Villiers Touch

25. Howard Claiborne

Howard Claiborne walked down Wall Street without hurry; these great monolithic buildings gave him comfort-there was in them certainty, permanence, solidity. The old man had a keen appreciation of his life. He enjoyed the tight-knit efficient organization of his financial empire in the fuzzy world of modern bureaucracy. He enjoyed the daily luncheons in plush private dining clubs with pre-Castro Havana cigars and silverware crested with coats of arms. He enjoyed his exclusive multifold membership in the highest-priced club in the world, the New York Stock Exchange, each of whose 1,366 seats was worth more than half a million dollars.

The big bullpen on the eighth floor was half-empty when he strode across it; he had arrived, as always, ten minutes ahead of time. His secretary was in place behind the wooden railing: “Good morning, Mr. Claiborne!” Miss Goralski chirped. He nodded his head once, smiling with reserve, and touched the flower in his buttonhole as he entered his baroquely ornamented office and tore off the page of the desk calendar to expose today’s, Thursday’s, date. His big corner office was dominated by a huge walnut desk, behind which he settled in a chair which had been occupied by his father before him.

Howard Claiborne’s parents had wanted a polite, neat, unintrusive child. He had grown up in the requisite prep school (Exeter) and summer camp, trained not to display emotion; even love, to a Claiborne, was polite.

On a chain across his conservative waistcoat he carried his Phi Beta Kappa key and his Skull and Bones doodad. He had the requisite membership cards in his wallet-the Union League, the Links. He lived, during the summer months, in a turreted gingerbread Victorian estate on Fishers Island, from which he commuted each day by helicopter. During the winter, while his wife-often with one or another grandchild-went to Florida or the Bahamas, he occupied a plush townhouse with spiral staircase, another legacy of his father. Howard Claiborne’s great grandfather had been a buccaneering magnate who had used the bodies of workmen for railroad ties. His son, Howard Claiborne’s grandfather, had used his inherited wealth to establish himself on Wall Street and in the best drawing rooms. It was said that if a family started with money, it would take at least three generations to get into the best society. Howard Claiborne was the fourth generation: a bulwark, a patriarch, a Brahmin. There were perhaps a dozen Claibornes in the New York telephone directories, but only one family was meant when the phrase was uttered, “the Claibornes, of New York and Fishers Island.”

This Thursday morning, Howard Claiborne occupied the first half-hour of his working day by reading the correspondence that had accumulated overnight. He was near the bottom of the stack when the phone buzzed and he lifted it to his ear.

“Mr. Arthur Rademacher, of Melbard Chemical.”

“Fine, Miss Goralski. Put him on.”

There followed a fifteen-minute conversation, during which the expression on Howard Claiborne’s patrician face, and the intonations of his voice, underwent far vaster changes than was his usual wont. Afterward he sat back in the old chair with his eyes shut and his fingers drumming on the desk-a sign, with Howard Claiborne, of spectacular disturbance.

He went into the file room and unlocked the Wakeman Fund drawer and spent half an hour there; he could have had Miss Goralski bring the files to him, but somehow it seemed necessary to do this privately, with no one’s outside knowledge. And finally, when he returned to his desk, he buzzed Miss Goralski and said, “Is Mr. Wyatt at his desk?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ask him to come in here, please.”

The young man, Claiborne thought, had a supercilious air. That would soon change, he thought-and abruptly chastised himself for feeling a moment’s anticipatory vindictive pleasure in the thought. Steve had taken a seat without being asked and was sitting with his legs carelessly crossed, one arm flung over the back of the stuffed leather chair.

The old man said, in his customary unruffled murmur, “Tell me something. Would you feel happier working for a hedge fund?”

“What do you mean, sir?”

“The Wakeman Fund, which you manage, is a closed-end mutual fund. You are supposed to take prudent risks-prudent- with a view toward long-term investment gains. You’ve been juggling it like a hedge fund. I told you several months ago I wouldn’t tolerate the kind of supercharged financial gunslinging that goes on elsewhere in the Street. A hedge fund, if I need to stir your memory, is a high-risk speculation designed to move large blocks of capital in and out more rapidly than any other kind of investment operation. The little fellows like them because they generate brokers’ commissions. The manager hedges by selling short and thereby making money in both directions, knowing that whatever the overall day’s average may be, some stocks are rising and some are falling. The hedge manager leverages his buying power by margin-buying and factoring his assets. He deals in highly volatile issues of the sort an old-line partnership like Bierce, Claiborne amp; Myers has a reputation for avoiding like the plague, out of consideration for the financial stability and security of our investors. Hedge funds can make huge sums of money in very short periods of time-but the risk of sudden loss is as great as the chance of sudden profit. Does all this sound familiar to you? It should. It describes pretty well the way you’ve been operating the assets of the Wakeman Fund for the past few weeks. And so, my callow young cousin, I repeat the initial question: Would you feel happier working for a hedge fund?”

The flip mask had drained from Steve’s face; he looked sullen. “I’ve been doing my best, sir, according to my own judgment, and I’ll remind you I’ve broken every gain record in the history of the fund. I thought you’d be pleased, sir, but if-”

“Twaddle,” Claiborne said. “I suspect if I audited your books right now you’d be found short on securities and unable to cover them. Don’t throw bookkeeping smokescreens at me, young man-I know every trick in the book-I suspect I’ve forgotten more of them than you’ve learned. Well?”

Steve said stiffly, “If you don’t trust me, you’re welcome to audit my books, sir. I assure you you’ll-”

“You’re bluffing, and you’re not very good at it.”

