Bull Street (7 page)

“Why the hell’re you so edgy?”

Dolan scrunched up his face. “Sorry. Budget cuts, too much work, too many scumbags trying to kill us all.”

“Tell me about it.”

“So what can I do for you?” Dolan asked.

“I’m working on a case where I don’t have enough to get formal surveillance. It’s got international elements to it. If you could monitor this company’s international transmissions—phone calls and emails—you could help us break it wide open.”

“You say international?”

“I wouldn’t be coming to you otherwise.”

“Any national security issues?”

“No idea.”

Dolan paused for a few moments, looking Croonquist in the eye. “I said any national security issues?”

Croonquist got it. “Absolutely. It’s right up your alley. That’s why I came to you.”

“Okay, what you got?”

Croonquist handed Dolan a piece of paper. He’d written the names Walker & Company, Groupe Credit Generale and Schoenfeld & Co. on it.

“Who are these guys?”

“Financial institutions. Suspected money laundering, or whatever you need to call it to make it work for you.”

“You mean for you,” Dolan said, smiling.

Croonquist paused for a moment, sipped his Brazilian Mocha. “Right. I owe you one,” he said.

Houston, Texas.
At 8:15 a.m. the next morning at Southwest Homes’ offices in Houston, Richard ate breakfast alone. Except for George Cole and Howard Blaine, who sat at the other end of the table, the team had already finished eating and scattered. Blaine was still making cowboy jokes in his perfect Harvard accent—
“Ro-day-o, ro-day-o.”
Richard was thinking Cole probably wasn’t a bad guy deep down inside; Richard just hadn’t seen any evidence of it yet. Like when standing at the curb at the airport with Richard and Howard Blaine, he pointed to Richard and said, “Get a cab,” as if Richard were a bellboy. Like when he’d shown Richard it was he who taught Jeannie Peters the “no, asshole” voice in reply to Richard asking if he should have the
cabbie leave the meter running. This after Cole’s admonishment, “Make sure we have a cab to take us to dinner,” while they were checking into the Ritz-Carlton and dropping off their bags before heading to the restaurant. Like when he didn’t bother introducing Richard to their dinner colleagues—two Associates of Howard Blaine’s, Southwest’s General Counsel and Southwest’s accountant from KPMG. And like when he’d replied, “In the lobby, checked out, ready to get into a cab at seven a.m. sharp,” in response to Richard’s “good night” at the elevator.

Cole said, “We’re on in ten minutes. Two doors down on the right. Ron Peters, the CFO.” He and Blaine got up and left. Richard relished that much peace based on how the last half day had gone. He was beginning to wonder what he’d gotten himself into, starting a career in this business. Jeannie Peters and George Cole were a couple of gratuitous ball breakers. They made the Senior Account Execs in advertising seem enlightened. Ten minutes. Then time to get kicked around again. He heard someone come into the room behind him.

“Breakfast for half a brigade, I see.”

Richard turned to see Harold Milner walking toward the credenza that held the catered breakfast. Richard stood up. “Hi,” he said, not so much tense as caught off guard. “Nobody told me you’d be here. Richard Blum.” He extended his hand. “Remember me?”

“The long-suffering Vikings fan.” Milner shook Richard’s hand with that big paw of his. He walked over to the credenza.

“How was your flight?” Richard asked.

Milner had his back to him, fixing coffee at the credenza. “Long. I hate them.” Milner turned and sat down. “But at least I’m not flying commercial. And this little number makes it easier.” He held up an iPod Nano.

“We all have one of those. In my generation you’re a nerd if you don’t. But the sound’s disappointing.”

“That’s because MP3 recording quality cuts out the highs and lows, compromises the sound in order make the data files smaller. Makes it sound tired and sloppy. I record everything in lossless mode. Tons more data, same amount as a CD.”

“Yeah, but it takes up a lot of iPod memory.”

“Top quality but less songs is a good trade. Listen to this.” Milner handed Richard his iPod. Richard plugged in the earpbuds and turned it on. The sound was liquid, like he was in the studio, or better, at Lincoln Center. “Amazing.” Richard knew the piece. It was one of his father’s favorites. Richard said, “Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A.”

“I’m impressed. Go ahead. Keep it.”

“You kidding?”

“Nah, it’s yours. I’ve got a dozen or so.”

Richard laughed.

“Yeah, not bad for a man who still has to check his emails through his secretary. Richard, you keep that,” he said, pointing to the iPod.

“Okay, Harold.” Richard still felt odd calling him by his first name. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome. Spread the gospel. Music’s one of our last uncorrupted refuges. A purity nobody can mess with. In there,” he said, pointing to the iPod, “we’re all equals.”

“Thanks again,” Richard said.

“Where’s Cole?”

“He just left. We start our management interviews in five minutes.” Richard looked at his watch. He’d milk this down to the last second. How many more chances would he get to BS one-on-one with Harold Milner?

“He’s a good banker. You’ll learn a lot. He giving you a hard time?”

“Is the Pope Catholic? I’m rubbing a lot of tummies.”

Milner gave him a questioning look.

“My dad used to say, ‘Sometimes you have to rub people’s tummies to get them to accept you.’ Part of the game.”

