by Marcus Sakey
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
PART I - The Players
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
Part II - The Rules Change
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
Part III - Game Theory
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
Acknowledgements
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALSO BY MARCUS SAKEY
The Blade Itself
At the City’s Edge
Good People
DUTTON
Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A.
Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario M4P
2Y3, Canada (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.); Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand,
London WC2R 0RL, England; Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland
(a division of Penguin Books Ltd); Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road,
Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd);
Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110
017, India; Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New
Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd); Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd,
24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa
Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First printing, August 2009
Copyright © 2009 by Marcus Sakey
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Sakey, Marcus.
The amateurs : a novel / by Marcus Sakey.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-13340-8
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.
http://us.penguingroup.com
For Sean and Michael and Joe, who always help me fix it when it’s broken
PART I
The Players
“There was something seriously wrong with the world for which neither God nor His absence could be blamed.”
—Ian McEwan, Amsterdam
LATER, JENN LACIE WOULD SPEND a lot of time trying to pinpoint the exact moment.
There was a time before, she was sure of that. When she was free and young and, on a good day, maybe even breezy. Looking back was like looking at the cover of a travel brochure for a tropical getaway, some island destination featuring a smiling girl in a sundress and a straw hat, standing calf-deep in azure water. The kind of place she used to peddle but had never been.
And of course, there was the time after.
So it stood to reason that there had to be a moment when the one became the other. When blue skies bruised, the water turned cold, and the undertow took her.
Had it been when they first met Johnny Love, that night in the bar?
Maybe. Though it felt more like when she’d opened the door at four a.m., bleary in a white T-shirt and faded cotton bottoms. She’d known it was Alex before she looked through the peephole. But the tiny glass lens hadn’t let her see his eyes, the mad energy in them. If she hadn’t opened the door, would everything be different?
Sometimes, feeling harder on herself, she decided, no, the moment came after the four of them did things that could never be taken back. Not just when they decided; not even when she felt the pistol, the oily heaviness of it making something below her belly squirm, a strange but not entirely uncomfortable feeling. Like any birth, maybe her new life had come through blood and pain. Only it hadn’t been an infant’s cry that marked the moment. It had been a crack so loud it made her ears hum, a wet, spattering cough, and the man shuddering and staring as his eyes zeroed out.
But late at night, the sheets a sweaty tangle, her mind turning relentless carnival loops, she wondered if all of that was nonsense. Maybe there hadn’t been a moment. Maybe that was just a lie she told herself to get through the day, the way some took Xanax and some drank scotch and some watched hour after numbing hour of sitcoms.
Maybe the problem hadn’t come from outside. Hadn’t been a single decision, a place where they could have gone left instead of right.
Maybe the road the four of them walked never had any forks to begin with.
CHAPTER 1
IAN WAS AWARE OF THE CLICHÉ. That’s what made it OK. It was one thing to be the trader wearing a suit that belied your debt, sitting in the company men’s room at almost eight at night, blasting coke from the hinge of your thumb, and believing you were Gordon Gekko. It was another to see it for the sordid little scene it was. As long as you knew that, you were still running the show.
Screw it, he thought, then bent forward and snorted hard.
It was good stuff, coating the inside of his skull with ice, a moment of brain freeze that released slow and sweet into a glorious warmth. He poured a bump for his other nostril—had to be democratic—and blew that one too. Then he leaned against the toilet tank, the porcelain cool and hard and kind of pleasant through the starched cotton of his oxford.
There we go. There it is.
His toe wanted to tap, but he fought the urge, glanced at his watch instead: 7:58 in the p.m. Almost there. He’d worked here for years, noticed it only subliminally at first. The kind of pattern the human brain catches a bit at a time. Part of him wanted to count the seconds down, but that would have been cheating.
When the air-conditioning shut off at 8:00 exactly, a sudden absence of sound that had measured the whole of his day, he smiled.
Silly, he knew. But if eighty percent of his waking life was going to be spent sitting in a gray corporate office—which, by the way, he didn’t remember voting on, thanks very much—he’d seize his little triumphs where he could. He arrived most days before six, in time to hear the fans turn on,
and worked the same day over and over in a blur of predatory action, the headset so much a part of his body that he sometimes forgot to take it off when he stood up from his desk, got jerked back by the cord. Maneuver after maneuver, each the one that might get him out from under, might return him to wunderkind status, the guy who had cracked Hudson-Pollom Biolabs and made a quick half-mil instead of the also-ran everyone was starting to suspect he might be. Lunch at his desk, stolen in bites. A bathroom break midmorning and midafternoon, two quick white blurs to keep his energy kicking. Staying after the phones went quiet to read the blogs, make his plans for tomorrow, and try, in an amiable, distracted way, to figure out how to make up what he’d lost.
