Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street

by Offit, Mike

  Warren checked his closet. He had an Italian suit that was inappropriate, but the conservative, charcoal, nailhead-wool, single-breasted Brooks Brothers suit his mom had bought him as a college-graduation present was perfect. He made a special trip to Saks for a new white Oxford shirt, and Larisa surprised him with an Hermès tie. The blue and red silk set off the gray flannel, and it had cost more than his shoes, which hadn’t been cheap.

  On the morning of his first interview, he suited up and checked himself in the mirror. A clear-eyed, young Wall Street moneyman stared back. He had even shaved off his usual stubble. Larisa gave him some final advice. “Warren, you don’t always have to say exactly what you think all the time. If someone gets you mad, or you think someone is an idiot, just keep it to yourself. Turn on the filter! Maybe even count to five or something.” She was right. Trading barbs with Corelli or pointing out a mistake by his stats TA might be fun, but sometimes it was better to just shut up.

  The tense bubble in his gut wouldn’t go away, but he figured there really was nothing to be too nervous about. Almost nobody got a job at Weldon, so he might as well try to relax and learn from it. He stuck a few résumés in his pocket, just in case someone hadn’t read it, and headed out, prepared, as best he could, to do battle.

  six

  When he got out of the subway at the Bowling Green station, Warren was relieved. To people who had grown up outside New York, the subway system was a daunting, frightening underground inferno. Warren had never gotten used to it even though he had spent months living in the city with his mom almost every year. Once back on the street, he found his way up to Old Slip, and the offices of Weldon Brothers. He felt reasonably assured he knew what to expect—the placement office at school had taken everyone through practice interviews, and he had handled himself well. He had done his research and knew the names of most of the department heads and important people, such as Pete Giambi, the highly regarded, young fixed-income research head who specialized in mortgage-backed securities.

  Weldon Brothers was acknowledged as one of the premier investment banks in the world. It had been founded by two brothers early in the twentieth century to compete with the firms started by Marcus Goldman and Samuel Sachs, Orthodox Jews who had begun a company that financed trade receivables, and the Lehmans and Schiffs, aristocratic German Jews who were raising money for shipping companies. The Weldons, two distinguished-looking young men whose father owned a regional railroad in the South and virtually controlled the import of coffee beans into the Northeast, had seen a need for a Protestant trading house. Founded on such inegalitarian motives, the firm, by the time Warren came to interview, employed forty-two hundred people in seven countries, had assets of almost $47 billion, and generated a pretax profit of approximately $400 million a year, after paying the average midlevel professional compensation of some $400,000 annually, most of that in year-end bonuses. It occupied a solid niche in what was called the “bulge bracket,” the top six firms used by blue-chip clients to raise money in the stock and bond markets. First Boston, Salomon Brothers, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch were its main competitors. Warren had investigated each company and felt Weldon best suited him, with its strong mortgage-backed-securities department, and its aggressive trading image.

  * * *

  One Old Slip, just above the Salomon Brothers building on the East River waterfront, was a massive tower that commanded a sweeping view of the harbor and the monuments to money that had been erected in lower Manhattan since the nation was young. Warren crossed the windswept plaza and pushed through a set of revolving doors into a cavernous, granite-clad lobby with an immense and powerful Frank Stella painting suspended on the far wall.

  The security guard in the lobby called upstairs, and Warren was given a pass to the nineteenth floor. When he got off the elevator, a sleek reception hall with burnished wood trim and the firm’s logo in large brass letters greeted him. The woman at the console took his name and asked him to take a seat.

  After a few minutes, a short, heavyset young man in a billowing white shirt and red tie emerged from the glass doors and headed toward him. “Warren?” The man’s hand was extended.

  “Yes. Are you Rich?” Warren stood up and gave a firm shake.

  “Yup. Rich Symanski. You’re right on time.” Rich’s attitude seemed congenial enough.

  “Thanks. It was an easy trip.” Warren noticed Rich had a sheaf of papers in his hand. Symanski caught him looking.

