The Last Trade (4 page)

6

New York City

T
hey're still applauding for him, but Havens has had enough.

Enough of Salvado and enough of his supporting role in the creation myth that has been spread countless times to the financial press. He looks up as the bottle girl approaches. She sidles up alongside him and places her palm on his thigh. “So I was right,” she whispers, giving his quad a squeeze. “You
are
famous.”

Havens removes the woman's hand from his thigh and answers, “Not for long.”

He's still looking into her medicated eyes when his phone buzzes. Danny Weiss again. This time rather than simply reading and ignoring Weiss's texts, he shuts the phone off. Havens and the bottle girl watch one of the Texans pass with a girl on each arm. She asks, “How come you don't have a girl?”

He watches a chaperone open a door for the Texan and the girls. The room beyond is empty and filled with red velvet couches, flat screens, and flowers. “Is that what you call that?” he tells the bottle girl. “No thanks.”

“Your boss,” she says, “last week he was in there for three hours with three of them. I had the privilege of replenishing the champagne and politely declining to be number four.”

Havens groans. Tommy Rourke approaches. Despite Havens's re-nown as a quant, Rourke is still Salvado's most valued employee, a bona fide rainmaker with a gift for bringing high-value clients, such as the Texans, into the fund and converting them into Believers. Rourke is also the person most responsible for discovering Havens, based upon the recommendation of a friend of a friend, and bringing him to Salvado's attention.

“What's wrong with the King of Quants?”

Havens smiles. Despite the fact that Rourke is all about image and has little understanding of numbers, he likes him, and sometimes wishes he had some of Rourke's social skills. In the beginning, whenever someone made a comment about Havens's antisocial, obsessive behavior, Rourke was always the first to stick up for him. Plus, during Havens's darkest time, Rourke proved to be his most loyal and caring friend.

“You know me, Rourkey.”

Rourke smiles. “Good with the numbers . . . not so much with people.”

Havens lifts his chin toward the room into which the Texan just vanished. “And even less so with whores.”

Rourke tilts his head. “Oh, come on. I throw up in my mouth a little every time Rick pulls this shit, but you know you're a rock star to these clients. They respect you.”

“They respect an old story. An
as told by
legend that you and your boy Rick tell especially well. This new stuff, this so-called investment strategy that they're being sold right now, you and I know it isn't mine, isn't close to true, and makes no sense.”

Now Rourke's smile slackens. “Jesus, Drew. This again?” For the last twelve months Salvado has been loading the Rising Fund with a disproportionate amount of pro-American investment positions. Although his fund made its name shorting sub-prime real estate, he's now gone on record as being long on a broad array of American securities, specifically tech, advertising, old and new media stocks, commodities, and real estate. Almost exclusively American. Even the U.S. dollar.

Of course, on the heels of a recession, with the country's leaders at one another's throat, it's been a popular position. And why not? Salvado was one of the few, thanks to Havens, to have gotten it right in 2008. And this time it doesn't hurt that he's betting big on American success rather than widespread collapse. It was an easy story for Rourke to use while prospecting, at least at first.

One would think that Havens would be comfortable with his boss's populist long position on the American economy. If anything, it would alleviate some of the guilt that has plagued him ever since they reaped fortunes off of economic ruin and the widespread woes of millions of Americans. But Salvado has been making less and less sense to Havens. As he's been telling Rourke with increased passion and frequency, he believes that Salvado's pro-American position is, at best, more of an investment
philosophy
than a strategy, let alone a numbers-based financial model.

When Havens continued to question the increasingly one-dimensional position of the fund that had made him and so many others rich, he was gradually pushed aside during key internal meetings, relegated in recent months to less strategically important tasks. Ultimately he was moved up, replaced by other analysts who were more prone to see things Salvado's way, more willing to bend their data to accommodate and promote their boss's sketchy philosophy.

