Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street (17 page)

Austin’s father, Ray Karr, was an exemplary American entrepreneur. He had taken the inheritance of a small newspaper in Charleston and parlayed it into a significant media and telecommunications empire. He kept houses in Hobe Sound, East Hampton, New York, Islesboro, and San Diego, plus a gorgeous historic mansion in Charleston and apartments in Paris, Rome, and Cape Town. His holdings included the largest privately held block of stock in Mobil Oil, and also in Weldon Brothers. When Austin took an interest in investment banking, Ray Karr had simply made two phone calls and, with the chairmen of Morgan Stanley and Weldon Brothers on the line, had agreed that Austin would go to Morgan, and he would not be told of his family’s ownership of 12 percent of a major competitor.

Austin had been doing reasonably well at Morgan, though his father had not been pleased with his choice to sell bonds for a career. Ray Karr thought a background in international corporate finance, with a focus on Latin America, would be more useful to Austin later on, but understood that his son might feel the need to carve out his own niche. In the meantime, Ray Karr kept building and acquiring.

The bedroom that Warren and Larisa shared was cheerfully decorated with blue-and-white-striped material and wallpaper. The towels even matched. Warren ran a shower and let the hot water ease his aching muscles. Between spending ten hours a day sitting in a chair with a phone pressed to his ear and another four hours sitting in the car, his back felt like mush. He wrapped a towel around his waist and stretched out on the bed, while Larisa took her turn in the bath. It only seemed like a few seconds, but he woke up in the dark. His watch said 4:00
A.M.
, and Larisa was sleeping soundly beside him. He crawled under the sheets and tried to nod off again, but couldn’t. After he tossed and turned a few times, and Larisa began to stir, he decided to get up so she could sleep. There’d always be time to take a nap, and maybe more, later. Her smooth, naked skin stirred him, but her opportunities for a real night’s sleep were increasingly rare.

As quietly as he could, he dug a pair of shorts and a T-shirt out of his duffel bag, then slipped out the door. Downstairs, in the living room, the fire was cold. He stepped out onto the porch, where the air was surprisingly warm and still. The lights from the pool beckoned across the lawn, and he decided a little dip might be a good idea. The heated pool water gave off a hazy cloud of steam in the cooler night air, a mesmerizingly beautiful halo slowly rising into the dark. The grass was clipped as short as that of a putting green, and as he crossed the lawn, he realized that part of it was actually a grass tennis court. There was a net, and two green-wire fences at the backcourts, with one side boundary framed by a ten-foot-tall privet hedge.

At the pool house, he poked inside and found a stack of big towels. He took one and put it down at the edge of the pool. Not surprisingly the pool was invitingly warm—clearly heating bills were not an issue in this house. After testing the water, he dove in cleanly, then started into a rhythm of swimming laps. It was a little difficult without goggles, but after three lengths, he had measured the pool at eleven strokes. He tried to keep track of the laps at first, then just decided to keep going until he felt tired. His mind began to wander, as it usually did, to work, and he tried to shut it out and think about more pleasant things. Somehow, Anson Combes and his pointy teeth kept popping into Warren’s mind. At least he knew there weren’t any sharks in the swimming pool. He knew Anson wanted something out of him, and maybe even Dougherty, but he had no idea what it could be. Frank Malloran had warned him Combes did nothing without bad intentions, and Warren was sure Frank was right. Jesus! All Warren wanted to do was sell bonds and make a living and move up. Maybe he wouldn’t inherit a fifteen-room palace at 740 Park, but he could maybe buy the place on Eighty-First Street or start looking for a two-bedroom if he and Larisa decided to—

Out of nowhere, he felt hands grab his leg, and he was startled. He came to the surface coughing for air. He wiped his eyes clear. Eliza was in the pool beside him. Her hair was wet and sleeked away from her face, and she was laughing at him.

“Jesus! You scared the shit out of me! I must have swallowed half the pool.” He waded over to the side and slumped against the stone coping.

“Well, you woke me up with all the splashing, so it’s your own fault.” She playfully splashed a little water at him. “It’s kind of a strange time for a workout.”

“I know. I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. I didn’t want to wake Larisa up, so I wound up down here.”

