The Gods of Greenwich

by Norb Vonnegut

  “Depends. Rich people live longer.”

  Hedgecock was seventy-six when she died.

  “Why all the interest, James?”

  “Call it research for now,” answered Cusack. “I need to ask one last question that might be a little insensitive.”

  “Okay.”

  “Have you ever thought about selling your company?”

  “I just bought one,” Caleb said.

  “But would you sell your business?”

  “Everything I have is for sale. Except my family. Now I’m really curious.” It was Caleb’s turn to press.

  “I’ll call you back.”

  Cy Leeser was standing in Cusack’s office door.

  * * *

  Victor Lee looked at his terminals. The market was already down 200 points, down with no bottom in sight. Just down, down, down. All three screens bled red tickers.

  “Dammit, Cy. I told you to sell,” Victor mumbled to himself. His three junior traders stared at their LCDs.

  Lee looked at the Premarin underneath the terminals and wondered whether the estrogen had been such a good idea. True, he read the markets right. True, he cut trading expenses down to nothing. Maybe women were better traders over the long term. But he hadn’t thought about a woman in weeks.

  “Where’s my hammer?”

  Victor glared at his LCDs, then at his junior traders. “All right, boys. I need a show of hands. The Dow’s over ten thousand. Who thinks it hits nine thousand before eleven?”

  All three boys raised their hands.

  * * *

  Leeser coiled on the guest chair inside Cusack’s office, waiting, watching, and biding his time. Every so often he clenched his teeth, and the ripping blue veins of his neck bulged like garden hoses. His words came out soft and slithery, every S hissing longer than necessary. He was hard to hear but there was no mistaking his serpentine venom.

  “You were checking Nikki’s files for prospects?”

  “Wait here,” bellowed Cusack with no hesitation. He erupted from his chair and stormed from the room like a bad mood. His sudden exit surprised Leeser, left him slack jawed and wide eyed.

  Cusack returned a few seconds later. He said nothing but placed the photo of Cy’s daughters on his desk, taking great care to ensure the twins were facing their father.

  “Oh, I get it,” sniped Cy. “You think LeeWell Capital is a commune. Nikki’s files and my desk—what else are we sharing, class?”

  “This way even you can understand,” Cusack jabbed back. Pointing at the photo, he growled, “What would you do if somebody threatened your girls?”

  “What’s this got to do—”

  “Answer the question,” Cusack barked. “What would you do?”

  “Kill ’em,” Leeser replied, no hesitation, no emotion, no pulse, no volume. “You’ll understand when you’re a dad.”

  “Anything to protect them, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Because they’re family,” bellowed Cusack.

  “Right.”

  “So why are you hosing mine?”

  “What are you talking about, Jimmy?”

  “Your video from the Foxy Lady.”

  Leeser’s face softened. The veins of his neck relaxed, and his eyes grew sly. “That’s why you’re snooping through Nikki’s files?”

  “I don’t care about your insurance policies. I want the video.”

  Leeser tilted on the back two legs of the guest chair. His brow wrinkled for a moment, his forehead bunching in deep furrows of concentration. “It’s time,” he said, his demeanor turning pensive, “you know. You need to know.”

  “Know what?”

  “We invest in life settlements.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Would you take just a moment and work exceptionally hard to shut the fuck up?” asked Leeser, barely raising his voice. “Or did you skip that class at Wharton?”

  Cusack shut up.

  “How much do you know about life settlements, Jimmy?”

  “Enough.”

  “Life insurance is a noncorrelated asset class,” Leeser stated, resorting to the inscrutaspeak of Hedgistan. “People die no matter what the markets do.”

  “I don’t care.”

  “Hear me out.”

  “Fire me. Whatever you need. But spare me the lecture, and give me the video.”

  “Maybe you’re the one who needs help understanding.” Leeser spoke softer and slower. But he delivered every word with more poison than the last. “You smile and nod your head. You suck up and listen to what I say. Because that cross default clause in your mortgage puts you on the street today—if I give the word. We clear?”

