Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street (35 page)

At that moment, Warren had $206,000 in his bank account. That represented his life savings, mostly from his bonus last year and commissions after he had laid out a $100,000 down payment to buy his apartment. By a rough calculation, he expected close to a million dollars in his January check, less about $450,000 for taxes, even if Malcolm shafted him on the business he’d been doing without a formalized payout scale. As a team player, he knew that it would be bad form to bring formalizing this up until after bonuses were paid. The firm usually notified all employees of their bonuses between Christmas and New Year’s and paid out in the first week of January. Tensions were building around the floor for the traders and finance people, who, unlike salesmen, were not on commission and were paid according to management’s whim. Bonuses were generally 70 to 90 percent of a person’s pay for the year. Warren felt the tension of uncertainty, and marveled that traders could survive the stress of a subjective bonus every year.

Warren knew that, just on his account base before Dougherty’s death, his second-half commissions were over $500,000 even if he got nothing else. He’d done much more than that with the new accounts since. The $12,000 didn’t seem so daunting. He slipped a $5 bill in the cup of a panhandler on the way to meet the car to the airport and wished him a Merry Christmas.

forty-two

American flight 63 landed right on time. Warren had the driver pull the sedan up to the baggage-claim exit and went to wait at the gate. He took the driver’s sign with him and wrote out
KENSETT
in big block letters. Sam was the second one off the plane, after a nervous-looking Harrison Ford, and smiled at the sign. She was wearing tight black jeans and a big white shirt, with a small duffel bag in one hand and a navy officer’s blue dress coat on her shoulders. Her boots made her even height with Warren. He grabbed her around the waist and gave her a long hug, which she returned, with a short kiss, as other passengers bumped past them.

She told him that she had checked one bag, and they strolled arm in arm downstairs to the carousel. The flight had been okay, and she watched the movie. The guy next to her had tried to pick her up, and she’d tried to pick up Harrison Ford. Both failed, she said, sad to report. Warren smiled.

Her bag came out quickly, and they were in the car within twenty minutes of her landing. Warren went from being apprehensive about seeing her to complete comfort. She was relaxed, and it put him at his ease.

“I think it was the Bloody Marys that did it,” she said when Warren remarked she didn’t seem the worse for wear. “I just love that Mr and Mrs T. mix. I think I had four of them. I wanted to get my money’s worth. I had the steak, which was okay, and a hot-fudge sundae, and one of those little bottles of Kahlúa. Did you eat?”

“Yeah, I did. At twelve o’clock.” Warren hadn’t even thought about dinner—he’d been preoccupied. He had noticed Sam had a penchant for reciting menus.

“You hungry?” She slipped her hand around his waist and curled up against him.

“Hey, I can always eat.” He turned toward her, and she met him in a long kiss. “Mmm. It’s good to see you,” he whispered in her ear.

“And it’s good to be seen.”

“That’s warm. That’s loving.” She nudged him in the ribs. Warren thought to himself things were going their way. The ironically named Van Wyck Expressway had actually been moving, a major miracle, and the Grand Central Parkway was wide-open, the traffic light, three smooth lanes leading to the shimmering city.

*   *   *

“Doesn’t it strike you as strange?” The light was streaming in through the tall French windows, the view of Central Park South crystal clear in the crisp, cold air. Sam was sitting on top of the covers, with a plate of toaster waffles and syrup on her lap, eating them with sticky fingers. They had spent the night getting reacquainted physically, and they were both happily fatigued, having slept in until mid-morning.

“A little, I guess. But this is New York. People get killed here all the time. Whole families get caught in the cross fire. It was just a coincidence.” Warren was leaning back against the headboard, his arms behind his neck, taking in the view. Sam’s dark hair was tousled, her long legs showing from underneath the Rangers T-shirt he’d lent her. Her angular features caught the sun, and Warren felt for a moment a desperate loneliness, almost a panic at the thought that she hadn’t been here yesterday, and that there might be a time when she was not here again.

“Yeah, but have you even known one person who’s been killed before? Now
two
in a few months? Hey, maybe you’re next.” She pointed a maple-coated finger at him and shot him in mime.

