The Gods of Greenwich

by Norb Vonnegut

“Cy Leeser could use a loss-aversion utility at home.”

  “Try that in English,” prodded Cusack.

  “His wife threw all his clothes out the window.”

  “What are you talking about, Geek?”

  “A buddy from Lone Pine Capital told me. He was driving down Round Hill Road and watched Cy’s clothes flying from the second story. Shirts and pants and about a thousand shades of gray everywhere. There was probably enough Armani on the lawn to open a store.”

  “How did your friend know the clothes belonged to Cy?”

  “He stopped and was watching from across the street. That’s when your boss pulled up in the Bentley. Cy hopped out of the car and ran into the house like a man possessed.”

  “Well, there’s a mess,” observed Cusack.

  “I’ll say. Cy Leeser could use a Gaussian copulation rhythm.”

  “Only you could say that.” Cusack knew the reference was a play on Gaussian copula algorithm, but after that he had no clue what Geek meant.

  The phone rang, interrupting their repartee. Cusack recognized the Rhode Island area code but not the number. “Somebody’s on my other line. I need to go.”

  * * *

  “Jimmy Cusack.”

  “Graham Durkin here. I’m returning your call.”

  In that instant Cusack’s spine tingled. His body temperature warmed ten degrees. The next thirty seconds, he knew from both instinct and experience, could change his career forever.

  Last Monday, according to The Wall Street Journal, Durkin sold his medical device company to one of the big pharmaceuticals for $1.3 billion. All cash. He was the perfect prospect. Cusack dialed him after reading the article, and left a message. He never really anticipated a return phone call. He expected to chase Durkin like all other prospects.

  “Congratulations on your deal,” Cusack said, trying to walk the fine line between flattery and nonchalance. He stood while speaking, an old sales trick to summon energy as needed.

  “Don’t tell me. You manage money. And now, you’re my new best friend.”

  Tough audience.

  “Your phone must be ringing off the hook,” Cusack admitted. “That’s the downside of hitting the ball out of the park.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “LeeWell has been in business since 2000. I’d like to meet you and describe how we invest.”

  “Why you?” asked Durkin.

  “We’ve never lost money.”

  “Fifty financial advisers have called. Goldman. Morgan Stanley. Every Merrill Lynch guy on the East Coast. What makes you different?”

  “Those are investment banks. I work for a hedge fund.”

  “I mean you personally.”

  Weird question.

  Cusack paused, considered where to begin, and then swung for the fence. “There are a hundred thousand guys on Wall Street, Graham. I’m one of the few who’s ever run a business and struggled to make payroll. I know how hard it is to make money and how easy it is to lose. If I didn’t believe in LeeWell Capital, I wouldn’t be here.”

  “What’s your minimum?”

  “Ten million.” Cusack hesitated, thought about what he had just said and added, “But frankly, I’d put money in bonds before investing the first dollar with us.”

  “Do you manage bonds?”

  “No, but—”

  “You said it’s Jimmy?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you wasting my time, Jimmy? Why are you sending me to your competitors?”

  Cusack flashed his crooked smile and replied, “I’m giving you my best advice. At some point, you’ll want growth capital. And I’ll be there no matter how long it takes, no matter when you add risk assets to your portfolio.”

  “I like that,” Durkin said. “My secretary and you can arrange a time to meet. You have other business out in Providence?”

  “Always.”

  The conversation was that quick. Thirty seconds later Jimmy finalized arrangements to meet Durkin in Rhode Island. He had just bagged an appointment with a billionaire, a feat he had never accomplished at Cusack Capital or with the gilt-edged panache of Goldman. He should have been elated. He should have been pumping his fist.

  Cusack sat with his hands wrapped behind his head, though, pensive and reflective. He faced Sophie’s Choice without the kids: his family’s welfare versus selling out. He was exposing a guy he just met to a firm he no longer trusted. Jimmy considered what he’d said, words intended to convey honesty and integrity. “If I didn’t believe in LeeWell Capital, I wouldn’t be calling you.”