And finally, the retreat here, to his porcelain palace, to blow a good-night kiss to work and start the evening properly.
He pinched his nostrils, then rattled the toilet-paper dispenser like he’d been using the john. There was no one in the bathroom, but habits were important for the day he didn’t hear his boss come in. He flushed, stepped out, washed his hands, then checked himself in the mirror. Nose clean, tie straight. Ready for the world.
He smiled, made guns of his fists and shot the mirror, an intentionally cheesy joke meant only for himself—it seemed like most of his jokes were—and then headed for the door.
It was Thursday night, and his friends would be waiting. Alex behind the bar in a bleach-worn shirt, the cuffs spotted with old stains. Jenn sipping a vodka martini, never a cosmo, not since Sex and the City. Mitch rocking his stool on two legs, trying not to get caught looking sidelong at Jenn. The Thursday Night Crew. Thinking of them made him smile again. Funny how their unlikely foursome had remained friends when all the folks he’d grown up with, the ones who signed yearbooks and made pledges of eternity, had all fallen quietly away. Moved to New York or the suburbs, gotten married and had children. That might be sad if he let it.
But why would he? He was young, secretly high, and his friends were waiting.
WHEN MITCH CLIMBED ON THE BUS, there was only one seat open, next to a black guy wearing a puffy Looney Tunes jacket and loose jeans, his leg thrown across the open seat. Mitch walked over, stood looking down at the guy. “Excuse me.”
For a long moment, the man ignored him. Then, drawing the gesture out slow, he swiveled his head to look up at Mitch. His eyes pitched half open, a toothpick stuck to wet lips. Nothing in his expression at all. After a moment of staring, he turned back to the window. He didn’t move his leg.
Asshole, Mitch thought and moved back a couple of rows, stood gripping the hand bar, swaying with the motion of the bus. His heels felt like someone was cranking wood screws into them, and the steady ache in his back that began around noon had stretched up to his shoulders and neck. Occupational hazard of spending all day standing up, smiling on cue as he opened and closed the heavy glass doors of the Continental Hotel.
It’s only a couple of minutes. Not worth making a thing over.
He shifted from the edge of one foot to the edge of the other. The bus was warm, humid with body odor, and he was afraid some of it came from him. Nothing to do about it, just a day’s worth of sun beating down on his jacket and tie, but he wished he could have showered.
After all, tonight was the night. He’d made up his mind that he was going to take the plunge with Jenn. If the right moment came up at least, when the guys weren’t there. And probably best to get in a couple of drinks in to unwind from the day. Be loose. Loose was good. Like, “There’s this new sake lounge we could check out, you know, laugh at the yuppies.” Or was that too casual? He didn’t want her to say it sounded great, why didn’t they invite the others. Maybe more like, “It’d be really nice to get a chance to talk, just us.” Though he didn’t want to put her on the spot.
He ran lines until his stop, but couldn’t find the right one. Maybe he’d wing it.
Rossi’s was one of those identity-crisis places, a bar-slash-restaurant that drew families for dinner but an after-work crowd for drinks. Perched on a stretch of Lincoln that fell between more fashionable areas, the place had become their haunt in the last few years mostly because with Alex there, they could drink cheap. Funny, really; in a city filled with terrific bars, they chose to meet every week at a half-assed restaurant that they’d otherwise never have noticed.
After the heat of the bus, walking into the air-conditioning felt wonderful. Mitch nodded at the hostess, moved past the dining room, with its rich smell of bolognese and carbonara, and into the bar. The postwork crowd was thinning but not gone, men in business casual, women laughing, glasses filled with pink and green and pale yellow, specialty martinis made with syrups and liqueurs. He moved through them, looking toward their customary seats.
Dammit. Other than Alex pulling drinks, he was the first one there. He should have showered.
“THAT PRICK,” Alex was saying as she walked up. “He should be, I don’t know. Drawn and quartered.”
