Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street

by Offit, Mike

  “This looks like tough drill.” Warren plopped down in a sofa’s crisp, comfortable embrace, the linen canvas softened by age and the humid sea air.

  “Yeah, I’ve been roughing it out here while Austin’s dad’s in Europe.” Eliza curled her feet under her in an armchair, kicking off her sandals.

  “I didn’t realize you two were such an…”

  “Item? I guess we are. Actually, we’re kind of engaged!”

  After an oddly awkward moment of silence, Warren said quickly, “Engaged! That’s awesome! Wow.” He was genuinely enthusiastic.

  “Yeah, well, no date yet, but we’ll get to it soon. We’re both so busy,” Eliza said with a slight shrug, but a smile.

  “Tell me about it. So, how’s the job?” He remembered that Eliza had taken a position at the Markham Foundation, a heavily-endowed private charity that supported the arts in schools.

  “It’s great. I’m hitting up the A-list out here for donations, and pumping them all with invitations to our big reading. Austin’s been very helpful.”

  “What are you promoting?”

  “It’s for inner-city kids. We have famous writers doing a benefit for a creative-writing program. We’re matching donations to start up classes in six major cities. You know, self-expression to vent frustration instead of guns and knives. That kind of horseshit.” She waved her hand in the air.

  “Gee, Eliza, so pleased to see that you’re such a believer in the cause.”

  “Cut me a break, will you? I actually had to go to one of the schools a couple weeks ago. In Detroit, for God’s sake. I was so scared I needed a diaper. We’re going to buy these kids computers and teach them to write? We should keep them all on dope and on the basketball courts, or locked up somewhere. Thank God we had along some security guys.”

  The juxtaposition of her attitude and the work didn’t surprise him at all, and Warren smiled and tried to provoke her a little. “Aw, c’mon. You’d actually like that, wouldn’t you? Don’t all white girls fantasize about being held hostage by angry savages?”

  “Yeah, exactly. That’s my idea of a dream weekend. Forties and drive-bys. That’s the last time I go to a site. I’ll raise ’em all the money they want. Just teach ’em to use deodorant, and keep ’em away from me.”

  “Well, Eliza, I’d have to say that your caring and commitment are exemplary. The foundation is fortunate to have you. With you at the development helm…” Warren had adopted the stentorian tones of an awards speech.

  “Can it, Senator! Hey, you don’t have to hang out with lepers to build ’em a hospital, right? I put the bucks together with the cause. Good gets done. Guys like you’re gonna be in ten years make a donation and get to feel better about taking all the money and leaving none for anyone else. That’s my job.”

  “Please, don’t get me wrong. It’s a hell of a lot more than I do. Hey, the sixties are dead. This is the eighties. Man, I feel guilty already.” He reached into his back pocket for his wallet. “Where do I give?”

  Eliza smiled. “You see? You’ve got to direct the pitch for the audience. You Wall Street guys are easy. Put a white woman in peril, and they’re ready to pay.”

  Just then, Austin clomped into the room, with Larisa in tow. The two made a handsome pair—him in his regulation tan khakis and blue oxford shirt, and she in a pale blue, floral sundress with Warren’s lavender, heavy cotton cable-knit sweater over her shoulders.

  “Wow, what a great house. Austin gave me the tour.” Larisa was truly enthusiastic.

  “Are you guys hungry? There’s plenty of chow in the kitchen. Marina’s still around. She’s the cook. Just ask her for anything you want.” Warren found Austin’s mannerisms incredibly reminiscent of their friend from Columbia Chas Harper’s. They both had an apparent diffidence to their surroundings, a sense of disbelief at their good luck to have woken up the eldest child in a family worth hundreds of millions of dollars. They spoke about everything as if it belonged to someone else, and wasn’t it all just amazing? Warren had seen the same thing in some of his schoolmates in Millbrook. It never failed to amuse him how, once the old man died, that wide-eyed attitude almost always shifted to one of total entitlement, and an air of having earned every penny of their inheritance. Actually, given the way their fathers generally treated them, maybe they did.

