He didn’t know more than a quarter of the people crammed into Charles MacCarren’s apartment in Battery Park City. One of the second-year associates at MacCarren had taken over the sound system and had massive headphones on as he nodded to the beat and curated a steady stream of angry rap that sent bile crawling up Ryan’s throat. He pulled the antacids from his pocket and chewed two. His stomach, filled with only a few bites of pan-seared Arctic char and a chocolate mousse that was sure-as-shit a mistake, settled a little, but the Tums wouldn’t do anything to slow his racing heart.
Looking out over the living room from the kitchen, he revised his estimate downward. He didn’t know a tenth of them. The MacCarren employees not yet able to buy a table at the Met gala wore button-downs over jeans and covetous expressions as they eyed Ryan in his tux with his “date.” They masked their awe by looking around the apartment to see what the standard was for apartment, furniture, view, and decorating, not understanding that Charles came from family money, the kind of wealth managers protected for future generations. Charles had Degas on the wall, a couple of Picasso’s sketches, the obligatory hand-me-down painting of the great-great-great-grandfather MacCarren, who started the family on the road to superwealth, an Audi R8 and a motorcycle in the garage downstairs, and he’d just bought the house next to his family’s home in the Hamptons for twenty million dollars. Rumor was he intended to tear it down and build a temple to modern architecture. That was the standard these days. Forget that bullshit about buying a piece of history. Flaunt your wealth by bulldozing history to the fucking ground and building a monument to yourself.
Ryan’s mother was a teacher. His father sold plumbing supplies before he died. If his dad could see this party, he’d be speechless with shock. There were the requisite women, some from the firm, some girlfriends who’d brought their friends, and another set who were quite clearly “hired” to “entertain.” Because this was an equal opportunity era, there were also some men from the same occupational class, some chatting up the women, others chatting up men.
Daria stopped beside him, and sipped from her glass of champagne. “This is interesting,” she said. She’d raised her voice to be heard over the music, but her tone, similar to the one his mother used when one of the kids in her class had done something completely outside the social order, came through loud and clear.
“Sorry,” he said.
“No, it’s fine,” she said without taking her gaze from the crowd. “If I’m asked to be in the sequel to the Wolf of Wall Street, I’ll be set for research.”
He laughed. “Are they making one?”
“It made over three hundred million dollars,” she said pragmatically. “I’m sure the studio’s considering it.”
“Greed never gets old, never goes out of style,” he said.
The crowd parted for a moment as Charles, the managing director of MacCarren, his father’s right-hand man and enforcer, made his way through the crowd, heading straight for Ryan. Charles extended his hand, most people too cowed to actually say hello or strike up a conversation. He held out his hand to Ryan, giving him a hearty handshake, but Ryan knew better than to think Charles had crossed the room for him. Charles didn’t cross a room for anyone, but Ryan was here with Daria Russell, still in the gown from the gala, and looking every inch the movie star. The way Charles transformed from an arrogant investment shark into a starstruck, posturing teenager was almost enough to make him laugh.
He introduced Charles to Daria, and stayed on the sidelines while Charles told her which performances he loved, and how she smoked her Oscar competition. Typical male chest-beating. Ryan knew that she felt her best work was in the theater, that she’d given performances to half-empty off-Broadway theaters that blew any film work she’d done straight out of the water. But she played the movie star well. Now it was his turn to play a role. This was why he’d brought Daria. Supermodels in New York were a dime a dozen, but an Oscar-winning actress? That would get Charles’s attention.
“Can I have a minute?” he asked when the conversation lagged. “Your office?”
Charles couldn’t turn him down without looking like an ass in front of Daria. “Sure,” he said.
He led Ryan down the hallway to the office Ryan had scoped out on a bathroom run earlier in the night, and evicted a couple with a single jerk of his head. The kid worked for one of Ryan’s traders, and his face went white with terror when he saw Charles. Don’t worry, Ryan thought. You’ve got bigger problems than getting caught with a hooker’s hand down your pants in the managing director’s home office. If this goes according to plan, you’re not going to have a job.
When the door closed behind the kid and his “date,” Ryan took a deep breath and reached in his pocket to thumb on the microrecorder. “I know what you guys are doing.”
Charles’s expression didn’t change. “You’re going to have to be more specific.”
“The Ponzi scheme. I know what you’re doing. I know how it works. I know the accounts, how the money flows, how you’re covering it all up.”