Dave Hart Omnibus

by David Charters

  Today the Silver Fox is going to help me deal with my drug habit, my alcoholism, and my addiction to sex.

  I’m staying at the Abbey, a super-expensive, ultra-chic private hospital for the rich and famous, that specialises in addiction. The Abbey doesn’t actually cure you of whatever it is you are addicted to – you have to do that yourself – but it’s great PR, and with the right spin you can turn a problem into an opportunity. You’re not weak, selfish, stupid and possibly criminal. You’re a victim. People don’t condemn you, they sympathise with you. And once you’ve done a few weeks out of the public eye, you can return once more to your normal abusive lifestyle.

  The doctors here think I should be dead.

  In a way that’s kind of flattering. They keep bringing along young interns who stare at the readings and look at me with awe. On the other hand, I see it differently. The way I see it, I’m probably not the first investment banker to have suffered from the occasional moment of stress. Naturally, we all have different ways of dealing with it. Some unwind over a glass or two of whisky. Others get into drugs, with cocaine probably still the number one choice. Some prefer the comforts they can find in the arms of a beautiful woman – or two, or sometimes more. Being a very senior investment banker, and extremely rich and powerful – not to mention both stressed and greedy – I prefer all three, preferably at the same time.

  The problem is that eventually it catches up with you.

  And so instead of finally getting together with the love of my life, the gorgeous Sally Mills – who has left me a tearful voicemail saying our love ‘is not to be’ (we’ll see about that) and that she has returned, distraught, to beg forgiveness from the under-achieving schoolteacher – I’m being prepped for an exclusive interview and a photo-shoot with Her Magazine.

  I’m going to tell some dimwit airhead woman reporter that I wasn’t shagging hookers every night for fun, but because I needed a release; that I got into drugs out of casual curiosity and I was snared before I knew it, and now I want to share my experience with young people everywhere. That part is true. I’ve a lot of experience I’d like to share with blonde seventeen year olds, but I’ll be careful not to share that with the reporter. And finally I’ll talk about the evils of drink. I have a particularly evil fifty-year-old Scotch in my bedside cabinet, but I’ll keep it out of sight while we do the interview.

  After that there’ll be more interviews, eventually a TV appearance on Dick and Julie, and once it’s all out in the open, I’ll get back to work. I’m desperate to get back to work. I need to before the board realise quite how redundant I was before all this happened.

  * * *

  FIVE TEDIOUS weeks have passed. Weeks that were boring beyond belief. The bastards took my whisky away. They wouldn’t let me buy drugs. And sex was out of the question.

  Can you believe that? And I was actually paying to be deprived.

  I ended up working out maniacally in the gym, if only to escape the boredom, lost weight, shaped up, and found after a while that the cravings started to fade – or at least that’s what I claimed with absolute sincerity in the group therapy sessions and the long conversations on a couch with my shrink. They say that addicts can be very cunning, but investment bankers are even smarter.

  Yes, we’re plausible.

  And now it’s over. The papers have all carried my story, the hero has sought and received redemption, and with the help of the Silver Fox, I’m going to make a triumphal return to Grossbank.

  I’ve moved into an apartment in Whitehall Court, near the supposed safety of the heart of government, with well-patrolled streets and my own team of bodyguards. I still have Tom, my driver, well over six feet tall and built to impress, who drives me in an armoured S-class Mercedes. But we also have two other cars – Range Rovers – one of which drives ahead of us and one behind. In the Range Rovers are my bodyguards, whom I’ve called the Meat Factory. They are led by Scary Andy, a six-foot six-inch ex-Royal Marine weighing in at just over two hundred pounds. Arnie ‘the Terminator’ is not quite as tall, but even wider, and weighs in at two hundred and forty pounds. They are my regulars, but are supplemented by a whole team of human wardrobes.

  Everywhere I go, I feel as if my little convoy creates its own hole in the ozone layer, three gas guzzlers complete with heavies to transport one greying, tired-looking, middle-aged man in a suit. How sad is that?