If he hadn't been so instrumental in the Rising Fund's sub-prime legend, and featured so prominently in a number of bestselling books and articles about “The Crisis,” Havens is sure he'd have been shit-canned a long time ago and not pidgeonholed in the position of past-tense PR poster boy, rolled out like a museum piece for this sort of client-appeasing spectacle.

But now he doesn't care. It's one thing to be right about an impending economic disaster, but even worse to predict bliss that will never happen and that the numbers just don't substantiate.

“So what are you gonna do?” Rourke asks over the music.

Havens looks around once more. “Don't worry. I'm not out to blast him in public. You guys have been too good to me. But, between us, I've got to get out.”

“Now?”

“I'm fried, Tommy. You know I'm all or nothing with this stuff, and I can't . . . I know you think I'm nuts, and, yeah, the money's great, but I can't work on something I don't believe in and, worse, know is wrong.”

Rourke looks at Salvado, who's clinking champagne glasses with the second Texan. “You tell the big man yet?”

Havens shakes his head. “You guys basically took me off the street and made me a rich man, and when everything went down with my—”

Rourke interrupts. “With Miranda . . . I hear you. But that was between friends. Not work. You know, I have my questions, too, and I'm far from a numbers guy. Shit, I'm a goddamn Ivy League literature major. I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that I'm ready to move on, too. Get away from the ego that ate Wall Street and go someplace with Jenny and chill for a while. But because this is a tough time for him, for the fund in general, and he has been more than generous with us, we sort of owe—”

This time Havens interrupts. “When everyone involved is rich, it's tough to say you owe anyone anything. Listen, Tom: I've made a lot the last few years, more than I ever dreamed; but I've also lost more than I'd ever wish on anyone. I'm done.”

Rourke puts his hand on his friend's shoulder. “You may be done with this, Drew, but I have a feeling you're just beginning.”

* * *

Havens walks away from the table and heads down the short flight of stairs to the lounge. He orders a seltzer with lime and stares at the bank of TV screens suspended over the top shelf. Baseball play-offs. Monday night football. Aussie rules football. Two men beside him are discussing a spread. One man claims to have laid ten thousand on the Cowboys, giving the 49ers four points, and the Cowboys are up three in the fourth quarter. Havens is interested for a moment—he starts to sketch a model in his head about the probability of this douche bag winning, of the Cowboys coming back and beating the spread with 6:48 and two time-outs remaining—then he's not. This is a problem. This is
his
problem, using the scalpel of mathematics to dissect the improbabilities of life. Over the course of his life it has intrigued, fascinated, and consumed him, ultimately to the brink of destruction. If not for his way with numbers, he would not have become rich as a direct result of the misfortune of others. If not for his way with numbers, he would still have a wife and a daughter and a life.

Some may claim that Wall Street is the biggest casino of all, but Havens disagrees. He thinks it's a laboratory and that Wall Street is an experiment, and sometimes experiments go horribly wrong. Out of the corner of his eye he catches Salvado handing a pad of cash to the chaperone in charge of the Texans' VIP room.

7

New York City

W
eiss ducks behind the cover of the AC unit and listens. The roof door slamming open. Steel smashing against concrete. Gravel crunching underfoot. Fast steps heading toward the west side of the roof, then doubling back. He can hear the guy's strained breaths. Now another siren, this one heading south. A car door closes on the street below.

He slips his phone into his pocket, holds his breath, and considers his options. Wait to be found, run for the stairwell, or jump. Only the stairwell holds the promise of survival. The footsteps resume, moving away again. He peeks over the unit and sees the man, large and muscular, black hair shining in the night, looking at what, his phone? Another option is reason, Weiss thinks. Explain yourself and promise no harm, to cease and desist. But this man doesn't seem to be the reasonable type.

