Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street

by Offit, Mike

  Chas was waiting for him in the white Volkswagen, with the top down and the radio on. He was wearing the kind of sunglasses that reflect the world in purple.

  “It’s only a half a mile, but we’ve got to save your strength.” Chas gunned the reedy motor and shifted into gear, barely pausing at the gate before pulling out onto the single road that served the islet. They sped down the narrow lane for about a minute before Chas guided the car into the Hobe Sound Club. The grounds were perfectly manicured, and the clubhouse immaculate. Every piece of wood had the same patina found in the locker rooms of the Meadow Club or Shinnecock in Southampton, where Warren had played in tennis tournaments and caddied for his dad playing golf with clients, and the awnings over the terraces were as crisp as the ones at the Millbrook Golf and Tennis Club.

  Chas and Warren were met by a sandy-haired, middle-aged man in whites, whose attitude of deference and familiarity quickly identified him as a member of the staff. “Hey, Chas, good to see you! Long time. I’ve got you two gentlemen set up with Ray and Austin Karr. Should be a good match if your friend here can play the game.”

  “That’s great, Bill. This is Warren Hament.” Chas patted the man on the shoulder as he extended his hand to Warren.

  “Bill Asher. I’m the excuse for a tennis pro around here. Good to meet you.”

  Warren returned the firm grip. “I might be looking for some tips later. It’s been a while.”

  “Well, once the Karrs get done with most people, they need a stiff drink more than any tennis tips. You’re all on court four.” Bill winked at Warren and waved over his shoulder as he headed into the pro shop. At the door, he paused and threw Chas a can of balls. “Go get ’em, Harper.”

  “For some reason, Chas, I get the feeling that people around here take their tennis pretty seriously.” Warren was beginning to be glad he’d practiced.

  “Well, if these two beat us, you’ll get to hear all about it at dinner tonight—all night. My mom’s invited them.” Chas led the way to the court. From the lawn, Warren could see the Karrs warming up. They were obviously father and son, one in his late fifties, the other in his late twenties. The two looked like an advertisement for something, only better. Ray Karr was about six feet one inch tall, and fit, his legs solid slabs of muscle, his gold-and-gray hair setting off a deep tan on a handsome, weather-beaten face. His son was about the same size, with short blond hair and a long, fine nose, atop which perched a pair of sunglasses virtually identical to the ones his father and Chas wore.

  “God, playing with you three’s going to be like getting stopped by a team of Nevada state troopers. You guys all get your glasses at the same place?” Warren poked Chas in the ribs with the butt of his racquet. They stood still for a moment, and Warren sized up the opposition. The older man had graceful movement and powerful strokes, but was an overhitter with limited control. The son had obviously taken plenty of lessons with Bill, his strokes long and fluid, but his rhythm had a tentativeness that suggested he would tense up in a match. Warren noted Ray’s backhand looked suspect, and that even in practice his son took relish in driving the ball to that corner and pouncing on the weak response.

  “Okay, Harper, I’ll take the backhand and serve last, I come to net on everything, we hit pace to the old man’s backhand, short to his forehand, and spin to the kid. By the second set Ray’ll be telling him he was illegitimate, and by the end, the kid’s going to think he’s right.”

  Chas turned his mirrored gaze to Warren and said, “I just knew I was going to enjoy this.”

  three

  The walk from the guest room he’d been assigned was pleasant, his shoes making a sandy, scratching sound on the stone path. The evening was warm, with a slight breeze off the ocean. His skin was flushed from the sun, and the exercise made him feel fit. Just one day of the good life, he thought, and I already feel like a million bucks. Then he corrected himself—better make that a couple of hundred million bucks. The Harpers weren’t just a successful family. They were a dynasty. This was a nice place to visit, but whatever it took to make this kind of money, Warren was pretty sure he didn’t, or maybe didn’t even want to, have it.

  The minute he walked into the living room, Warren was relieved at his choice of clothes. He’d considered white pants with a white shirt and blazer, but that made shoes difficult, and he didn’t want to look ready for sailing. After a few moments of deliberation, he went with old Brooks Brothers khakis, a blue oxford with rolled-up sleeves, and a pair of slightly worn Tretorn tennis shoes. He carried the blazer in case.

