Jordan, no fan of heights, had developed a method for dealing with the floor: From the moment the door swung open, he stared Stack straight in the eyes and never looked away. In the early days, Stack had observed this and, surprisingly, had responded by turning the floor as dark as onyx whenever Jordan arrived. It was a subject of debate on Jordan’s desk whether Stack had done this out of respect for Jordan’s trading prowess, or, as Jordan suspected, because Stack had liked him. In any case, in recent months, as Jordan’s market wizardry had faded, Stack had dispensed with this gesture and now left the floor as clear as glass.
“Sorry to bother you, Alan,” Jordan said. “We have a problem.”
Stack nodded. The back wall of the office, the one behind Jordan, held six enormous screens, allowing Stack to monitor every trading position in the firm.
“The rumors in New York are that the Ministry has voted to maintain its current stance,” Jordan continued. “But I think the rumors are wrong.”
“Any new information?” Stack asked.
“Just some b.s. fed to the wires,” Jordan said.
“Who’s on the other side?”
“Draco, I think,” Jordan answered, referring to a massive New York hedge fund. “Most of the wire quotes came from their shills.”
Stack nodded again, almost imperceptibly.
The meeting was over. A hundred and fifty million was real money, even for Stack. If Jordan took the loss, it would hit Stack too. And yet, as always, he had reacted as though receiving a weather report.
Back on the trading floor, Fishman stood up when Jordan approached, so agitated that he seemed about to shout across the floor.
“We’re down two hundred now,” Fishman hissed, as Jordan slid back his chair. “Two hundred fucking million.”
“You’d be a terrible poker player, Fishman,” Jordan said, trying to maintain a Stacklike demeanor. Despite his efforts, the number was a kick in the chest. They were now down for the year. He was going to get blown out the door.
Fishman shut up, thankfully, but the market didn’t stop falling. Ten minutes later, they were down $240 million. Then 280. Word spreads fast on a trading floor, and Jordan’s conviction that he was getting famous increased with every downtick. The glances, the murmurs … Finally, ten minutes after Jordan returned from Stack’s office, a light on his phone flashed: Stack. Jordan stabbed at the button.
“Double it,” Stack said. Then he was gone.
Double it? Jordan’s heart raced. The loss was huge now, even for Stack, but it wouldn’t kill him. Stack could take the hit, fire Jordan, cover his ass. Double it? No matter who Stack had called, no matter what he had learned, nothing was certain. It was no mystery why Stack sat in that translucent office and Jordan in a dime-a-dozen swivel chair.
Jordan turned to Fishman, who looked like the defendant in a murder trial.
“Double it,” Jordan said.
“Are you crazy? Stack said double it?”
I said double it,” Jordan said. So Fishman did.
* * *
It wasn’t a baijiu headache, fortunately, but three hours of sake at the Japanese-themed year-end banquet had gone to work on Jordan’s head: a pinpoint throbbing pain, gradually increasing in intensity, just forward of his right ear. The waiters were pouring tea now, offering hope of a recharge, and Jordan knew he would need it to get in a final word. Fifty feet away, at the power table, Stack was still joined at the hip with Reingold and Zhu.
“Rumor has it Reingold’s mainly here to kiss Stack’s ass,” Fishman said, catching Jordan looking, referring to Steve Reingold, the head of Global Sales and Training. “Apparently he’s no longer the shoe-in for the CEO job.”
“Oh?” Jordan said. Fishman’s main attribute was that he was plugged in.
“Apparently, Beston seduced a couple of the board members over the past month,” Fishman continued. “He’s tight with Stack. The board is worried that if they pick Reingold, Stack will bolt, taking most of us with him. Reingold’s probably here to suck up to Stack, make sure he can keep him.”
“I thought Reingold had it sewn up,” Jordan said, feigning ignorance.
“So did everyone else,” Fishman replied. “But Beston crushed his numbers this year, and now he’s persuaded everyone he can hang onto Stack.”
“May the best man win,” Jordan said.
“And may we all get paid in the meantime,” Fishman added.
