by Gage Grayson
“It’s still pristine—the whiteboard didn’t do shit.”
“Well, yippee for that hedge fund tabletop. May it live to see many more years of pointless meetings.”
I start sweeping the markers and the whiteboard into a big pile at the edge of the table.
“Pointless, you say?”
“Yeah,” Maddie answers quickly, her hands still on her hips. “Every single one.”
“Even today? Even your meetings?”
I can’t help myself. I’m already sweeping the mess back into the bags. There’s no way Kallie is cleaning this up; it’s going to end up being some poor janitor working a sixteen-hour day.
I hear a heavy sigh coming from Maddie’s side of the room.
It’s definitely from Madeline, but there’s a world-weariness I wouldn’t expect to hear from her.
“I’ve been trying, Ethan.” Madeline’s tone is so hefty that I’m afraid to even look up from what I’m doing. “I wanted...I still want to do this the easy way.”
“The easy way?” It’s like I’m following a script at this point. I need her to fess up, even if she needs me to lead her on a bit.
“Interviews, Ethan. That’s what I told my higher-ups. Not formal interviews—I thought I could keep it casual. A new approach.”
Now I’m holding both plastic bags, one in each hand. They’re both bursting with Kallie’s garbage.
“Do you have an old approach?” I’m staring at my hands holding the bags like a shy child. I know where this is going.
“No. I mean new for this branch office.”
I walk in Madeline’s direction, looking at her. She’s not trying to hide a frown of disappointment with a mounting, resigned anxiety in her eyes.
“Investigations never start this way in New York?”
“They start this way, but they don’t continue this way for this long. I’m not going by the book, and I was hoping to avoid that.”
I deposit the bags on a chair a few spots from the end of the table in case Maddie starts to feel like Maddie again.
“Why?”
“Because now, it’s only going to get worse.”
“Why?”
I arrive at my spot just in front of Madeline, getting close enough that she has to look up at me.
I lightly rub her back with one hand, and her frown and troubled eyes start to take on a maudlin, playful tone.
“Can we speak in your office?”
I look around the room as if I’m checking for a giant reel-to-reel recording our entire conversation.
“Madeline, we’re safe here. I’m sure of it.”
“I’m sure of it too. I’d just like to see your office. Please?”
Shit, if Maddie didn’t worry about being recorded up until now, with everything we just did in this room, she must mean business.
“Okay, let’s check it out.”
Madeline nods, and she’s halfway out the door by the time I take my first step.
“I appreciate you giving me your time after hours,” Madeline calls out to me as I follow her down the corridor. “I hope we can get some of these questions answered.”
Now that Madeline’s got me in a sort of paranoid state, I try to act natural and pull my business phone out from my pocket to check my messages.
There’s an email notification on the lock screen. I don’t usually get notifications for emails, except for one account—the account that the partners set up for me when I first joined.
The email is from John Barrister’s Gmail account.
Why would he be using his Gmail account?
We need to talk re:Basel. Remind me when you see me next.
“Not this shit again,” I say out loud as Maddie opens my office door.
“What shit?” she asks, walking around my desk to sit in my chair.
After walking into my office, I close the door behind me and pull up a chair to my desk.
“I keep forgetting, even though it’s a big fucking deal. The firm is in talks, internally, to move to Switzerland.”
“Switzerland?” Maddie lets out an odd, vaguely horrified laugh after saying the word.
“Yeah, weird, right? It’s not going to happen, or at least I doubt it.”
“When have you heard about an entire firm making a move like that?”
“Exactly. I think it’s just a negotiating tactic because our lease in the building is almost up. They’re trying to make it look as realistic as possible.”
Maddie spins around in my chair, making a complete rotation to the window behind the desk and back. Her expression’s still dead serious.
“That is one nice view you’ve got here.”
“Tell me about it. That’s why it doesn’t make any sense—this is a historic building, we’re on an upper floor, and I don’t think there’s room to negotiate.”
“You don’t say...” Maddie gingerly brings her hand to the open laptop on my desk then swiftly slams it shut.
“Hey,” I complain weakly.
“Not what this is, I’m afraid.”
“Not what what is?”
Maddie watches my laptop and waits for the light indicating it’s in sleep mode before she continues.
“Are you really thinking about moving to Basel?”
“How did you know the city? Did they tell you, or did you uncover that detail somehow?”
Maddie pushes back with her foot, sending the chair a few feet backwards.
“No, just a lucky guess.” Maddie brings the chair back up to the desk. “Why do you think they chose Basel?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know much about the town. I’m picturing some whimsical village in the Alps with hot chocolate and cuckoo clocks.”
“Hate to break it to you, Eth, but Basel’s a city, and it’s not close to any mountains.”
I feel disappointed after hearing that description, which means I must be thinking about it more than I realized.
“It’s not whimsical, then?
“I don’t know about whimsical. They did invent LSD there, but that’s because Basel has a ton of pharma company headquarters.”
