by Thomas Locke
Don hung up the phone and said, “Mission Control, we have liftoff.”
The three company chiefs stayed on. Enrique spelled his father when the hour arrived to arrange pickups for their new clients. By the time the first trucks left, they had forty-two retailers ready to hand over cash. On a handshake.
Saturday evening, Lena went straight from the exhibition hall to the airport. Don was remaining in Colorado to nail down the paperwork. As she sank into her seat on the flight, she wondered if perhaps she should have asked why he was willing to act against his firm’s interests on this project. But there simply had not been time. And unless the attorney general’s ruling came down in their favor, it really did not matter.
Don phoned her at work Sunday night, his voice reduced to a ragged lisp. “I’ve never seen anything like it. An hour after you left, we actually had one store owner break down and weep.”
“How many clients have you signed?”
“The trucks have made sixty-three pickups.”
“All on the basis of handshake deals.”
“And Preston’s comments from the podium. Having him serve as our spokesperson was a master stroke. Not to mention another seventeen firms that won’t hand over their cash until they get the deal memo. Which I should have ready in a couple of hours.”
“Thanks for backing me.”
“That’s my job.” Don hesitated, then asked, “Something wrong?”
She stared around the junior analysts’ bull pen. Robin had left just before Lena arrived. The seven other analysts were all heads down. At nine thirty on a Sunday evening. “I came back to the same old grind. I don’t know. I guess I expected something different.”
“It is. You just don’t see it yet.”
She turned away from the others and released the worry that had been plaguing her since the retailers swarmed their booth. “What happens when the feds hear about us?”
Don did not reply.
“This thing is so much bigger than I ever expected. We won’t be able to keep the lid on for long. People are bound to talk, and sooner or later Washington will hear.”
“I’m working on that.”
“It better be good, whatever you come up with.” She found it hard to swallow, much less form the words. “How long do we have?”
“Little late to be asking that.” Don seemed unfazed by her worry. “A few weeks would be my guess. Maybe a bit longer if I can work up a smoke screen.”
Lena swiveled back to her workstation and stared at the reams of figures stretched over her three computer screens. Normally she could read them like a good book. “I’m just tired.”
“Leave the worries to me. That’s why I’m here.” Don sounded impossibly cheerful. “Three things. One, we need to set up a daily conference time. Confirm the next one before signing off. What works for you tomorrow?”
She rubbed her face, tried to think. “Let’s go for eleven.”
“Done. Point two, you need to buy a pay-as-you-go phone. Only call me from that, and only to the number I’ll give you when we next speak. Once the feds catch wind of what we’re doing, we have to assume there will be listening ears.”
Fear rose like a gorge once more. “And third?”
“Quit. Give notice. You’re president of a company about to go ballistic.”
Lena silently amended, Unless the feds lock us all up. All she said was, “I’ll think about it.”
Monday morning she arrived at eight forty, the latest she had come in since her first week on the job. The junior analyst bull pen was a hive of frenetic activity. Robin paused long enough to say, “Your job is to analyze risks. Not take them.”
“That was the first decent rest I’ve had in a week.” She slipped into her seat. “Amazing what nine hours’ sleep will do.”
Robin smirked. “So the vacation was that good, huh.”
“It’s not what you think.”
Robin ducked like a turtle slipping into her shell and hissed, “Weasel at eleven o’clock and closing.”
Wesley Cummins stopped where he could loom over Lena. The Weasel was very good at looming. “Fennan. My office. Now.”
Wesley Cummins occupied the seventh-floor southeast corner office. Four windows. A tight glimpse of the Hudson River. Real sunlight. He was head of the bank’s financial services division, the largest component of the mergers and acquisitions department. Some investment bankers considered M&A the unwanted stepchild of the Wall Street giants. Lena had never wanted to work anywhere else. But eleven months of sweating in Wesley’s domain had almost cured her of what before had been her life’s ambition. To be here. Standing in front of a man she had come to truly, genuinely, wholly loathe.
Wesley Cummins was a caricature of the self-obsessed Wall Street executive. Flash suspenders, flash suit, flash haircut, ridiculously overpriced tie. He was tall and would have been good-looking, had it not been for the simple fact that Wesley Cummins survived by being a professional thief. He stole his analysts’ work, stripped away all mention of their names and the hours they had put in making him look good, and refused them permission to even touch the shadows of the banks’ higher-ups. Which meant they had zero job security. They lived and breathed each day at the Weasel’s whim. In the eleven months since her arrival, Lena had learned this was often the fate of junior analysts. Eighteen-hour days, no glory, quick departure. The story was so overtold the survivors treated it as one big yawn.
He bounced in his Italian executive chair of cherrywood and suede as he frowned over her handwritten note. “Did I green-light a vacation?”
Lena did not reply.
“No, I did not. But you went anyway. That’s a firing offense if ever I saw one. Are you interested in staying on at First American, Fennan?”
Lena remained silent.
“You’ve got one chance of hanging on to the end of the week. I’m shooting you five new potential acquisition targets. I want them analyzed by start of business tomorrow.”
“I need more time.”