Eliza was wearing a white, one-piece bathing suit, and it clung to her above the water. Warren couldn’t help but notice how good she looked, and her skin seemed preternaturally dark in the glow from the pool.

“Look at us. Both trying not to wake anyone up. Aren’t we a couple of sweeties?” Eliza floated onto her back, her hair fanned out around her head, and her legs, long and slim, broke the water. Warren took the three steps to the end of the pool and climbed out, picking up his towel, and drying himself off.

“Are there more towels in there?” Eliza swam to his end and climbed up the steps. In her wet suit and the bright light softened by the water, her body looked fit, angular and tight. Where Larisa was smooth and muscled, Eliza was lithe and defined. Warren remembered Larisa’s telling him that Eliza had been interested in him down at Chas’s house in Florida. Eliza was sharp, funny, smart. She may have developed some seriously jaded views from her work, but she was actually doing something worthwhile. Looking at her, Warren wondered how she would really fit with someone like Austin, who was actually a bit of a stiff. Warren knew she had been joking about the kids she was helping with her work–she cared deeply about what happened to them. She had always enjoyed provoking people with outrageous statements, just to test them.

“Yeah. There was a stack by the door.” He walked past her to the door to the pool house to show her where the towels were. She followed him inside and took the one he handed her. Absently, she started to dry her face, then stopped. She was standing less than a foot from him, they were both damp, caught in the wavering sparkle of light from the moving surface of the pool. Warren felt a sudden surge, and they both leaned into a crushing kiss and an embrace.

Their hands were all over each other, pushing off their suits, easing down to the floor. He was on top of her, and she reached down and guided his hardness into her, slick, ready for him. Her hands held his bottom as he pumped into her, her legs coming up to wrap over his. She moved with him, moaning softly, then gasping, and brought him over the top, her muscles contracting on him, pulling him in. His back arched, and his lips pulled away from hers, every fiber contracted. He felt the eruption deep inside, her breath ragged as he filled her, every movement a convulsion until the power drained from him and he slumped onto her chest, her arms enfolding him.

They lay like that for a few moments, regaining their bearings, their breath returning. “Good Lord” was all Warren could say.

“I don’t believe it.” Eliza smoothed his hair. “After all this time.”

“Why did we never do this before?”

“I don’t know. I just can’t believe it.” He was still inside her, and she moved her hips to ease him out.

“Umm. I can’t believe it either. I haven’t slept with anyone except Larisa for over two years.” Warren was starting to think about the repercussions already.

“That’s nothing. Relax. I’m on the pill, and I’m going to marry Austin in six weeks. You guys are invited.” She half laughed, her voice full of sarcasm. Her hands balled into fists and tapped him playfully on the shoulders.

“Six weeks? I thought there wasn’t a date? Jesus. May I kiss the bride?” He leaned his head up and she gave him a long, deep kiss. To his surprise, he felt a stirring again.

“Do you know I always wanted you to ask me out in school?” She rolled him off her and propped her head up, lying on her side.

“I kinda hoped you might, but I was afraid to ask. I thought it’d piss you off. You know, we were ’friends.’” He made little quotation marks in the air.

“Well, it wouldn’t have.” She traced a finger down his chest and stomach. “Not at all. But Larisa’s great. A bit of a man-eater, maybe, but you seem …
Hmmmm
. I see you may really be up to the task.”

Warren just groaned. After a minute, she mounted him and took her full measure, grinding on top of him until she was satisfied and exhausted, when he let himself go.

They dozed together briefly as the sun began to come over the horizon, turning the sky a midnight blue, casting a golden glow that filled the air.

“Listen—” she began.

“I know. It’s okay. It never happened.” He scrambled into his shorts, and she slipped into her suit.

“I mean, the wedding, and everything. If this had happened—”

As she said it, Warren knew she was right. If this had happened in school, there would never have been a Larisa or an Austin. He stopped the thought and cut her off again. “Consider it like a bachelorette party or something. Wild oats.” Then he leaned over and kissed her lightly. “But it was great.”

