The Best American Mystery Stories 2008

Stephen Rhodes At the Top of His Game

From Wall Street Noir

On the day they conspire to put a bullet in my head, I experience an epiphany.

My epiphany is this: a fourteen-year career on Wall Street wears away at your soul, as assuredly as a stream against limestone. It pushes you to a place where you don’t fully recognize who you are, or how you got here. Everyone around you becomes a stranger, including — no, especially your own wife. Working sixteen-hour days in those glistening glass towers in Manhattan, engaging in mortal combat with some of the planet’s brightest and most power-obsessed bastards who have trained their full concentration on destroying you and stealing the business you’ve built up over the years — well, it hardens you. Wall Street eats its young, and today the beast has a particular appetite for a certain thirty-six-year-old maverick with seventy-eight people reporting to him (which would be me).

So today they plan to execute me. How do I know this? Well, last night at 9:30 P.M., an urgent BlackBerry message instructed me to report to Howard Ranieri’s office at 7:30 A.M. sharp for a mandatory meeting. That particular e-mail was no surprise; a head’s-up had come from a friend in HR that my employment would be terminated during this impromptu meeting.

My response: Bring it on, jerkweed. Bring it on.

Ranieri is now more than forty minutes late for his own meeting. Typical move for this passive-aggressive, hair-challenged, beer-gutted, no-talent clown. I should mention that Ranieri is my co-head in the Equity Structured Products group.

Outside Ranieri’s office, the phones on the trading floor twitter relentlessly. This morning, Goldman Sachs has issued a dire report on certain Latin American economies. As a result, the overseas financial markets are getting walloped.

The twentysomething stress-addicts that populate the trading floor gaze into their Bloomberg screens seeking divine guidance. I hear the voices of my people reporting losses in the overseas markets like breathless wartime correspondents witnessing heavy casualties from the front lines. The Footsie is getting whacked, hammered, slammed, smashed, crushed, drilled, smoked, spanked, roasted, sewered, bashed. Beaten like a redheaded stepchild, clubbed like a baby seal. Boom boom, out go the lights.

Ranieri’s tardiness is driving me to distraction. It’s Friday, for chrissakes. I’ve got a dinner party at the Honeywells’ tonight. And I’ve got a wife who may have been cheating with a kickboxing instructor for God knows how long. Do I really need to have Ranieri playing with my head in the moments before he gleefully fires me?

Abruptly, Howie breezes through the door of his office. “Sparky, glad to see you’re here,” he burbles as if he’s five minutes late for a tennis game. “I’m really truly sorry about this, but—”

“No, you’re not.”

“Come again?”

I pronounce each syllable slowly. “I said, ‘No, you’re not.’ Meaning, no, you are not sorry. You are the polar opposite of sorry. You kept me waiting on purpose.”

“Touché, Sparky.” Ranieri’s laugh is a brutish grunt. “Maybe you’re kind of right about that.”

“Not a problem. I passed the time by reading all your e-mails.”

Ranieri inspects me to see whether I’m serious, but my poker face is inscrutable. Backatcha, jerkweed.

“Anyhoo,” Ranieri says with narrowed eyes, “let’s move on to the reason we’re here. You know Brian, I presume.”

I turn around and see Brian Horgan, a VP from HR, skulking in the doorway, craving invisibility. Brian is a good guy in my book; he was the one who gave me the head’s-up about this meeting. I take note of the thick Redweld tucked under his arm — my personnel file, no doubt.

“Um, good morning, Mark.” The poor bastard winces as he says this. It’s obvious this is anything but.

“Of course I know Brian,” I say breezily. “We’ve worked together for what... six years?”

“Yeah, six years,” he confirms. “Six long years recruiting the best structured products group on the Street, from the ground up.”

Ranieri steers the conversation away from my accomplishments. “Well then, I hope we can make this as pleasant as possible for everyone concerned. Given your contribution to the firm, we’ve moved heaven and earth to be generous.” Translation: You need to sign this piece of paper promising not to sue us, or you walk away with nothing for fourteen years of service

I wheel around to my friend from HR. “Your work is done here, Brian.”

“It is?” There is a look of palpable relief on Brian Horgan’s face.

“Go back to your office, check your e-mail for further instructions.”

Ranieri erupts. “Just what the hell are you trying to pull—”

“It’s not my doing. Sanderson has taken an interest in this—”

“Bullshit. He’s in Hong Kong.”

“Exactly. And Sanderson says stand down. Nothing is to happen until he returns to London on Monday.”

Ranieri scrutinizes me. “Does Becker know about this?”

“Why would that matter?”

Ranieri scowls venomously, then wheels his Herman Miller Aeron chair over to his flat-panel computer screen. His lips move as he reads the fresh e-mail from Sanderson. Then he slams his open palm on the surface of his desk. “Sonuvabitch!”

I turn to Horgan. “Like I was saying. Until this gets sorted out, you’re free to go.”

Ranieri grumbles with a dismissive wave. “Whatever.”

With a surreptitious wink, Brian Horgan reassembles the file and departs.