I look out the window behind Maddie. It feels like she’s going off on a long tangent away from what she’s supposed to be investigating and making assumptions that are way off the mark.
“I do not get your logic, Madeline.”
“There’s none to get yet. I’m just saying it’s a coincidence. In fact, it probably is just a coincidence.”
I audibly sigh with relief.
“There has to be some more obvious reason...”
“Yeah, like the fact that Switzerland’s basically a giant hedge fund.” Maddie pokes the top of my laptop with her finger, looking almost as sad as I’ve ever seen her. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out in good time.”
“Couldn’t you extradite from Switzerland?”
Maddie stands up and brushes the shoulders of her dress with her hands. I laugh loudly yet briefly; Madeline ignores that.
“If they move enough of their assets, we’ll probably let the case go cold.”
“Meaning they’ll get away with it.”
Maddie starts toward the door, about to leave me alone in my office. As usual, I don’t know where, when, or even if I’ll be seeing her again.
“Meaning you’ll get away with it, if you stay on. Probably.”
I listen to Maddie leave and stare out the office window, seeing nothing but the darkening sky from my perspective.
Ethan
“Happy Friday, Sleeping Beauty!”
Greg’s getting gutsy these days. And does everybody know about the one fucking time I slept in the office?
I know it was just yesterday, but...
But, whatever. I grunt in response to Greg and continue down the corridor to my office.
I don’t give a shit that it’s Friday anyway.
When you’re as much of a workaholic as I am, Fridays don’t mean much anyway.
I might be here tomorrow, when the office
is nice and empty.
Saturdays—when it’s only me here, if anyone.
“No disgusting deli paper cup coffee today?”
Barrister’s gone before I can reply to his little jab. He’s well on his way in the other direction.
Fuck. Not only am I looking forward to a quiet, empty office tomorrow, I’m starting to regret coming in today.
I feel instant relief after walking through my office door. That annoying fucking walk through the corridor aside, I’m looking forward to putting my nose to the grindstone and keeping it there.
I even enjoy the mindless routine of getting my laptop, tablet, and business phone ready for a long day of work.
That’s what I need right now—a long day of being carried away by numbers and by market trends and hard analysis that has nothing to fucking do with intraoffice gossip, circus-like board meetings, weird, needless competitiveness or any of the other shit that’s been inundating the firm.
The second I get everything, it suddenly starts raining like fucking crazy outside, with raindrops falling fast and loud on the window.
Good—that should block out the noise of the rest of the fucking office, at least..
As my finger hovers over my laptop trackpad, ready to inaugurate another marathon work session, my fucking desk phone rings.
Of course, it’s the intraoffice ring. What the fuck could it be now?
I pick up the fucking phone, mostly to get it to stop ringing.
“What is it, Greg?” I growl into the receiver.
“Who?” The female voice on the other end sounds majorly confused.
“Greg. You know, the only person who’s ever called this phone—until now. Who is this?”
“This is Kallie!”
I rummage through my mind for a moment before placing the name. I just watched Kallie give a presentation yesterday, but I’m trying to not think about too much of the bullshit happening these days.
She doesn’t sound too offended, though. She sounds almost bubbly.
“What can I do for you, Kallie?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Not much.”
Really? Really? What the fuck is going on?
“Kallie, I know you’re new around here, and forgive me if I sound gruff, but...”
I’m ready to tell her that this is a work line, meant for work-related purposes, so if she doesn’t have something important to say, then I need to hang up.
But I seriously don’t know what the fuck she’s doing, so I’ll try not to be too much of a jerk.
“Is there something you needed to tell me, Kallie? Or ask? Something about work?”
“Hmm. Yes, actually…”
Kallie pauses. For crying out fucking loud.
Fuck, I don’t know. Maybe she’s nervous, maybe she forgot.
“Are you okay, Kallie? If you need some time to remember, you can call me back…”
“What happened to my presentation?”
The fate of Kallie’s magic marker whiteboard presentation is not the first thing on my mind right now. I think back to yesterday afternoon, which is a very enjoyable thing to think about.
Suddenly, I’m lost in a daydream.
I’m no longer in my office on Friday morning, but I’m back in the boardroom on Thursday afternoon.
And Maddie and I are enjoying the best damn business meeting imaginable. Things got a little heated—or a lot heated—during that meeting, but it was a lively and productive exchange.
“Helllooooo?” Kallie’s voice on the phone brings me right the fuck back to the present. “What happened to my presentation, Ethan? Or have you gone deaf?”
Jesus.
I don’t know what the fuck is up with Kallie, but her presentation was a casualty of my meeting with Maddie.
But seriously, what the hell is going on with Kallie?
Fuck it, I don’t even fucking care anymore. If Kallie wants to know what happened, I’ll do for her what I’d do for anybody:
Tell her the truth.
There’ll surely be consequences for me, but…
Fuck, there’d be consequences for Maddie too.
Dammit.
