by P D Singer
“Yeah, get in there, buster!” Kate swung on her lover. “And no excuses this time!” One hundred pounds of brains turned into one hundred pounds of wrath. Under her fierce regard, Geoff shrank and then visibly bucked himself up, but his short journey to his partner’s door took longer than Jon wanted.
Traders and staff alike gathered behind Geoff, craning their necks to see over his shoulders. He rapped on the door once before opening it in time to answer everyone’s questions and fears. Also in time to see Liu say, “No,” and a great many other things, all with one swift kick to Edgar’s shin.
“You disgusting pig!” she shrieked, and she drew her foot back again. “How dare you!”
Edgar jerked his assaulted leg up to his chest, clutching his shin. “What the hell do you think you’re doing!” got drowned out in the cheering, and Jon whooped with the rest of them. “You’re fired!” did come through, but so did a small, pump-shod foot, squarely on the other shin, and Edgar couldn’t swivel away from her second kick in time. His howls mixed with the applause.
The cheering stopped rather abruptly when Liu turned, hands on hips. “And you—you should be ashamed.” Geoff wilted again. “You should all be ashamed.” She marched out, head high, shoulders back, a force of righteousness, and Geoff stood aside to let her through. Traders and analysts alike parted to let her by.
“You’re fired, bitch!” Edgar yelled after her.
“No. She’s not.” Geoff, straight and tall, stalked into Edgar’s office.
“I quit!” Liu screamed over her shoulder, and half a dozen people flinched. She yanked a drawer open and threw files on top of the desk. No one dared approach her, staying rooted to their spots.
“Zip your fucking pants!” Geoff slammed the door behind him. Indistinct shouting emanated from the corner office. Liu continued sorting out her possessions, occasionally casting steely looks at her colleagues.
A few drifted to the door, ears cocked to catch the sense of the angry words. “The worm turns,” Jon muttered to himself, but the volume dropped, and there was a situation out here that he could do something about. He stopped short, because Dwight had reached Liu first.
He spoke softly. “We thought all that was over.” Holding out one hand, he implored her. “We thought once Ricky and Jon stood their ground last week that it was done, and he wouldn’t bother you.”
“Ricky isn’t here, I see.” Liu threw a paperback onto the pile on her desk. “How has Jon not been chewed up and spit out?”
“By being indigestible, at least for now.” Jon joined the two. “Liu, please, don’t quit, not when things are changing. Geoff’s standing up against Edgar, finally.” He glanced back to the corner office door, where a knot of people still stood. “This place has a lot going for it, aside from him. Take the day off. Think about it. You can always quit later.”
“The Titanic had a lot going for it, aside from that little iceberg.” Liu looked around, selecting a trash basket to hold her possessions. “How long has this been going on?” She gave Dwight a long look. “Never mind. Too long. I won’t be here to see the changes. Perhaps they’ll be enough for you.” She pulled Dwight down and kissed his cheek. “If I stay, thinking my career can’t survive leaving my first job, one day he’ll ask for a moment of my time and I’ll wonder if my career will stand saying no again, and I will give up some part of myself that I don’t want to give up.” She pulled Jon down for a swift brush of lips against cheek. “Like you have. I hope you find that part of you again someday.”
Liu made her farewells, hugs and kisses around the room, and left. Jon watched her go, knowing the little philosopher hadn’t planned to touch his private pain. He’d found one of his missing pieces when he’d stood up to Edgar. Ricky’d had another and had lost it at the clubs.
The door to the corner office didn’t open for a long time; the money needed minding and everyone ended up doing something more or less financial on the main trading floor, glancing up often, especially when the shouting started again. “Twelve? Damn it, Edgar, I need more time!” did come through loud and clear.
“Time for what?” everyone asked with their eyes, but before anyone said anything, Geoff burst out the door, head lowered like a charging bull, past Jon, who was looking at the group Bloomberg with Miranda.
“I’ll be back, Edgar, and you leave everyone alone,” he snarled over his shoulder. To the staff at large, he added a further caution. “If he doesn’t, beat the shit out of him. I’ll cover all the legal fees.”