My co-head makes a big show of closing the door and sealing us off from the rest of the trading floor. “Swift move, asshole. You knew I was leaving for Barcelona with my family tonight, didn’t you?”

“Guess you’ll just have to postpone your victory dance.”

“Maybe...” Ranieri regards me with a feral leer, “but you can postpone the inevitable only so long, Sparky.”

I lean back and give him a smile that’s... well, yes, call it self-satisfied. “Let’s recap, shall we? Four months ago, you pull some strings in London with Ian Becker — your Harvard roommate — to conjure up some do-nothing job that suggests to senior management that you’re not utterly useless. Lucky me: Since I happen to drive the lion’s share of revenue in the U.S., Becker drop-kicks you into my sandbox as a co-head. Says you’ve got a lot to learn and you’re ‘here to help.’ Instead, what happens? You steal my ideas, my team, my business, my revenues. You systematically bad-mouth me to Becker and the rest of senior management as ‘redundant’ and ‘not a team player.’ You and Becker wait for my mentor to be incommunicado somewhere so you can pull this lame-ass coup d’état.” I shake my head in disgust. “You’re not even worth keeping around to order lunch for my people.”

Ranieri leans back calmly. “On the one hand, screw you for messing up my vacation. At the same time, I commend you for pulling off that last-minute clemency from the powers that-be. Very creative.” A slow smile spreads across his face. “But guess what? Turns out your guy is getting a bullet to the head himself from senior management. So looks like we have a do-over first thing Monday morning.”

“We done here?”

“For now.”

“Good.” I bolt upright and regard my mortal enemy with utter contempt. “You’ll excuse me, I’m going to go back to the desk and make some money. I’ll leave you to whatever it is you do all day.”

Bite me, jerkweed. And I’m out of there.

Moments later, I experience an emotional cocktail of mild embarrassment and genuine euphoria when the entire derivatives trading floor erupts in a standing ovation. On the Street, information is the ultimate commodity, and the news that I survived Ranieri’s savage assassination attempt causes spasms of joy among the all-star team I’ve assembled.

“Okay, okay, all right!” I shout over the sustained applause, whistles, and catcalls. “A for effort, but this show of loyalty won’t necessarily have a favorable impact on year-end bonuses.”

The cheering tapers off into an admixture of laughter and mock boos. I hear a muffled thud behind me as an apoplectic Ranieri kicks his office door shut. I love these people. Love them.

“All right, people, show’s over. Let’s pump it up and make some money for the Brothers.”

As if a switch is turned on, the trading floor becomes electrified, crackling with high-voltage activity. The discordant brays of traders fill my ears:

“I’m choking on micro-gamma decay on my long-vol position, and unless they rally I’m gonna be achin’ like there’s no tomorrow—”

“Johnny Meyer, pick up the double-donuts!”

“I called Tommy at DB for a chinstrap in the double-Monday nasty; the bid’s gone to a bad neighborhood—”

“I took the bid up a noogie from 10.2 to 10.25 and oh-fived a sweet-one pick-off of the crowd. Am I a hammer or what?”

This is in my blood, the thrill and agony of trading derivative securities. There’s no Betty Ford clinic for this addiction, nor would I voluntarily twelve-step myself away from this high. Come Monday, if Ranieri succeeds in taking this world away from me, I will wish him a particularly painful strain of testicular cancer.

I slide into the Aeron chair at my trading turret. “Morning, Terri. Any news on your mom?”

“She’s getting much better, thanks for asking.” My assistant is Terri Aronica, a sweet-natured girl from Staten Island. Her freckled presence on the trading floor is akin to a gazelle amongst lions, so I’m highly protective of her. In return, her loyalty is beyond question. “She’s coming out of the hospital this weekend.”

“Good. That’s great to hear.” I try to sound casual. “Hey, listen, Compliance is all over me to do my semi-annual supervisory thing. Can you pull all the personal trading records of Howard Ranieri for the last two years? And tell the back office I need it over the weekend.”

“Sure thing.” When Terri says it’s a sure thing, I know she means it.

It is six hours later, and I’m mentally composing my resignation announcement. It’s customary on Wall Street to extend the courtesy of ghostwriting the memo announcing one’s involuntary departure, but I’m finding little joy in my imaginings.

Having escaped the offices of Fischer Brothers, I’m on the 4:36 p.m. Metro-North train out of Grand Central to Greenwich. I’m unaccustomed to the brightness that floods the filthy confines of the bar car; for over a decade, my profession has required me to keep coal miner’s hours. I’ve rarely left the office before nightfall. Still, I’m somewhat surprised that the bar car is so well-populated. Must be advertising types.

With their game faces off, the commuters look positively miserable. They are die-hard junior execs with their eyes still on the prize, feverishly making love to their BlackBerries and Dell Inspirons and Motorola RAZRs. I make my way up to the bar.

“Two Absoluts in a cup, straight, wedge of lime.”

Just as I get my cocktail, the train pitches suddenly to the left, and someone collides with me, nearly upending my double shot.

A striking blond girl in a pastel sundress murmurs an apology around a dazzling smile. “So sorry.”

