The Last Trade

by James Conway

  Some may claim that Wall Street is the biggest casino of all, but Havens disagrees. He thinks it’s a laboratory and that Wall Street is an experiment, and sometimes experiments go horribly wrong. Out of the corner of his eye he catches Salvado handing a pad of cash to the chaperone in charge of the Texans’ VIP room.

  7

  New York City

  Weiss ducks behind the cover of the AC unit and listens. The roof door slamming open. Steel smashing against concrete. Gravel crunching underfoot. Fast steps heading toward the west side of the roof, then doubling back. He can hear the guy’s strained breaths. Now another siren, this one heading south. A car door closes on the street below.

  He slips his phone into his pocket, holds his breath, and considers his options. Wait to be found, run for the stairwell, or jump. Only the stairwell holds the promise of survival. The footsteps resume, moving away again. He peeks over the unit and sees the man, large and muscular, black hair shining in the night, looking at what, his phone? Another option is reason, Weiss thinks. Explain yourself and promise no harm, to cease and desist. But this man doesn’t seem to be the reasonable type.

  He waits for the man to reach the farthest corner of the roof. As the man glances over the edge Weiss makes his move. On hands and knees at first, through the shadows, then into the light near the open door to the stairwell. At the threshold fear overcomes patience and he begins to rush. His knee drags through the gravel and sprays a few loose pebbles against the steel door. He turns as the man whirls and locks eyes on him.

  Weiss bolts upright and lunges toward the first set of stairs. He leaps three at a time, sliding his left hand along the railing for balance. At the first landing his shoeless feet slide out from under him and he stumbles onto the linoleum. He reaches out to balance himself with his right hand and drops the flash drive. The man is already at the head of the stairs and racing toward him. Weiss grabs the flash drive and shoves it in his pocket as he rights himself. His goal is the street three flights below. At least in the street there will be witnesses. At the next landing, his landing, he glances back and sees the bald man set his feet and take flight, leaping from eight steps above, swooping down on him like a hawk toward its prey.

  8

  New York City

  Havens takes a frustrated breath when he sees Salvado at the head of the stairs. He came to the lounge to get away from Salvado because he knows if pressed he won’t be able to hold his tongue, and Rourke is right, this isn’t the time or place to quit. When he quits, he wants to do it when they’re alone. He owes that much to the man who made him rich.

  “What’s the matter, Drew? They’re looking for you up there.”

  “Just taking a breather. Needed some space.”

  “Maybe what you need is some tail.”

  Havens stares at his boss. At one time all he saw when he looked at Salvado was the man who took him off the street and made him rich. Now all he sees is the man who made him . . . what? Alone? Divorced? Drowning in guilt?

  “Don’t tell me you’re back with the guilt?”

  “You see it, I don’t have the stomach for it anymore.”

  Salvado winces and glances up at his clients, where Rourke has taken over as entertainment director. He stares back at Havens. “Of course, you don’t have a better alternative.”

  “Better, like the sub-prime? That’s a once-a-century thing. So no, nothing like that. Which is part of the problem, too.”

  “Kind of like pitching a perfect game seven of the World Series, as a rookie.”

  “Pitch the perfect game, then win it with a homer in the bottom of the ninth.”

  “Look, you’re tired. You work as hard as anyone I’ve ever seen. Why don’t you take a break and think about it?”

  “I’ve been thinking about . . .”

  “Why don’t you take a week—shit, take two—and get your head away from all this. We went to war together, Drew, and I would hate to lose you over some fucking crisis of conscience, unless . . .”

  Havens looks away, thinks, Am I absolutely sure? On the far side of the room, near the VIP bar, he watches one of Laslow’s thugs get up in the face of the bottle girl who was just speaking to him, admonishing her, apparently, over some protocol lapse. “I agree,” Havens says. “I need a break, and I appreciate the offer, and I won’t do anything publicly, until you give me the green light. You’ve been extremely kind and generous with me.” He tries to stop here but can’t help himself. “But you know me, Rick, I can’t sit on my hands all day, or do this.”

  Salvado rolls his eyes. “This. You’re gonna let a difference of opinion ruin how many years of . . .”

  “Opinion has little to do with it,” Havens says. “For me, the difference in the numbers, the data, the economic truth, means everything. That’s how I function. It’s easier for me to reconcile myself to this,” he waves a hand back toward the clients, the champagne bottle–covered table, and the women, “than to numbers that don’t make any sense.”

  “I’m asking you to have faith, to trust me.”

  “I wish I could, but my brain, it won’t let me.”

  “This is a mistake.”

  Havens shakes his head. “I wish there was something to show me otherwise. You know, I’ve been looking around.”

  “Looking around?”

  “To see if anyone else is seeing things the other way, my way. For my own sanity.”

  “And . . .”

  “And while I couldn’t come up with any individual fund or trend of people taking significant short puts against all of your longs, I found some other stuff.”

  Salvado scans the room, then turns his back on the table, steering the conversation to a more private place. “For instance.”

  “Well, apparently, at least a couple of heavy investors seem to be locking in with huge bets, one position, one security at a time, against you. I mean us.”