  His outfit closely matched everyone else’s, except for that of several older men, who were wearing pants and jackets in indescribably iridescent colors. He remembered a line a caddy had once told him: “Golf is just white folks’ excuse to dress like fools.” For a certain set of people, no excuse was necessary.

  As he walked into the room, he snagged a small hors d’oeuvre from a tray that was laid out and one of the maids took his drink order. As he made his way toward a group of six people on the patio, Cornelia Harper lassoed him with a practiced arm.

  “We meet at last. I’m Cornelia, and you have made Chas a celebrity. Straight sets from Ray Karr is absolutely biblical.” It took about one millisecond for Warren to like everything about this woman. He knew it was an art, but every gesture, every word, was somehow meant to put him at his ease and make him feel welcome.

  “Well, I think the Karrs were a bit off their game today. I guess the new blood confused them.” Warren had been led into a group sitting comfortably in plumply cushioned rattan chairs. Cornelia leaned against the arm of one, and Warren mimicked her as he spoke. His drink arrived, and he gladly gulped it before he was introduced.

  “Warren Hament, this is Gran Beal, Jim Metcalf, the Karrs, whom you know all too well, and Frances Benson. Warren is Chas’s new doubles partner and is evidently also carrying him through business school.” Warren shook hands all around, and after a polite moment of small talk gravitated to Austin Karr, the closest to him in age.

  “Sorry about that lob. I had no other play.” Warren had caught Austin out of position during a key point and made him look bad with a topspin lob over his head late in the match.

  “Hey, it was a good shot. Besides, Harper’s been trying to win this tournament for years. He just needed a good partner. You’re way out of our league.” Warren was surprised at the compliment. “And, hey, it’s good for my old man to get a whipping around here once in a while. Most everyone’s too boozed up to teach him a lesson.”

  “Tell me something, is there usually an audience like that for friendly doubles tournaments down here? I felt like we were at Wimbledon.” About twenty people had wandered over and watched the match, and they’d even wound up with a few younger kids as ball boys. Warren had played a lot of matches, but was unaccustomed to applause from a gallery.

  “Everybody down here watches everything. Everything.” Austin finished his drink and waved for another. “And there’s no such thing as a friendly tournament. You’re going to love it.”

  “I guess that depends. Where do you live if it’s not ’down here’?”

  “I’m up in New York too. I sell fixed income for Morgan.”

  “No kidding? I was thinking about looking into sales and trading jobs when school’s over.” Warren had started studying the investment banking firms, trying to pick the one that would allow for the fastest advancement. He had decided that being in corporate finance, where they advised big companies and worked endless hours, wasn’t for him. He wanted to be on the trading side, where the daily action was, preferably in the mortgage or futures area. “I was thinking about Weldon Brothers.” Warren also finished his drink.

  “Weldon!” Austin snorted. “That’s a tough shop. Real competitive, bottom-line traders’ house, like Salomon. You better be ready to hit the ground running there, boy, and watch your back. For a salesman like me, that place is no picnic.” Austin shifted on his feet.

  “What about Goldman?�
� Warren asked. They had a reputation as the smartest, most ethical firm on the Street.

  “Ugh. Great place if you can get a job. A close friend of mine has been there for four years. If you’re on the partner track, it’s a gold mine. But, Jesus, the things he says they do for a buck. It’s unbelievable!” Austin shook his head.

  “Like what?” Warren was curious.

  “Well, he told me this amazing story. Basically, they were hired to advise a big finance company on a sale of some assets, and evidently then told the client one portfolio was so bad no one would buy it, except Goldman, as a favor. So, they bought it themselves and a few weeks later sold it for like a fifty-million-dollar profit. So, maybe that was the plan all along. They knew the portfolio was worth a ton more. It sounded to me like they never even showed it to anybody until they had bought it! He makes it sound like they do stuff like that all the time.”

  “Jesus. That’s scary. Why would they do something like that? It’s got to be illegal.” Warren was stunned. Goldman touted itself as the cleanest and the best.