  Austin poured Warren and Larisa beers, and they wandered into the kitchen. Warren rummaged through the huge, double-doored fridge and resurfaced with a platter stacked with pieces of fried chicken, and a bowl of coleslaw. Larisa’s eyes lit up. Warren put the food on the pine farmer’s table that was in the kitchen, and Austin pointed him to the right cupboard for plates. Warren sat down, and the two weary travelers dug in with gusto. Austin pulled up a chair, and Eliza started poking at the low fire that was burning in a small hearth.

  “So, how’s biz at Weldon?” Austin’s curiosity was obviously bubbling over.

  Warren swallowed a chunk of white meat. “Pretty good, no complaints.”

  “You’re covering Monument, right?”

  “Yup. I have that honor.”

  “Yeah, it’s a joy, isn’t it? Leonard is certainly saving souls with his work.” Austin was their sales coverage, too, and Warren knew that he had been taking a good piece of business away from his friend. Morgan just didn’t have the same kind of mortgage effort that Weldon did, and Warren was capitalizing on his firm’s strength. Alex Stevenson had explained to him one day that Nathan Leonard had founded the money-management company, after leaving a big trading firm, paying a retired World Bank president $5 million to become vice chairman, thereby gaining instant credibility. Stevenson explained that Leonard’s first fortune had been built as a corporate bond trader for a second-tier firm, although most of the profits he had earned his employer were the result of inventory being overvalued on the books to record phantom gains. By the time the dinosaurs who ran the company figured out what was going on, their own fortunes were inextricably tied to Leonard’s. Rather than expose the fraud, they continued to reward and praise him, their own compensation ballooning as surely as his bogus bottom line. At the apex, with almost $200 million of losses hidden on his books, Leonard, still thought of on the Street as a profit machine, had left his firm to join Monumental Insurance and start their investment-management business. After three years of great earnings around Wall Street ended, his old firm had simply taken the hidden losses and blamed “deteriorating markets.” By then, the executives were all wealthy men, and no one on their Board either knew about the hidden losses or cared. As Leonard himself had put it, “Hey—when did you ever hear of an executive committee member giving any of his pay back?”

  “But I hear that you’re Weldon’s new superstar,” Austin said. “How’s Frank Malloran doing?”

  Warren put his beer glass down. “You know Frank?”

  “Sure do. He’s a great guy. I used to play squash with him at the racquet club twice a week. Hell of a swimmer. He was the lead finance officer on my dad’s first bond deal.”

  Warren smiled and nodded. It was kind of scary how closed a society this little world was. They all played the same games in the same places, spent their vacations in the same resorts. Of course some were principals, such as Ray Karr; others were simply the hired help. Over time, their institutions had begun to weaken before the tide of motivated, bright outsiders—Jewish and Asian kids with their brainpower and work ethic, the Irish with their balls and bluster. Even Ralph Lauren understood the attraction of this paneled-mahogany world of khakis and gin and was making a fortune selling it to tiny Japanese girls and, ironically, even to the high WASPs, who knew quality when they saw it. One thing Warren had come to share with Kevin was, if not the desire for “dynastic wealth,” then at least the desire to live well, within the understated definition of comfortable luxury this world so effortlessly achieved. “Well, Malloran’s doing great. In fact, he’s been dating Larisa’s sister.”

  “That’s your sister? That knockout we saw him with the other nigh
t?” Austin said. Eliza shot him a dirty look from across the room. “Of course, she’s a washerwoman next to Eliza.” A piece of kindling whizzed by his ear and bounced across the stovetop.

  “I’m afraid so. Been taking her rejects ever since third grade.” Larisa smiled and laughed, but only half convincingly.

  “Well, now that you’re all practically family, we’ll have to go out one night,” Eliza piped up halfheartedly.

  They finished their snack and the beer and spent a little while longer chatting before heading up to bed. The house had been put up in the local “shingle style,” during the first big building boom in the Hamptons during the 1920s. Several owners had added to it, generally in good taste, so that it now had twenty rooms. The second floor offered a clear view to the ocean, though the houses on Lily Pond Lane, one street south, had direct access to the beach.