  “I don’t care.” Cusack took the gut punch, struggling to sound defiant, surprised Cy already knew about his lease problems.

  Leeser poised for a split second before striking. His words were faint, hardly a whisper, but more sinister than a serpent’s tongue. “Nothing like malfeasance to fuck up medical insurance. Your wife hasn’t had any complications, has she?”

  Jimmy could not breathe, the air gone, bitch-slapped from the bottom of his lungs. After a long and withering silence, he reached for his bag and started to pack. He grabbed chargers from one drawer, pens and loose items from another. It was the only way to busy his hands, the only way to stay in control.

  How about I rip your nose out your ass?

  Leeser watched Cusack tuck Yaz’s sonogram inside his jacket. He studied his employee impassively, almost clinically. And as he considered Cusack’s impending departure, he grasped the enormity of his mistake. Cursed himself for things spiraling out of control.

  When Cy finally spoke, he raised his voice, though not in anger. With enough outward contrition to moisten every eye in the Vatican—and no internal remorse whatsoever—he said, “I’m sorry, Jimmy. It was a crappy thing to say. Cool off and listen. I’ll give you the video.”

  Cusack stopped packing.

  “I offset risky investments with life settlements,” explained Leeser.

  “Whatever,” said Cusack, his head still spinning. He was unsure whether the video mattered.

  “Give me five minutes,” said Leeser, retreating and less hostile. “I buy insurance policies tiered across different ages. Sixty-eight. Sixty-nine. Seventy. See what I mean?”

  “You ladder ages. Someone is always dying, and LeeWell gets paid on a regular basis. I get it.” Cusack feigned indifference but his thoughts had returned to the video.

  “Right,” Leeser confirmed. “We can’t lose.”

  Not according to Caleb.

  “LeeWell Capital owns the policy on Conrad Barnes?” asked Cusack.

  “Right.”

  “Life settlements aren’t really a hedge, Cy.”

  “Twenty million buys time on our margin loan with Merrill. Sounds like a hedge to me.”

  “I’m tired of dancing around the issue,” replied Cusack, immersed in the conversation again, finally understanding the preoccupation with his father-in-law. “You want to buy Caleb’s company?”

  Leeser measured his words carefully. “I should have been more direct. Your father-in-law has a great business.”

  “His business. Not mine. I’m not involved.”

  “Once he’s elected governor of Massachusetts, he can’t run his agency.”

  “He has competent people.”

  “It’s not the same, Jimmy. His operation will atrophy unless he’s at the helm.”

  “If you want to buy Caleb’s business, pick up the phone and call him.”

  “I planned to fire you for stealing trade secrets,” Leeser said. “I was wrong. And I’m sorry.”

  “Just give me the video.”

  “I already said you can have it. But I need a partner. Not an adversary.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “We can put this deal together. You and me. Take tomorrow off, Jimmy. Think about how we buy your father-in-law’s agency. Come back Monday, and we’ll talk.”
<
br />   “But what about the video?”

  “The Mac’s at my house.”

  “Can we get it today?” asked Cusack hopefully.

  “No. I checked into the Delamar Hotel.”

  “Why?”

  “I can’t have Bianca throwing my clothes out the window every time she gets a feather up her ass. Half of Greenwich thinks my estate is a drop zone for the Salvation Army.”

  “I’m sorry, Cy.”

  “Look, I’ll get you the video by Monday.”

  “That’s great news.”

  “You help me,” Leeser prodded, “and I’ll help you. I’m a generous guy.”

  Cusack said nothing.

  “Returning that video is a show of good faith.” Leeser’s demeanor turned warm and conspiratorial. “Now it’s your turn to help me buy Caleb’s company. And think about all the perks.”

  “What perks?”

  “You can fire your father-in-law for pulling the plug on Cusack Capital.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “I don’t lose. And that means knowing everything about everyone.” Cy stood up to leave, walked to the door, and turned as though struck by one last thought. “By the way, Jimmy. Do you have something for me?”

  Cusack reached under his desk and pulled out the paperwork belonging to Henrietta Hedgecock. “Is this what you mean?”