  Salvado nods. Havens takes this as an invitation to continue.

  “For instance, I saw some activity on a bunch of our tech plays, you know Apple . . .”

  “I know what the hell our tech plays are.”

  “Right. Anyway. Just a couple hours ago, activity coming out of Hong Kong was laying huge money, play for play, against our exact—”

  Salvado shrugs. “Not everyone loves tech. Especially American tech. Especially Apple. And clearly not everyone likes me these days. Plus, how do you know it’s one person, and from Hong Kong?”

  “I don’t, but it’s all coming out of the same firm,” Havens says.

  “Really? And you found this out when?”

  “Today. Saw some movement and then confirmed it through a fixed income guy I know from my Citi days, covers China over at HSBC.”

  Salvado sizes up Havens. “So you picked this movement up on our system?”

  “No. I didn’t want to compromise our network with something I haven’t vetted. It’s something Danny Weiss got his hands on.”

  Salvado tilts his head. Of course he has no knowledge of Weiss or any lowly quant, Havens realizes.

  “Weiss, my desk quant protégé. Good kid and hard worker.”

  Perhaps Salvado would have known the young man’s name back in 2007 when he walked the floor more often, before he became a legend, but not now. Not a chance. Finally, he mouths the name, as if committing it to memory: Weiss.

  “What else?”

  “Well, the others aren’t confirmed. But there’s some recent stuff in advertising and new media that Weiss is investigating. Plus other stuff he’s all twisted up over that I haven’t checked into yet.”

  “Who else knows about this?”

  “Just me and Weiss.” Already he wishes he’d left Weiss out of this. It was his hunch.

  “Well,” Salvado begins, “it doesn’t surprise me, ha
ving such contrary counterplays, especially on something as fickle as tech. I’m not in it for a popularity contest. Above all, you should know that. But what bothers me is that after all we’ve been through, you’re spending all this time and company resources just trying to prove me wrong.”

  “Actually, I’ve been trying to prove you right. And I never questioned you publicly. In or out of the office. It’s not about you, it’s about me trying to find a way forward in this job. Ask Rourke.”

  “You know how I feel about loyalty to the fund, Drew.” While Salvado states his call to loyalty, the Russian model appears and presses her hip against him. Sonya. Mischa. Something. She’s putting on her best I-want-to-play face.

  Havens remembers one of Salvado’s loyalty speeches in particular, delivered while he paced around the conference table after the morning call, menacingly holding a Louisville Slugger, like Robert De Niro playing Capone in The Untouchables. “You taught me all about loyalty from day one, Rick. Fidelity and loyalty to the fund. It’s people. And their families.”

  Salvado shrugs off the model, who then turns away, not in the least forlorn, and clippety-clops back to the table. “I called this the Rising Fund for a reason. It is an epic journey, an epic American tale about the ability to overcome adversity that is still being written, and when it’s all over, it will be remembered as one of the great ones.”

  Havens, who has heard this all too many times, shrugs.

  “I’d be disappointed to learn that you no longer want to be part of it, Drew.”

  “Maybe I’m not cut out to be an epic journey kind of guy. I like to know why things happen; how things end.”

  Salvado begins to answer, but Rourke and one of the Texas clients interrupt them. Rourke’s holding a tray half-filled with tequila shots. The others were handed out at the upper table. “Herradura Seleccion Suprema,” shouts the client, who couldn’t have botched each word more if he’d tried. “Best in the danged world.”

  Havens can only imagine the jacked up club price for a bottle of the best in the danged world. Salvado takes the shot glass in his hand and considers the amber liquid. Rourke offers Havens a shot. He starts to wave him off, but Rourke steps closer. His eyes implore Havens to play along one last time. He takes the shot, but doesn’t drink it as the others knock theirs back.

  “Listen,” Salvado says after the client wobbles away. “Just do me a favor and sleep on it. Let me think this through. Then let’s talk in the morning. I want to know more about this software you’re experimenting with, and I promise to give you a more succinct rationale for my position. After that, if we still agree to disagree, we’ll figure something out. But I want you to know, after all we’ve been through, I’ve got your back. No matter what, I’ll take care of you.”

  9

  Hong Kong

  Cara Sobieski is spending her Monday afternoon happy hour in the same place she spends most happy hours, work permitting: kicking the hell out of something or someone. Heavy bags, in-structors, air.

  Today she’s taking more than giving, squared off in a ring with a professional Muay Thai kickboxer at Pyramid Gym on Connaught Road. The pro needed a sparring partner, an instructor pointed to “the pretty American,” and here she is, trying but not entirely succeeding at blocking a series of kicks and jabs. She takes a straight left to the jaw and has her feet stripped out from under her by a sweep kick, but she pops right back up and comes back at the pro for more. She blocks a right and sidesteps a straight left foot, but she doesn’t see the straight right. It crashes against her headgear and rattles her brain. The pro follows with two quick lefts, and Sobieski tips back against the rope. In the second it takes the pro to glance at her trainer, as if to ask if she should continue the onslaught, Sobieski bounces forward off the rope as if it is electrified and slams a right uppercut just below the pro’s ribs. She hears the breath gush out of her opponent as she rips off two more uppercuts with her left fist. Sobieski rears back with her left foot and starts to bring it forward, but the pro sidesteps it and lunges forward, wrapping her in a clinch. Sobieski fights the clinch like a trapped animal, frantically trying to punch and thrust and wriggle out of it. For a moment she loses track of where she is and whom she’s fighting, and she’s filled with so much rage that the room dims and spins and blurs.

