by P D Singer
Maybe that statement could make Ricky see the point of protection. Maybe if Jon framed the stop-loss order as a condom for money, Ricky would see the light on protecting a long position, stock he owned outright. All he had to do was set a price at which the stock would get sold automatically. Why was it such a big deal?
“Geoff?” That was odd—Edgar usually asked his partner last, if he was in town, and he never mentioned his own trading unless there was a profit to announce. It was Friday, and Geoff wasn’t off on another of what he liked to call “due diligence” trips—that was even odder. He and Kate didn’t make much secret of their weekend adventures. Maybe if Geoff stayed in town more, he’d actually have a moment to visit prospective clients.
“I just put $6.5 million into some GlobalSky bonds.”
Kate gasped. “That much?”
“Relax, darling, I know you’re short GlobalSky. I like junk bonds, you like short sales, we’ll all end up happy. You kept saying they’re worth 53, and I only paid 36. We can give them some time.” Geoff reached over to pull her into a one-armed hug. “It’s still a mighty big airline, it isn’t going anywhere. In a manner of speaking. Oof.”
Kate had sharply driven her elbow into Geoff’s solar plexus. Jon refrained from shaking his head at this little display of lovers with disparate investing styles. At least he and Ricky kept their disagreements out of morning meeting.
“Ricky?” Of course, save the best for last.
“Closed out a big position on my oil drillers. The price on Brent crude’s coming down, so I think they’ve peaked. I’m up $730K—” A couple people must not have heard yesterday or the shock hadn’t worn off, because the whoops drowned Ricky out for a moment. Smiling widely, he paused until it quieted. “And I opened a two hundred thousand share position in Intens.”
Edgar frowned. “Wasn’t that trading at around 27?”
“I bought at 26.25.”
Some quick math, and something that hadn’t pinged Jon’s radar half hard enough yesterday screeched now. Ricky still had some open positions in a couple of stocks, and he didn’t control nearly that amount of trading capital.
Edgar must have caught that too, asking, “What’s your leverage?”
“Three to one. It’s good.”
Maybe, maybe not. Ricky had just announced that he’d borrowed close to $4 million on the firm’s behalf. Without a safety net. No, he hadn’t announced that part, only he and Jon knew it. Logan too, if he thought about the papers he had been asked to prepare and the ones that he hadn’t. Damn. Edgar didn’t follow up with a quiz—Jon would have to make sure “it’s good” really did mean “it’s hedged.” He’d learned the symptoms of Ricky’s waffling on truths he’d rather not tell.
“Very nice, we’re up something like 2.7 percent for the week, which would annualize out to around 140 percent if we could keep it up. That would be lovely but unrealistic, unless our brilliant little analysts have some more nice ideas for us. Kids?” Edgar could have been the father of any one of the analysts, none of whom were over thirty-five, although most of the traders weren’t either. Edgar did like them young.
“Nothing ready to present,” came from Chloe, Vaughn, and Liu, their newest hire. Miranda had already claimed Pramiti’s bright idea.
“I need to run something past Jon first,” Dwight admitted, hunched like a turtle under Edgar’s beady eye. Maybe more like a Galapagos tortoise. The kid—twenty-five wasn’t exactly a kid, but he had all the social skills of a middleschooler—was brilliant. Jon wondered what he’d get treated to, because anything in his field that Dwight was uncertain about should be interesting.
Out of the corner of his eye, Jon caught Logan puffing up. Don’t say it. Dwight’s allowed to call me ‘Jon’. You haven’t earned it yet.
He didn’t go there. Good. “Ricky’s asked to take a look at Lasker Builders.”
Ricky looked up from the cartoon he was doodling, slightly puzzled. Had he asked to look, or was Logan trying to gain some points in public, or forcing Ricky’s hand? Then Ricky looked serene again. Either it was legit, or he was willing to cover the statement.
“All right!” Edgar boomed. “The stock exchange opens in seventeen minutes—trade wisely!” His usual code for “make lots of money,” he said that every morning before the opening bell. He often said something less palatable.