I’m taken aback. This is a radiant burst of genuine friendliness, and I have an instant attraction to this girl — and not all of it sexual. It’s more that she seems a beacon of positive energy on a suddenly very hostile planet. She makes me think of lemon meringue pie.

“It was my fault, actually,” I offer.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter much either way, does it?” The girl holds my eyes for a moment while I try to place the accent. Australian, I guess, with the vanishing r’s. I’m intrigued.

“My name’s Mark,” I say, surprised at my own cojones.

“Fiona.”

“Ah. Can I get you a drink, Fiona? A Coke?”

“I’d much prefer a Foster’s, actually. With a vodka chaser.” With that, Fiona flips open her cell phone to smile-and-dial.

When I return with the drinks, I tune in to bits of her conversation. It is peppered with an exotic slang, putting me in mind of A Clockwork Orange.

“It’s choice... That’s spot-on... Did you dip-out for a moment? What a complete saddo she turned out to be... Ah, Viv, Ranieri can be such a drongo sometimes.”

Ranieri. Could it be?

And now I realize I’ve seen her somewhere before — on the trading floor, maybe...? Fiona accepts the shot and the beer and slugs down four quick throatfuls — we have a party girl here.

“Kia ora, baby” she says. She snaps the cell phone shut and turns to me. “That was my mate Vivica. She’s my cozziebro. I trust her with my deepest secrets.” Fiona hoists her beer in a toast. “Thanks for your kindness. I’m not used to that, especially in New York.”

“It’s nothing really. Are you from Australia?”

“Australia? How insulting.”

“I didn’t mean any offense—”

“No worries. I’m from New Zealand originally. But for the last year, I’ve lived in Greenwich.”

“I live in Greenwich also.” I struggle to sound casual. “I couldn’t help hearing the name Ranieri. Would that happen to be Howard Ranieri?”

“Yes,” she says in amazement. “I live with Mr. Ranieri.”

“You what?”

She choke-laughs, and a geyser of imported beer spews forth, making her laugh even harder. “That came out completely wrong. His family, I should say, I live with his family. I’m an au pair. The Ranieris are my host family in America.”

Ranieri’s au pair! This makes perfect sense — the trophy nanny to go with the trophy wife. It was all Ranieri.

“And you just dropped his children off in the city.”

“Right,” she says.

“At Fischer Brothers. For the family vacation in Spain.”

“Which got canceled, thank you very much, and screws up all our plans. Wait a minute — how did you know that...?” Her voice trails off as she tries to decide whether I’m a clairvoyant or a stalker.

“So happens I work with Howard Ranieri.”

“Bloody hell!” With a mock-naughty face, she hides the beer behind her back and giggles. “Don’t tell him you bought me a beer. He’ll flip out.”

“Deal,” I say conspiratorially. “That is, if you tell me what you meant when you called Ranieri a drongo.”

Fiona draws in a sharp breath. “Ah, yes. A drongo. Well, the American equivalent, I guess, would be dickhead.”

I double over in laughter. Things are definitely looking up.

So, for the next forty minutes I’m treated to a private performance of Fiona Hensleigh’s one-woman off-Broadway show that might well be titled The Greenwich Nanny.

She riffs animatedly about her adventures since being plucked from Christschurch, New Zealand and plunked down in Greenwich, Connecticut, U.S.A., the very vortex of history’s most excessive bull market. And she dissects the archetypes of the Connecticut Gold Coast in deliciously bitchy detail: the beauty-shop-addicted, Prada-obsessed prima donnas, whose sense of entitlement is without limitation; the insecure, cigar-smoking Master-of-the-Universe wannabes, whose self-worth is measured by the girth of their Range Rovers; and their worshipped, fretted-over, unlovely offspring, spoiled beyond belief and taught at the youngest age that viral disrespect for authority is a virtue.

As Fiona speaks, I’m picturing the Ranieri household, and it’s a fascinating insight into my rival’s secret world. Mrs. Ranieri, apparently, is something of a bitch on ice. And Ranieri himself is no candidate for sainthood, prone to moodiness and shouting matches with his better half. I bide my time, awaiting an angle, a vulnerability to use against my blood enemy. Fiona tantalizes me with the possibility that she has some juicy tidbits about Ranieri that she wants to share, but she doesn’t trust me enough to give up the goods. Smart girl.

Now, I cannot say this with absolute certainty (for I am admittedly out of practice in such things), but I think this Fiona Hensleigh finds me attractive. There is a certain tilt of her face, a certain way she lets the gleaming wisps of her blond hair tumble over her eye. Then, in an instant of startling clarity, I suddenly realize how the distance between our bodies has shrunk. A chill prickles my skin with each incidental contact between Unless this is purely my imagination — and I’m willing to concede it might be — there is an unmistakable electricity between me and Ranieri’s nanny.

Fiona is telling me how much she misses some dreadful-sounding Kiwi delicacies — Minties, Jaffas, Moro bars, Wattie’s tomato sauce, and Vegemite — when the Old Greenwich train station rolls into view.

“My station,” I say, and feel a genuine pang of regret that this encounter is coming to an end.