“No, not really.” Warren reached out and smoothed her hair, and his eyes met hers. She smiled at him, and didn’t look away. “Funny, there were two girls in school at Columbia who died in accidents, but Anson was a son of a bitch. Dougherty was a good guy. That was sad. At least he had a lot of insurance, though. Evidently that’s big with the Irish.” Warren sat forward and plucked a corner of waffle from the plate. “Besides, why would anybody bother killing investment bankers? Usually, if there’s going to be genocide based on financials, it’s the Jews who go first. I mean, you didn’t see Hitler herding the Hapsburgs out of the Deutschebank.”

“What is it with you Jews? If someone else gets killed, you figure it was a mistake, and they were aiming for you. It’s like there’s a Holocaust in every closet.” She was waving a waffle in the air for emphasis.

“Uh-oh. Do I detect a little of the fascist in you? This could be it! I always had a thing for Mussolini. Great outfits! He did the same thing with his food. Waved it around and ate with his hands. And you’ve got a similar figure. Better hair. I think I’ll call you Il Duce.” Warren ducked as the waffle came whistling at his cheek. He grabbed Sam’s hand and brought the waffle back to his mouth. He ate it slowly, then licked the syrup off each of her fingers, working his way up her arm to her neck. “You have beautiful hands, did you know that?”

“Yuk. Your lips are all gooey.” She made a halfhearted attempt to push him away. He resisted and got her plate onto the night table before he pushed her back onto the bed and started searching under her T-shirt for where she had hidden the other waffles.

*   *   *

They didn’t make it out of Warren’s apartment until almost noon. The sun made them squint as they went through the front door. Warren still managed to catch Angelo’s glance as the doorman sized Sam up with an appraiser’s eye. Invariably, Warren would get a critique the next time he passed through the lobby alone. His building only had doormen on duty from 8:00 a.m. to midnight, so he had to remember to get Sam a key for the lobby door.

Warren’s two front rooms each had small balconies with planting boxes, which he had filled for the winter with ivy and miniature evergreens. He’d taken his first vacation from Weldon and spent a long weekend days furnishing the rooms in an eclectic collection of French country antiques mixed with Biedermeier and art deco pieces from antique stores in Brooklyn and Greenwich Village. His mother had always told him the way to make a room interesting was to blend periods and styles. Larisa had designed the curtains, which had been sewn and hung by a frail Argentinian gentleman who ran a tiny workshop on upper Amsterdam Avenue. His prices had been unbelievably reasonable, but he was so nervous that Warren had given him a glass of brandy to calm him down halfway through the day he spent putting them up.

Sam had complimented him on the décor, as it was unusual for a young, single guy to invest in anything more complicated than a sectional sofa and a couple of posters. She singled out the curtains, and the care taken in picking fabrics. Larisa had spent three days in the Decorators and Designers building obsessing over moiré silks, velvets, and the like, bringing him dozens of swatches, settling on an art deco printed velvet. He had thanked Sam for the compliment and shamelessly took full credit.

They hailed a taxi on the corner and headed east, through the roadway that cut across Central Park and emerged just south of the Metropolitan Museum. From there, they turned down Fifth Avenue. They both had some last-minute Christmas shopping to do. Warren had suggested Bergdorf Goodman as a likely source of gifts for her family, and he had to get something for his dad.

The store was bustling, but Warren found the layout confusing. In the small men’s department, Sam picked out six pairs of boxer shorts with silly, colorful designs, two each for her father and uncles, and Warren was split between a heavy pigskin suede duffel coat and a brown leather polo bag. The overly helpful salesman was pushing him toward the bag, but Warren finally opted for the coat. The price was almost breathtaking, $1,200, but it was an awfully nice coat. He’d already sent his mother a handbag from Bottega Veneta.

Before they left, Warren wanted to look at some suits. They went up in the elevator, to a part of the floor divided into a dozen small niches, each representing a single designer. Warren recognized some of the names from Goering’s clothes. After five minutes, he told Sam it was time to go. He hadn’t seen a single item under $1,300. “It may be the 1980s,” he’d said to Sam, “but those prices are just crazy.”

Outside, in the cold air, Sam realized she was hungry again.

“Isn’t it a bit late for lunch?” He felt as if he’d hardly digested the waffles.

“Lunch, dinner, who cares? C’mon, what’s good around here?” Sam waved with an expansive gesture. Warren noticed that she started moving her hands a lot when it was feeding time.

“I dunno. Whaddaya want?” He shrugged his shoulders. Picking a restaurant in New York was impossible. There were simply too many to choose from.