Edgar followed Geoff out of the office. “You can’t do it, you putz.”
“We’ll see about that!” Geoff wrenched the big glass door open, digging in his pocket all the while.
“What are you looking at?” Edgar spat at the assembled staff, standing like a pouter pigeon under the mass stony stare. He slammed his door and hobbled out, not meeting anyone’s eyes, behind his partner, but not closely enough that he might end up in the same elevator. “Get back to work, and don’t burn the place down while I’m gone.” The etched-glass doors shut again, but on what variant of an era, no one said aloud.
NEITHER Edgar nor Geoff returned that day, nor were either at Tuesday’s morning meeting, which fizzled out with Kate’s, “Pfft, let’s go make some money.”
Jon caught her alone in her office. “Did Geoff say what’s going on?”
Her fine-boned face strained, she shrugged. “He’s trying to buy Edgar out, but the old goat set a pretty tight deadline.”
“Or what?” Jon thought he knew the answer.
“Or we liquidate. No big deal for me; I can trade on my own, and so can you, but the analysts don’t have that kind of cushion.” She played with a pen, twirling it around in her fingers. “I can probably keep Chloe on, and Dwight would follow you anywhere, but the rest of the kids are screwed in this industry. Edgar will see to that as his last hurrah.”
Pondering the thought of becoming a one-man or, if he kept Dwight on as an employee, two-man operation, Jon suspected that it was not only doable but, given the expiration of his trust in a few months’ time, almost inevitable. “What about Corbin and Miranda?”
She laughed without mirth. “Can you see Corbin in a little frame house with a vegetable garden, picket fence optional? He’s got it all planned out—move to Nashville, grow tomatoes, meet someone, and actually stay married this time.”
“I didn’t think Corbin liked country music. Or tomatoes all that much.” Jon had trouble seeing his dapper colleague bent over leafy plants, with or without steel guitars playing in the background.
“He doesn’t, but Nashville doesn’t gobble money like New York does.” Kate slapped her pen down. “There’s a lot more intellectual life there than we give credit for, and he might live forever on what he’s already made. Corbin’s set. Miranda’s the only one Edgar might not have a grudge against. But I don’t know, especially after that ‘Stubby’ crack.”
“How much does Geoff need?” The concrete issues had to come before the speculation—Jon mentally smacked his forehead for getting distracted.
“I’m not sure, but he’s already said I don’t have enough.” Kate went bleak. “Maybe you and I together…?” She brightened.
Numbers, damn it! He needed numbers! Jon didn’t know Kate’s net worth, though he could approximate, knowing what the bonuses were the last few years and what her holdings in the fund were, less her tendency to buy four-figure shoes and purses to match. And he didn’t have that kind of money, either, without dipping into funds invested in trust by Ben Fleisher, arch-conservative preserver of capital, wary of hedge funds and risky investing. It made his last question almost irrelevant.
“By when?”
“Opening of trade tomorrow.”
“Not much time.” Jon pulled out his cell, scowling more with each beep. The call went to voice mail—had Geoff pressed the silence key because he was even now in the middle of negotiations for enough cash to get them all out from under Edgar’s thumb? “Rats.” Jon obeyed the
instructions to leave a message. “If he calls you, tell him I have to talk to him.” Kate agreed, and Jon stalked back to his office, fretting over the time passing, but probably not as much as Geoff was. Perhaps he should buy stock in antacids.
A three-way partnership with Geoff, Kate, and himself was a fast track to losing every battle—the lovers would side together, and Jon would have no recourse. But still, there had to be a way, if only he could get some hard numbers. By the end of his third attempt, Jon could recite Geoff’s phone greeting word for word, and by the end of the day he was ready to pull that recorded voice out of the system by the electrons. That one of his options sets had fallen so far as to being in the money was no consolation, and Ricky wasn’t picking up, either. The one time Jon’s phone rang, it had an ID on the number that struck a blow directly in his gut, much as the caller once had.
