Megan Abbott: Wall Street Noir

The twentysomething stress addicts that populate the trading floor gaze into their Bloomberg screens seeking divine guidance. I hear the voices of my people reporting losses in the overseas markets like breathless wartime correspondents witnessing heavy casualties from the front lines. The Footsie is getting whacked, hammered, slammed, smashed, crushed, drilled, smoked, spanked, roasted, sewered, bashed. Beaten like a redheaded stepchild, clubbed like a baby seal. Boom boom, out go the lights.

Ranieri’s tardiness is driving me to distraction. It’s Friday, for chrissakes. I’ve got a dinner party at the Honeywells’ tonight. And I’ve got a wife who may have been cheating with a kickboxing instructor for God knows how long. Do I really need to have Ranieri playing with my head in the moments before he gleefully fires me?

Abruptly, Howie breezes through the door of his office. “Sparky, glad to see you’re here,” he burbles as if he’s five minutes late for a tennis game. “I’m really truly sorry about this, but—”

“No, you’re not.”

“Come again?”

I pronounce each syllable slowly. “I said, ‘No, you’re not.’ Meaning, no, you are not sorry. You are the polar opposite of sorry. You kept me waiting on purpose.”

“Touché, Sparky.” Ranieri’s laugh is a brutish grunt. “Maybe you’re kind of right about that.”

“Not a problem. I passed the time by reading all your e-mails.”

Ranieri inspects me to see whether I’m serious, but my poker face is inscrutable. Backatcha, jerkweed.

“Anyhoo,” Ranieri says with narrowed eyes, “let’s move on to the reason we’re here. You know Brian, I presume.”

I turn around and see Brian Horgan, a VP from HR, skulking in the doorway, craving invisibility. Brian is a good guy in my book; he was the one who gave me the head’s-up about this meeting. I take note of the thick Redweld tucked under his arm — my personnel file, no doubt.

“Um, good morning, Mark.” The poor bastard winces as he says this. It’s obvious this is anything but.

Of course I know Brian,” I say breezily. “We’ve worked together for what... six years?”

“Yeah, six years,” he confirms.

“Six long years recruiting the best structured products group on the Street, from the ground up.”

Ranieri steers the conversation away from my accomplishments. “Well then, I hope we can make this as pleasant as possible for everyone concerned. Given your contribution to the firm, we’ve moved heaven and earth to be generous.” Translation: You need to sign this piece of paper promising not to sue us, or you walk away with nothing for fourteen years of service

I wheel around to my friend from HR. “Your work is done here, Brian.”

“It is?” There is a look of palpable relief on Brian Horgan’s face.

“Go back to your office, check your e-mail for further instructions.”

Ranieri erupts. “Just what the hell are you trying to pull—”

“It’s not my doing. Sanderson has taken an interest in this—”

“Bullshit. He’s in Hong Kong.”

“Exactly. And Sanderson says stand down. Nothing is to happen until he returns to London on Monday.”

Ranieri scrutinizes me. “Does Becker know about this?”

“Why would that matter?”

Ranieri scowls venomously, then wheels his Herman Miller Aeron chair over to his flat-panel computer screen. His lips move as he reads the fresh e-mail from Sanderson. Then he slams his open palm on the surface of his desk. “Sonuvabitch!”

I turn to Horgan. “Like I was saying. Until this gets sorted out, you’re free to go.”

Ranieri grumbles with a dismissive wave. “Whatever.” With a surreptitious wink, Brian Horgan reassembles the file and departs.

My co-head makes a big show of closing the door and sealing us off from the rest of the trading floor. “Swift move, asshole. You knew I was leaving for Barcelona with my family tonight, didn’t you?”

“Guess you’ll just have to postpone your victory dance.”

“Maybe...” Ranieri regards me with a feral leer, “but you can postpone the inevitable only so long, Sparky.”

I lean back and give him a smile that’s... well, yes, call it self-satisfied . “Let’s recap, shall we? Four months ago, you pull some strings in London with Ian Becker — your Harvard roommate — to conjure up some do-nothing job that suggests to senior management that you’re not utterly useless. Lucky me: Since I happen to drive the lion’s share of revenue in the U.S., Becker drop-kicks you into my sandbox as a co-head. Says you’ve got a lot to learn and you’re ‘here to help.’ Instead, what happens? You steal my ideas, my team, my business, my revenues . You systematically bad-mouth me to Becker and the rest of senior management as ‘redundant’ and ‘not a team player.’ You and Becker wait for my mentor to be incommunicado somewhere so you can pull this lame-ass coup d’état.” I shake my head in disgust. “You’re not even worth keeping around to order lunch for my people.”

Ranieri leans back calmly. “On the one hand, screw you for messing up my vacation. At the same time, I commend you for pulling off that last-minute clemency from the powers that-be. Very creative.” A slow smile spreads across his face. “But guess what? Turns out your guy is getting a bullet to the head himself from senior management. So looks like we have a do-over first thing Monday morning.”

“We done here?”

“For now.”

“Good.” I bolt upright and regard my mortal enemy with utter contempt. “You’ll excuse me, I’m going to go back to the desk and make some money. I’ll leave you to whatever it is you do all day.”

Bite me, jerkweed . And I’m out of there.

Moments later, I experience an emotional cocktail of mild embarrassment and genuine euphoria when the entire derivatives trading floor erupts in a standing ovation. On the Street, information is the ultimate commodity, and the news that I survived Ranieri’s savage assassination attempt causes spasms of joy among the all-star team I’ve assembled.

“Okay, okay, all right!” I shout over the sustained applause, whistles, and catcalls. “ A for effort, but this show of loyalty won’t necessarily have a favorable impact on year-end bonuses.”

The cheering tapers off into an admixture of laughter and mock boos. I hear a muffled thud behind me as an apoplectic Ranieri kicks his office door shut. I love these people. Love them

“All right, people, show’s over. Let’s pump it up and make some money for the Brothers.”

As if a switch is turned on, the trading floor becomes electrified, crackling with high-voltage activity. The discordant brays of traders fill my ears:

“I’m choking on micro-gamma decay on my long-vol position, and unless they rally I’m gonna be achin’ like there’s no tomorrow—”

“Johnny Meyer, pick up the double-donuts!”

“I called Tommy at DB for a chinstrap in the double-Monday nasty; the bid’s gone to a bad neighborhood—”

“I took the bid up a noogie from 10.2 to 10.25 and oh-fived a sweet-one pick-off of the crowd. Am I a hammer or what?”

This is in my blood, the thrill and agony of trading derivative securities. There’s no Betty Ford clinic for this addiction, nor would I voluntarily twelve-step myself away from this high. Come Monday, if Ranieri succeeds in taking this world away from me, I will wish him a particularly painful strain of testicular cancer.

I slide into the Aeron chair at my trading turret. “Morning, Terri. Any news on your mom?”

“She’s getting much better, thanks for asking.” My assistant is Terri Aronica, a sweet-natured girl from Staten Island. Her freckled presence on the trading floor is akin to a gazelle amongst lions, so I’m highly protective of her. In return, her loyalty is beyond question. “She’s coming out of the hospital this weekend.”