She smiled at him, with the light shining through the window now, and he could see her here, in a few years, with her children, and he knew she had found the right place. He looked back toward the main house, a white colossus gleaming over a deep green lawn under an azure sky, the morning sun glinting off the glass, and wondered when and where he might find his own.

seventeen

Not for at least a month after the trip to Austin’s did Warren notice it. At first, he figured that the cleaning staff must be rearranging things at night. Finally, it began to bother him a little. He kept a file of each trade ticket in a big accordion folder, organized by account and trade date. One folder was for his trades, and one for Dougherty’s. All salesmen kept copies of trade tickets in case there was a problem later. Trades were punched into the computer system by the salesman, and they would automatically be forwarded to the trading-desk position clerks. They had to be done immediately. The client would get a trade confirm based on the ticket, but not including internal information, such as commission paid. Amber, Dougherty’s sales assistant, would review them at the end of each month and make sure Warren was getting all the commission he was entitled to. The problem was, the tickets never seemed to be where he’d left them the night before when he came in each morning.

Amber told him he was getting senile, and that she never touched them except the last two days of the month. So, as a test, he made a point of leaving them in a particular spot, or with little pieces of paper balanced on the folder as telltales. Once a week or so, they’d have been moved, probably opened and the papers inside them obviously looked through, the telltales scattered.

Many documents on a trading floor are “classified.” Competing firms would love to know exactly what big clients had bought or sold with Weldon. They’d love even more to know what sort of inventory Weldon traders were holding, or where they were trying to sell particular items. Security was assumed to be tight, but, Warren knew, in reality it consisted of a few bored and underpaid guards in cheap uniforms who hardly ever even checked for identification at the elevator entrances and rarely patrolled the floor after hours.

“You ever see anybody nosing around my desk?” Kerry shrugged her shoulders at the innocently phrased question. “Anyone you don’t know?”

“I thought I saw some KGB agents the other day, but I couldn’t be sure. Big guys. With fur hats.” Her sarcasm made Warren smile. “Why? Is something missing?”

“No. Not that I can notice. It just feels like things keep getting moved around.”

“So? What’ve you got in your desk anyway? Plans for a hydrogen bomb or something?”

“Nah. Never mind.” It bothered him, but it didn’t matter. If anybody wanted to look at the trade tickets, they must not have much else to do with their nights, he thought to himself. The tickets told an interesting story, though. Warren’s folder had started thin, with only a couple of tickets making it in each week. As the months passed, each week’s section grew thicker. His volume of trades had begun to accelerate, and the last few sections were as thick as Dougherty’s. Warren had turned his account list into a big producer, especially considering the relatively small size of most of his customers. Admittedly, Dougherty’s trades tended to be much bigger, but that was not surprising, considering that his accounts controlled almost $400 billion in assets. Warren’s totaled about $80 billion.

The older man had done little to actually help Warren or teach him about the business. Warren had simply listened in on his client calls with a “trainee phone,” a handset with no microphone. He was surprised that Dougherty generally read sales memos—the marketing materials prepared by the trading desks—verbatim over the phone. Warren soon realized that his mentor actually understood little about the intricacies of the products he sold. Dougherty relied almost completely on the traders and research to tell him what to say. Bill almost never stayed past five fifteen in the evening. Warren seldom left before seven, and research and finance analysts seemed never to go home.

Warren put the folders under his desk and walked out toward the small trading-floor cafeteria for a cup of coffee. The kiosk accommodated two large coffee urns and a refrigerated display case for sandwiches and soft drinks., plus a table with a hot entrée and soup each day. Everything was fresh and excellent. Warren plucked a foam cup out of the dispenser and opted for decaf.

“What’s the point of unleaded? Don’t tell me you like the taste.” Anson Combes had come up behind Warren and was waiting his turn.

“Huh? Oh, hey, Anson. Nah, I’m on natural stimulants. Rent. Car. Utilities. Caffeine’s overkill. I’m just cold from the damn vent over my desk.”

“Well, you could do what Bill does and get yourself a nice cardigan sweater. Looks like he’s playing golf out there. Maybe he
is
playing golf.” It seemed to be impossible even to trade small talk with Combes without him insulting someone. Dougherty’s cardigans were part of his image.