“He’s right. So keep toughing it out. And if you can manage to get face time with Jack Grass, jump through hoops to impress him and you’ll make it. We all pay our dues. Just don’t forget where you came from. Rule number one.”

“And number two?”

“Never let anybody take it from you once you’ve made it.” The casualness in Milner’s manner was gone. He was looking at Richard but his focus seemed elsewhere. Then Milner’s gaze went up over Richard’s shoulder. “Here’s the Pope now.” Richard turned to see George Cole in the doorway. Richard’s ears burned and he felt his face flush. If Cole heard what he’d said, he was cooked.

“Harold,” Cole said. “I didn’t expect to see you. What a pleasure.” His voice went higher than usual, Cole gushing.

“Yeah, well, just slumming.” Milner stood up and he and Cole shook hands across the table. Cole had a brightness in his eyes and an eagerness in his face Richard hadn’t seen before.
Golly, Mr. Springsteen, I’ve got all your CDs.
Some hotshot Wall Street type now.

On the way to the CFO’s office, Cole said, “Must be a really important deal to Milner. He wouldn’t normally show up in person for something like this.” His tone was almost collegial for the first time, Richard wondering if maybe Cole felt like Richard’s audience with Milner had rubbed off on him. It wore off when they entered Ron Peter’s office. He pointed at Richard’s yellow pad and glared at him. “Take notes.”

New York City.
“To the printer’s,” Cole said as he, Howard Blaine and Richard collapsed into a limo at 9:00 p.m. that night at JFK. Richard had never been in a stretch limo before. The driver took them to Bowne & Co.’s office on Varick Street and they went upstairs to an enormous conference room filled with the rest of the Southwest IPO deal team—attorneys representing Southwest and Walker, Southwest’s General Counsel and CFO, and other Walker professionals—to make final the IPO prospectus that was to be filed with the SEC in the morning. Printer’s drafts of the prospectus were scattered on the table. Luggage sat against the walls. The place smelled of ink and sweat.

The second hour went like the first one, and the next six after that: Richard observing, following along as everyone read each successive draft of the documents; Richard generally unsure what people were doing or talking about; Richard amazed that Cole kept pushing a button on the wall and some gray-faced schlub in saggy-assed pants showed up to take his and Blaine’s drink orders, that Ron Elman, Walker’s senior Real Estate MD picked his nose, then tore matches from the CFO’s pack and picked his ears, then mocked Richard for loosening his tie; Richard finally making a suggestion in the drafting and everyone acting like he’d never spoken, hell, like he was invisible.

At 5:30 a.m., after rubbing tummies as hard as he could for the last few days, Richard’s ego finally surfaced. “Why are you only using me as a gopher? Why won’t you let me make a little more of a contribution?” Richard said to Cole as they waited in the limo for Jeannie Peters to come downstairs.

“You’re an amoeba,” Cole said. “You don’t know anything. You’re excess baggage at this point.”

Richard felt it like a slap from the back of Cole’s hand: not meant to hurt him, just insult him. He fumed in silence. Jeannie got in.

“Hey,” Cole said to her.

“Hey.”

Richard looked up but Jeannie ignored him. She and Cole both extended their legs full-length from the back seat of the stretch limo to the foot rests. Richard sat facing them on the fold-down seat. He had to shift sideways to avoid Cole’s loafers. Cole never looked at him.

“Tired,” he said to Jeannie.

“Too tired for a nightcap?”

“Maybe one.”

She smiled back like it meant more than a nightcap. After that they drove uptown in silence.

“Good night,” Richard said when they arrived at his apartment building. They didn’t make eye contact. No response, not even a nod, a word or a perceptible movement of their feet. Richard’s ears burned red and his jaw set rigid with anger and hurt as he climbed out of the limo.

As he entered his building it was more than his exhaustion that burned moist in his eyes. His pride stung, and he felt trapped in Jeannie’s sadism, Cole’s nastiness, his hatred of Ron Elman and his 55-year-old adolescent comments, and the collective arrogance of the industry he’d chosen for himself.

In bed he screamed from his guts with his face down in the pillow. It made both his head and his heart feel lighter. He figured investment bankers didn’t do things like that, but he did it again anyhow.

Washington, D.C.
Roman Croonquist finished reviewing the Wells Notice on the Boston Financial Arts case that his new Enforcement Assistants, Starsky and Hutch—it was easier than remembering their real names, and they seemed to enjoy the monikers—had drafted for him.

He liked these kids. They reminded him of his peers and himself when he’d interned under the SEC’s legendary Enforcement chief, Stanley Sporkin, back in the 1980s. Croonquist had done two stints under Sporkin: the first when he was an undergraduate Poli Sci major at George Washington University, the second when he was in second year law at Georgetown. The second time around he was proud to be one of the few interns required to wear a beeper under the hard-ass regime of Sporkin.

He remembered the way Sporkin talked about the go-go years of the 1960s when he was coming up, how the SEC brought down a number of the major conglomerate builders of that era with a flurry of litigation. Sporkin would pace back and forth in his office in front of a few young staff members, railing against the abuses of those early takeover artists. Then he would fire them up with challenges about bagging the current-day bad guys.