Each time Gus brought up right and wrong, Jake wanted to pop him one. If anything, Jake bent like a pretzel to dot each and every i. The feds had made a lifelong impression when they took his parents for questioning. Look around their office—it was he who practically ironed the paperwork to make it perfect.
When he was an old man like Gus, he’d sit around and pontificate. But this was his time to build his life and dazzle the world.
“Money might not send you to heaven, but having it is a hell of a lot easier than the alternative.” Jake refolded the newspaper to its original shape and gathered the wax paper from his sandwich. He brushed crumbs into his tissue-covered hand and threw it in the trash. Each time Gus threw apple cores and sandwich remains straight into the basket, Jake redoubled his vow to be in his own office by this time next year. Someplace classy. He’d dance naked in Times Square before renting a shit office like this Bronx dump. The place hulked in the shadow of the elevated train—a pigsty where the gloom hiding the dirt and overflowing trash cans was the only positive.
“Are you worried about Onassis being a prick or that you won’t end up being like him?” Gus ripped off the white adding machine tape and stapled it to a sheaf of papers.
“Nobody becomes Onassis without being a prick.” Jake picked up a copy of the Pink Sheet to check stock prices. Like everyone else in the business, he pored over the daily publication for quotes on companies that traded over-the-counter. Smart people could make plenty on OTC stocks.
“Are you ready to go down that road?”
Jake flipped the bird. “Already walking.”
Gus dismissed him with a wave. “Big talker.” He winked and flashed a pure-white grin, showing off the perfect dentures provided by his brother the dentist, Jake’s father-in-law. “But a smart one. You have dollar signs where the rest of us have corpuscles.”
Despite chafing under his lectures, Jake relished Gus’s regard, basking when Gus treated him as a cross between family and the goose laying golden eggs. Jake churned out profits as though he manufactured them for the clients. Sure, vinegar got mixed in when Jake’s father-in-law covered his one mistake, but that was two months ago. He’d worked seven days a week to climb out of that hole.
Red was a hell of a father-in-law. He never even hinted to Gus about the problem once it was fixed. Lola? Another story. Same as ever, his mother-in-law always acted like a bitch. Now she scrutinized him with narrowed eyes, waiting for him to fall again.
Neither Gus, nor the friends and family he brought into the Club, knew a thing about his fumble. They never suspected that their holdings almost disappeared. Thanks to Red, they continued to believe that Jake spun gold.
Who did he hurt? Nobody. Club members got their profits. Red got paid back. Climbing out of his personal financial hole would be his last step in erasing the setback. Barely worth worrying about. He’d end up on top of the world, and he’d play it straight. Not like the shit his parents had pulled, running a brokerage without a license. Every neighbor had come outside and watched those asshole federal agents drag away his parents.
Covering the losses was genius. He took his knocks paying interest to Red but kept his clients. His hot streak returned in no time, and he’d juggle twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to keep all the balls in the air.
Genius. He laughed at his own bullshit. He’d stayed up half the night until he figured out how to manage the crisis. One night he had to sit up until four in the morning, heartburn and stomach pains hit him so hard. Another night he woke in tears, in the midst of a dream about being paraded in front of neighbors. Phoebe might have known if he hadn’t declared that his head was so stuffed from sinus problems that he woke up sniffing because he couldn’t breathe.
Jake tapped his financial bible with an index finger every morning: Registration and Regulation of Brokers and Dealers by Ezra Weiss. He bought the book the day it was published, read every word twice, memorized what he needed, and then gave the text a place of honor on his desk. Occasionally, he stared at the author’s photo, imagining his own picture—though as a New York Times bestseller, not the author of a dry text. He’d already come up with book titles:
Pierce Investment Strategies: Secrets to Success!
Pierce Invested: Strategies to Millions!
Wall Street Pierced: How One Man Beat the Stock Market!
The last line electrified him. He wondered if Pierced would work as a title. The cover—he doodled iterations as he spoke on the phone—he imagined vivid gold with a dense silver title. Somewhere there’d be an artistic black dollar sign, with smaller versions on the spine and back cover.
Unless the dollar sign gave a cut-rate appearance.
At the right time, he’d ask Phoebe. Matters of taste were her specialty, though he worked plenty learning about the best of everything. Once a month, he broke his tedious commute and exited the train in Midtown. He strolled Madison Avenue checking out how big shots dressed, stopping in Brooks Brothers, where he rubbed suit fabric between his fingers and lingered over briefcases, choosing what he’d soon acquire. Until he could afford the best, he waited, carrying his papers in his old college gym bag. Who cared how a guy in his twenties carried his shit to the Bronx?
He read the Wall Street Journal daily, and subscribed to Forbes and Architectural Digest, along with House Beautiful, Gourmet, and Vogue Paris for Phoebe.
His wife turned heads already, but for his plans, she needed to add a little sheen. Less Brooklyn, more Manhattan. Phoebe would make beautiful children. A daughter with her Snow White skin and delicate features, or a son with her brains and his balls, and life could be perfect.
Fuck it, he loved the hell out of her.
Crisp piles of money, scorching nights of sex, and silver-framed photos of a flawless family defined Jake’s endgame. Tons of dough. Tons.
Men climbed over one another these days for over-the-counter and initial public offerings, convinced that every OTC stock and IPO would be the next Ma Bell. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry thought they were next in line to be a millionaire. Jake might as well be the one to sell them the chances to hit the jackpot.
Phoebe wrote down every brokerage trade, but details about the Club he kept private. Jake didn’t need to be answering questions about that pot of cash. As long as the Club’s clients got their statements, it was nobody’s beeswax how he used the money it generated. If it took a few days to catch up on the buys he claimed to have made, so be it. Eventually he followed through. Cash flow required an elastic touch.