  Ray Karr hadn’t wanted a house right on the ocean. His upbringing in coastal South Carolina had taught him that wasn’t such a great place to be during an Atlantic storm, no matter how much money you had. He didn’t spend a lot of time in the Hamptons, so Austin had the place pretty much to himself whenever he wanted it. His younger sister was still in high school, even though she was almost twenty. She’d been diagnosed as learning disabled, and her volatile emotional outbursts led her parents to keep her at schools such as Rumsey Hall that specialized in troubled and disabled kids. Austin had told Warren about her less charitably one day when they’d grabbed drinks at the Four Seasons after work. “She was a spoiled bitch, and my parents were never even around. She had this thing they call ADD—she couldn’t actually sit down and do her homework. Attention deficit disorder. Crap. My mom used to make me do my homework every night by eight or there’d be no TV or dessert. Bailey never even saw my mom—by then she was so busy with charity parties and trying to keep my dad interested in her. Bailey had ADD, allright. Adult discipline disorder. Out all night, drugs, parties. Now she’s treated like she has some kind of fucking mental illness. She’s just another rich kid who doesn’t want to do shit. And she won’t. I have to work like a dog, and she’ll just get her half of everything on a platter. But it’s not her fault. My mom just abandoned her, and I was no fucking use. I had my own problems.” Warren was surprised at the bitterness. The Karrs seemed like the perfect success story.

  Austin’s father, Ray Karr, was an exemplary American entrepreneur. He had taken the inheritance of a small newspaper in Charleston and parlayed it into a significant media and telecommunications empire. He kept houses in Hobe Sound, East Hampton, New York, Islesboro, and San Diego, plus a gorgeous historic mansion in Charleston and apartments in Paris, Rome, and Cape Town. His holdings included the largest privately held block of stock in Mobil Oil, and also in Weldon Brothers. When Austin took an interest in investment banking, Ray Karr had simply made two phone calls and, with the chairmen of Morgan Stanley and Weldon Brothers on the line, had agreed that Austin would go to Morgan, and he would not be told of his family’s ownership of 12 percent of a major competitor.

  Austin had been doing reasonably well at Morgan, though his father had not been pleased with his choice to sell bonds for a career. Ray Karr thought a background in international corporate finance, with a focus on Latin America, would be more useful to Austin later on, but understood that his son might feel the need to carve out his own niche. In the meantime, Ray Karr kept building and acquiring.

  The bedroom that Warren and Larisa shared was cheerfully decorated with blue-and-white-striped material and wallpaper. The towels even matched. Warren ran a shower and let the hot water ease his aching muscles. Between spending ten hours a day sitting in a chair with a phone pressed to his ear and another four hours sitting in the car, his back felt like mush. He wrapped a towel around his waist and stretched out on the bed, while Larisa took her turn in the bath. It only seemed like a few seconds, but he woke up in the dark. His watch said 4:00 A.M., and Larisa was sleeping soundly beside him. He crawled under the sheets and tried to nod off again, but couldn’t. After he tossed and turned a few times, and Larisa began to stir, he decided to get up so she could sleep. There’d always be time to take a nap, and maybe more, later. Her smooth, naked skin stirred him, but her opportunities for a real night’s sleep were increasingly rare.

  As quietly as he could, he dug a pair of shorts and a T-shirt out of his duffel bag, then slipped out the door. Downstairs, in the living room, the fire was cold. He stepped out onto the porch, where the air was surprisingly warm and still. The lights from the pool beckoned across the lawn, and he decided a little dip might be a good idea. The heated pool water gave off a hazy cloud of steam in the cooler night air, a mesmerizingly beautiful halo slowly rising into the dark. The grass was clipped as short as that of a putting green, and as he crossed the lawn, he realized that part of it was actually a grass tennis court. There was a net, and two green-wire fences at the backcourts, with one side boundary framed by a ten-foot-tall privet hedge.

