Acid ate holes in his gut. Milk, his drink of choice these days, hardly touched the flames. He’d borrowed from loan sharks to cover what Eli and his asshole cousins had forced him to pay out. Their gonif interest rate was killing him. They were all thieves.
Jake hustled. He and Phoebe went to winter-fucking-wonderland weekends in the Catskills, dined with school connections, and attended fraternity reunion events. Warding off the stink of desperation, which killed any deal, took subtlety. Every function required planning. He coached Phoebe to drop hints about his success and demurred when approached directly about his investment fund. Groucho Marx became his mentor, as Jake took on the comedian’s tag line: Who wanted to join a club that would accept them as a member?
As Gus’s contacts dried up, Ronnie Gallagher tapped into his network: a vast sea of Irish families with full bank accounts. Jake paid him per client, and they both made out. Money in, money out. He couldn’t ingest enough Rolaids or milk as he raced to keep the in above the out. The Club stopped being fun. His days morphed into a cruel cycle of chasing profit. Expending new client funds to oil the machine—paying staff, saving for his house, buying supplies—meant putting off more and more trades until a mountain of chits piled up.
But, hey, who cared if he bought the stock this week or next, or the following month, as long as everything added up in the end? Money was money. Gita-Rae didn’t give a shit, thank God. The woman demonstrated genius in creating perfect statements, taking Jake’s information—the date he had purportedly purchased the stock—entering it as though the sale had gone through, and using some Byzantine coding system to track it.
Menus of investments weren’t offered at the Club. He didn’t have time for bullshit. Go somewhere else if you want to pick stock. Meanwhile, the brokerage arm of JPE built up a reputation as the place where you made a trade for a few pennies less.
Soon he’d stencil “Jake Pierce Equity” on a door in Manhattan. Like Goldman Sachs, he’d make a family kingdom. The giant investment firm made its bones with promissory notes. Jake would find an equal for JPE. Something spectacular. Something new. His brother swore that the next wave of wealth and information would roll in on a surge of computers. Theo, five years younger than Jake, had inherited whatever brains traveled through their family, getting his doctorate in math and computer science, baffling his parents, who couldn’t understand what computer science meant or why Theo studied in Indiana, of all places.
Idiots. Neither his mother nor father could pull together an ounce of insight between them. Indiana State University attracted the best in the new field. Meanwhile, Theo, deep in college debt, had only Jake as his safety net. On top of buying all Theo’s books and supplies, he sent him a weekly allowance.
“Hey, buddy, wake up over there. Check your messages.” Gus gestured with his chin at the small shelves labeled “Jake,” “Gus,” “Ronnie,” and “Gita-Rae.” Gus held the folded New York Times—every section, from the look of it—as he came out of the can. Jake bought his own newspaper every day to avoid touching the shared copy. A private bathroom topped the list of his future office must-haves.
“Gallagher’s been acting like your secretary all morning.” Gus grabbed the yellow notes that filled the overflowing mail slot and threw them on Jake’s desk.
“Call Billy.” “Call Billy, ASAP.” “Call Billy minute you get in!”
“You take these?” Jake yelled across the room. Ronnie glanced up, pencil in hand, as he entered figures on his green analysis pad.
“Yeah. Billy called.”
“I can read, jerk. Is something wrong?”
Ronnie shrugged. “Dunno. He sounded happy to me.”
Jesus. The guy did fine in his arena: keeping records, keeping his mouth shut. Ask him to step two feet outside his home court, and he flattened. Ronnie sure as shit didn’t know that Jake used day-old copies of the Pink Sheet that Billy, his old Brooklyn College buddy, pinched from Bach Investments. Just as important, Billy kept his ears open—listening in on Bach’s top brokers for the best trades and passing on the information.
He dialed fast.
“Bill Mazur, Bach Investments.”
“Jake.”
“Jake! Gonna make you a happy, happy man. Remember when I told you to buy into Cinema Right Films’ limited offering?”
“CRF? The television station offshoot?”
“Yeah.” Billy took a loud drag on his cigarette. “Did you do it?”
“I did.” Jake doodled dark lines on the corner of a message sheet.
“Did you buy big?”
Jake turned the pages of his books, searching for the number. “I went my limit.” And actually bought it.
“Good man. CRF is breaking out big today. Now I got another one for you. A technical business. Capisce?”
“I understand technical.” Jake would call his brother for anything he found confusing.
“Write this down. Omdex. The company’s gonna go public and it’s gonna be big. I gotta go. Buy now. You’ll owe me.”
Visions of houses danced in front of Jake. Out of their stinking apartment and into a place with a damned lawn. His in-laws, his parents—they’d all see their grandson take his first steps on green grass owned by Jake. “How big?”
“Fucking huge.”
Success pooled deep in his groin.
By the end of the day, all signs pointed to a home run. Thank you, Billy. At the market’s closing bell, a boatload of profit that he intended to turn to cash was pulling into port.
“I gotta do some celebrating!” he yelled to Gus. “Champagne style.”
“Unless you invested some hidden fortune of your own, it’s the clients who’ll be lifting the champagne glasses. How much did you make on your cut?”
Classic Gus, just like Phoebe’s whole family: always cautious, always putting a little bump in your road. Watch out! Don’t get so excited! Jake gave his father credit—he’d lost a ton, but at least he’d been willing to play the game.
“There’s enough for everyone,” Jake said.
“Go easy on the celebrating, kid,” Gus said. “One day doesn’t a millionaire make.”
“Millionaire? I’m aiming for billions.” Jake winked, as though he were kidding, gave his crooked grin, and tipped an imaginary hat. “I’m off to buy a dozen roses for Phoebe. Careful enough for you?”
Jake steered his boring beige Chevy Caprice, Phoebe’s choice, toward FDR Drive, heading to the real estate agent with the glossiest New York Times ad. Screw the White Plains broker who’d hauled him all over Westchester and Long Island and came up with nothing worth showing Phoebe.