Jon hit the refuse key, knowing he might not listen to that message for days. Too much else was going on right now; he couldn’t cope with Spencer.
UNLOCKING the door to Wolfe Gorman Equities a good hour before he usually arrived, Jon was pleased to see he was the first one there. He wanted to catch Geoff early—of the two partners, he would be the first to show. Too many of the staff might like to take advantage of Geoff’s offer on legal fees, and Edgar, with his well-honed sense of self-preservation, wouldn’t allow himself to be caught alone.
Papers rattled in the inner pocket of his suit jacket, papers that he’d stayed up late marking with a pencil, papers that might contain the answer to their current difficulties. Jon had turned down Davis’s request to come look at kitchen layouts, promising help at some vague future moment when his work life wasn’t in imminent danger of imploding. Davis had taken the refusal easily, with assurances that there would still be vast numbers of decisions to make, and added that he’d be closing on the loft Thursday. A general contractor stood poised to start bringing materials in for the second floor’s construction on Friday morning.
“It’s good to be in the industry,” Davis had gloated when Jon questioned the speed of getting started.
Yeah, well, Geoff was in the money industry, but the big question was—had he put the money together quickly enough to save the fund? Jon sat down at the desk with the group Bloomberg to wait for the answer to walk through that door.
If the hunched shoulders visible through the frosted glass and the fight with the lock had to answer, then he had not. Geoff tried unlocking the door, only to discover he’d locked it again, and struggled to get it open. Jon opened the door from the inside.
“Morning, Jon.” Fine lines never before visible around Geoff’s eyes went with the absence of “good” in that greeting. “We’ve had a great run—I’ll miss working with you.” He clapped a hand to Jon’s shoulder and pushed by, headed to his office. Jon caught up with long strides.
“Maybe there’s a time for that, but first, you tell me exactly what’s going on.” Jon followed directly on Geoff’s heels into the corner office.
“I couldn’t come up with enough cash fast enough to meet that bastard’s demands, so Edgar’s going to liquidate.” Geoff sat heavily in the executive chair. Jon pulled one of the guest chairs up close to the desk. “He plans to oust me and lay everyone off, sell everything, pay out to the investors, and oh, I don’t know, go play golf in the Poconos until he drops dead. Which can’t happen soon enough. Or oust me and keep going.”
“True. But—how much is he demanding?” Jon hadn’t gotten numbers out of Kate and couldn’t say one useful thing until he had them.
“More than I’ve got now. If he gave me sixty or even thirty days, no problem; I’d borrow against the ski condo and my apartment. The yacht is on the market, but who knows how long that will take to sell, and every banker I’ve talked to says sure, fine, next week, and bring in vast quantities of paperwork.” Geoff shook his head. “I can’t do it fast enough.”
Too bad Geoff hadn’t approached any of the shady lenders Jon had bet against with his puts, but even they would need a couple of weeks for processing. Mustering the patience not to scream at the man, Jon pressed again. “Tell me how much in dollars, Geoff.”
“He wants twelve million bucks for his share of the fund ownership, the right to keep his personal funds invested, and some other stuff. Leases.” A huge sigh dismissed the other stuff as minor.
“Twelve.” Jon leaned forward, his heart pounding with the need for the rest of the answer. “How much are you short?”
“Eight.” Geoff flicked his thumb against the edge of a Forbes magazine that had been lying on the desk, getting a little zip sound.
Jon didn’t know whether to laugh or cry—he let out a sharp bark of amazement. “Eight!”
“Yeah. It might as well be a billion.” Geoff zipped the pages again.
Jon couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “That’s all?”
“It’s a lot of money to me, Jon.” Geoff looked up, anger creasing his eyes, but he relaxed, and his eyes went wide with dawning comprehension. Jon let it sink in a moment.
“Should it be Hogenboom Gorman Equities? Or Gorman Hogenboom?” Jon held out his right hand to shake. “You can work with me, I hope?”