  At the pool house, he poked inside and found a stack of big towels. He took one and put it down at the edge of the pool. Not surprisingly the pool was invitingly warm—clearly heating bills were not an issue in this house. After testing the water, he dove in cleanly, then started into a rhythm of swimming laps. It was a little difficult without goggles, but after three lengths, he had measured the pool at eleven strokes. He tried to keep track of the laps at first, then just decided to keep going until he felt tired. His mind began to wander, as it usually did, to work, and he tried to shut it out and think about more pleasant things. Somehow, Anson Combes and his pointy teeth kept popping into Warren’s mind. At least he knew there weren’t any sharks in the swimming pool. He knew Anson wanted something out of him, and maybe even Dougherty, but he had no idea what it could be. Frank Malloran had warned him Combes did nothing without bad intentions, and Warren was sure Frank was right. Jesus! All Warren wanted to do was sell bonds and make a living and move up. Maybe he wouldn’t inherit a fifteen-room palace at 740 Park, but he could maybe buy the place on Eighty-First Street or start looking for a two-bedroom if he and Larisa decided to—

  Out of nowhere, he felt hands grab his leg, and he was startled. He came to the surface coughing for air. He wiped his eyes clear. Eliza was in the pool beside him. Her hair was wet and sleeked away from her face, and she was laughing at him.

  “Jesus! You scared the shit out of me! I must have swallowed half the pool.” He waded over to the side and slumped against the stone coping.

  “Well, you woke me up with all the splashing, so it’s your own fault.” She playfully splashed a little water at him. “It’s kind of a strange time for a workout.”

  “I know. I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep. I didn’t want to wake Larisa up, so I wound up down here.”

  Eliza was wearing a white, one-piece bathing suit, and it clung to her above the water. Warren couldn’t help but notice how good she looked, and her skin seemed preternaturally dark in the glow from the pool.

  “Look at us. Both trying not to wake anyone up. Aren’t we a couple of sweeties?” Eliza floated onto her back, her hair fanned out around her head, and her legs, long and slim, broke the water. Warren took the three steps to the end of the pool and climbed out, picking up his towel, and drying himself off.

  “Are there more towels in there?” Eliza swam to his end and climbed up the steps. In her wet suit and the bright light softened by the water, her body looked fit, angular and tight. Where Larisa was smooth and muscled, Eliza was lithe and defined. Warren remembered Larisa’s telling him that Eliza had been interested in him down at Chas’s house in Florida. Eliza was sharp, funny, smart. She may have developed some seriously jaded views from her work, but she was actually doing something worthwhile. Looking at her, Warren wondered how she would really fit with someone like Austin, who was actually a bit of a stiff. Warren knew she had been joking about the kids she was helping with her work–she cared deeply about what happened to them. She had always enjoyed provoking people with
outrageous statements, just to test them.

  “Yeah. There was a stack by the door.” He walked past her to the door to the pool house to show her where the towels were. She followed him inside and took the one he handed her. Absently, she started to dry her face, then stopped. She was standing less than a foot from him, they were both damp, caught in the wavering sparkle of light from the moving surface of the pool. Warren felt a sudden surge, and they both leaned into a crushing kiss and an embrace.

  Their hands were all over each other, pushing off their suits, easing down to the floor. He was on top of her, and she reached down and guided his hardness into her, slick, ready for him. Her hands held his bottom as he pumped into her, her legs coming up to wrap over his. She moved with him, moaning softly, then gasping, and brought him over the top, her muscles contracting on him, pulling him in. His back arched, and his lips pulled away from hers, every fiber contracted. He felt the eruption deep inside, her breath ragged as he filled her, every movement a convulsion until the power drained from him and he slumped onto her chest, her arms enfolding him.

  They lay like that for a few moments, regaining their bearings, their breath returning. “Good Lord” was all Warren could say.

  “I don’t believe it.” Eliza smoothed his hair. “After all this time.”

  “Why did we never do this before?”

  “I don’t know. I just can’t believe it.” He was still inside her, and she moved her hips to ease him out.

  “Umm. I can’t believe it either. I haven’t slept with anyone except Larisa for over two years.” Warren was starting to think about the repercussions already.

  “That’s nothing. Relax. I’m on the pill, and I’m going to marry Austin in six weeks. You guys are invited.” She half laughed, her voice full of sarcasm. Her hands balled into fists and tapped him playfully on the shoulders.