Steve got to his feet. “I resent that.”

“And well you might. The thief usually resents being caught out.”

Standing with both hands on the edge of the desk, Steve glowered down at him. “I don’t like being put on the carpet.”

“Please sit down. There’s no need for you to loom over me… That’s better.”

The young man took out a cigarette and put his lighter to it, avoiding Claiborne’s eyes. Claiborne said, “I think you need to know that, were it not for your mother, I’d not hesitate to summon the other partners and fire you in their presence. As it is, I’m offering you a dignified way out.”

Steve dragged suicidally on his cigarette and said, with smoke spouting from his mouth, “Bullshit. If you fire me I’ll go straight to the exchanges and the SEC and tell them there are illegal manipulations going on in the firm-and I’ll tell them right where to look.”

“You’re refusing my offer, then?”

“Wouldn’t you?”

Claiborne said, “I realize the incendiary nature of this affair. But the only illegal manipulations to be found under this roof are those in which you have had a hand. To be sure, there’d be embarrassments all around, but in the long run you’d be the one to suffer most. Haven’t you learned by now that I’m too shrewd, too old, and too stubborn to be bluffed? I’ll just mention two other things-one, someone has tampered with my files, and I’ve taken the precaution of having a discreet private investigator dust them for fingerprints. I have the photographs of the prints, and they’re quite clear. I haven’t turned them over to the police for identification, and I trust you won’t force me to do so. Second, I’ve just had a call from an old and valued friend, Arthur Rademacher. I imagine you know better than I what he had to say to me. Your conduct with that old gentleman has been reprehensible and inexcusable. If exposed, it would at the very least put you in jeopardy of serving a prison sentence for blackmail and extortion, for which the penalty is quite severe. Now, then, I’ve put my cards on the table. I can’t tell you what to do. I can suggest you accept my offer to have your resignation arranged, and I can further suggest that as soon as possible you remove yourself from Wall Street, from this city, and in fact from this country.”

The old man had not once raised his voice. Steve Wyatt dragged on his cigarette and stared at him from the sullen depths of hooded eyes. “Do I have any choice?”

“You always have a choice in any decision. To be sure, in this case the alternative would not be palatable. I would of course spell out the whole dismal affair before your mother-whether that would have any effect on you I don’t know, I’m constantly amazed by the callous indifference you’ve displayed toward every decent human value since birth-but in any case, I’d consider it my duty to inform her of your conduct. After that I should allow her a decent interval in which to try to persuade you to leave the country before I turn the whole body of information over to the police, which in the face of your continued intransigence I should be obliged to do. Does my convoluted syntax confuse you, or do you understand English well enough to follow me?”

“No need to be insulting. I’m literate.”

“You are,” Claiborne replied, “both morally and ethically illiterate.”

Steve stood up, his mouth pinched into a thin white scar. Tipping his head back to direct his gaze at the youth, Claiborne said, “Tell me one thing. By what curious process did you arrive at the conclusion you could get away with all these ridiculous schemes? You could have been eminently successful without resorting to cheap crimes-you could have stopped this, even before it started.”

“Uncle Howard,” Steve breathed, “it’s just started.”

“What is that intended to mean?”

“I have no intention of fleeing the country.”

Claiborne spread his hands. “Of course. I told you that option was open to you. You do, however, realize the consequences?”

“What I realize,” Steve replied, “is that I’m not the only one in this room who tries to pull a bluff now and then. Your big threat becomes a pretty puny tissue when you analyze it. What does it amount to? One: You’ll audit my books. Fine. You’ll find I’ve made up whatever shortages might have existed one time or another. The Wakeman Fund’s in better shape now than it was when I took it over. How can you prosecute me for that? So it’s a bluff. Two: If I’ve manipulated anything illegally, I’ve done it in your employ, and the books will show it was done in your interests, not mine-you’re the one who’s profited from it, not me. Expose me, and that fact becomes public. No, you won’t do it-you’d be risking much more than I would. So that’s a bluff too. Three: It’s quite possible my fingerprints are on your files, along with your own prints, and Miss Goralski’s, and those of half a dozen other people. I’m one of your executives-I’ve had plenty of justifiable occasions to use your files, both in your presence and during your absence. So what have you got? Proof-of nothing. Another bluff. Four: It’s true I was a little tough on Arthur Rademacher the other day, but it was in his own best interests. He stands to make a good deal of money from it. You’d have a pretty tough time convicting me of blackmail when I showed the court how my so-called victim had, in fact, profited from my ‘extortion.’ So? Another bluff. Five: My mother’s getting on in years, and I’m convinced you wouldn’t risk damaging her health by filling her head full of allegations about me which I’ve just shown are feeble and inconclusive at best. No one’s been hurt by what you choose to call my reprehensible and inexcusable conduct-on the contrary, several people, including yourself, have profited from it. I trust you can follow my syntax?”

Howard Claiborne tipped his head an inch to the side. “You’re a clever fiend, I’ll give you that.”

“Yes, sir. And now that we understand each other, I will not stand in the way of a successor. I’ll be happy to have you arrange for my resignation at the earliest possible moment. As it happens, I intended to resign anyway.”

Oddly, Claiborne suspected that last statement was true, and not merely a dignity salve. Without stirring, he said flatly, “Clear out your desk and get out of here. I don’t want you to set foot in this building ever again.”

“It’ll be a pleasure,” Steve said with a thin smile, and went.