He waits for the man to reach the farthest corner of the roof. As the man glances over the edge Weiss makes his move. On hands and knees at first, through the shadows, then into the light near the open door to the stairwell. At the threshold fear overcomes patience and he begins to rush. His knee drags through the gravel and sprays a few loose pebbles against the steel door. He turns as the man whirls and locks eyes on him.

Weiss bolts upright and lunges toward the first set of stairs. He leaps three at a time, sliding his left hand along the railing for balance. At the first landing his shoeless feet slide out from under him and he stumbles onto the linoleum. He reaches out to balance himself with his right hand and drops the flash drive. The man is already at the head of the stairs and racing toward him. Weiss grabs the flash drive and shoves it in his pocket as he rights himself. His goal is the street three flights below. At least in the street there will be witnesses. At the next landing, his landing, he glances back and sees the bald man set his feet and take flight, leaping from eight steps above, swooping down on him like a hawk toward its prey.

8

New York City

H
avens takes a frustrated breath when he sees Salvado at the head of the stairs. He came to the lounge to get away from Salvado because he knows if pressed he won't be able to hold his tongue, and Rourke is right, this isn't the time or place to quit. When he quits, he wants to do it when they're alone. He owes that much to the man who made him rich.

“What's the matter, Drew? They're looking for you up there.”

“Just taking a breather. Needed some space.”

“Maybe what you need is some tail.”

Havens stares at his boss. At one time all he saw when he looked at Salvado was the man who took him off the street and made him rich. Now all he sees is the man who made him . . . what? Alone? Divorced? Drowning in guilt?

“Don't tell me you're back with the guilt?”

“You see it, I don't have the stomach for it anymore.”

Salvado winces and glances up at his clients, where Rourke has taken over as entertainment director. He stares back at Havens. “Of course, you don't have a better alternative.”

“Better, like the sub-prime? That's a once-a-century thing. So no, nothing like that. Which is part of the problem, too.”

“Kind of like pitching a perfect game seven of the World Series, as a rookie.”

“Pitch the perfect game, then win it with a homer in the bottom of the ninth.”

“Look, you're tired. You work as hard as anyone I've ever seen. Why don't you take a break and think about it?”

“I've been thinking about . . .”

“Why don't you take a week—shit, take two—and get your head away from all this. We went to war together, Drew, and I would hate to lose you over some fucking crisis of conscience, unless . . .”

Havens looks away, thinks, Am I absolutely sure? On the far side of the room, near the VIP bar, he watches one of Laslow's thugs get up in the face of the bottle girl who was just speaking to him, admonishing her, apparently, over some protocol lapse. “I agree,” Havens says. “I need a break, and I appreciate the offer, and I won't do anything publicly, until you give me the green light. You've been extremely kind and generous with me.” He tries to stop here but can't help himself. “But you know me, Rick, I can't sit on my hands all day, or do this.”

Salvado rolls his eyes. “
This
. You're gonna let a difference of opinion ruin how many years of . . .”

“Opinion has little to do with it,” Havens says. “For me, the difference in the numbers, the data, the economic truth, means everything. That's how I function. It's easier for me to reconcile myself to this,” he waves a hand back toward the clients, the champagne bottle–covered table, and the women, “than to numbers that don't make any sense.”

“I'm asking you to have faith, to trust me.”

“I wish I could, but my brain, it won't let me.”

“This is a mistake.”

Havens shakes his head. “I wish there was something to show me otherwise. You know, I've been looking around.”

“Looking around?”

“To see if anyone else is seeing things the other way, my way. For my own sanity.”

“And . . .”

“And while I couldn't come up with any individual fund or trend of people taking significant short puts against
all
of your longs, I found some other stuff.”

Salvado scans the room, then turns his back on the table, steering the conversation to a more private place. “For instance.”

“Well, apparently, at least a couple of heavy investors seem to be locking in with huge bets, one position, one security at a time,
against
you. I mean us.”

Salvado nods. Havens takes this as an invitation to continue.

“For instance, I saw some activity on a bunch of our tech plays, you know Apple . . .”

