Recently, Ellis had become the king of the status update. “Calling to check in on the status,” he would say, or more irritatingly, “Just a friendly status call!”
“I’m trying to manage it as best I can,” she said. “What can I tell you?”
“Tell me what’s going on. Update me.”
Jane took a deep breath and fought the urge to smash the receiver against the side of the desk.
She said, “Ellis, it’s 8:30 a.m. and it’s Thanksgiving.”
“You told me to call you. You left me a message last night. Didn’t you?”
Jane sighed. She had called him, but she hadn’t told him to call her back. It was a preemptory strike voice mail, apprising him of the situation with just enough color so that he would feel looped in. She had hoped this would be enough to satiate him, at least through the weekend.
He wasn’t going to let her off that easy.
“All right,” she said. “Here’s what we know. We believe that Reis was running some kind of Ponzi scheme. We’re not sure how long it’s been going on, if RCM was ever a legitimate operation. We looked into it briefly in 2006, but nothing came of that. David Levin began an informal investigation a few months ago, but it wasn’t well handled. Everyone in our group was focused on the mutual-fund sweep and the ball got dropped. So now, yes, it’s a situation.” She was repeating what she had said in the voice mail, but she would be doing a lot of that over the coming days. Everyone was going to want to hear her version of the RCM investigation: the press, the attorney general’s office, her superiors, her staffers, her friends. If she had to think every time she told it, it would exhaust her. She would tell it again and again until the words themselves lost their meaning. Might as well get it down pat now.
“When you say the ball got dropped, by whom? By Levin?”
“I don’t think David handled the situation appropriately, no,” she said carefully. “He didn’t convey the urgency of this investigation, to me at least. So I thought it was best to keep him staffed on the mutual-fund sweep. What he was doing on his own time with respect to RCM was outside of marching orders, and again, it wasn’t properly elevated to senior management.” She hoped this came across as contrite but unapologetic.
“Would he say he dropped the ball?”
“What’s that?”
“David Levin. If I asked him, would he say he dropped the ball?”
Jane squeezed her eyes shut. Her head hurt. Every time she pictured Ellis, he still had that ridiculous white mustache, even though he had shaved it off over a year ago. There was a part of her that pitied him. Their paths had crossed in the sky for a brief moment, before her star continued on its meteoric ascent upward and his slipped off into cosmic obscurity. He reminded Jane of a supernova, the brief and overwhelming burst of radiation that occurs shortly before the star itself fades to black.
Still, his support was crucial to her promotion, and they both knew it. For the moment, she was at his mercy.
“I don’t know what he’d say. I don’t know why he didn’t push harder. I got the sense that he was a little territorial about the investigation. It’s not appropriate, but it happens, particularly with career-making cases like this one. He also may have simply misgauged the magnitude of it. He’s got a lot on his plate right now.”
“Seems like you guys are stretched pretty thin.”
“We are,” she said curtly. “We’re managing it as best we can.”
Ellis grunted. She heard what she thought was his feet swinging up onto the desk. She had seen him sitting like that before, feet on his desk, headset on, hands folded behind his head—like a telemarketer.
“It just seems to me,” he said, “that we’re really going to look like assholes if we had someone on the case and it got lost in some sort of administrative black hole.”
She knew where this was going.
Her eyes bounced off the surfaces of her office: the industrial black shelves lined with case binders; the dismal putty-colored rug; the depressed-looking ficus in a wicker basket in the corner. Her Harvard Law School diploma hung slightly off-kilter, flanked on either side by her Harvard College diploma and a photograph of a young, dewy-eyed Jane with Justice O’Connor, for whom she had clerked in 1986. The tops of the frames were dusty, like everything else in the office. Her desktop hummed in front of her. Outlook was actively collecting unread e-mails. The light on her second line had gone on twice, pushed to voice mail. Jane’s standard breakfast—a large black coffee and a cheese Danish from the twenty-four-hour deli—was churning angrily in her stomach.
“I know you’re swamped up there,” Ellis offered. “I’m not saying anything’s your fault. I’m just saying how it looks.”
“You’re saying it looks like my fault.”
Ellis made a lip-sputtering noise, like a car exhaust. “It looks like someone’s fault. I just think we have to be clear on what happened before the press comes knocking.”
“The press is already knocking. A statement doesn’t need to be made until Monday, I don’t think. I thought that was the consensus. I’ll have one prepared by the weekend.”
“That’s fine. I just think—I think everyone’s going to be looking for someone to blame. I think very highly of you Jane, always have. I’d hate to see you take the fall for something like this.”
“Why don’t you just say what you’re going to say, Ellis?” Jane snapped. The little hairs on her arms stood at attention.
“Whoa there, Jane. I’m just saying protect yourself. What you do over the next few days—what you say and what you do in response to this situation—is gonna matter. You’ve got a lot of people who would like to see you succeed here. We need a real leader. Someone who’s going to instill real confidence in the Commission. I think you’d be great. But you’ve got to make it very clear that what happened with the RCM investigation wasn’t your fault.”