  On the other hand, it works wonders for the ego, which is probably why politicians love it. On a good day it can feel totally Hollywood. Entering a room with a bunch of heavies wearing suits and dark glasses is rather like being in a scene from The Godfather. Better yet, it can feel positively Presidential. Sadly I won’t ever be President of the United States, but there are times when I feel that being Dave Hart is the next best thing. The only bit I miss is the bag man, the uniformed officer with a briefcase containing the nuclear launch codes. Imagine if I had access to the nuclear launch codes. Then we’d really have a party…

  And the aphrodisiac effect on women is remarkable. When I walk into a room surrounded by my wardrobes, all of whom are taller, stronger and manlier than me, guess who the ladies look at? That’s right – the little guy in the middle, the one the heavies hold the door for.

  But today is different. Today the heavies will stay in the background, as I stage-manage the final part of my rehabilitation: my triumphal return to the trading floor of the bank where I made my name.

  We pull up outside the Grossbank building, and I pretend the press cameras and the TV crews aren’t there as Tom helps me out of the car, passes me my crutches – yes, crutches – and I make my way painfully and bravely to the foyer, where Two Livers and my loyal team are waiting for me.

  I look around the eager, smiling faces of my heads of department. Bastards.

  I know they’ll have been scheming. I’ll leave it a couple of days to make them feel safe, then have a couple taken out and shot to encourage the others.

  We go up in the lift to the sixth floor, where the sales and trading teams are and where I keep my corner office, looking out towards the Bank of England.

  As I emerge onto the floor there’s pandemonium, as all business stops and the traders cheer and whoop and high five each other. Isn’t it wonderful? My people love me. The fact is, they couldn’t have cared less about me, and why should they? Imagine the extra headroom in the bonus pool if I wasn’t around to take the first slice.

  I struggle manfully to my office, where Maria, my longsuffering, loyal secretary is waiting for me. Maria is mid-forties, heavily built, half German and a Grossbank lifer. She understands me – well, sort of – and we get on well. When I’m ten yards from her, I pause. A hush descends on the trading floor as I drop the crutches and walk slowly, painfully towards my office. In my head I’m playing the theme tune from Chariots of Fire as I drag myself one painful step at a time. Only when I get there do I catch hold of the doorframe and turn to wave to the troops. A great cheer goes up. I’m back, and the cameras have caught it all.

  Once I’m inside my office Maria draws the blinds so I can wander over to the desk in privacy, put my feet up and light a cigar, blowing smoke rings at the ‘No Smoking’ sign on the wall.

  * * *

  MY FIRST day back in the office passes slowly as I get up to speed with what’s happened to the business while I was away.

  Just as I feared, it’s been going brilliantly, masterminded by my two key lieutenants, Two Livers, who handles all the corporate business, and Paul Ryan, the head of Markets, who looks after sales and trading. Paul is the Brad Pitt of Grossbank, tall, fit, good-looking, charming, but unlike Brad Pitt he’s gay. I’m very pleased about Paul’s sexual orientation. It means that out of the top three people running Grossbank in London, the only predatory heterosexual male is me.

  Maria calls through on the intercom. I assume it’s another ‘welcome back’ call from someone senior at another firm. I’ve been getting a lot of them. All the heads of the major firms have called, and I even ha
d a bunch of roses from Tripod Turner, the biggest swinging dick of them all, Chief Investment Officer at the Boston International Group, the world’s biggest investing institution. Herman Schwartz, the Frankfurt-based Chairman of Grossbank, has sent me a long, handwritten personal letter of welcome, and Two Livers has sent me an email saying she’s so pleased to have me back that if I’m free tonight she’d like to invite me round to her place for a special treat. I like it when she gives me special treats.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Mister Hart, I have Wendy on line three.’

  Shit. Wendy is my ex-wife. She wants something. She’ll have heard I’m back, and now she’ll expect to resume normal milking activities – briefly paused while I was in recovery – and the pretext will be Samantha, our daughter, who has recently celebrated her fourth birthday. I couldn’t actually make it in person, but I did send a van-load of presents, so this had better not be a complaint.

  I flick the button on the speakerphone. ‘Darling, how are you?’

  ‘Wh – what? Dave, it’s me – Wendy.’

