

  “So whaddaya say? Can I have your job? How about you make me your numero uno? How about a new credenza, a commode and a fancy shower curtain? Hey, where’s my Chinese rug? Where’s my success?”

  Brinkley started to turn his back on the guy and walk away.

  “Hey, where ya goin’? Hey, banker dude come back here! You people make me wanna puke, ya hate having skin in the game!”

  Brinkley had reached his limit. Profession related insults were an instant trigger point for him. From where Nathan was watching, he saw the guy turn around and attempt to head-butt his tormentor, aiming for the bridge of his nose.

  But instead of Cacciatore falling down, he anticipated the attack, stepped out of the way and then moving forward, delivered a powerful right jab to Brinkley’s jaw that made a loud crunching sound.

  Brinkley stumbled badly, knocking over one of the bar stools, a pitcher of Martinis and an ice bucket. As the olives and ice cubes rolled across the teak deck, the small circle of guys closed in more tightly, obscuring Nathan’s view.

  He could see there was a scuffle and even though Brinkley didn’t appear to be close enough to the yacht’s stern railings, the next thing he heard were male voices shouting, “Man overboard!”

  The minutes that followed were full of confusion and panic. Some of the girls started screaming, the more hysterical demanded Valium.