  “This is a couple copies of your résumé and your interview schedule. Hope you’re ready for a long day.” They were making their way along the perimeter of the trading floor, a cavernous, double-height room that contained about three hundred modular trading desks with no partitions or walls, just stacks of video monitors and computer screens. The open floor was a nest of activity, with dozens of young men in white shirts and ties holding phones to their ears, some yelling out numbers, others pointing to the small trading screens. A few women were scattered around. The tall windows were tinted dark against the bright daylight, and the fluorescent lighting gave the scene a greenish cast. To their left, a line of offices, each with a glass wall, fronted on the floor. Absolutely no place in the entire room had any real privacy.

  “Here’s your schedule. We’re starting you off with the toughest part first. You survive that, you move on. You’ll finish with Jillene Manus, head of HR. Hey, I’m the oldest Weldon trainee ever. I’m famous.” Symanski handed Warren a typed sheet as they walked.

  “What do you do now?” Warren took the sheet and scanned it, noticing Symanski’s name was not on it, and wondering why he would be proud of coming so late to the game.

  “Oh, I’m just starting on the convertible desk. Not cars. Bonds. Convertible bonds.” Rich giggled to himself a bit.

  “Well, I suppose they’re not so great for those rainy days.” Warren figured a little humor might ease his tension. He knew what convertible bonds were; Fisher had covered them a few weeks before. And bonds were supposedly safe investments, literally good for the proverbial rainy day.

  “Hey, hotshot, think you were the first to come up with that one?” In fact, Symanski had never heard that play on words before, and Warren could tell by his tone.

  “Nah. Just learning as I go,” Warren said in a conciliatory tone, minding his girlfriend’s advice and holding back from adding a sarcastic Aw, shucks.

  “You’re learning pretty fast, rookie. Now, here’s Bill Pike’s office. I’m going to do you a favor. Someone must have had it in for you to start you with him first. He’s the biggest prick in the place. Only one out of ten get past him. He’ll piss all over you. Just do your best not to let him get to you. After him, you’re on your own to find the guys on the rest of the schedule. I might be tied up.” Rich knocked on the door and cracked it. He leaned his head in and spoke briefly, then ushered Warren in past him. “Warren, this is Bill Pike. He’s in charge of fixed income—that’s bonds. Bill, you’ve got Warren’s résumé on your stack there. He’s from—”

  “Jesus Christ, Symanski, that’s enough. Get your fat, fucking lard ass out of my office already and go make some money, will ya? What are ya, a goddamn secretary or something?” Symanski started to object, but Pike cut him off. “Yeah, yeah, I know. Just leave me and Wonderboy here alone. Go take dictation or something.” Pike picked up a golf putter that was leaning against his desk. Symanski grinned, tittered, and ducked out. “Fucking fruitcake, wouldn’t know a bond if it tried to blow him in the bathroom,” Pike muttered under his breath, then looked up at Warren with an appraising glare. “So, you wanna work for Weldon, eh?”

  Pike was easily fifty pounds heavier than Symanski, though no taller, and his gut rolled over his pants. He wielded the putter like an ax and paced around the room, which was at least fifteen by thirty, with a huge partner’s desk, a seating area with a sofa and three chairs around a coffee table, and golf balls scattered across the floor. He didn’t offer Warren a chair.

  “Yes, sir.” W
arren was a bit off-balance. Pike’s hostility was like a big, angry wave perennially about to break.

  “Now there’s a deeply considered answer. ‘Yes, sir.’ I didn’t see any military service on your résumé there, Wonderboy. I saw Columbia and Cornell. Let me ask you something: Why might you want to work for Weldon?” Pike’s walruslike face loomed closer as he swooped past on his orbit toward the bank of blinking screens behind the great desk. Warren didn’t correct him about having gone to Brown and not Cornell. Pike didn’t seem to be the kind of guy you’d want to correct, to put it mildly.