“Oh, anything. Maybe seafood. Clams. Shellfish. Whatever.” Her eyes half glazed over, and Warren imagined for a moment that little lobsters were floating in her eyes, like in the cartoons.

“Anything, as long as it comes in a shell?” Warren asked, picking up the scent.

“Yeah. Salty, maybe even briny. You know. That’s what I want.” She hugged his arm.

“How about the Oyster Bar right over there at the Plaza?” Warren pointed a gloved finger across the street at the famous hotel. “They have oyster pan roasts, you know.”

“That sounds yummie. Okay!” The pair made their way across Fifty-Eighth Street to the side entrance to the restaurant. The dark walnut paneling, bright lighting, and red leather banquettes hadn’t changed in almost a hundred years, since the days when men would think nothing of quaffing two dozen oysters and two or three pints of beer before a serious eight- or nine-course dinner. Sam ordered only one dozen Cotuits and a bottle of Sam Adams, to be followed by a half dozen littlenecks, an oyster pan roast, and finally by a plate of snow-crab legs. Warren had a dozen littlenecks and asked if she’d share her pan roast. She looked a little crestfallen, but agreed.

“Let me ask you something,” Warren started as she inhaled the fifth oyster and took a pull of beer. “Do you always eat like this? How do you stay so thin?” He’d also ordered a crabmeat cocktail and a cup of clam chowder.

“I like to eat. No, I don’t really put on weight, unless I go to town. Hey, once, in Austria, on a trip for work, I put on twelve pounds. I got hooked on buttercream. I think I had it on toast and maybe even on fish. It was this incredible stuff they had in their cakes. I had to dry out for a week or two when I got back. I did the same thing once with my ex-boyfriend.” She jabbed a tiny fork into another oyster, then changed her mind and just sucked it down.

“Ex-boyfriend, eh? And here I thought I was your first man.” Warren smiled and took a sip of his beer.

“Oh, maybe my first
real
man. Yeah, he turned out to be a cretin. Stole almost all my money.” She put down the shell. “That really was not a great moment.”

“I thought you said your business manager took your money?” Warren was confused. “Was this a habit with the men in your life?”

“No. They were the same. He was my boyfriend. Or so I thought. Told me he had a Harvard MBA. Put me into offshore hedge funds, leveraged buyouts, blah, blah, blah. They were all phony. Except the car dealership. Took about a million bucks. Six hard years of modeling, a house I bought and sold, two commercials, and a sitcom. Hey, but he nailed some Hollywood big shots for some pretty good dough too, so it wasn’t just me.”

“Oh, yeah, like who?” Warren was interested in gossip, though he denied it.

“Well, for one, this big, hotshot lawyer who represents all the singers and supposedly does these big deals, but actually just bails them out of trouble and helps supply them with drugs and chicks. She’s married to this sleazeball art dealer. He used my boyfriend to sell me some bogus painting for eighty-five thousand bucks that was worth maybe ten, but who knew? He was selling stuff to these idiot studio heads for millions. They used to drive everywhere in this Rolls convertible, each of them talking on their own fancy car phone. So when Artie screwed them out of five hundred thousand, I didn’t feel so bad about it. Uggh.” Sam had finished the oysters and was working on the littlenecks. “These are good. Really cold and sweet. Want one?” She held the pinkish bivalve under Warren’s nose.

He detested the slimy creatures unless they were cooked to a cardboard consistency. “No, no thanks. Well, I’m glad to see your experience hasn’t hardened you at all.” He looked the other way as she chewed the clam.

“C’mon. What about you? You think these are fun people I’m talking about? In
your
business? The world’s full of them. It doesn’t mean you have to be one of them, but it pays to know what you’re dealing with. I wish I had a lot earlier.” She put her beer mug down on the table with a bang. “Some people want to screw you in every possible way.”

“I don’t think I’m naïve. Hardly. I just think you’ve gotta look for the best in people rather than the worst. My dad always said he tried to find one thing to like in everyone.”

“A noble idea. Most people do find one thing to like in everyone. Their hand in your pocket.” She had made short work of the creamy pan roast—Warren had managed to spear only two bites before it ws gone—and was already halfway through the crab claws, picking the meat out expertly with the fork. “Could you wave him down and get me another beer?”