“I know what the hell our tech plays are.”

“Right. Anyway. Just a couple hours ago, activity coming out of Hong Kong was laying
huge
money, play for play,
agains
t our exact—”

Salvado shrugs. “Not everyone loves tech. Especially American tech. Especially Apple. And clearly not everyone likes me these days. Plus, how do you know it's one person, and from Hong Kong?”

“I don't, but it's all coming out of the same firm,” Havens says.

“Really? And you found this out when?”

“Today. Saw some movement and then confirmed it through a fixed income guy I know from my Citi days, covers China over at HSBC.”

Salvado sizes up Havens. “So you picked this movement up on our system?”

“No. I didn't want to compromise our network with something I haven't vetted. It's something Danny Weiss got his hands on.”

Salvado tilts his head. Of course he has no knowledge of Weiss or any lowly quant, Havens realizes.

“Weiss, my desk quant protégé. Good kid and hard worker.”

Perhaps Salvado would have known the young man's name back in 2007 when he walked the floor more often, before he became a legend, but not now. Not a chance. Finally, he mouths the name, as if committing it to memory:
Weiss
.

“What else?”

“Well, the others aren't confirmed. But there's some recent stuff in advertising and new media that Weiss is investigating. Plus other stuff he's all twisted up over that I haven't checked into yet.”

“Who else knows about this?”

“Just me and Weiss.” Already he wishes he'd left Weiss out of this. It was his hunch.

“Well,” Salvado begins, “it doesn't surprise me, having such contrary counterplays, especially on something as fickle as tech. I'm not in it for a popularity contest. Above all, you should know that. But what bothers me is that after all we've been through, you're spending all this time and company resources just trying to prove me wrong.”

“Actually, I've been trying to prove you right. And I never questioned you publicly. In or out of the office. It's not about you, it's about me trying to find a way forward in this job. Ask Rourke.”

“You know how I feel about loyalty to the fund, Drew.” While Salvado states his call to loyalty, the Russian model appears and presses her hip against him. Sonya. Mischa. Something. She's putting on her best I-want-to-play face.

Havens remembers one of Salvado's loyalty speeches in particular, delivered while he paced around the conference table after the morning call, menacingly holding a Louisville Slugger, like Robert De Niro playing Capone in
The Untouchables
. “You taught me all about loyalty from day one, Rick. Fidelity and loyalty to the fund. It's people. And their families.”

Salvado shrugs off the model, who then turns away, not in the least forlorn, and clippety-clops back to the table. “I called this the Rising Fund for a reason. It is an epic journey, an epic American tale about the ability to overcome adversity that is still being written, and when it's all over, it will be remembered as one of the great ones.”

Havens, who has heard this all too many times, shrugs.

“I'd be disappointed to learn that you no longer want to be part of it, Drew.”

“Maybe I'm not cut out to be an epic journey kind of guy. I like to know why things happen; how things end.”

Salvado begins to answer, but Rourke and one of the Texas clients interrupt them. Rourke's holding a tray half-filled with tequila shots. The others were handed out at the upper table. “Herradura Seleccion Suprema,” shouts the client, who couldn't have botched each word more if he'd tried. “Best in the danged world.”

Havens can only imagine the jacked up club price for a bottle of the best in the danged world. Salvado takes the shot glass in his hand and considers the amber liquid. Rourke offers Havens a shot. He starts to wave him off, but Rourke steps closer. His eyes implore Havens to play along one last time. He takes the shot, but doesn't drink it as the others knock theirs back.

“Listen,” Salvado says after the client wobbles away. “Just do me a favor and sleep on it. Let me think this through. Then let's talk in the morning. I want to know more about this software you're experimenting with, and I promise to give you a more succinct rationale for my position. After that, if we still agree to disagree, we'll figure something out. But I want you to know, after all we've been through, I've got your back. No matter what, I'll take care of you.”