“What favors?”
“Like I said. The Chinese love us. They love our lives. They love North America. They want to come here, to live here, to buy homes here—well, not here here, not Las Vegas, this place is a hellhole. But Vancouver? Toronto? That’s a different story. These businessmen and bureaucrats, now they’ve got money to spare, but the one thing they still can’t buy is a normal life. They want their kids to be like ours. To go to Ivy League schools. To have good careers. They need visas. And Canadian immigration moves like molasses. WestCorp was able to help them out. Speed things up through back channels. They have something we want. We have something they want. It’s really not so complicated.”
“And you went to Beijing to make this happen. You decided to put the entire company at risk for this deal. I can’t believe this.”
“Yes, I did. And I would do it again. I don’t need to tell you how dismal things are. How pathetic our returns are this year. How much worse it’s going to get. Do you really want to go back to New York and tell half the company that they’re going to lose their jobs? China is booming. They need lumber, and the Canadians have a glut they need to unload. We’re just providing liquidity. We’re making a market. We applied a little pressure to make it happen, but it’s happening, and it’s working.”
Brad was silent for a long time.
“You’re not going to be able to keep this quiet much longer, Michael,” he said at last. “Pretty soon someone else is going to notice it, too, someone besides me, and they’ll start asking questions.”
“Maybe. But what they’ll notice is how much money we’re making. And what they’ll ask is why they didn’t think of this earlier. Does anyone really care how you get from point A to point B? Did you hear a single complaint from a single banker cashing his checks during the last five years? And we’re not stupid. We’ve been discreet for a reason. When people finally notice, the proof will be there. The profits will be there. I’m not going to apologize for doing my job.”
“You keep saying ‘we.’ Who is we?”
“Me and Peck, the analyst. That’s it. A few people have pitched in occasionally, but they never really knew what they were working on.”
“And does Peck know about the arrangement you have going?”
I closed my eyes and felt an insane rage—all of it directed at Roger. Most of me realized that this was ridiculous. Roger was the least of my concerns. But were it not for him, I would have been asleep and blissfully ignorant. Yes, I’d had my suspicions along the way. The trip to China. The overheard phone call. But I’d decided, a while earlier, to trust that Michael had a plan. He was the boss. He wasn’t going to do anything illegal. I kept my head down and did my job. It had worked, up until that moment.
“He knows I went to China,” Michael said. “He doesn’t know what I did there. I picked him for a reason. He keeps things to himself. And he’s ambitious, too. He wants it to succeed. I can tell. He’s perfect for this.”
“Michael, come on. He’s—what?—twenty-three years old? These analysts go out drinking every night. They can’t keep a secret.”
“He’s different. And we have an insurance policy on him.”
“How?”
“He’s Canadian. Which the WestCorp guys loved, by the way. But his visa is contingent on his remaining in our employ. If he puts this deal in jeopardy, we’ll be talking layoffs. Visas don’t come cheap. He’d be the first to go. So it would behoove him to keep his mouth shut.”
I could make out a green pinprick of light from the smoke detector on the ceiling above me. The rage had turned into panic. A stinging rash spread across my chest, down my arms, and under my shirt. Breathe, I reminded myself. Breathe.
“Fucking hell, Michael. This is your mess. Okay? I don’t want anything to do with it. And I’d like you to leave now, if you don’t mind.”
“You’re the one who brought this up,” Michael said, standing from the couch, tugging his cuffs straight. “I didn’t ask you to get involved. And Kleinman didn’t ask you to be his watchdog. I’m going to bed.” The door opened, there was a pause, and Michael said: “And I hope you don’t have trouble sleeping, because I certainly won’t.”
“All right, Peck?”
Chuck cuffed me hard on the back. We were at the breakfast buffet outside the conference room, where the day’s first panel was about to begin. Chuck popped an enormous strawberry into his mouth and winked.