“Look, I want you and your board to be happy. We don’t build on this relationship if you’re not. But we clearly have different recollections of our initial discussions. I’m not going to do a whole he-said/he-said thing, but you act like I’m some sort of magician. The market pays what the market pays. Now, if this were a situation where our mistake cost you money, I’d have no problem discounting the fee. But we didn’t do anything wrong. Nobody can get you ten bucks a share. You know that’s right because you’ve been shopping this deal. So the beef you have is that you came away from our initial meeting thinking that price was doable, and now the market won’t pay it. And I feel the need to remind you that we never guaranteed a price. The contract is quite clear that our only obligation is to use best efforts to get you a reasonable market price based on conditions at the time. We’re delivering exactly that. Besides, let’s be honest here—you know as well as I do that if the market rallied and the offering went off at eleven or twelve, you weren’t going to pay us a dollar more than the fee in the contract. It’s a two-way street, I’m afraid.”
“You certainly are a smooth talking son-of-a-bitch, I’ll give you that.” Amoroso shakes his head in obvious disgust to be in my presence. “But no matter how you spin it now, you know and I know that you lied to me when you promised us ten dollars a share. I’d understand if the market dropped, but that’s not what happened. The realistic market price back then was the same as it is now. You knew it then, and you know it now. When you quoted me ten, it was just to lock up our business. Everyone else at the time was telling us seven to eight.”
I want to point out to him that he’s just as big a liar as I am. I remember him distinctly telling me that the reason he chose our firm was because he valued the personal chemistry between him and me. He never once mentioned everyone else’s market estimate had come in at least two bucks a share under mine. It’s his own greed that put him in this spot. He knows as well as I that he would have done business with Satan for an extra buck a share. Still, name-calling isn’t going to advance the ball here.
“I’m sorry, Paolo. There’s no give on the fee. That’s a nonstarter. If you want to move the business to someone else, just tell me where to send the file. But if you stay with us, we’re ready to bring you to market in four weeks.”
We stare at each other for a moment. The primate thing—wondering, if it came to it, which one of us would be able to kill the other.
He leaves my office without saying another word. The truth is that I’m surprised he’s able to walk at all, considering that I have his balls in a vise.
Less than an hour later, I get a call from the office of the firm’s CEO. I’m told by his assistant that “Mr. Freedman wants to see me right away.”
I’ve given so little thought to Charlotte Broden today that it doesn’t even occur to me that Freedman might be calling me in to be arrested for murder. Instead, I’m certain that Amoroso pulled rank and now it’s Freedman’s turn to ream me out.
“What the fucking fuck?” Freedman asks when I enter his office.
The guy actually talks like that. Like he’s in a Quentin Tarantino movie.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Freedman,” I say. “What the fucking fuck about what?”
One of the odd things about Wall Street is that it’s one of the few places where you don’t want to be the boss. The goal is to make money, not to be in charge. Supervisors get fired, or worse, indicted. To be sure, Joel Freedman makes a shitload of money. More than I do. But that won’t be the case in a few years. It’s like being a professional athlete who plays for a marquee head coach. When you’re starting out, the coach may make more money, but that doesn’t mean that you’re angling to be the coach. You just want to stay on the field as long as you can so someday you can buy the whole goddamn team and retire to a Caribbean island. Right now Joel Freedman’s tax return might have a bigger number than mine, but he’s also sixty-seven years old and doesn’t live on a Caribbean island.
“Don’t play dumb with me, Tyler,” he says. “You fucking well know what.”
“You talked to Paolo Amoroso, I’m assuming.”
“No. I didn’t talk. He talked. No, that’s not right either. He fucking screamed at me for twenty minutes.”
“The guy’s upset that the numbers we’re seeing from investors are below what he had hoped for.”
“No fucking shit, Sherlock. Why the fuck is that?”
Just like I knew overpromising Amoroso would lead to his chewing me out, I also knew that I’d eventually wind up in Freedman’s office on the receiving end of a profanity-laced tirade. It was a price I was more than willing to pay. My bonus last year reflected bringing The Pouch into the firm. Besides, if I had come to Freedman back then and told him it would take lying to Amoroso to land the business, he wouldn’t have hesitated to tell me to do it. No, that’s actually not true. He would have fired me for asking such a stupid question in the first place. His hand-wringing now is all about him pretending to be holier than thou.
“As I explained to Amoroso this morning, my price quote was provided six months ago. At the time, the market was stronger in the underwear sector. Now there’s a lot of uncertainty. Also, there was an IPO just last month, granted, it wasn’t an underwear company, but it was in the sportswear space, and the market didn’t react well to it. I think that’s also dampening interest at the levels we’re trying to achieve.”
“I only care about one fucking thing, Tyler. So I’m going to ask you about that one thing, and I want a one-fucking-word answer out of you, and then I want you to get the fuck out of my office.”
I know better than to say anything, so I wait for the question. I’m reasonably sure I know what he’s going to ask. It’s the only question that matters on Wall Street.
“You gonna fucking bring in the full ten-million-dollar fee?”
“Absolutely,” I say.
I had been confident that Amoroso would be back with his tail between his legs by the close of business, but at quitting time, I still haven’t heard from him. For the first time all day, my thoughts return to Charlotte. More precisely, why I haven’t heard anything about her disappearance.
Like everyone else in the United States, I’m well aware of the nationwide manhunt for Jennifer Barnett. I assumed Charlotte too would become a fixture on the 24/7 news cycle as soon as she was reported missing. In fact, given that Charlotte’s father is a hotshot lawyer, her disappearance should be twice as newsworthy as Jennifer Barnett’s.
So why hadn’t the news broken?
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I always visit Jason’s apartment at night, when there’s no one else around. Even though it’s far more innocent to come in broad daylight, I’m more nervous than ever entering his building. I keep looking over my shoulder to see who might be watching.
He opens his front door with a smile. “I’m so glad you came.”
“I wouldn’t have except that you made very clear that I didn’t have much of a choice. So what’s so important?”
“Come in and have a seat,” he says, still all smiles.
“I really don’t have time for this, Jason.”
“Please, I insist,” he says.
His grin is still fixed, but it now looks frightening. Almost maniacal.
I do as directed and enter his apartment. The moment I’m seated on his ratty futon, I say, “Now I’m in. Tell me.”
“No. You tell me, Clare.”
“Tell you what?”
“Who is he?”
“Who is who?”
“The guy you’ve been fucking behind my back.”
For the briefest of moments I consider coming clean. I could tell Jason about Marco and thereby shift the dirty work of this breakup from me to him. But I quickly banish that thought. Even though his question suggests he already knows, there’s a big difference between suspecting your girlfriend is sleeping with someone else and knowing for certain.