  He flip-flopped between defending Leeser and crabbing about him. Cy was odd, which did not mean bad. Or evil. Maybe paranoid. But there was no certainty that his boss was anything other than a hard-charging entrepreneur with marital problems and some kind of fixation on Emi’s father.

  One truth, Jimmy realized, was growing clearer with every passing day. There would be no 2008 bonus at LeeWell Capital—and probably no jobs anywhere else in Hedgistan. The portfolio would never clear the 10 percent hurdle, not with Bentwing dropping day in, day out.

  The game was survival now. Bagging new clients was the only way for Cusack to save his job and negotiate, maybe, just maybe, a little relief on his mortgage. There was another conclusion Cusack could not escape, try as he might. And for a guy whose pride was a problem with his own father-in-law, the realization tasted like rotten clams.

  Cy owns me.

  * * *

  Cusack drove home after the rain stopped. He arrived at eleven P.M. and wedged his BMW into a parking space on the street, kissing bumpers front and rear the way he learned in Somerville. He locked the rust bucket, which was odd, because most nights he never bothered. It was too ugly to steal.

  Three hours more, and the meatpackers would rumble through the neighborhood. Every night they arrived in convoys, somehow coexisting with Kiss & Fly, Level V, and the other nightclubs. Heavy trucks creaked across the cobblestone streets, gears grinding with every shift, motors laboring from the loads. Swarthy men, their white aprons blood-splattered from sawing animal flesh, would push beef and lamb carcasses from low-rise warehouses. At that hour, the air stank like death. And blood from the slaughter ran down the cobblestones in rivulets that beckoned blowflies long before the opening bell rang at the New York Stock Exchange.

  Upstairs Emi nestled inside her cocoon of sheets, no covers. Cusack tiptoed through the bedroom, shed everything except his boxers, and slipped between the sheets, spooning and savoring his wife’s great, ponderous belly. He started to drift with the unsettling notion that Yaz would inherit her gene for face blindness.

  Emi stirred and said in a voice caked with sleep, “I tried to wait up.”

  “Late call from Providence,” he explained. “I’m driving up to Rhode Island in a few weeks.”

  “Is it important?”

  “Big prospect.”

  “That’s nice, James.”

  He started to fade again, when Emi whispered through her own sleepy haze, “Is Geek okay?”

  Cusack’s eyes rolled open. “I just spoke to him. Why do you ask?”

  “Some guy called today. He’s doing a background check.”

  “On Geek? Did you get the guy’s name?”

  “Daryle something. I wrote it down in the kitchen.”

  “What did he want to know?”

  “Whether Geek went to Wharton. How long we’ve known him. If we spend time with him.” Emi sounded more alert now, somewhat irritated to be awake.

  “That’s odd.”

  “You’re telling me. A few questions were about us.”

  Emi’s comment set off the alarm bells. “Did he ask for a social security number?” Cusack suspected identity theft.

  “Nothing like that. But it still felt,” Emi paused momentarily, “intrusive. I told him to call you.”

  “Good. Did you get a phone number?”

  “In the kitchen.”

  Cusack bounded out of bed. He found the message pad wi
th a 646 area code and assumed it belonged to a cell phone. But he froze at the sight of the caller’s name. Emi had written Daryle Lamonica on the pad.

  No way.

  * * *

  As long as mankind exists, there will be only one Daryle Lamonica. Cusack knew the name well. Lamonica, known as “the Mad Bomber,” quarterbacked the Oakland Raiders in the late sixties and early seventies. His playing days ended two years before Jimmy was born.

  Cusack’s dad disdained Lamonica. Every fall when Oakland whipped his beloved New England Patriots, Liam barfed out expletives that most plumbers hid under the lid around their families. He beseeched St. Patrick to rain hell on Raider Nation. He asked that misery follow the seed of every scumbag who played for the “Silver and Black.” He cursed on and on.

  The diatribes started with Daryle Lamonica. They gained momentum with Kenny Stabler, who replaced Lamonica. They reached a fevered pitch with Jim Plunkett, the Benedict Arnold who defected from the Patriots and led the Raiders to two Super Bowl victories.