Fishman grabbed the sake bottle and, for the umpteenth time that evening, refilled everyone’s cup. Then he stood up and raised his own. “The night is as yet an embryo,” he proclaimed to the four junior members of the desk, trying to channel some frat lingo in a sad attempt to bond with them. “But before we move on, I would like once again to toast our fearless leader, Mr. Emerson Jordan, without whom we would all be living in hutongs.”
“To Emerson!” they shouted.
Jordan nodded his head in gratitude, embarrassed, hoping Fishman would leave it at that. But Fishman had been working up to this all evening.
“Those of you in fixed-income land,” he continued, louder, nodding toward six members of the emerging-market bond desk at the other end of the table, “may not be aware of the absolute killing that was made on the forex desk this afternoon. And to be sure that you show the proper deference to the god among men in our presence this evening, I would like to—”
“Thanks, Fishman,” Jordan interrupted, raising his own glass. “What Mr. Fishman means is that, once again, the Shanghai team at Whitney Gilman wiped the floor with every other division at the firm, and we should all drink to that.”
“To Shanghai!” ten of the twelve voices at the table concurred. They drained their glasses, set them back on the table. Then an eleventh voice, previously silent, chimed in.
“What I heard,” Joseph Wilson said, from the other end of the table, audible even over the cacophonous conversation of the banquet hall, “was that our resident ‘god among men’ got himself in a bit of a fix this afternoon.”
In the instant silence, Jordan looked down the table at Wilson, who was still holding a full cup. Jordan felt a stab of humiliation, and hoped Wilson wouldn’t take it farther.
Wilson was drunk, drunker than Jordan, drunker than most of them. His desk had had a bad year—the second in a row—and everyone knew that unless Stack made him a charity case, Wilson was done. That was why Wilson’s people were whooping at Fishman’s lousy jokes—they needed a lifeboat. Tomorrow, when Jordan’s team was getting their numbers, Wilson would be packing up the wife and kids and heading back to New York.
Making a scene now would only add to Wilson’s disgrace: a bitter has-been hastening his transformation into a never-was. Jordan wasn’t eager to hear the rest of whatever Wilson had to say, though—no doubt something to the effect that Jordan was just an empty-suited puppet on Stack’s string—and he especially wasn’t eager to have his team hear it. He stared at Wilson, readying himself for the verbal punch. After a few seconds, however, Wilson backed down.
“To Whitney Gilman,” he said, raising his cup into the air. “And to the forex desk, for riding out the storm.”
“To Whitney Gilman!” the table roared, in enthusiasm and relief.
A few minutes later, after chugging a cup of tea, Jordan made his move. He had hoped to catch Stack alone, but Stack was still glued to Reingold and Zhu. The banquet was over, the crowd was dissipating, and the three were now standing at the head table, waiting to follow everyone else to the door. Jordan worked his way across the room, as confidently and soberly—as possible.
“Mr. Reingold, Mr. Zhu, I’m sorry to interrupt. I’m Emerson Jordan. I run the currency desk. I just wanted to say goodnight to Alan.” Turning to Reingold, he added: “It’s a pleasure to see you again, sir. We met last year in New York.”
“I remember,” said Reingold. “And I gather you had another good year.”
“Well, thanks, yes, we did,” Jordan said. “But we had help. Especially this afternoon.”
&
nbsp; As he said this, Jordan nodded toward Stack.
“I hear you made a stirring comeback,” Reingold said, smiling. “Have you met Mr. Zhu?”
“I haven’t yet had the pleasure, sir,” Jordan responded, shaking the hand of the billionaire real estate mogul everyone assumed was one of Stack’s key guanxi. “You’re quite a celebrity on the trading floor, sir.”
“It’s a privilege to do business with the firm,” Zhu said. “Thanks for stopping by, Emerson,” Stack said, speaking for the first time. His tone was courteous, but it was also a kiss-off.
Jordan was going to respond with a play for time, when Reingold jumped in: “Yes, thanks for stopping by. X.D. is giving us a ride back to the Hive. Why don’t you come along?”