“Who should?” Jenn smiled at him, careful not to hold it too long, then hugged Ian, the blades of his shoulders sharp through his shirt, then Mitch, still in his uniform, the jacket with the hotel logo slung over the back of his chair.
“Tasty,” Alex said, “right on time, as usual.” He smiled back at her, his eyes warm. Normally she wouldn’t have liked the nickname, Tasty-sort-of-rhymes-with-Lacie, but he had a way of saying it that sounded warm instead of dirty. “Hot date?”
“Kickboxing class. Who should be drawn and quartered?”
“That Cayne guy.”
“Who?”
“James Cayne. He was the CEO of Bear Stearns,” Ian said. “It’s a securities firm, the one the Fed just bailed out. They’ve had a lot of trouble lately. The whole subprime mortgage collapse? Started with their hedge funds.”
“Apparently,” Alex said, “while the company was tanking, he was playing in a bridge tournament. Guy’s company is responsible for half of America losing their houses, he’s playing cards.”
“It’s a little more complicated than that.” Ian gave that sharp-edged grin. “There were market forces in play.”
“Hi, Jenn,” Mitch said.
“He should be killed,” Alex said again, pouring a martini from a stainless steel shaker and setting it in front of her. He stabbed three olives with a toothpick shaped like a sword and balanced it across the top. “Line him and that Enron guy, Ken Lay, and the rest of them up against a wall and shoot them.”
“Ken Lay is already dead. Heart attack.”
“OK, well, everybody else from Enron.”
Jenn said, “Bad day?” then laughed when all three of them nodded. “OK. Next round is on me.”
Her mother found it strange, the way her closest friends were guys. She was always asking unsubtle questions about which one Jenn was dating. Hoping it would be Ian, whom she’d never met but had come to believe must be a nice boy, a judgment that had a lot to do with the fact that he worked as a trader.
Jenn had always gotten along fine with women. But her friends, especially as she’d gotten older, they tended to be guys. It wasn’t that she was a tomboy or the perennial little sister or one of those women who talked sex all the time to keep the boys nearby. Somehow, though, as her twenties had slipped into her early thirties, it had gotten harder to have real girlfriends. The married ones retreated into couplehood. The single ones looked over her shoulder every time the door opened, checking the men at the bar, scoping shoes and ring fingers. Wondering if the guy walking in was the one for them, the one who would let them jettison this tedious phase, the single apartment and Christmas with the parents and the fear that they would end up owning cats. Ever hopeful that a cute stranger would spill coffee on them and have just the right line to follow it up. Romantic Comedy Syndrome.
Which was fine, and she wished them luck. They just made for lousy friends, whereas the boys kept things easy. Which was how she ended up here every week, all four of them at the end of the bar. She, Alex, Ian, and Mitch, the Thursday Night Drinking Club. “Which game tonight
?”
“Tonight,” Ian said, “is clearly a Ready-Go night.”
“Why?”
“I’m feeling hypothetical.”
“I feel that way all the time,” she said. “OK. In the spirit of the evening: If you had half a million dollars. Ready, go.”
“Only half?” Ian cocked his eyebrow.
“I’d buy a house,” Alex said. “Nothing fancy, just something with a spare bedroom for Cassie. I think she’d stay with me more often if she had a room of her own. In Lincoln Park so she could walk to the shops, the lake.”
“Somebody hasn’t looked at real-estate prices in a while,” Ian said.
“What?”
“A house in Lincoln Park for a half million?”
“No?” Alex looked genuinely wounded, as though the neighborhood pricing was all that was holding him back. “Huh. All right, a condo. Whatever. How about you?”
“I’d quit the firm. Work from home. Day trade. I could turn that into ten million in no time.”
Alex snorted. “You’d be broke in a week.”
Ian smiled that thin smile again. “Jenn?”
She sipped at her martini, pulled off an olive, chewed it slowly. “Travel.”
“Where would you go?” Mitch leaned forward.
“Everywhere. All the places I book trips for other people. Paris. St. Petersburg. The islands. I’d like to spend a while in the islands. A little cabin on the beach, someplace with screens for walls, where you could hear the ocean day and night. Drink coconut drinks. Live in a bathing suit.” It was strange hearing the words come out of her mouth, like this was a long-held fantasy. Truth was, she hadn’t known what she was going to say until she’d started.
“Sounds nice,” Mitch said.
“Sounds boring,” Ian said. “I’d be out of my head in a week.”