  Lamonica was the name, however, that triggered the harangues. Cusack’s parents once fought bitterly over the star, a scene that left the indelible print of Lamonica’s name in family folklore. That was the time seven-year-old Jimmy Cusack asked his mother, “Is Daryle Lamonica’s middle name Fucking?”

  Liam Cusack burned bright red. Busted.

  Helen Cusack, Jimmy’s mother, gasped. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

  Jude, Cusack’s older brother, stated with the indignation of a Sunday morning preacher, “You’re sinning, Mother.”

  “I’m not sinning,” Helen Cusack snapped in her Irish brogue. “I’m praying for the strength to clobber Jimmy. And maybe your father, too.”

  Her sharp rebuke scared Cusack’s younger brother, Jack. Four years old—he started to cry.

  Liam soothed, “It’s okay, son.”

  Whereupon Jack wiped his moist eyes and announced fiercely, “I’m praying to Jesus, Mary, and Joseph so Mama doesn’t have the strength to clobber anyone.” Ever since, the episode always made for a good laugh at Thanksgiving dinners.

  Back in bed Cusack asked Emi, “Was ‘Daryle Lamonica’ one of my brothers?”

  “Don’t be silly. They’re not prank-calling you from the war. And besides.”

  “Besides what?”

  “Daryle had the world’s deepest voice. Nothing like the way your brothers sound.”

  “Would you recognize it?”

  “Of course. I never forget a voice.” That was the thing about prosopagnosia. Through the years, Emi had developed many tools for recognition. “Go to sleep, James.”

  Cusack was wired. He decided to call Daryle Fucking Lamonica first thing in the morning. He hated when his career followed him into bed. It was one thing to lay awake at night thinking about the markets, whipping yourself for investment decisions that looked stupid in the rearview mirror. But background checks on his friends by people who left fake names—they were another matter.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THURSDAY, AUGUST 7

  BENTWING AT $50.16

  In grade school one year, Jimmy wrote an essay titled “Mornings Are Purgatory.” Somewhere he added, “One step away from hell.” Sister Rosario smacked his knuckles with a ruler and sent him home with a note asking his mother to do the same.

  Through the years Cusack’s opinion never changed, which was a problem in an industry where the reading, the yakking, and the osmotic flow of ideas all took place before the market open at 9:30 A.M. Bacon, egg, and cheese offered some relief to the rise-and-asinine hours of money management. But most of the time, Jimmy struggled to self-medicate with coffee.

  Not today.

  Cusack kicked out of bed at 5:30 A.M. No groggy start—he showered with purpose. Getting up was one part anticipation. Emi and he were celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary today. She mattered above everything else. Four months from now so would Yaz.

  Getting up was one part relief. He had tossed and turned all night, flopped on his stomach, rolled on his side, turned the infomercials on, turned them off, and tried everything except Ambien. He checked his alarm clock at least a thousand times during the early-morning hours.

  And getting up was ten parts foul temper. Financial problems were one thing. The intrusion into Cusack’s life was another. The phone call to Emi was both bizarre and invasive. He vowed to learn the real identity of Daryle Lamonica. If it were Cy or Shannon, they had gone too far.

  Cusack hopped into his BMW. He turned the key, gritted his teeth to find the right angle in the ignition, and the cranky old engine rattled to life like Chinese New Year. Forty-five minutes later he pulled into Greenwich Plaza, already bustling with the citizens of Hedgistan.

  Jimmy passed Victor Lee’s station en route to the screaming eagle cappuccino in the kitchen. The trader had not arrived, odd for seven in the morning. His three screens were still blank, on sabbatical from the red, yellow, and green tickers that would follow during the day. Cusack hoped the market rally would continue. LeeWell Capital’s portfolio had crept up 2 percent since Monday.

  There was a computer printout on Victor Lee’s desk. It was the same one Cusack had seen before, “Market Volatility Linked to Testosterone.” This time the passages were highlighted so manically that only bits of white paper showed through the fluorescent yellow.

  Great. My bonus is 20 percent away. And Victor’s buried in weird science.

  Cusack closed his office door and dialed Daryle Lamonica’s 646 phone number. The phone rang. He wondered what to say if the Raiders legend answered.