“You don’t get to ask for more time, Fennan. That’s what it means when you’re—”
“I’ll give you one new analysis each day. That’s it.”
“That’s it? Did I really hear you say that?”
“And I want my name on the reports when you take them upstairs.”
He stared at her like she had grown a new head.
“All reports I deliver from now on.” She wanted to give it more steam. But it just wasn’t in her. The full night’s sleep still held her like a delicious elixir. “I want credit for the work and the hours—”
“Get out of here.”
Lena walked back to her cubicle. Robin greeted her with, “You’re fired?”
“Not today.”
“Why not?”
“I have no idea. I did everything but beg him to give me the ax.” She watched the files pop up on her incoming list. “I told him I wanted credit for my work.”
Robin stared. “Not really.”
“I know, can you believe it?” Lena tasted a smile. “Maybe next time I should tie him to the desk and get out the bullwhip. Maybe then he’d give me the new contract he’s held back for the past ten weeks.”
During their conference call on Tuesday, Don reported the team had signed up one hundred and seven clients. By close of business, the Pueblo State Bank was in possession of more cash than at any point since the recession hit.
When Lena rose before dawn on Wednesday, her first waking thought was the feds were bound to strike. They had grown too big too fast. The other Denver banks had to be complaining by now. The attorney general’s office still had not issued a ruling. Which meant Lena’s group was out there, exposed, swinging in the wind. She could almost hear the jail doors slamming shut.
An hour later, Lena sat in her cubicle, sipping a cup of green tea because her stomach was too knotted to accept anything bitter. “What am I doing here?”
“I’ve been wondering the same thing,” Robin replied. “You’re sur
e not working.”
Lena pointed at her screens. “These numbers might as well be written in Egyptian.”
“Last I checked, Arabic is the lingo in Egypt.”
“There, you see? I knew that! What’s happened to my brain?”
Robin started to quip, then looked farther down the corridor and said, “Weasel.”
Wesley walked over and loomed by Lena’s desk. “Got the report I ordered, Fennan?”
Lena picked up a file she had been working on before Don’s call had come in the previous evening. Since then, she’d done little but worry. She offered the folder without looking up. It was the first time since her arrival in New York that she had offered subpar work.
Wesley accepted the file and said, “Need the others, Fennan. Chop-chop.”
Thursday morning, Lena was working with Robin through a mass of data sent in by a new prospective client. The client was a financial services company who was interested in being acquired. Actually, interested did not describe the company’s attitude. They were beyond desperate. In reply to Lena’s request for financial data, they had sent sixty-three boxes of files. Lena suspected the data dump was intended to mask a fatal flaw. Which only made her angry. And when Lena was angry, she attacked numbers like a ferret.
Lena did not even hear her phone’s chime until Robin said, “Your purse is ringing.”
“I don’t have a purse.”
“Purse, case, bag, whatever. Answer it.”
Lena lifted out the phone she had purchased at Don’s insistence. “Yes?”
“Where are you?”
“The bank.”
“Go outside. Call me back.”
“Actually, now isn’t—” But Don was already gone.
Lena sat there staring at the phone, feeling the fear she had carried constantly ever since returning from Denver congeal. Don sounded worried. Frantic. Which could only mean one thing. She forced herself to rise from the chair.
“Was that your vacation man?” Robin’s voice carried a knowing smirk. “He makes you buy a special phone? He’s got to be married.”
“He’s not my guy.” Lena’s voice sounded metallic to her own ears.
“Hope he knows that.”
It was raining when she arrived downstairs. Lena rushed down the street until she found a canopy not already occupied by smokers and hit speed dial.
Don answered instantly with, “We have an issue.”
“How bad?”
“Too early to tell. The Denver Post contacted Preston at the bank’s Pueblo headquarters. He turned the reporters over to me. I’m stalling, but it won’t last long. The reporter knows too much for us to stay under the radar. We’re front-page news.”
Her gut felt filled with frigid concrete. “The reporter has been fed data by one of Preston’s competitors.”
“Preston thinks the same. Still nothing from Washington, right?”
“Not a peep. I’m checking every twenty minutes.” She watched the rain form a liquid curtain off the canopy’s edge. “What a mess.”
“Don’t panic just yet. I’ve been working my own sources.” When she did not respond, he asked, “Are you paying attention?”
“With every fiber of my being,” Lena replied.
“Okay, it looks like the AG is preparing to act. Generally major issues like this one are preceded by some quiet nudges, just letting the markets know well in advance. My gut tells me this is happening.”
“Are you sure?”
Don remained patient. “Of course not. But it’s more than a hunch. I’ve been at this game a long time, remember. Call it a seventy percent certainty.”
She took a breath of the damp air, tasted diesel and the electric thrill of another chance. “Don, this is great.”
He held to the same calm steadiness. “I’m glad you like it. Now listen. The reporter is bound to be calling. You need to stay cool and refuse to respond. Don’t hang up, don’t run. Just don’t give them any more ammunition.”