“Well, it was very nice talking with you, Mark.”

“Likewise, Fiona.” I offer my hand and the New Zealander’s equivalent of aloha. “Kia ora.”

She glances at my wedding band, then locks up my eyes with hers. “And what about tonight?”

Flustered, I manage: “Tonight? What about it?”

“We were planning to have a piss-up at Chez Ranieri, but now it looks like it’s moving to the beach. You ought to pop on by.”

“A piss-up?” I stand immobilized as other commuters pour around us to the platform. Pressed up against me, her breath is warm on my cheek, and sweet with the tang of lager. One Night Only — The Nanny’s Ball — Live at Greenwich Point Beach. The thought of me in the midst of a gaggle of out-of-control drunken au pairs? Tempting, but a tad self-destructive. “That’s not in the cards, Fiona. I’ve got a dinner party I’m obligated to attend.”

She rolls her eyes in a deliciously feminine way. “Oh, I’m that will be loads more fun than our ten-kegger.”

“Ten-kegger, huh?”

“Anyway, you change your mind, come by the beach?”

“Yeah. I’ll keep it in mind.” I walk off the train backwards, nearly stumbling into a heap on the platform. They say crack cocaine is instantly addictive. I totally get the concept.

Okay, I know this is sick, but I’m in tell-all mode, so here goes: My BlackBerry has been programmed to tally up the number of days Susan and I have gone without having sex.

It tells me we’re at seventy-eight days and counting.

Wait, there’s more: Just recently, I have discovered that my wife is also surreptitiously keeping track of this ignoble hitless streak. She pencils tick marks into the kitchen calendar, and by her count, we’ve been on the sex wagon for seventy-seven days straight.

I own up to it: The demise of our relationship is mostly my fault. My struggle with Ranieri over the last months has turned me into someone other than the person she wed in sickness and health so many years ago. And her infertility problems have weighed heavily on us for even longer. In our calibrated attempts to conceive, we’ve followed to the letter the clinical manner in which teams of doctors have instructed us to copulate, and have spent the last thirty-six months not so much making love, as conducting laboratory experiments.

It’s taken its toll.

To wit, I’m convinced that Susan no longer loves me. I suspect she is in love with at least one, if not two others in the Greenwich vicinity, and I often lay awake nights going over likely candidates. Is it Adam, the wacky New Age martial arts expert at her yoga center on the Post Road, the kid with bad teeth who teaches her Tae Bo and promises to launch her on a spiritual journey to discover her inner self? Is it Dr. Lauren, the collagen-lipped lesbian physician who wears no undergarments when she prescribes migraine treatments at Norwalk Hospital? It could be both, I suppose, or neither. Maybe we’ve just encountered one of those rough patches that couples therapists are always going on about. One of those things we’re supposed to traverse together, before the next phase of our lifelong partnership.

The appearance of Peter I. Tortola’s name in my check-book register suggests otherwise.

This Friday night, I find my wife in the small childless bedroom designated as the Quiet Room. My wife is strikingly pretty, even as the chiseled angles of her face are softening with time, but just now she’s an unsettling sight in the darkened room. Susan has an ice pack swirled over her forehead and eyes. On the bureau next to the trundle bed, a spent EpiPen and bottles of migraine medication are arranged in a neat row. Susan — God help her — is in full-blown aura mode with bursts of colors. With her head tilted back and her arms along the armrests of the recliner, she appears to be clamped in an electric chair.

“Susan, you all right?”

“Migraine,” she murmurs tonelessly.

“Need anything?”

“Solitude.”

Though she can’t see me, I nod in the darkness. I realize how my Friday night will play out, and it ain’t a pretty picture. But I can’t hold myself back.

“Susan?” My tone is the most delicate I can manage.

“Mm?”

“We need to talk about something — but only when you’re up for it.”

“What is it?”

“It can wait.”

“If it can wait, why bring it up? Just tell me, Mark.”

I sigh. “A canceled check came in from Citibank. Made out to Peter Tortola.”

Susan has no immediate response to this.

I push. “We need to talk about your intentions, Susan. I need to know what that check means.”

All is silence. I’m aware of my own labored breathing. Peter I. Tortola? He’s Greenwich’s most obnoxious pit bull, a vulture, a shark, the lowest of snakes — a high-powered divorce attorney who specializes in going after Wall Street husbands, with the tenacity and teeth of a moray eel. His quarter-page ad is a weekly fixture in the otherwise-good-news pages of the Greenwich Time community newspaper. IT HAPPENS TO THE BEST OF US: D-I–V-O-R-C-E.

“Susan, we can talk about this later if—”

“You heartless bastard!” Her voice soars to a blood-chilling volume, and I am transfixed by the fury. “You sadistic son of a bitch. Why would you torture me when I’m in this condition? What’s the matter with you? Get the hell away from me!”

I dutifully comply. There is little doubt, after this exchange, that we will be more than a little unfashionably late to the Honeywells’ dinner party.

Wealth whispers.