  “Exactly,” Leeser confirmed. “See you Monday.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  FRIDAY, OCTOBER 3

  BENTWING AT $26.48

  Emi inherited Caleb’s gift for feisty New England clarity. She operated at her level best when confusion ran amok. While others deliberated and scratched their heads to sort things out, she swung her opinions like gnarled two-by-fours. “Cy Leeser’s not reliable. You can’t trust him.”

  “I need to play along,” argued Cusack, more inclined toward diplomacy. “A few days and we get the video.”

  “Don’t get your hopes up. It’s fifty-fifty whether that guy even shows for his own funeral.” Emi left for work, but the two agreed to continue their discussion over lunch at the Bronx Zoo. She still had no clue about their iffy finances.

  Cusack grabbed his laptop and trudged to a greasy spoon on Hudson Street, home to the fastest wireless in Manhattan according to signs in the window. He introduced himself to the $7.99 special, a platter full of greasy steak, rubber-soled eggs, and home fries that made him wonder whose home turned potatoes into felonies. It was like breakfast arrived on a shingle, which did not help the worries gnawing at Cusack’s stomach.

  “How is everything?” asked the waitress. She splashed coffee while loading Cusack’s cup, which was okay because the bursts nailed Cusack’s sleeve instead of his computer.

  “Special.” He read The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times online. He needed to decompress.

  When Cusack reached inside his jacket for money, any attempt at decompression stopped. He found the list of seven names from Nikki’s files. Instead of paying the bill, he ordered a doughnut and things got interesting.

  Henrietta Hedgecock was the first name Cusack Googled. The New York Times had printed her obituary in late April, about the same time Jimmy started at LeeWell Capital. Hedgecock was one of New York City’s foremost socialites. An avid swimmer, she drowned in a pool after suffering a seizure. Seventy-six years old at the time of death. Fifteen million dollars, Cusack recalled, in insurance proceeds to LeeWell Capital.

  Cusack Googled Conrad Barnes next. He was not hard to find given the spectacular crash in the Meadowlands two months ago. Barnes was a bastion of the Bronxville community, a guy who made it big in pharmaceuticals.

  The following five names generated too many Google hits. Cusack found John Emery, Joshua Kendall, Robert Miss, Francis Rotch, and John Ranney. But he could not be sure whether he found the right people.

  Harold Van Nest was a different story. He was a fixture in the Harvard community, fêted by half a dozen charities for his philanthropic largesse. He died of natural causes back in December, but The New York Times obituary did not elaborate.

  Cusack cursed himself for bungling the opportunity to examine Nikki’s files. In less than twelve months, Cy Leeser had collected three major death benefits. Jimmy never saw the size of Harold Van Nest’s policy, but he assumed the man was wealthy given all the fanfare. If the policy paid $20 million at death, Cusack guessed that Van Nest sold it for at least $2 million. Maybe more.

  The estimate reminded Cusack what his father-in-law said: “Nobody turns down free money, James. Not even Larry King.”

  Jittery from too much coffee, Cusack ordered another cup anyway. His thoughts began to drift. And he found himself blaming Google—the Internet boot camp for ADHD. Before long Cusack forgot the Web and focused instead on Bianca’s haunting words from the bar.

  Bianca: “Did Cy tell you about the time he bet against oil?”

  Cusack: “No.”

  Bianca: “Lost his ass.”

  Bianca dubbed her husband the Wile E. Coyote of hedge funds. But collecting $55 million dollars in twelve months—20 from Barnes, 15 from Hedgecock, and 20 from Van Nest—was something else. It made Cy brilliant. Or lucky. Eighty-six was the average life expectancy, which meant the three policies paid about ten years early.

  Cusack called the one guy who knew numbers better than anyone else in Hedgistan. The one guy who saw patterns that eluded everyone else. And the one guy he trusted like a deck of fifty-two suicide kings.

  * * *

  Geek pulled off his Coke-bottle glasses and rubbed his eyes. He had worn a hole in his pants over the last three weeks. His knee pumped like a piston. His right leg rubbed against the side of the desk with every downstroke of the Dow. He expected the markets to plummet another hundred points before the day was out. “I called a dozen times. You still pissed?”