Lena knew she needed to return to the bank. The analysis she and Robin were working on was due that evening. She had no idea whether the deal actually carried such a short fuse or if it was just the Weasel’s standard hassles. In either case, she couldn’t leave Robin hanging. But she needed a moment. Lena turned up Wall Street and walked to Trinity Church. She entered the cool shadows and slipped into a pew. Her first week in New York, she had hunted down four such havens, places close enough for her to escape momentarily and just breathe.
She did not think things through. She simply sat and felt the electric tension vibrate through her body. She had no idea what to say to the press. She had never spoken to a reporter in her life. She couldn’t say whether Don’s idea would work. She needed to call her investors and give them an update. She needed another night’s sleep. She needed a week away.
The rainstorm passed, and the church’s western wall turned honey-colored in the sunlight. Lena emerged from the church, crossed the street, and rejoined the frenetic pace of Wall Street.
Fifty yards from the bank’s entrance, her phone rang. Not the one she’d bought for Don. Her real phone. Her lifeline. This too was supposed to be an unlisted number, one she shared with family and a few close friends. But that meant nothing. She checked the readout and saw the number was blocked. She knew it had to be the reporter, and she still wasn’t ready. She answered anyway. Waiting wouldn’t help. “Yes?”
“Is this Lena Fennan?”
“Who is calling?”
“Ms. Fennan, this is Charley Farlow.”
“Is this a joke?”
“No ma’am, it most certainly is not. I’m calling to talk a deal. And folks will tell you I don’t joke about deal-making. I understand that’s something we have in common. A lack of humor when it comes to numbers. I assume you know who I am.”
“Of course I do.” Charles Farlow had run his operation out of Atlanta for years, where he owned several cable networks. Back in the early nineties Farlow had invested in supposedly played-out Colorado mines, and then watched the price of gold go through the roof. Over the next dozen years, Farlow went from being seriously rich to being one of the nation’s ten wealthiest men. “That is, if you’re really who you say you are.”
He chuckled. “I admit, going through a half-dozen layers would make this appear more legitimate. But I don’t have the time. My jet’s over at Teterboro revving its engines. I’ve got a meeting tonight back in Denver. If we’re doing this deal, it’s got to be now.”
“You want . . .” Her brain was still too busy doing the hamster routine, spinning its mental wheel, to fully register. “You’re here?”
“Tower suite, Waldorf Astoria. Why don’t you head on over, see for yourself how real I am.”
7
The same driver who had brought Reese from the prison to the motel returned with bags containing clothes. The room’s directory had menus from a dozen different local restaurants. Reese took exquisite pleasure in ordering meals whenever it suited her, eating breakfast at midnight and dessert at nine in the morning. Each bite took her one step further from the rigid blandness of prison time.
Reese took repeated showers, reveling in the clean water and the privacy. She had almost forgotten how exquisite it felt to have a door lock on her side of the world. She positioned the table so she could stare out the front window, fascinated by the view. The parking lot fed onto a busy main road. Reese studied the people and the cars and the freedom they all took for granted. She did not mind being cooped up. She needed time to transit out of the prison mentality.
Whenever she grew restless, Reese pushed the beds together and used the free space for her workout routine. She punched the air and she ran in place and she held to the same tight internal zone that had gotten her through so much. Mostly, though, she read and she thought and she planned.
On the seventh morning after her release, Vera and Jack collected her in the same black Escalade. Neither of them spoke to Reese during the hour-long drive to a private airs
trip. A needle-nosed Learjet 85 was parked at the end of the single runway. The midsized business jet had been introduced by Bombardier in 2007 and immediately gained its share of fans and critics among the ultrarich. The Lears were narrow and low-ceilinged compared to similar-priced Gulfstreams. But the Lears could land on a dime, and even this larger version required just three thousand feet for takeoff. But the real advantage to Lears were their engines. Lears popped to full speed in a heartbeat and had the force to smash their passengers deep into the plush leather seats. Fans of Lears referred to them as the Ferraris of the skies. A new Lear 85 had a range of three thousand nautical miles and cost seventeen million dollars. In a former life, Reese had counted such information as vital.
“Stay here,” Vera ordered, and rose from the vehicle.
The driver watched the pilot emerge from the jet and salute Vera. “She wasn’t kidding, you know. You get this wrong, I’m tasked with sending you away for good.”
“The lady,” Reese replied, “did not strike me as a kidder.”
The driver studied her in the rearview mirror. “Me and the guys, we’re taking bets on how long you last. I was feeling generous. I gave you another forty-eight hours.”
When Vera signaled to her, Reese gripped the briefcase, opened her door, slid out, then said through the driver’s open window, “I’d tell you to have a word with the others who bet against me in the past. But none of them are breathing.”
Her clothes were one size too large, an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt and linen cargo pants with a cloth tie. Cork-soled sandals. Reese spent the flight leafing through the files she had memorized and staring at the clouds. The sun’s position told her they were headed south. The flight lasted just under three hours. Vera worked her BlackBerry and did not speak. Twice Reese ate sandwiches from a tray in the plane’s galley. The restless stirring in her gut was a silent alarm. She was missing something important. But she found an odd comfort in the fact that her sensors were still working at all.