“Hell, yes!” Geoff grabbed at his hand like a lifeline, crushing and pumping, then freezing. “We could, but we’re still short on the time—it took me and Edgar a good month to set up, what with the lawyers and SEC filings and all that.”
“I’ve already thought about that. Here’s what we do—I make you a short-term loan, thirty days, at completely usurious rates, like 30 percent for the life of the loan, to keep things moving. You buy Edgar out with the money, and when we have all the technicalities done, you redeem the loan with either 10.4 million bucks or Edgar’s share of the fund ownership.” Jon had been expecting higher numbers, given Edgar’s greed—this was doable, with one small detail.
Whose name was Ben Fleisher, and therefore, not such a small detail. But first things first—Geoff hadn’t agreed.
“Two-thirds of the necessary cash buys all of Edgar’s interest? That’s a little steep, Jon.”
“Edgar technically owns what percentage of the fund?” Jon had thrown numbers out without good knowledge but thought it was over half.
“Fifty-one percent. Enough to screw me.” Geoff slumped in his chair.
“Then I loan you all twelve.” If I can. There’s still Ben to convince. Jon kept that inside. “And you know me better than to think I’d screw you over.”
“You could do that?” Geoff cocked his head; sounds of others moving around on the trading floor came through the door. Every sound meant time was ticking away on this deal. “Four million in cash pinches me to the limit on ready money, like using the Visa instead of the American Express.” Visa would carry a balance, the AmEx had to be paid in full each month; that was a serious pinch.
“Let me make a phone call.” Jon whipped out his cell. “Good morning, Ben,” he said, after a short wait on hold to the strains of Boccherini gavottes. Damn, he should have used the wait to get to his own office rather than have Geoff overhear this, but he didn’t want to encounter anyone outside, most especially Edgar.
“Good morning, Jon,” Ben replied. “Checking on your little protégé?”
Jon hadn’t actually given Logan another thought. “How’s he doing?”
“I’ll tell you more this time next week. He starts Monday.” Ben chuckled. “You had something else in mind? More junk airline bonds that nearly double in a week and a half?”
If Ben was thinking of Jon’s good call, he’d be more amenable to this next proposal—Jon dared lean back in the chair. “Something a bit more exotic, but potentially as lucrative. More so.”
“Odd situations in airlines aside, that sort of return generally carries substantial risk. What are you proposing?” Ben’s voice went suspicious. Of course: risk made him break out in hives. Jon took another tack.
“Think back to your opinion of my boss.” Jon gave him an instant to recollect, but also
an instant to draw a conclusion.
“You can only sue him for sexual harassment if you are the actual subject. I thought you said he’d left you be? And do you want the name of the right lawyer for the job?” The outrage in Ben’s voice warmed Jon, and told him how to proceed.
“I can go one better than suing him, Ben.” Jon paused for dramatic effect. “I can get rid of him.”
“Get rid of him, hmm….” The hmm was almost conspiratorial—what did Ben know that he’d never shared? “I presume this project requires money?”
“You presume rightly.” Now for the pitch. With a deep breath, Jon explained, “I have a one-time opportunity with a very short deadline to come up with $12 million in cash, which will take Edgar Wolfe’s name off the door and put mine on.” Jon ignored Geoff’s nervous shifting across the desk. “Ben, I’ve worked out how to do it”—he’d actually worked out what holdings to sell to raise quite a bit more—“without disturbing most of the solid investments or any of the real estate. We have how much in airline bonds?”
“You tell me those bonds are worth 53; I was going to let them alone until either you found a new apartment or they’d come closer to that price.”
“New apartment is on indefinite hold; Ben, we’re talking about me owning majority interest in a very successful hedge fund. Isn’t this more the career you’d dreamed for me than working for a man like Edgar Wolfe?” Blessing all those long talks over the years, Jon invoked something money couldn’t buy.
“It is, Jon, you know that.” Ben paused, and his gathering thoughts took on nearly a physical existence. “The trouble is, buying a hedge fund, even a majority interest, isn’t prudent. From a fiduciary standpoint, it completely violates my instructions as a trust officer.”