For generations past, this was an unspoken code in Greenwich, the humility of old money. After all, darling, living in this town, how shall we say? Res ipsa loquitur. But the relentless tsunami of urban barbarians descending upon the Connecticut Gold Coast with fat Wall Street bonuses has killed off any vestige of subtlety here. Now Greenwich is just another brand name to accumulate.

The McMansions roll past as Susan and I wind our way along tree-lined Round Hill Road. It’s nearly 8:30 and we have not said a word to each other since our chat in the Quiet Room. I now believe that our conversations are inexorably headed for the same fate as our sex life.

My Aston Martin approaches the Honeywells’ seven-bedroom mansion on Larkspur Lane. Rich Honeywell is yet another Greenwich hedge fund asshole, one of those Wall Street guys with marginal talent and a nine-figure chunk of someone else’s family money behind him. A once-in-a-life-time fluke — a federal deregulation of pension plans — has made him obscenely wealthy in his own right, and kept an endless convoy of Brinks trucks dumping mountains of money on the doorstep of his Steamboat Road office.

Rich’s house is an eat-your-heart-out monument to his new wealth, a dramatic custard-yellow contemporary with Hudson Valley stone veneer set on five acres of what was once a fertile onion farm. And it’s equipped with all the usual accoutrements: four-car garage, tennis court, THX-certified home theater, mahogany wine cellar, and an Olympic-sized pool. There are two backhoes in the front yard, suggesting further expansion is imminent.

The Honeywells’ Belgian-bricked drive is jammed with probably $3 million worth of luxury automobiles, and I wedge my convertible into a space between a Porsche Cayenne and a yellow Hummer with personalized plates: 183 IQ. I turn off the car, and the ensuing silence is deafening. I crave a talk before we go in, a clearing of the air. Perhaps it’s naïve, but I still hope that we can turn this around before we pass the point of no return and head down the path of mutually assured destruction. As a prelude, I clear my throat — and get no further.

“I want out, Mark. I’m done with this.” Susan delivers this statement in a flat, lifeless tone, as she might say, Looks like rain. She opens the vanity mirror to check her makeup. “I want sixty percent of everything, and the house as well. You keep the cars and the retirement accounts. I’d like to file the papers next week.”

She snaps the mirror closed and exits the convertible. And just like that, it’s official: My marriage has begun its slow-motion spiral to the first circle of hell.

We approach the front door wordlessly, trying to assemble a convincing facsimile of a happy and centered Greenwich couple. Rich Honeywell opens the door with a flourish. He’s dressed in a pair of black Ted Baker slacks, a charcoal Armani shirt, and Donald Pliner loafers.

“Hey, it’s the Barstons!” Honeywell says theatrically, as he hugs Susan (a bit too warmly for my comfort). “Word up, Barston? You get lost on the way or something?” This offhand dig is a passive-aggressive notice that we are the last to arrive, but it’s the unintended irony that makes me blink. Yeah, I got lost on the way, all right

“Jennifer’s been asking all night, ‘Where’re the Barstons, where’re the Barstons?’ She’ll be psyched you’re finally here.” Rich says this breezily as he shepherds us through the palatial, antiseptic interior of his McMansion-in-progress. Like the homes of most of our friends, the design has a predictable look and feel. The furnishings bear the fingerprints of a particular interior designer who specializes in a bland, WASPy décor that appeals to new money clients with absolutely no sense of style of their own. She’s booked up for six months in advance. “Jen, come say hello to the Barstons.”

Jennifer Honeywell curtails her lecture to the waiter on how to serve the platter of jumbo Gulf shrimp, and wheels around with exaggerated delight. “It’s the Barstons!” she squeals like a teenager, and I remember something I’d heard about her trying out a new antidepressant.

We apologize for being late, then I give Jennifer a kiss, Jennifer and Susan kiss, and Rich takes advantage of the pleasantries to try to score a kiss on the lips with Susan (which she successfully evades). I take note of Jennifer’s new body — it has been honed and shaped by spinning classes and Pilates into a rock-hard leanness that teeters on the verge of masculinity. The excessive athleticism has introduced an asexual coarseness to her face. Too bad; she used to be among the most attractive of my friends’ wives.

Rich makes a sweeping gesture toward the French doors. “The bartender’s got a bottle of Grey Goose with your name on it, kimosabe.”

“Let’s have at it,” I say.

Honeywell directs us to the open-air patio overlooking an exquisitely manicured backyard of Kentucky bluegrass — an emerald carpet gleaming under a full moon. Predictably, Susan and I peel off in different directions. It will be this way for the entire night, but I’m cool with that. The blast of communal energy from the party lifts my spirits.

At the bar, a pimply-faced Greenwich High School kid gives me a double shot of Grey Goose on the rocks. Duly fortified, I meld into a nearby amoeba of acquaintances. They interrupt their debate about Robert Trent Jones golf courses to slap my back, shake my hand, and high-five me.

“I was just saying,” Ford Spilsbury says, “that the Lido course on Long Beach is as close to eighteen-hole nirvana as you’re ever going to get. The sixteenth hole is the ultimate par five, and you have an eagle opportunity if you can survive the double-water carry.”