After she hung up the phone, Jane went to the bathroom and let the cold water run over her wrists. She stood with her eyes closed, hands turned upward, the delicate blue veins exposed beneath the frigid tap.
Get ahold of yourself, she thought.
She was taking this David Levin business harder than she had thought. She had never much liked David. He was dating a woman in the office, and this bothered her. Admittedly, they were discreet about it, but it was still a distraction, for them and for everyone else in the office. Also, he dressed too casually. Jane had come across him wandering the hallways in jeans or scuffed Converse sneakers, not just on weekends but in the middle of the workweek. He never looked sheepish about it. Jane felt he was too old to be getting a lecture on either dating in the workplace or appropriate office attire. He was smart enough, she thought, to pick up on her tacit disapproval.
She thought about his Converse sneakers as the chill of the water began to set in. She thought about his relationship with Alexa Mason, and how she had come across them holding hands at a movie theater on the Upper West Side. It had been embarrassing and awkward, particularly for Jane because she was alone.
Then she thought, This is neither here nor there. David is a good lawyer, one of our best.
You don’t need to like or dislike him to fire him.
You need to fire him because it has to be done.
She had sacrificed so much already for her career. Years of perfect grades, of ninety-hour workweeks, of missed dates, of missed dinners. Years spent fielding questions about when she was going to get married and have kids. Worse still, the years after when the questions stopped because the answer was always the same. She had earned the position of chairman. Finally, it was right there for the taking. Whatever had to be done now, so be it.
David Levin would do the same, she thought, if the positions were reversed. Any man would. David Levin would sell her down the river without a second’s hesitation if it meant he could save himself.
She imagined he would try to, if he hadn’t already. But it was too late for him.
She turned off the tap. Flick
ing the drops from her wrists, she pushed back her shoulders and stood tall. She caught her reflection in the bathroom mirror. Her black hair came to a practical, blunt edge beneath her ears. Her cheekbones, once elegant in their definition, now read as gaunt.
You’ve earned this, she said to herself.
She forced a smile in the mirror and thought about the call she would get from the president when it was all decided.
Her nerves steeled, she went back to her office to fire David Levin.
THURSDAY, 9:30 A.M.
“What are you thinking about?” Merrill asked as she closed the trunk of the car. It made a satisfying thunk, the sound of a weekend away in the country. She looked up at Paul inquisitively, her hands stuffed into the pockets of her parka. The garage was freezing, almost the same temperature as outside.
He had let her load the bags without really helping. That was unlike him. “I’m sorry,” he said, flustered. He gestured at the bags in the back of the car. “I got distracted. The coffee hasn’t sunk in yet.”
She smiled, a half-watt smile. She was tired, too. “That’s okay. Want me to drive?”
“No,” he said, and opened the passenger side door for her. “Let’s go. I’m fine.”
As he slid into the driver’s seat, he noticed that his left hand was shaking. He adjusted the rearview mirror, checking it twice as he always did before he pulled out of the garage and onto the street. “So we need to talk about something,” he said, flicking on the blinker. He turned onto Third Avenue. The street was wide and empty. “Something’s happening with your dad’s business.”
Merrill had already settled in on the passenger side, her feet folded beneath her, Indian-style, on the seat. She had been fidgeting with the radio dial, but she stopped. King sensed the shift in tone and perked up, his ears alert.
“Come here, sweetheart,” she said, and scooped the dog out from the backseat and onto her lap.
Paul took a deep breath. “I found out yesterday that Morty was under investigation by the SEC. He was about to be indicted when he died. It looks like all of us—all of the officers, anyway—are under investigation.”
Merrill’s eyes widened slightly. She reached out and put her hand on top of his, her fingers finding their way, familiarly, into the grooves between his.
“Okay. Tell me everything.”
As he talked, the city unfolded like a paper doll against the white winter sky. They drove north past Ninety-sixth Street, the doorman buildings turning into bodegas and gas stations, then housing projects. They came to a full stop at the light. Three teenage boys passed in front of the car and Paul fell quiet. There had been stories recently about all the carjackings and muggings at the edges of the city. Crime was on the rise. One of the boys held a basketball tucked beneath his arm. He was the biggest of the three. He made eye contact with Paul through the windshield, and he dragged his hand along the front of their car. It lasted a second, but Merrill silently pulled her hand away from Paul’s knee to check the lock on the car door.
When the light turned green, Paul gunned the engine and caught the lights all the way to the FDR Drive. Once they were moving, Paul picked up where he had left off, speaking quickly, telling Merrill about the meeting with Alexa, and then the call with David Levin. Though he felt the absence of her hand he knew he had to keep going if he was going to get through everything without completely losing it. They both forgot about the boy. Eventually, the sound beneath the tires changed to a higher pitch as the car transitioned from the cement highway to the bridge, suspended above the river.