  “Yeah, fuck you, it’s out of my system and I need your help.” Cusack gunned his words in one long sentence without breathing.

  “How bad are things at your shop?”

  “Never mind. What’s the market connection between December of last year and April of this year?”

  “You,” Geek replied without hesitation.

  “I’m not kidding.”

  “Me either. Cusack Capital blew up in December after your banks bombed. And you joined LeeWell in April. The Dow started the month down five percent.”

  Geek’s words hit Cusack like an anvil from thirty feet. “That’s it. I can’t believe it’s so simple.”

  “What’s ‘it’ Jimmy?”

  “Bentwing dropped like a rock at the end of August.”

  “Can you bring me into your quadrant?” asked Geek.

  “December, April, and September—those months all followed bad markets.”

  “The Dow was up during July and August.”

  “Bentwing got smoked,” replied Cusack.

  “Sounds six sigma.”

  “That’s what I say. Too many coincidences,” Jimmy agreed. “Do me a favor.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Stay away from LeeWell Capital. I’ll tell you everything next week.”

  * * *

  The red-haired woman—baseball cap, burly sweater, dark sunglasses—drew from her cigarette, long and glorious and altogether satisfying. She filled her lungs, savoring the hot vapor, remembering the cafés of Paris where the fumes billowed in great clouds of secondhand nicotine. It was the perfect day to smoke, a crisp autumn afternoon at its best, even though Rachel Whittier now had a problem.

  A hornet’s nest in the outhouse, she thought.

  Dirt lodged in Rachel’s eye. Or maybe her contact lens slipped. Rachel turned away from the baboon reserve and blinked out the chocolate-brown lens. She popped it back in place, fussed with her sunglasses and wig, and told herself to pay attention.

  Emi was eating lunch at Somba Village. Most days she would finish and hike back to the World of Reptiles, past a cutoff to the brown bears and the big white polar. It was that ju
nction, home to Ursus arctos horribilis, where Rachel Whittier would dry-gulch Mrs. Emily Phelps Cusack, seven months or so pregnant.

  Rachel patted her purse and the syringe inside. Doing Cusack was a good thing. Made her feel better. She remembered how good it felt to stand over the lifeless body of her father, her words back then: “I got the rigor-mortis touch, old man.”

  Emi looked at her watch, not once but a dozen times. She stared at her brown lunch bag. She fidgeted for a while and then, losing focus, disappeared into a silent reverie of gelada watching.

  Rachel reached into her handbag and pulled out a pair of light fall gloves, taking care to hide her motion from the pregnant woman. Just once Emi glanced in her direction, a look that chilled the nurse. Rachel never knew when she would be made, disguise or not. But Emi drifted past Rachel, and there were no telltale signs of recognition.

  That was when Jimmy joined his wife for lunch. Rachel closed her eyes in exasperation, and shaking her head, she said in a voice so low no one else could hear, “You’re lucky, girlfriend.” Given the couple’s animated discussion, it looked like Cusack would never leave.

  * * *

  The color drained from Emi’s face. “Is there anything else?”

  “Isn’t that enough?”

  Emi appraised her husband. He was a stranger. She lowered her voice and said, “I hate secrets.”

  “Cusack Capital was my fuckup.”

  “We have no life if you hide things from me.”

  Emi had no idea what to add. Of all Cusack’s revelations over the past fifteen minutes, the coincidences at LeeWell were the most unnerving. Three life insurance policies. Three bouts of financial loss. And three untimely deaths.

  It was Jimmy who broke the silence. “I want more for our baby than Somerville.”

  “Your childhood didn’t hurt you.”

  “I want more.”

  She paused, again, and measured her words. “And I don’t want Yaz visiting his father in jail.”

  Three tables over a red-haired woman glanced up from her book at the word “jail.”

  “What do you mean, Em?”

  “Life settlements. Too many people died too young.”

  “It may be a coincidence,” he said. “The people all died of natural causes according to their obituaries. I have a hunch and nothing more.”