The five of them — Spilsbury, Foster, Brightman, O’Clair, and Cantwell — are clubhouse friends, and, like me, they are all Wall Street jerks: bankers and brokers and traders and lawyers. The Ivy League degrees on this patio cost millions in tuition dollars, but they were worth every penny. The diplomas our parents bought for us are a license to steal. Collectively, we siphon off a disproportionate chunk of the country’s GNP, and trundle it north to our trophy wives in Greenwich. We buy expensive cars and homes and boats and pools, and go on obscenely expensive vacations, all of which is meant to inform everyone just how much we’re taking out of the American economy for ourselves. Our nine-year-olds are infected with this zombie-like consumerism, and are as tragically conversant with the iconic symbolism of Tiffany and BMW and Prada as their parents. We confuse wealth with class; we think they are synonymous, when they most assuredly are not. Inevitably, we will pass the former on to our children, but not the latter.

In this particular fishbowl, we wrap ourselves in an aura of effortlessness. We are expert at concealing the fears that haunt us at 3:00 in the morning: the TMJ-inducing toll our careers take on our stomachs and our mental health; the slow decay of our marriages; the warning signs that our children might not end up at an Ivy League university; the velocity at which our spending is outpacing our income. We hide behind the breezy accomplishment of breaking eighty on the course at the Stanwich Club, pretending everything is right in the world when we’ve come to know that the pursuit of this life is a cancer to the soul. I gaze up at the moon in the star-studded sky and heave a sigh. Maybe my spirits aren’t so lifted after all.

I’m mildly surprised to find my glass is empty. I break away from the group for a refill. As I’m waiting at the bar, a call lights up my cell phone. I flip it open. “This is Barston.”

On the other end an uncertain pause, then a soft fumble of the handset. A hand slips over the mouthpiece. Heated whispers, shushing, and the musical laughter of drunken young girls — a live feed directly from Fiona’s piss-up at Greenwich Point Beach.

I say nothing, just listen. More giggles and whispers, all unintelligible. Her nanny friends put her up to this, I realize, and it is juvenile, immature — a slumber party prank, for chrissakes — and then, the act of chickening out; the curt click of the line going dead. I’m staring at my phone, waiting for... I don’t know what.

I’m jolted from my reverie by the underage barkeep holding out my replenished drink. I take a greedy slurp, my temples throbbing with the pulse of curiosity over this au pair Lollapalooza taking place just a few miles away.

The night wears on, booze is consumed in disturbingly large quantities, and the conversation becomes edgy. The subject matter is friendship, fidelity, and minding your own damn business. Would you tell a friend if you knew his wife was cheating?

Foster says, “No fucking way, it’s not my business.”

Cantwell says, “Of it’s your business. It’s your buddy.”

Foster: “I can’t be the one to tell him something like that. It’s too... heavy, man. I’d be ruining his life.”

Rob Brightman chimes in: “So you’d keep it to yourself? How would you sleep at night?”

O’Clair says: “I get Foster’s point. Why is it his responsibility to break the news that the wife is banging the tennis instructor?”

I jump in. “He’s your best friend, Chris, that’s why. You couldn’t look him in the eye at a party like this if you knew his wife was being unfaithful. You’re duty-bound to tell him, and let him take the appropriate course of action. Case closed.”

The passion with which I deliver this point brings the debate to an abrupt end.

Brightman breaks the uncomfortable silence: “So any of you assholes have something to tell me?” The group explodes in laughter. Everyone, that is, but Ford Spilsbury, who has kept conspicuously out of the conversation.

Forty-five minutes later, when a preoccupied Spilsbury quietly approaches me during the Chicken Kiev dinner and asks to speak to me alone, I feel my stomach knot. I somehow know what’s coming.

“I heard what you said on the patio,” he says, avoiding my eyes. “About friends.”

I nod.

Spilsbury almost whispers it. “I think I’m the kind of guy who would tell a friend about that.”

“You have something to tell me, Ford?” I reply, my voice warbling. But I already know he does.

Friday evening has segued somehow into Saturday morning. Newly armed with the knowledge that my wife has been having an affair for the last six months with her college friend’s husband, I plunge through the darkness of the Backcountry, heading to the other side of the looking glass. I recognize this quest can only end badly — scandal, ruination, utter self-destruction — but it no longer matters. I’m powerless to stop the forces that have overtaken me.

A fantasy torments me: I arrive at the beach and she spies me... She pulls away from her friends and comes so close that I can feel her breath on my cheek. “I knew you’d come.” She locks up my eyes in hers as she says this, a note of triumph in her voice. She is such eye candy, I can barely contain myself. We are intoxicated — not just by alcohol, but by the electric danger of being so close. I spirit her away to a secluded beach at the ass-end of Sound Beach Avenue. With the languid hiss of low tide in our ears, the au pair steps forward. She kisses my neck, puts her hot hands up my shirt. I grab her apple-bottom ass and pull her toward me. She responds with a tongue-loaded kiss. I can taste the salt on her skin and smell the soap in her hair.

This is going to happen, I convince myself. This is redemption. This is revenge. This is justice.