They passed the sign for Long Island. Usually, it promised a weekend at the beach or apple picking or playing golf on a crisp Sunday morning. Paul spoke for what felt like a very long time, and Merrill listened. He spoke quietly and efficiently, trying not to editorialize. She was a lawyer, after all. She would want only the facts. Still, when it came to his conversations with David Levin, Paul faltered. He wanted to explain his actions away.
“I wasn’t trying to lie to him,” he said, chewing hard on his lower lip. “I just wanted him to stop asking questions. Not because I thought there was something to hide. We were all just so busy . . .” His voice trailed off.
Merrill covered her mouth with her hand and began to cry. King put his paws up on her shoulders and tried to lick the tears from her cheeks.
“Stop it, King,” she said. Her voice cracked. She pushed the dog to the backseat of the car with a firm hand. “Stop it.”
She released the seat belt and drew her feet up beneath her. Her shoes were on the floor in front of her and they clunked together as the car hit a pothole.
“Ask me anything,” he said. “Please.”
“You saw Alexa yesterday and didn’t tell me about it.” She coughed fiercely.
“I know. I know that’s complicated. But she’s trying to help.” Paul reached for her hand but couldn’t find it.
“Help who?” Merrill said. Her voice was loud and Paul flinched. King barked; he hated it when they fought. “Help you? She comes to you with this insider trading bullshit, or whatever it is, which she doesn’t even know for sure, by the way, because she’s not the one running the fucking investigation, and tells you what? That my dad’s a bad guy and you should go be an informant for the SEC? That they’re going to save you? And you think she’s helping you?”
King paced frenetically in the backseat. Paul could hear the sound of his paws against the leather as he tried to make the jump by himself. Merrill ignored the dog and he began to bark. For a minute, Paul thought that he ought to pull over and stop. Talking in the car now seemed like a very bad idea. He couldn’t even look her straight in the eye, talking this way. They had another hour before they reached East Hampton. But the traffic was running by on the right and there wasn’t much of a shoulder. The only option was to keep driving, straight ahead, as fast as he could.
“I know it’s a lot to take in,” he said, trying to stay calm. “It’s a lot for me, too.”
“Yeah, it’s a lot.” Merrill paused and stared out the window. She grew quiet, but tears still flowed down her cheeks. She wiped them away and made a snuffling sound. Fumbling in her purse she said, “Damn it, I don’t have any tissues left. Okay, forget what Alexa told you. Do you have any reason to think Morty was doing something wrong?”
Paul hesitated. “It doesn’t make any sense. The performance is statistically perfect. And there are other things, undeniable stuff that doesn’t add up. They won’t let us look at their accounts online, for example. They send trade confirmations by mail, these hard-copy printouts that could be anything.”
“What do you mean, hard-copy printouts?”
“Just lists of what they traded. But it comes straight from them. And they don’t have an outside broker, so there is no way to verify their trades with an outside party’s books. Basically, we just rely entirely on the information they provide, which isn’t much.”
“I’ve never heard of that.”
“I haven’t either. No one else does it. Frankly, I don’t think we’d let anyone else get away with it, but RCM has always had a sort of favored status at Delphic.”
“So you have no idea what they’re trading, really, how they’re doing it, or with whom.”
“It seems that way.”
She closed her eyes and shook her head. “The lawyer in me really hates hearing this kind of stuff.”
“Trust me, the lawyer in me isn’t thrilled, either. I mean, Christ. It’s our job to run diligence on these funds before we invest our clients’ money in them. We should know everything about every fund we’re invested in.”
Paul hated to talk about it, but Merrill seemed calmer now that they were getting down to brass tacks, and that encouraged him. She had always been coolheaded in a crisis, always focusing on what logically could be solved, never letting her emotions run away with her. In law school, Paul was sure she’d make a great lawyer. She would make partner one day, if that was what she wanted.
“You
said the performance was statistically perfect? What does that mean?”
Paul pointed to the backseat without taking his eyes of the road. “Get those folders back there. Open the top one—it shows the performance. You’ll see what I’m saying. It’s a perfect curve.”
The car fell silent. The exits were growing farther and farther apart. They had passed the suburbs, Glen Cove and Jericho and Syosset and Huntington, strung together as if on a low-slung clothesline, the local traffic thinning out on the highway. They were close to Exit 70, where they usually got gas and sodas at the 7-Eleven. Paul kept driving, his knuckles white on the wheel.
Merrill studied the folders’ contents intently, the crease of her brow fixed. Paul resisted the impulse to ask questions. All he could hear was the undulating chunkachunkchunk of the highway’s pavement beneath the car, and the quiet hum of the radiator.
Finally, she glanced up and said, “It’s not insider trading. Is it.”
Smart girl, he thought. “I don’t think so.”
“Right. Inside information would enhance their performance, but there would still be variability in the results. No one earns the same amount every single quarter.” She shook her head, thinking of Elsa Gerard. “I just don’t understand how they did it.”
“I don’t think they did. It’s an illusion. Don’t you see? It has to be. They weren’t investing the money at all. And I think I have a way to prove it. The SEC hasn’t quite connected the dots, but they don’t have access to all the information that I do.”
The Darlings Page 15