The click of Kallie hanging up interrupts my train of thought.
There is no way that Kallie knows the whole story of what happened, but she knows it was destroyed, and I was the last person in the boardroom—besides Madeline.
So, I’ll take the fucking blame if it comes up again.
I throw the receiver back on the hook and unplug the useless fucking phone from the wall.
What the fuck would Kallie do with that whiteboard full of erasable scribblings anyway?
Frame it?
Fuck, I’m getting agitated about this shit—I’m sure she worked hard on it, but...
If Kallie were nicer about it, I’d maybe try harder to understand.
As it is, I’ve got no time for any of this bullshit with a full day’s work ahead of me.
After that useless little delay, I get to work for real.
I read local, national, and international business news.
I see Swiss cities mentioned several times—new startups in Zurich, in Basel...
Fuck, of course I know that Basel’s a city. Why did I tell Maddie I thought it was a village in the fucking Alps or something?
What am I in denial about?
No time, keep working.
I run current market data through analysis apps on my tablet and phone. I pore over raw data on my laptop monitor, staring at it for minutes, hours, running it through the analysis program in my head.
That program keeps getting better, sharper, more powerful. As the hours go by, all the distractions and bullshit slowly fade from my mind as I become a market analysis machine.
I glance at my wristwatch, and it’s almost noon. If I can stay in this zone for a few more hours, I can reach a sort of state of Zen, concerned with nothing but numbers.
I’m not there yet.
Kallie, her presentation, and that fucking phone call, are still gnawing at my mind.
Without thinking, I look at my phone, and of course there’s an email notification from Rosen. It’s only recently that people at his level—full partners in the firm—have started emailing me regularly.
It happens all the time now. I dismiss the notification. I don’t even want to fucking look at it. After what Maddie told me, something like that has the potential to sidetrack an entire day.
Insider trading, pharma companies, the real reason for moving to goddamn Switzerland...
Potentially, what Maddie told me is a fucking bombshell. Yet I haven’t thought about it once today.
Until now.
Maddie didn’t get into specifics, and I’m yet to see proof of anything. Maddie seems convinced. But as far as I know, there’s some higher-up at the SEC with an ax to grind, or Maddie and the SEC are simply mistaken about something.
Maybe that’s it—it’s just a big misunderstanding.
Would that even be possible?
All I know is that I stopped working, and now I’m just thinking about this shit.
My desk phone is sitting silently. Someone could be trying to call right now.
There’s just no way Kallie knows what happened in the boardroom. It seems like she knows something, though.
Either that, or she’s just a supremely fucking unpleasant person.
That’s probably true whether she knows something or not.
Oh well, back to work. I get back into the flow quickly and fiercely, the torrential downpour helping to block out any distractions.
After about five hours, I start compiling a list of potential lenders for leverage. Even with institutional investors being cultivated, I’m seeing new opportunities for massive returns—opportunities that are not going to wait.
In other words, we need to borrow some money. That’s my opinion, anyway.
It’s also a good excuse to talk to Rosen and Barrister. What I’d really like to know is what’s going on with Switzerland,
what’s going on with Kallie, and what’s really going on with the company.
It’s almost five on the dot, and I need to brave that corridor to find the partners before they leave. After years of amazing fucking returns for the firm, they can’t afford to lose me. The least they could do is tell me the truth.
The corridor hums with excitement as everyone is leaving for the weekend en masse. I wander up and down the corridor, searching for the partners but assuming they must be long gone by now.
“Barrett!”
I stay cool, even though Rosen’s sudden yelling makes me want to jump out of my skin. I turn around casually, not seeing him anywhere.
“In the boardroom, Barrett!”
I almost jump again, but I stroll coolly into the boardroom where both Rosen and Barrister are seated at the conference table.
“Do you need glasses, Barrett?” Rosen asks as I close the door.
“No.”
I close the door.
“I think he forgot his coffee,” Barrister quips.
“I decided to do without it today.” I don’t give them the satisfaction of taking their digs personally. I just sit down across the table from them casually. “What’s up?”
“We hear you’ve been hiding in your office all day,” comments Barrister.
Kallie’s been talking to them. Great.
“I’m in there most days—working, helping the fund succeed. Speaking of which, I think it’s time to consider a credit line...”
“Enough of that,” interrupts Rosen. “The fund, as you know it, isn’t long for this world.”
Fuck. How much do they know? Before I have time to think too much about it, Barrister taps an envelope on the table and slides it across to me.
Picking up the plain white envelope, I put on my best poker face, although I have no idea what the fuck is happening.
The envelope is sealed. I tear it open, pull out a folded sheet of yellow legal paper, unfold it, and see a printed dollar sign followed by a very large fucking number.
“Switzerland?” I ask.
Rosen nods. I look at the number.
“This would be a yearly salary? I work on management and performance fees now...”
“We know how you work,” Rosen interrupts. “And that’s per month.”
Holy goddamn fucking shit. Poker face, don’t fail me now.