“Dwight, I need a moment of your time.”
“But sir, I need to talk with Jon—” He clutched a folder of papers like a shield. Jon motioned Dwight over, once again at a loss for a way to keep them all away from the boss. Logan edged sideways, pressing up against Ricky’s shoulder.
“Ah, if Jon has a prior call, what I have in mind will keep.” Edgar’s eyes traveled from analyst to analyst. Ricky ambled across the trading floor, Logan following him like a shadow. Dwight inched across the space to Jon, who didn’t feel like much of a shield.
“Jon? Got a minute?” Ricky disrupted Edgar’s choosing at every possible opportunity; it never stopped a thing, but Jon appreciated the gesture.
Of course. Jon had had all night for Ricky; another minute was hardly enough, but he wasn’t going to leave Dwight hanging. Jon aimed a significant look over Ricky’s shoulder.
“Go wait in my office, Logan. You can hide with him, Dwight. Just don’t kill each other before I get there.” Ricky kept his voice down. The unlikely cohorts made a beeline for the far door.
“Chloe, dear, a moment of your time.” The old goat had chosen.
“COME on in.” Jon closed the door, not wanting to share direct quotes of anything he and Ricky might say. This place was already a soap opera of the worst sort, and Ricky’s bit of artistry wouldn’t help.
“Damn him.”
“She’s a big girl, Jon.” Ricky’s tone was wry. “She’s got choices. Have to decide what you’re willing to forfeit when you stand up to someone like that.”
“It’s still wrong.” Jon hadn’t made a decision about what he was willing to forfeit in doing what was right. “I can’t imagine why his wife sticks around.”
“Someone actually married that?” Ricky shuddered. “He’s never mentioned her, but he doesn’t mention much. All these years and I don’t even know where he lives.” The squinched eyebrows suggested that Ricky’d put a brick through a window if he did know, and that was likely why Edgar kept his secrets.
“My mother probably doesn’t even know, and she knows everyone.” The better to extract financial support for her pet projects from them. Jon couldn’t imagine Edgar tolerating the mysterious Mrs. Wolfe giving away money, to the arts or any other worthy cause.
“Yeah, well…. Look at this.” Jon felt the brush of lips against the side of his head and accepted Ricky’s daily artwork.
“That’s so Edgar.” Jon marveled at the few savage pen strokes that Ricky had doodled during the meeting. “I don’t know how you make him look that greedy with nothing but lines.” He turned back to the artist, who had perched his hip against the desk, smiling a bit lopsidedly and very carefully not sitting down squarely. The tropical-weight wool slacks creaked a tiny protest.
Ricky looked a little less spectacular than his usual this morning, the suit a trifle tight in the shoulder and seat and a tad short in the leg. Even a genius the caliber of Jon’s tailor couldn’t create clothing that would fit both men equally well. Ricky had blown off a trip back to his apartment in favor of a leisurely shower with benefits, and dressed from Jon’s closet.
“Heh. You should see what I can do with pencils and some time.” Ricky dropped his little cartoon onto the desk before scooping Jon into his arms.
“I’d love to.”
“You’re still coming out to Fire Island with me for the weekend, right?” Ricky slipped a hand into the back of Jon’s slacks. “We’re running out of beach season. Please don’t say your mother’s roped you into some fundraiser and you have to stay here.”
“There is the Friends of the Opera thing,” Jon pondered, more to get a rise out of Ricky
than because he’d agreed, or wanted, to go. That Ricky had gone to the club alone last night still rankled, no matter where he’d ended up spending the night. Jon didn’t plan to make confirming the invitation too easy.
“You want Figaro or you want me?” Ricky cocked a knowing eyebrow.
“I want you and Figaro.” He could tease with the truth. “Come with me. You’d be one of the few in the room who’d understand the libretti.”
“No, thanks.” Ricky made a face. “You can have me or you can have Figaro. Which will it be?”
“You, stupid.” Much as he enjoyed the opera, he’d really rather be with Ricky, and after what had happened the last time he’d insisted they go, Jon wouldn’t drag an unwilling companion. “Figaro is for next week, anyway.”