It had been a rough early afternoon, but since then, Jordan’s luck had taken a turn for the better.
X.D., as Mr. Xiaodong Zhu was known (a concession to foreigners’ inability to pronounce even the simplest Mandarin), was chauffered around town in a forty-two-foot stretch Hummer—the kind, Jordan reflected, that only drug dealers and rap-stars would be caught dead in back home. The Hummer had two PC-equipped desks, fully reclining seats, a fifty-inch flat-panel HDTV, and a lounge. In addition to the driver, it was staffed by a steward, who navigated, checked traffic via the government-sanitized Internet, refilled the mini-bar, and, at every stop, brushed grime off the car with a feather duster.
On board the Hummer, the four men settled into the lounge, and Zhu’s steward opened a bottle of Laphroaig, pouring four glasses. Zhu reached for one, raised it toward his guests.
“I have promised to show Mr. Reingold my car,” Zhu said. “Before I do, however, I would like to toast Mr. Jordan.”
“Here, here,” said Reingold.
Jordan considered playing along, but decided not to risk it. “I’m sorry?” he said.
“One of my companies was overweight with baht this morning,” Zhu explained. “We needed some time to convert before the Ministry meeting. Without your help, we’d never have gotten out.”
“I see,” said Jordan, even though he didn’t.
“Thanks to your efforts,” Zhu continued, “some folks in New York temporarily concluded that the Ministry wasn’t going to relax the peg. Unfortunately for them, this conclusion was wrong.”
“All’s well that ends well,” Reingold said, raising his glass.
So that explained Jordan’s temporary $280 million loss—and the near—heart attack that had accompanied it. Stack’s contacts had floated rumors to grease Zhu’s wheels—and Draco had fallen for them. No wonder Stack had been so cool. Remembering the depths of the afternoon’s panic, the walk of shame across the trading floor, the conviction that an entire year’s worth of work (and, likely, his job) had vaporized, Jordan once again felt the heat of humiliation flood into his cheeks. Would it have killed Stack to let him in on the game? This must have been the story that Wilson had threatened to spill at dinner—that the currency desk’s ‘god among men’ was so blind that he didn’t even see he was a pawn.
Zhu slipped out of his seat and headed forward, with Reingold following. As plush as it was, Zhu’s Hummer was more luxurious than the G5 in which Reingold had just floated across the Pacific, so its interior could hardly have been of interest. But Zhu’s conglomerate had paid Whitney Gilman $172 million in fees that year, so if necessary, Jordan knew, Reingold would lick the tire treads.
Zhu and Reingold’s departure left Jordan alone with Stack—the moment he had been trying to engineer all evening. To Jordan’s annoyance, however, Stack took the opportunity to check his BlackBerry. As Jordan watched Stack scroll through e-mails, he took another sip of his Laphroaig, felt its warmth radiate outward from his throat and stomach, emboldening him.
“Well, that certainly sheds some light on this afternoon,” Jordan said, aggressively.
Stack stiffened ever so slightly, and his thumbs stopped working the BlackBerry keys—a reaction that, for him, was almost frenzied.
“All’s well that ends well,” Stack said, without looking up. In the long, infuriating silence that followed, Jordan took another swig of Laphroaig.
“Speaking of ending well,” Jordan said, “I—”
“This is not a good time,” Stack shot back, again without looking up.
“Well, can we talk before the final decisions are made?” Jordan asked.
“They’ve already been made,” Stack said. “And this is not a good time.”
“When—”
“It’s not a good time,” Stack said again, sharply, suddenly looking straight at Jordan. “And the politics in New York”—at this, Stack nodded toward Reingold, who was hunched over a computer with Zhu in the belly of the Hummer—“have made this a challenging year.”
Stack returned to his BlackBerry, leaving Jordan to chew on this—and to chase it with another belt of Laphroaig. So Stack was going to fall back on the “challenging year” crap? He was Alan Stack—not some dime-a-dozen managing director—surely he could do better than that. Maybe the bonus pool was just fine and Stack was hoarding most of it for himself. That was what some of the sleazier managing directors did: duped their people into thinking that the department had gotten stiffed, then kept the lion’s share.