  ‘Wendy? Wendy who? But I thought – oh, shit…’ I hang up and grin. That’ll really piss her off.

  Paul Ryan comes to see me. He’s looking incredibly elegant in a way that no straight Englishman could ever manage – in fact a straight guy would have to be Italian to look this good – but he’s come to say he’s concerned about me.

  ‘Dave – you can’t carry on the way you were… you know… before all this happened.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know what I mean. The whole lifestyle thing. You were killing yourself. It simply isn’t viable.’ He’s just a little wary, watching to see if he’s overstepped the mark and I’m going to explode. He doesn’t want to alienate the Golden Goose, but at the same time can’t allow it to carry on mainlining heroin. ‘I don’t know if anyone else is going to tell you this, but I am. You have to change. You have to get this stuff under control.’

  Damn, he’s good. If I had a couple of scoring cards behind my desk I’d hold up ten points for sincerity. But then I check him out again and nobody’s that good. He actually means it. Or have I lost my touch and I just can’t read him anymore?

  The problem for people who run investment banks is finding colleagues who are prepared to disagree with you – at least up to a point. This is why I like Paul and Two Livers so much. If you hand out tens of millions of pounds each year at bonus time, most people want to stay on the right side of you at all costs. Announce that you’re planning to open an investment banking operation in Antarctica, and most of them will convince you you’re a genius, a visionary who’s ahead of the game and will steal a march on the competition.

  ‘Paul, I know. I need to re-focus my priorities. Life isn’t just about money. What’s the point of having lots of money if all you do is count it?’

  He’s nodding, agreeing with me. I’m not sure quite where this is going, but I’m feeling relaxed, so I decide to press on.

  ‘Sex is also important. And drugs. And of course alcohol and fast cars, even if most of us don’t know how to drive them properly.’

  ‘No, Dave, no – don’t go there. Dave, we’re bankers. This isn’t rock and roll.’

  ‘Really?’ I say this as if I kind of wish it was. Which maybe I do. He’s got up and he’s standing facing me. ‘Dave, those things were destroying you.’

  ‘Is that right?’ I thought they stopped me getting bored. I was planning to treat this as a light-hearted piss-take and have a laugh. But he could be right. ‘You may be right. Okay. Look – I’ll ease up on the drink.’

  ‘And the drugs.’

  I nod. ‘And the drugs.’

  ‘And the hookers.’

  ‘Okay, okay – I promise.’ He strides round the desk and I get up quickly, wondering if he’s going to attack me for taking the piss. But instead he embraces me, a big bone-crunching hug, and I smile broadly and squeeze him back.

  ‘I give you my word, Paul. I’ll ease up on the drink, the drugs and the hookers.’

  At least before lunch.

  * * *

  I’M BORED. This was always my problem in the past, and it’s even worse now. The thing about being in charge is that you don’t really have to do anything. Sure, you can fill your days with meetings, where your subordinates brief you on things and try to look good (but for what – so you can pay them more?), or you meet clients and shake their hands and mouth platitudes to convince them that their business is important to the bonus pool – I mean, the firm – or hold morale boosting ‘town hall’ meetings where you patronise junior employees by reading out ‘key corporate messages’ prepared by the Human Resources Department or the worker bees in Corporate Communications – ‘one dream, one team, one firm’ – or some such twaddle. It would all seem so futile, if it weren’t for the millions of pounds I get paid for doing it.

  In an attempt to raise my spirits, Paul and Two Livers are taking me to the Berkmann Schliebowitz drinks party. It’s a modest bash hosted by one of Wall Street’s most successful firms for their five hundred closest friends in the London market. It’s being held at the Embalmers’ Hall, one of the oldest livery companies in the City of London, and anyone who is anyone in the Square Mile will be there. Champagne, ice sculptures, entertainers – I can hardly wait.

  Tom drops us off about half an hour after the due time, mainly because they had to twist my arm to go. I’m in a foul mood. I haven’t had sex all day, my nose is running and my mouth is dry. I could fix all this in a couple of phone calls, but they won’t let me.