“I want you too.” Ricky made his point with fingers between Jon’s tight briefs and skin. “I’d like to lay you down on this desk and fuck you silly.”
“You have anything left to do it with?” Jon ran his fingers through Ricky’s hair. “We have to draw the line on bad behavior at the office somewhere.”
“Do we?” Ricky pursed his lips. “Oh, all right. Go make some money and meet me on the couch.” He reused the pucker on Jon and opened his mouth.
“Go put a stop-loss order on that Intens position and you can top.” Jon wouldn’t give up on getting Ricky to see the wisdom of the precaution, and four million borrowed dollars made him willing to try bribery.
“Damn it, Jon, don’t nag.” Ricky levitated off the desk and smacked the ass he’d been groping gently. He shrugged out of the borrowed suit jacket and dropped it on the chair on his way out the door.
Chapter Four
LOGAN plopped himself in Ricky’s chair once the door was shut and started checking out the papers that lay across the desktop. “You didn’t want to entertain Edgar this morning?”
“Hiding” was exactly the right word, and Dwight was grateful for Ricky’s shelter, though he could have wished for a second chair. “Quit snooping. And no, I didn’t want to.” He sputtered to a stop. Being gay wasn’t the same as being comfortable talking about some things, and Logan wasn’t his choice of confidante.
“Man up, fat boy, we all do it. At least those of us who want to keep working here. You know what happened to the last guy who told Edgar no?” Logan turned on Ricky’s Bloomberg terminal and started flipping through the channels.
“I don’t even know who that was.” Dwight had become dimly aware over the last six months that he really needed to put as much effort into reading people as company reports. He wouldn’t give Logan the satisfaction of asking, and regretted confessing his ignorance.
“Doesn’t matter; he’s working in a bank in Syracuse. He’ll never see Wall Street again except as a tourist.” Logan stared intently at the monitor. “Huh, imagine that.”
“Imagine what?” Dwight was quite sure Logan was laughing at him inside, the way the cool guys always did, and kicked himself for playing into the trap.
“Existing home sales were down 2.6 percent last month, but new home sales were up 6.4 percent.” Logan made a note on a sheet inside his own folder.
“I knew that.” Old news, obtained elsewhere. Logan gave him a dirty look. Dwight went back to the more important topic. “Did Edgar blackball that other guy?”
Logan sneered. “He didn’t have to. Remember that ‘special interview’ right around eighty days? If you went along, you stayed, if you objected, you could leave with sterling references. Remember that part? ‘No hard feelings’?”
Dwight nodded, remembering.
“Maybe you didn’t understand it, but those references wouldn’t get him in the door anywhere else in Manhattan, certainly not at the big places. You want to hire on at Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, or Lehman Brothers, you go to first-tier schools and make all the friends you can to get your foot in the door, or arrange for a miracle to happen.
“Otherwise, you’re lucky to get in at a little outfit like this, and if you leave here just before ninety days—sorry, Charlie, you didn’t work out, doesn’t matter what those references say. You could be qualified to be chairman of the Federal Reserve, but no one’s even going to give you a chance. So you get down on your knees and make Edgar happy or you get ready for a career change. Why do you think he recruits at third-tier schools?” Logan glanced up at him again before turning back to the Bloomberg.
“I went to Wharton.” A first-tier school, and his thesis had been published, but Dwight wasn’t about to tell Logan that, because he’d somehow admitted to being lesser, though he didn’t know how.
“Well, whoop for you, and why aren’t you over at Chase or Citicorp?” Logan laughed. “Didn’t make the right friends?”
That was why. He hadn’t made a lot of friends—being the chubby guy who couldn’t play squash and didn’t go to parties but did make the others look like fools in seminars wasn’t the path to popularity. He’d earned a grudging respect, and that was about all. “I wanted to work at a small, nimble place. The big funds have too much money in any single trade.”
“Riiiiiiiight.”