  “Everyone recognizes it is the top trading house on the Street, Mr. Pike. If you want to trade, anyplace else is second best. I want to trade.” Warren tried to sound confident—he knew from reading the newspapers that Weldon and Salomon were always competing to be considered the biggest, ballsiest trading house. He figured a little flattery might ease Pike up a bit.

  “You want to trade. You want to trade.” Pike’s whiny imitation was halfway between a school-yard taunt and a lament. “What the fuck makes you think you even know what it means to trade? What makes you think you know anything? You’re just some goddamn kid who’s going to come in here and be the hottest fucking piece of shit we’ve ever seen, eh?”

  Pike reminded Warren of a lot of professional hockey players later on in their careers. He’d seen them at Rangers’ games. Surly, scarred, short-tempered. He could imagine Pike in a Red Wings uniform, trying to smash in the teeth of some first-round draft pick.

  “Um, no, sir. I’ve just found trading fascinating, I’m extremely interested in mortgage-backed securities, and—” Warren was about to say he just wanted a chance to get into the system, but Pike cut him off.

  “You’ve found trading fascinating. Just exactly what the fuck have you traded in your illustrious career, Mr. Hament?” Pike had stopped, bent over, at the screens, perused them, and looked up at Warren.

  “Well, I traded metals and some other futures on the COMEX and NYMEX, and a few financial futures through a friend who is a member of the Chicago Board of Trade—”

  “Financial futures? Let me tell you, Wonderfuck, you don’t know fuck-all about financial futures. Did you know that I created half of the fucking futures contracts? Did you know that? I hate guys like you. Fucking locals. Scalpers.” Pike was pacing again, his voice heavily laced with disgust and anger. “We eat guys like you for fucking lunch. Man, Weldon could just fucking crush you like dust if it wanted to, did you know that, you fucking Wonderputz? A bunch of fucking parasites.” Pike seemed ready to pop a blood clot. Warren was nervous for real, beginning to wonder if this was just a “stress” interview, which the placement office had prepared him for, or if Pike actually didn’t like him for some reason.

  “Um, Mr. Pike, I didn’t mean to suggest that I could compete with Weldon.… I haven’t traded anything for almost two years.” Warren could see no other option but to be almost submissive.

  “Yeah, and if you were ever to work at Weldon, you might never trade anything again. We tell you if you sell or trade or wash windows, we tell you when you have to go to the bathroom. You fuckwads think you know it all. You know jack shit. Jack fucking shit.” Pike finished his soliloquy by plopping down in his chair, behind the desk, in front of the screens.

  “Yessir.” Warren blended the words on purpose. Pike had just said “if you were ever to work at Weldon.” That wasn’t the kind of thing you said to someone you didn’t think had a chance. Warren decided to play along and be superhumble. “And that’s exactly why someone like me would consider it a great opportunity to work at Weldon. For the chance to work with experienced pros like you, guys who’ve been through it all and are at the top. Where hard work and some guts might pay off.”

  “Ho-ho-ho, Mr. Warren Hament. Brown fucking University. I like it. ‘Experienced pros?’ You making a little fun with me, asshole? Very nice, scumbag. I like it. Now get the fuck out of my office.” Pike turned his back on Warren.

  Warren took a second to figure out how to respond. He just went with it. “Might you tell me where I could find Mr. Dressler?” Carl Dressler, head of mortgages, was the next name on the list. Warren would be ten minutes early. Pike had been playing with him—the Cornell “mistake” was some kind of test.

  “Out there. Call that fat little faggot Polack. He’s your nursemaid, isn’t he?” Pike pointed toward the trading floor.

  “Thanks. Nice to meet you.” Warren was soaked with sweat, but had the sense that Pike liked to see how potential hires stood up under the abuse.

  Pike flashed him a grin. “The pleasure was all mine, son. Close the door, wouldya?”

