The byline at the top of the story stood out in big, bold letters. Adam McCard.
Roger was staring at me when I finished reading. The floor had gone silent while everyone read the news. The only sound was of the building’s joints, creaking in the high wind.
“Did you know about this?” Roger asked, in a charged whisper.
Was I being paranoid again, or were people murmuring as I passed? A numb panic spread through my body: my limbs had gone leaden, but my mind was racing faster and faster. I speedwalked over to Michael’s office. All the e-mails and phone calls back and forth with WestCorp. The delivery to Chan in Las Vegas. Security footage from the cameras in the hallways at the Venetian. Chan’s cackling demands. The $20,000 in cash, still sitting in my sock drawer. There were a thousand different trip wires suddenly lying in wait.
Wanda was back at her desk. Her fingers flew across the keyboard; ten different lines blinked red on the phone. A half-eaten salad lay forgotten at her elbow.
“I need to talk to him,” I said.
She looked bewildered for a second, then laughed. “Are you kidding?”
“But it’s about this story. The WestCorp story. Please, Wanda.”
“Evan. This is way above your pay grade, okay? Just go home, get some rest. It’s the best thing for now. Trust me, hon. I’d help you if I could.”
When I got back to my desk, Roger stared at me with a mixture of pity and contempt, maybe even a little bit of awe. I turned off my computer, pocketed my phone, put on my coat. The elevator whisked me down to the ground floor. Outside, the night was consumed by a vicious rainstorm, dark and howling and damp. I walked to the subway at Times Square, dodging umbrellas and sprays of water from cars streaking by. One foot in front of the other. Just keep walking. I elbowed my way into the middle of the train for a seat and collapsed, my clothes dripping wet.
I thought of Brad, shouting and seething with anger that night in Las Vegas. It would have been nothing to him to pick up the phone and vent it all to a reporter. Michael had a fat bull’s-eye painted on his back. Anyone who resented him, anyone who wanted him gone, any of those people would have happily spilled the news. And who knew how many people Brad could have told? Chuck, or Roger. Roger, his jealousy barely guarded by derision. He wasn’t someone used to coming in second. On the roof that day in September, the day of the crash, he had been the one to summon forth Adam McCard’s name. I always read the Observer. Just for their finance guy. He’s good. Adam’s silky touch might be exactly what Roger’s wounded ego needed. Making Roger feel like he was doing the right thing. It explained Adam’s pointed questioning when he ran into me at Thanksgiving. He’d been chasing the scent of the story. Roger had acted so surprised when the news broke.
Who would do this? Why would he do this? If someone really hated Michael, if he wanted him gone, there were other ways. Roger or Brad could have gone straight to David Kleinman, and Kleinman would have handled it—probably would have rewarded the whistle-blower, to boot. Instead, whoever did it had gone nuclear. Someone was willing to blow up the whole company because of some petty jealousy. I felt my blood rising. It stank of hypocrisy. Everything Spire did, every bet we made and trade we transacted, was dependent on some kind of asymmetry. We had better information, faster networks, a heavier footprint. We got rich to the detriment of some other party. That’s how it always worked. For this particular deal to be singled out was completely arbitrary. How many hundreds of morally questionable deals had been made at Spire in years past? Who had the gall to decide that, here, a line had been crossed? Who had the right?
I knew how it would go. It would be a fucking nightmare. The country had just been devastated, and it needed someone to pin the blame on. The SEC would come in with guns blazing. In the papers, on TV screens, broadcast over radio waves: people wanted blood. They bayed for revenge. The complexity of subprime mortgage products meant that the real bad guys might never face punishment. But this story, our story, was easy to understand. Rich guys bribe the Chinese in order to become richer. All while the rest of the country shrivels in a drought of our own creation. I saw it from the outside for the first time, just how bad this looked.