  “Yeah. I know! Hey, anyway, that’s what he told me. He was probably just making it up or boasting. Who knows what they really do? All I know is that partners there can make eight figures a year! The minions make less than the competition pays, but there’s that gold ring out there if you work twenty-four/seven for like ten years.” Karr’s voice had gone from sardonic to almost awestruck.

  There was a moment of silence while Warren contemplated the conversation and the contact he had just made. During the lull, Eliza Roberts and a beautiful, reddish blond-haired girl came in from the patio.

  “Whoa! Who are they?” Austin’s eyebrows shot up and he gestured to the pair.

  “The dark-haired one’s Eliza Roberts, and she goes to school with Chas and me. The other one, I hope, is going to fall helplessly in love with me.” Warren was staring at the newcomer, wondering where she had materialized from.

  “Wow. Get in line.” Karr snuffled a laugh nervously as the two, both in summer print dresses, approached.

  “Hey, Warren! Heard you were the big stud on the tennis court today. Trying to hustle these poor WASPs?” Eliza gave him a push on the shoulder as he stood up, momentarily knocking him off-balance.

  “Hey, take it easy on me, Eliza … Jeez! This is Austin Karr, one of Chas’s victims. Eliza Roberts.” Warren gestured between the two before he turned toward the newcomer. “And so I may never forget, who on earth are you?”

  “I’m Larisa Mueller.” Her faced flushed slightly, and she shook Austin’s hand.

  “Hey, Hament, wake up. Larisa’s in our macro class.” Eliza punched him on the shoulder.

  “You go to Columbia?” Warren said incredulously. “I can’t believe it.”

  “Well, if you spent a little more time around school and a little less screwing around, you might know a few more people.” A lesser shove punctuated Eliza’s barb. “And what do you do, Austin?” She turned on him, batting her eyelashes, speaking in an exaggerated Southern drawl.

  “I, um, sell bonds in New York.” He looked down into his drink as he spoke.

  “And tell me, is that something to be ashamed of?” Larisa had detected the hesitancy in Karr’s voice and seen his eyes drop.

  “Well, around here, guys like me are just the indentured servants.” Austin gestured with his drink.

  “Yeah, scraping by on a half a million a year,” Eliza rejoined in a mocking tone.

  Cornelia Harper interrupted the conversation by announcing dinner was served. To his vast pleasure, Warren discovered he was seated directly between Larisa and Mrs. Harper. The dinner conversation centered around politics, with virtually all present noticeably conservative Republican in viewpoint. Warren seemed to find a willing ally in Mrs. Harper while he engaged in a debate with the senior Karr about the merits of President Reagan’s policies. Warren felt they didn’t go far enough, and that government spending cuts across the board would be the only sure way to avert a disaster at the end of a brief rainbow of prosperity. Mrs. Harper seemed to feel this was a capital notion, so long as the bulk of the cuts came in social and entitlement programs, accompanied by bigger tax cuts for the higher-income brackets. Ray Karr evidently felt that all the poor, blacks, and Hispanics in the nation should be relocated to a vast military encampment in North Dakota and assigned to manufacturing any product that a bountiful supply of cheap, unskilled labor could benefit, while also busting all the labor unions in the country. “We’d give ’em food, clothing, shelter, and birth control—more than they’d ever get themselves.” After a few minutes of this unappealing conversation, Warren let it drift away, so he could focus on Larisa, who had remained mostly silent.

  “So, how is it we’ve never met at school?” Warren took advantage of a shift in the flow of talk to the far end of the table to speak quietly to her.

  “I don’t know. I guess I’m always in the library.” Her even features were not perfect, but the strong chin, grey eyes, and name conveyed a sense of an Aryan aristocratic elegance.

  “Well, that’s one place you’d be completely safe from me. In fact, that’s about the only place on earth you would be.” He looked straight into her eyes to judge the response.

  “Such a sweet talker,” Larisa said a little derisively. “I thought all you were interested in was busting Corelli’s chops, or chatting with these neo-fascists.”

  “I’ve had this affliction my whole life. I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut. Especially when I’m trying to impress someone with my intelligence and wit.”