  The pro’s trainer grabs her from behind and pulls her back, “Whoa . . . whoa!” he shouts. “Time! Time!” All at once she stops. The pro says something nasty to her through her mouth guard and gestures toward the bell.

  “Didn’t you hear the bell?” the trainer asks, leading Sobieski to her corner. Sobieski shakes her head. “After I got hit, I lost it. Tell her I’m sorry.”

  The trainer nods. She looks for a stool to sit on before the next round. The trainer shakes his head. “She’s done.”

  Sobieski shrugs, climbs out of the ring, and walks back to the heaving bag she was hitting when they approached her. “You should do this for real,” the trainer tells her as she executes a flurry of punch-and-knee strike combinations. Sobieski is twenty-nine, lean, and compulsively fit. “She’s nothing special,” he says, meaning the pro. “But I’m telling you, the way you responded to the pain . . . you can compete.”

  Sobieski shakes her head and speaks without breaking the rhythm of her strikes. “I like my teeth. And this bump on my nose? Some find it funny looking, but I’m kind of fond of it, too.”

  “Well, if you change your mind, I’m always here.” A few moments later Sobieski sees her phone flash and buzz on top of her gym bag. Usually she keeps it strapped to her arm during workouts, but she took it off before getting into the ring. Even in a gym, in the middle of a late day class in Hong Kong, she’s always connected, always on. They said it would be like this when she left Treasury for the newly formed Terrorism and Financial Intelligence (TFI) task force, and they were right. She gives a final, crisp kick at an imaginary target, then steps away from the rest of the class to take the call in the hallway outside the studio.

  “Sobieski.”

  “Sorry to interrupt your kung fu marathon, Sobes, but you know how it goes.” It’s her boss, Michaud, head of the Pan Asian Bureau of TFI.

  Sobieski can barely hear him. The male voice in the background butchering Katy Perry’s “California Gurls” is a clear giveaway that he’s in a karaoke bar. “Doesn’t sound like you’re in an office, Chief.”

  “One man’s office is another man’s prison,” Michaud replies. “What can I say, I was overcome by the urge to sing Sinatra, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Okay.”

  “Okay. So I just got a call from a senior tech inspector at Hong Kong PD. A friend. They’ve got a body they want us to look at, homicide in a high-rise near the convention center on the harbor.”

  Sobieski looks back into the class, watching the instructor rapping with another woman, probably telling her that she can compete. She decides the guy’s a perv, to be avoided, and that she’s nothing special when it comes to martial arts. “And I should be interested in this because . . . ?”

  “Securities trader. Twenty-nine. Single. Worked the U.S. desk at Hang Seng Bank.”

  “Okay . . .”

  “It’s a favor for a local detective. Detective Mo. Said that it looked like a professional hit, and that, combined with the nature of his job . . . Jesus, can you just check it out for me?”

  * * *

  Twenty-four minutes later Sobieski is standing inside Patrick Lau’s condo. Hong Kong Police Department homicide detectives are scouring the rooms for clues. Lau is still facedown on the counter, blood darkening in an oval on the white marble top. Wind blasts through the opening where the floor-to-ceiling window was, lifting the drapes on a constant horizontal plane.

  Staring at the kitchen counter, Sobieski tries but can’t figure out how or why the rest of Lau’s stiffening body is still standing. She’s temp
ted to ask, but because this is not her purview or jurisdiction, she decides to keep her mouth shut and let HKPD Senior Tech Detective Hueng Mo initiate the talking.

  It doesn’t take Mo long. “Wow. Michaud said you were easy on the eyes, but—”

  She cuts him off. “That’s funny. Somehow he neglected to tell me you were an insecure, old-school perv.”

  Mo steps back. He’s a short, gap-toothed man of fifty-five, with thick black-and-white hair and a face of crooked lines and crevasses. “I apologize. He also said you were the most talented, dedicated, and honest agent he had.”

  She stares at him with 5 percent less edge. Okay.

  “So,” he says, “what do you think?”

  Sobieski shrugs. “Something tells me he didn’t accidentally bang his head mixing a proper martini.”

  Mo nods. “They found the slug on the sidewalk. Long way down. Nine-millimeter. On its way to ballistics, though no one’s holding their breath for a match.”

  “Girlfriend?”

  “Gay. Neighbor said his last partner broke up with him more than a year ago and he’s lived like a hermit. So the salacious sex angle, sadly, isn’t likely. Nor is robbery. For example,” Mo gestures with his chin toward the corpse, “they left that fake Rolex on his wrist. Plus an entire box of what in my humble opinion is extremely tacky jewelry on the nightstand.” With a ballpoint pen he holds up a golden ring. “Do people still wear pinky rings in the states?”