Logan could scoff, but it was still true. Dwight had adjusted his goals once he’d been turned down at all the big firms Logan had mentioned plus a lot more, and he’d told himself it was true. Wolfe Gorman Equities had seemed like the perfect compromise of aggression and assets. Aside from the occasional fifteen minutes spent in the executive washroom fantasizing about anyone else in the world besides the old fart in front of him, it was still next to perfect. It wasn’t as if Dwight was getting a lot of other action. The man he thought about most wasn’t giving him anything besides opinions.
“At least after a couple years here, you’ll have enough experience and reputation to go somewhere else as a trader or an analyst.” Logan shrugged. “It’s not forever.”
“Edgar doesn’t do the traders?” Dwight hadn’t meant to make that a question, but he’d never heard “A moment of your time?” addressed to them.
A bark of laughter told Dwight he’d said something foolish. “Hell, no! He’s not stupid enough to make demands on the people who could bankrupt him out of spite if he didn’t let them top once in a while. And he sure doesn’t promote anyone who might have hard feelings about it.”
“None of the traders started from analyst?” Dwight would have to adjust his planned career trajectory from that, because he was already carrying a grudge.
“They did, but not here. It’s really good to be a trader here; a lot of autonomy, unbelievably good hours, and mingling their own money with the firm’s money. They get rich and still have a life.” Logan tried to open Ricky’s desk drawers but didn’t find one that was unlocked.
“What about…?” Dwight couldn’t get the rest of that sentence out.
“I don’t know why Mr. Hogenboom works here. His ancestral duck farm lies under some very expensive buildings on the Upper East Side, and his family’s richer than Vanguard Funds. Maybe he pissed off Granny and got his trust fund taken away?” Logan stopped shaking drawers and grinned slyly, making Dwight clutch his folder like a shield again. “Or did you mean did he get ‘educated’ by Edgar?”
Dwight froze.
“No, the only trader who came up through the ranks here is Ricky.”
“OUT, boys.” Ricky opened his office door to expose the two assistants. Logan sprang out of the chair behind the desk and tried to follow Dwight through the doorframe, but Ricky had still caught sight of him trying on the throne for size.
“Later, Mr. Santeramo?” Logan reached back for the file.
“Half an hour, and bring a cup of coffee. Black, nothing fancy.” Ricky handed over a bill. “Something for yourself if you want it.” He shooed Logan out; Dwight was long gone.
Ricky poked up a couple of channels on the Bloomberg, searching for the Intens symbol in the static list that would begin to change in a few minutes, when the opening bell at the stock exchange rang and trading officially began. Overnight trades on some overseas markets
would affect opening price, and Intens had multinational exposure.
Yes, still nearly unchanged from yesterday, when he’d bought it. No fresh news in the industry or on the company, it wouldn’t have any reason to move more than a quarter point unless someone made a truly huge trade, the sort that had fingerprints like Putnam’s or Fidelity’s all over it. It could happen, but he’d tracked institutional ownership on this stock back for some time and didn’t expect any profit-taking now. No, this baby was going to go nowhere but up, on a nice steady trajectory until those new processes went in, and after that—straight up.
Jon’s request echoed in his head. Maybe he ought to do it, but he’d wait until Intens went up awhile, and put a profitable price for his stop-loss, and not risk triggering a sale early. Then again, if something really strange happened and the stock dropped instead, Ricky might be out some bonus money, but Edgar would feel the loss like taking it in the shorts.
All in all, Ricky wouldn’t mind his boss getting fucked by the market.
Chapter Five
“I CAN come back later.”
Dwight stood in the doorway, blocking out most of the view, especially the door at the far end of the trading room. Jon looked up from the Bloomberg terminal that he’d turned on more to drown out his thoughts than to hear any actual news.
“No, come in.” He couldn’t dwell on Ricky’s refusal to hedge his positions—he had his own trading to look after—nor could he indulge in a few moments of fantasy to satisfy himself after that unpalatable farewell. Dwight and his research would make a decent distraction, requiring him to engage the brain. Looking like a moron in front of his assistant because he was thinking with his little head would not happen. Jon put his sorrow to one side. “Better grab a chair.”