  “Is there anyone else around as smart and witty as you?” Larisa’s lips were soft and full, almost pouty.

  “Nobody is.” Warren gave it his best Bogie impression.

  “The Big Sleep. Doghouse Reilly.” She caught his reference to the classic movie.

  “Well, there’s something we have in common! I guess you do get out of the library once in a while.” He lifted his glass of red wine and saluted her before he drank. “And what brought you down here?”

  “It seems Chas wanted a chance to make a pass at me and had to travel a thousand miles to do it.”

  “Oh? And how did Eliza feel about that?” Warren had assumed Chas and Eliza were seeing each other, but neither of them ever discussed it.

  “She’s probably slightly pissed that you’re making a pass at me and not her. I was supposed to be for Chas.”

  “Wait a minute. Eliza? Since when?” Warren was surprised, and flattered, not to mention a little piqued by the crack about his own pass.

  “Since a long time ago. She’s such a girl, that one. Come on, I always see her grabbing your arm and whispering to you. You mean you didn’t notice that?” Larisa had a remarkably condescending tone, but Warren noticed she made her comment while grabbing his arm and whispering in his ear.

  “Well, I might have to see about that. Jeez. Eliza. Who’da thunk it? But let’s talk about you. Where are you from? What do your parents do? What are your goals in life?” Warren drank off the rest of his wine, confident the waiter would refill the glass before long.

  “Born in Lake Forest, grew up in Charlottesville. Daddy was a doctor and research chemist at the hospital and my mom was in HR at UVA, but they got divorced, and my mom’s remarried in Palo Alto. As for me? Major success, power, and a pair of those small, round sunglasses.” She toasted him back. “What about you?”

  “The New York area. Mostly retired tennis-pro father, mother’s a teacher, sort of. I don’t have a clue about goals and never really did. I guess I wanted to be a tennis pro too. All that changed a few minutes ago.” He bent at the waist in genuflection.

  “You’re a flatterer. But I give you credit, you’re paying more attention to me than to my host.”

  “So, you were for Chas, eh? Isn’t that a little demeaning? I mean, to be the ascribed consort of the great scion? I wouldn’t take you for it, though I bet you look great in a bathing suit.”

  “Nah. Chas’s cute and incredibly nice,
but cut me a break. I mean, he has no edge at all—none. And, he sure as hell doesn’t have your vocabulary—ascribed consort of the great scion?—and I hear he just windsurfs for days.”

  “Yeah, I’d heard that too. I’m looking forward to seeing it live. He told me his favorite thing is to windsurf all the way across Penobscot Bay in Maine when the water’s so cold that if you fall in, you live about twenty seconds, and the wind is up, and there’s a mighty chop, and the will-o’-the-wisp is a howlin’. Or something like that.”

  “Are you feeling okay?” She was laughing, and Warren liked the way her full upper lip curled under to show her even, white teeth.

  “Never better! I think it’s dessert time. Isn’t that so, Mrs. Harper?” Warren had sensed that their laughter had attracted the hostess’s attention, and he turned to address her.

  “Oh, I just let everyone worry about that on their own time, Mr. Hament.” She laid her hand on top of Warren’s. “And I would say from the sound of things over here that you do okay on your own time.”

  Larisa blushed, and Warren smiled. “In this atmosphere it would be pretty hard not to.”

  “I’ll make a note of that.” Cornelia smiled back and glanced down the table toward Chas, laughing with Eliza and Austin Karr, who looked to be getting on pretty well.

  After the dessert, Warren and Larisa wandered down to the esplanades of columns that fronted the Atlantic. The tide was coming in, and the breakers were washing up only a few dozen yards away. A salt breeze was coming onshore just strongly enough to put the slightest chill in the mild air, and Larisa folded her arms across her chest as they stood and talked.

  “This is pretty incredible, isn’t it?” Warren said, waving a hand toward the house.

  Larisa nodded. “Unbelievable. It’s hard to understand that people can have this much money.”

  “I know. I mean, I knew that Chas’s grandfather was rich, but I’ve never seen anything like this.”