  Warren stood outside the office for a moment to regroup. The onslaught of crudeness, vulgarity, hostility, and bigotry was not what he had expected, even in a stress interview, but he felt he’d done okay. Being around the crudeness of the commodities exchange had built up some immunity, but the relative peace and decency at Columbia had made it a bit of a shock.

  He headed back toward the reception desk, where he asked for Symanski. The receptionist handed him the phone.

  “Did you love him, big guy? Was he great?” Symanski was obviously eating, his words muffled.

  “Terrific. It was a lovefest. Thanks for the tip. What should I do now? Go see Dressler or just hang myself in the bathroom?” Warren was trying to adopt the collegial tone. “You free to bring me over?”

  “Save that for later. Carl’s on the floor. I see him from here. Wait. I’ll get him. Meet us in the office two down from Pike’s. Just wait there.”

  Warren hung up and backtracked. As he passed Pike’s office again, he saw him putting at the distant sofa leg and noticed a collection of balls, all five feet or more short, and all left. He went into the open office down two doors.

  After Warren had spent a few minutes alone thinking things over, Carl Dressler walked in and shook his hand. Dressler ran the mortgage-backed-securities department, which was clearly the hottest area in the firm. Word had it they were making money hand over fist. He was surprisingly muscular, with long, thick hair, but an incongruously, nasal voice with a San Fernando Valley twang. He peered at Warren through round, wire-rimmed glasses.

  “Hi. I’m Carl Dressler, I run the mortgage desk. I see you’re at Columbia.” He pulled up a chair and gestured for Warren to sit.

  “Yes, sir. I graduate in May,” Warren answered neutrally.

  “What do you think you might like to do?” Dressler s manner was so different from Pike’s, Warren had to take a second just to slow down from the frantic assault to a civilized interview.

  “I think I might like to trade mortgages for you, Mr. Dressler.” Warren couldn’t help but smile when he said that because he believed he meant it. He instantly felt comfortable with Dressler and already liked him.

  “What makes you think that? And call me Carl.” Dressler steepled his fingers and pressed the spire against his pursed lips as he focused on Warren.

  “It’s obvious the two growth areas on the Street are mortgages and structured products. It’s between Weldon, Salomon, and First Boston for best in both businesses, and I personally think Weldon’s going to come out on top.” Warren’s conversation with Austin Karr and his reading were paying off.

  “Why’s that?” Dressler had a small grin on his face.

  “Because of you. And Pete Giambi. Between your desk and his research, I don’t see who can beat you. I’d love to be a part of that.” Warren tried to make his enthusiasm sound as real as it felt.

  “You’ve done a little homework.” Dressler suddenly shifted the topic. “Where are you from?”

  “I grew up mostly on the East End of Long Island and then upstate.”

  “Upstate?”

  “In a town called Millbrook—it’s near Poughkeepsie.”

  “I know Millbrook,” Dressler said, waving his hand. “It’s where a few of the investment bankers keep their wives’ horses.” He added derisively, “Are you some kind of polo player?”r />
  “Not really, sir. I ride a little because I used to take care of people’s horses during the summer. My dad was a tennis coach and liked to buy and sell houses. My mother’s a teacher.”

  “She moved around with your father?”

  “No. Actually, they were divorced a long time ago. I spent the school year with my dad in Millbrook and then on the East End, and summers with my mom in Manhattan. She had the summers off, and my dad had to travel a lot.”

  “What kind of teacher?”

  Warren was surprised at how curious Dressler was about his family. “She was an art history professor at NYU.”

  “Impressive. Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “Yes. I have an older brother, Danny. He’s a doctor—actually a cancer researcher in Houston. He’s older than me. He went to boarding school, so I didn’t see much of him after sixth grade.”

  “Are you married?”

  “No. I have a great girlfriend at Columbia, though.”

  “A father who taught tennis, and a mother who teaches art history. She must be something of a scholar. How did you wind up here? Why are you looking to become a trader?” Dressler’s tone was mild and inquisitive, almost psychiatric.