  No such luck. An automated voice responded tinny and robotic, none of the rich bass tones Emi had described. “Please,” pause, “leave,” pause, “a message.” Beep.

  Cusack thought about saying, “Daryle, this is Tom Brady. You suck.” But rather than fuel a rivalry, he said, “Jimmy Cusack here. I understand you have a few questions about Dimitris Georgiou. Call me.”

  Next, Cusack phoned Geek. “Are you changing firms?”

  “We have asymmetrical variable input here.”

  “Just answer the question.”

  “Before our year-end bonus,” Geek exhaled in a nasal voice. “Are you nuts?”

  “Some guy called Emi at home. He’s doing a background check on you.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m telling you,” Cusack continued, “the guy asked all kinds of questions.”

  “Like what?”

  “How long we’ve known you. Whether we spend time together. That sort of thing.”

  Geek paused for a long minute. Cusack could almost hear his friend blinking behind the Coke-bottle glasses, piecing together his thoughts and figuring out what to say. After seconds that stretched to the point of awkward, Geek asked, “Maybe somebody is investigating you?”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “The way those questions are phrased. The guy probably learned things about Emi and you.”

  It was Cusack’s turn to pause. “Emi said he felt ‘intrusive.’”

  “Did he say anything else that seemed strange?”

  “Yeah. His name is Daryle Lamonica.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “Have a few minutes?”

  * * *

  Geek finished with Cusack and surveyed the Long Island Sound from his office window on Steamboat Road. Today the waters were gentle, not much chop around the sailboats at anchor, a contrast to the way he felt inside. Dimitris Georgiou was not one to deliberate. Or seethe. But right now he was furious and dialed 974, the country code for Qatar.

  He reached the offices of his lead investor, Sheikh Fahad Bin Thalifa, on the first ring. “Somebody is investigating me. And I don’t like it.”

  “What are you saying, Dimitris?”

  “A guy named Daryle Lamonica phoned Jimmy Cusack’s wife and pummeled her with questions about me.”

  “Slow down, Dimitris. Who’s Jimmy Cusack?” asked the Qatari.

  “My fri
end at LeeWell Capital.”

  “Okay. Who’s Daryle Lamonica?”

  “The name’s a fake,” Geek reported. “It’s some kind of signal.”

  “I still don’t understand the problem.”

  “Somebody’s on to us, and they’re alerting my friend.” The Geek speak had all but vanished.

  “It doesn’t make sense. Lamonica calls an employee’s wife. Why wouldn’t he warn the founder of LeeWell Capital? Leeser’s the problem.”

  “Maybe Cusack has a friend. I have no idea.”

  “But why alert an employee?” the Qatari persisted.

  “I don’t know. I don’t care. I’m caught in the crossfire with a friend. And I don’t like it.”

  “Not my problem,” the Qatari said. “I’ve got money at risk. And bankers to please.”

  “‘Not my problem’! Is that all you can say?”

  “No, Dimitris, there is one other thing. Our next opportunity to redeem is September 30. I can say that.”

  The threat silenced Geek. Investor redemptions brought down Cusack Capital. With one phone call the sheikh could do the same to Geek’s firm—all by himself. For a while, neither man spoke.

  “You know what we need,” the Qatari finally said. “Hurry up and get it.” Then he hung up, leaving Geek to ponder how the game had changed from theory to brass knuckles since graduation.

  * * *

  It was 8:30 A.M. Jimmy Cusack sat alone in his office, troubled by Geek’s conclusion, fuming, unable to work. The more he thought about the mystery phone call, the more he suspected Shannon was the culprit.

  “Daryle has the world’s deepest voice.” Emi’s description fit the head of security at LeeWell Capital—dark, observant, a bad mood with biceps. Shannon seldom spoke. But when he did, his voice resembled a bass violin.

  And Geek made the more troubling remark: “Maybe somebody is investigating you?”

  Is it Cy again?

  “Move to the ball, Jimmy.” Cusack’s coach screamed those five words all the time during football practice at Columbia. They still made sense. Cusack grabbed his notebook and headed for Leeser’s office. He was armed with a cell phone, a twisted smile, and an opportunity in Rhode Island. He needed answers.

  Who called Emi and why?