Jordan’s indignation was getting up a good head of steam when a bolt of fear arced through him. Maybe there was another explanation for Stack’s frigidity. Maybe Jordan’s name was already on the execution list. It was Reingold, after all, who had invited Jordan on this last supper of a limo ride. Maybe Stack just didn’t want to break the news to him tonight.
“We aren’t the only game in town anymore,” Jordan said, a feeble threat, and one that, to his embarrassment, sounded as awe-inspiring as a mouse squeak.
“We’re the best game in town,” Stack replied, still engrossed in his BlackBerry. “And we are only as good as our team.”
Stack stopped short of pointing out that Jordan was only as good as his team, a pulled-punch that, in another mood, Jordan might have appreciated. In his current mood, however—drunk, over-caffeinated, and deep into his Laphroaig—he wasn’t grateful. Instead, he felt shafted and exposed. And he was still feeling that way another Laphroaig later, when they reached their destination.
The Hive was a ninety-seven-story needle two blocks from the glittery Pearl TV tower in Pudong. It had been designed to symbolize industriousness and dedication—to facilitate work, to honor work, to beatify work—and it did this by eliminating the need for its inhabitants to do anything but work. Many of those who worked in the Hive, including Jordan and Stack, also lived, shopped, ate, worked out, and drank there. The lower third of the building housed condos. The middle third restaurants, grocery stores, health clubs, night clubs, and the only mid-building heliport in the world. (The best tables in the sixty-third-floor restaurants hung above the heliport’s doors, so diners could watch executives nip to and from the airport and Hangzhou like bees.) The top third held the most expensive office space in Shanghai.
Such was the Hive’s self-sufficiency that the year-end banquet was the first time Jordan had left the building in over a month. He usually used the main door, in the building’s west lobby, overlooking the Huangpu. When Zhu’s Hummer pulled up that evening, though, it was to the southern lobby, which existed exclusively for VIPs. The instant the vehicle stopped, the doors opened and two valets reached upward with white-gloved hands.
Reingold got out first, followed by Stack and Jordan. Inside the Hummer, Zhu nodded goodbye as the steward cleared the Scotch glasses and wiped down the table. A valet swung the door shut, and the Hummer pulled away.
Reingold led them across the lobby to the elevators. He paused in front of them and turned to Jordan. “Nice to get to know you, Emerson.”
“Thank you, Mr. Reingold,” Jordan replied weakly, having persuaded himself that he was done.
“X.D. gave me this to give to you,” Reingold added, reaching into his jacket pocket and pulling out an envelope. “Another token of his apprecia
tion. He looks forward to see-ing you again.”
Jordan took the envelope. The elevator door opened, and Reingold and Stack stepped in.
“Goodnight, Emerson,” Stack said.
“Goodnight, Alan,” Jordan replied, wondering if he would ever see him again.
Alone in the lobby, suddenly aware of how drunk he was, Jordan fingered the envelope Reingold had given him. He opened it and found a key card, the kind used to operate most of the elevators and doors in the Hive. The card bore no markings, nothing to indicate what it provided access to. Jordan stood in front of the elevators for a moment, examining the card. When the doors opened again, he decided what the hell and stuck it into the slot.
The doors closed and the elevator began to ascend, but the screen displayed no floor numbers, so Jordan had no idea how high he rose. Higher than his floor, certainly, high enough that his ears popped and his booze-addled brain fought back a wave of seasickness when the elevator finally decelerated.
The doors opened to reveal an unfamiliar foyer, one that looked as though it had been airlifted from a Victorian exhibit in an art museum. The room was furnished with ornate chairs and lamps, Impressionist paintings, and—Jordan did a double-take—a fireplace with a crackling fire. On the far wall was an antique desk, behind which stood a Caucasian woman Jordan had seen somewhere before.
Wall Street Noir Page 24