I punch the accelerator and push on toward Greenwich Point Beach.

I arrive within minutes, and the scene is surreal. Kid Rock’s “Bawitdaba” throbs in the background, and yet the Nanny’s Ball has come to an undignified end. Five Greenwich police cars have pinned down at least a hundred stoned kids, all tongue-studded, belly-ringed, lip-pierced, and tattooed. Blinding blue-and-red strobes light the beach in psychedelic hues, and the squawk of the radio dispatcher says backup is on the way. The acrid smell of pot is heavy in the salt air. Six half-naked, soaking-wet party animals are led by in cuffs. I’m numbed by the commotion, but amidst the crowd, I see the object of my desire. Fiona Ranieri’s au pair is in the epicenter of this frenetic scene, crying her eyes out. She looks scared and vulnerable and... oh, so incredibly young

I swing the Aston Martin into a dark corner of the parking lot and kill the headlights. I don’t take my eyes off Fiona’s face as I begin to formulate a daring rescue mission. How far away is she? Thirty yards? Forty? I could edge up on the far side of the crowd, grab her by the arm... then a short sprint back to my car, and we’re home free. I can almost hear the sweet relief in her voice. “I knew you’d come.”

I open my car door and step out. And nearly fall.

Just then I realize how intoxicated I am. My head is swimming in Grey Goose, my legs are jelly, and I’m now bathed in a panic-induced sweat. I climb back in my seat and grip the wheel. Static blasts from a nearby police radio, and I jump. I can’t make out the words, but when I squeeze my eyes shut, they become clearer. The words are my own:

Another squawk of static and I realize it’s coming from the radio of a Greenwich cop glaring my way. As he strides toward my car, I fumble the door closed. The cops is shouting something, but somehow I get the vehicle in gear and kick up a cloud of sand, which I pray obscures my license plate.

Miles from the beach, I pull over. I’m sweat-soaked and shaking, and I rest my head on the steering wheel and gasp for breath. And suddenly I’m pounding the dash in fury and self-loathing.

What were you thinking, you pathetic, sorry-ass sonuvabitch?

It’s nearly dawn when I get home and stumble to the front door. On the third attempt, I jam the key into the lock. At first I don’t see the white envelope propped up against the door, and I kick it across the foyer. I stagger toward the stairs and almost leave it there on the Kashan rug, but something catches my eye and pierces the alcoholic fog around my brain: the Fischer Brothers logo.

I have to sit to retrieve the envelope, but I manage. Cross-legged on the floor, I thumb-wrestle it open and look inside. And I know instantly.

It’s nothing short of a miracle: the last-ditch Hail Mary pass thrown desperately with seconds to go, the game-winning homer in the bottom of the ninth, the sudden-death eagle on the eighteenth hole at the Masters — impossible victory from certain defeat. It is the life preserver that will save me from going under for the last time, that will save me from myself.

“Terri,” I whisper reverentially, the papers trembling in my hands. I say my loyal assistant’s name over and over.

I enter Ranieri’s glassed-in corner office on Monday morning, and I am ready to bite the ass off a bear. For his part, my enemy is bouncing a blue rubber stress ball off the windowed wall. He receives me exuberantly.

“Happy Monday, Sparky. How was the weekend?” He resumes throwing the ball against the glass.

“Must you do that?” I ask pointedly.

“You mean this?” He sidearms the ball again and smirks. “Why? Does it bother you?” I decline to engage in this lame banter, and silence prevails.

Moments later, Brian Horgan arrives with my thick personnel file. Sauntering in right behind him is Senior Managing Director Ian Becker. Becker is Ranieri’s ultimate boss, and mine too — here to see that I’m officially terminated, and that the empire I’ve created is handed over seamlessly to his Harvard roommate.

“Guess this is show time,” Ranieri says. We lock eyes for a moment and he quickly looks away, shoving the door closed. He ceremoniously circles back to his chair, slouching into an elaborately casual posture. “Let’s pick up where we left off on Friday. Ian, you care to kick things off?”

Becker clears his throat and speaks in an authoritative British baritone. “Let me start by saying we commend you for the contribution you’ve made to this firm. You’ve gotten us off to a respectable start, a decent standing in the league tables. But, candidly, you’ve developed something of a reputation for not being a team player, especially when it comes to matters involving your co-head. So, it’s the consensus of senior management that we need to have a single focal point for the future of the business. Regrettably, that means that one of the two co-heads needs to move on. It’s nothing personal, Mark, but—”

“Not true, Ian. It absolutely is personal.”

“If that’s how you feel about it, then fine.”

“That’s exactly how I feel about it. As for my people, let the record show that they consider Ranieri to be a rodent-faced, backstabbing, Mickey Mouse amateur who will crash this business into the ground within a year. By which time they’ll be poached away by our competitors.”

Ranieri’s eyebrows climb his forehead in offense, but he holds his tongue in check.