  So instead we find ourselves waiting in line to collect our name badges from a pretty girl at the reception desk, behind a very tall, mid-thirties, balding American with a deep booming voice and a very athletic figure. He’s the sort of man who exudes certainty – you just know he was a college football star, got all the top grades, comes from a privileged family, probably ‘East Coast aristocracy’, and he has what the Americans call Big Verbal Presence: take him to a meeting, any meeting, even if he knows nothing at all about what’s being discussed, and he’ll talk a lot at great volume and Be Impressive. These days, this is what the American investment banks like – quiet, short, thoughtful people need not apply.

  Right now, he’s being Verbally Massive with the receptionist, who is trying to be polite but is obviously flustered.

  ‘The name is Hurst. H – U – R – S – T. That’s G. Herbert Hurst the Third. From Schleppenheim. That’s Schleppenheim with an S. I’m head of Derivatives. That’s with a D.’

  He says all this in a slowed down, ‘I’m talking to a moron’ manner. The receptionist blushes delightfully and looks flustered. I guess she’s about twenty-three, quite pretty with a trim figure and a cute butt, and from the sound of her accent, comes from Poland. She’s probably getting the minimum wage, working nights to earn money and putting up with shit from the likes of G. Herbert. She looks at him helplessly. There isn’t a name badge for him, although he is on the list.

  ‘I’m very sorry. This won’t take a moment.’

  Exasperated, he turns to us as the next in line, does a double-take when he sees Two Livers and raises his eyes heavenwards, as if trying to elicit some sympathy at the nonsense that People Like Us sometimes have to suffer at the hands of the merely mortal. Two Livers stares right through him.

  The receptionist goes to make him up a badge, but he ignores her and walks past.

  ‘I think most of the people here know who I am.’

  Wanker. I look at Two Livers and Paul and we nod to each other. If they didn’t know who G. Herbert Hurst the Third was before tonight, they certainly will in about thirty minutes. As we take our badges, I growl to the others, ‘Let’s nail the motherfucker.’

  We peel off in different directions, Paul seeking out the trading types while Two Livers and I head for the bar. She’s wearing a skirt and jacket by Chanel, flatteringly snug in all the right places, without being in any way revealing, shoes by Jimmy Choo and je
wellery by Kiki McDonough. Heads turn as we pass, and they aren’t looking at me.

  We get to the bar, where I catch the barman’s eye and nod towards Two Livers: ‘Fill her up.’ At first he doesn’t understand, then Two Livers leans forward and whispers something in his ear, and he scurries off, returning with two mojitos, and hands them both to her. She heads off into the crowd, doing the old ‘excuse me, I’m taking this drink to a friend’, so she can briefly mumble to the tedious, while staying on the move to nail down our prey.

  I take a glass of champagne and wander over to the corner of the room, where some of the senior people are holding court.

  Dan Harriman is talking to Clive Gunn, who runs the sales trading side of Prince’s, and a tall, early forties, fair-haired guy I don’t recognise.

  ‘Hey Dave – come on over. Let me introduce you.’

  Dan is heavily overweight, sweating, and looks like he’s had about four martinis too many. ‘Dave Hart, from Grossbank, this is Vladimir Kommisarov, from First Siberian Bank.’

  Vlad the Impaler is well-known in the markets, though I’ve never met him before. He gets his nickname not because he’s an aggressive trader, but from his alleged prowess with the ladies. He’s been sent by his masters in the Kremlin to set up a heavyweight investment banking operation in London. He has a firm grip and nods respectfully. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you, Mister Hart. You are truly an amazing man.’

  Wow – how about that for an opening line? I like him already. And I like his bank. The Russians have hit London in force, and are setting up investment banking operations to take on all-comers. Amongst the Russians, OneSib, as they are known in the market, are the biggest. Vlad has deep pockets behind him and a serious game to play. They are planning to hire two hundred professionals for their London operation and he’s definitely in the market for talent. In no time at all we are getting on like a house on fire, talking the talk the way heads of investment banks do, swapping tales of business trips to the Ukraine – ‘Six in a bed – at the same time? Really? It must have been a huge bed’ – and sharing addresses and phone numbers in London – ‘Are they really twins? And they make you watch first? Hot candle wax where?’