Becker’s face softens in saccharine compassion. “Be that as it may, Mark, you should know that there will be a formal announcement about a restructuring shortly, possibly as early as Wednesday. I’m working to find a proper place for someone with your skill set, but we’ve got headcount pressures from upstairs. If these efforts fail, well, we’re committed to ensure proper protocol is followed with regard to your termination. We’ve all pushed hard to be fair — no, to go way beyond being merely fair — and we’re—”

I yawn theatrically.

Becker draws back in outrage. “Am I boring you?”

“Matter of fact, yes, you are. Even worse, you’re wasting my time.”

Becker sputters, furious at this insubordination, when a sharp rap sounds at the door. The cavalry has arrived, and right on time. All heads turn as David Rosenman, the firm’s Associate General Counsel, opens the door and leans in.

“Ian, I need to see you,” he says.

Ian Becker is annoyed by the disruption. “We should be done here in about fifteen minutes, David. Can we circle up at 8:15 a.m.?”

“It wasn’t a request, Ian,” Rosenman says sternly. “Step out of this meeting now.”

Becker is puzzled, but there’s no mistaking the seriousness in Rosenman’s voice. He mumbles something under his breath, rises from his chair, and disappears around a corner with Rosenman.

“What the hell was that about?” Ranieri says to no one in particular.

“Oh, that?” I say. I produce a cigar from my jacket pock t and light it. “That would be about the Eagles Mere III CDO. The ‘kitchen sink’ collateralized unit.”

Ranieri freezes, color draining from his face. The transformation is astounding: He ages ten years in an instant — exhausted, pallid, scared. He knows exactly what I’m talking about.

I push on. “According to a routine compliance check on personal trading that was run over the weekend, both you and Becker have sizable positions of these Eagles Mere III units in your personal trading accounts. Sizable positions.”

“You fucking son of a bitch,” Ranieri whispers hoarsely.

“So I imagine right now Rosenman is asking Becker how it is that a security that cost him $50,000 a unit is throwing off $11,568 in interest — a month. That would be about $140,000 a year, risk free—”

“You’re going to regret this, asswipe.”

“What kind of security pays nearly three hundred percent interest a year with zero risk? I don’t know, I’ve never heard of such a thing.” I exhale a luxurious cloud of smoke. “But maybe — and this is just a theory, mind you — maybe it’s a dummy security concocted by you. And maybe — just maybe — it’s a little something you cooked up to divert hundreds of thousands of dollars a year from the firm’s institutional clients to you and your greedy-ass butt-buddy. Now, why would you do such a heinous thing? I don’t know — perhaps quid pro quo for Becker naming you to a certain co-head position in equity derivatives? It’s just a theory, of course.”

“This conversation is over.”

“You’re goddamned right it’s over!” I yell. “Sun Tzu is required reading at Hah-vahd b-school, isn’t it? You must know The Art of War by heart. A mortal enemy must be crushed completely. More is lost stopping halfway through than through total annihilation: the enemy will recover and will seek revenge. Crush him, both in body and spirit.”

Ranieri regards me with a superhuman loathing. He remains mute

“Hey, Brian?” I say, getting up to leave. “I’ll be at my desk if you need me.”

Brian Horgan is open-mouthed with awe as I shut the door.

Checkmate, motherfucker.

My head is spinning. Events have been set into motion that will be impossible to stop. There will be lawyers and compliance officers and regulators piling onto this situation in the hours, days, and weeks to come. Both Ranieri and Becker will pay an enormous personal price for fucking with my livelihood. There’s even a good shot that they will be thrown out of the industry. So be it. Kill or be killed — that’s Wall Street in its purest form, isn’t it?

As I cross the trading floor, I receive another standing ovation. Apparently, Terri Aronica has spread word of the Eagles Mere scandal among the trading floor personnel, and I am acknowledged as the undisputed heavyweight champion of the world. This time, though, I don’t bask in the adulation. There is little sense of accomplishment in my Machiavellian maneuver, because with this second bullet dodged comes a second epiphany: This is no victory.

I have crushed Ranieri, but his voice is playing in my head: You can postpone the inevitable only so long, Sparky. And I know he’s right. How many more Ranieris are even now lining up to take what I’ve built? How many of them are in this room, smiling and clapping for me? And if not one of them, then it will be Susan and her cadre of lawyers. How many more bullets can I dodge?

There are handshakes, back pats, light punches on the shoulder, as I make my way to my seat. The applause subsides and the normal trading room chatter rises. Random static from a speakerphone fills my ears and I think of the other night with Fiona. Even if I’d whisked her off that beach, she too would have turned on me eventually, gotten lawyers of her own, tried to pick my bones clean. Maybe it’s destiny or some law of nature: Once you’re at the top of your game, everyone becomes your enemy — rivals, friends, lawyers, lovers, superiors, subordinates. They plot and scheme and come after everything that matters to you, everything you love and care about.

Terri puts a steaming latte on my desk. Her freckled face beams and her eyes meet mine. It is an intimate moment: Together, we triumphed over the forces of evil against great odds. Yet at this moment, absolutely no one is beyond suspicion. Et tu, Terri? I force myself to smile back, even as Rich Honeywell’s mocking voice unexpectedly fills my head.

You get lost along the way, Barston?