“Good morning to you.” Gita’s sibilant release of smoke brought her essence through the static-ridden connection, as though her particular mix of acrid tobacco, coffee, and Opium perfume ran through the air.
“Let’s do this fast.” Jake held up his thin-tipped pen, ready as always to fit as much as possible on each page. “I need to charge this damned phone already.”
“First, the good news. Louie Klein’s secretary called. He’s putting in another 125K. Apparently some guru is looking at a downturn—in the middle of everything skyrocketing, this wizard’s playing Chicken Little—and Louie’s shoving more into the Club for safety.”
“We have great affection for wizards, and we love Louis to death.” Klein, his largest Club member, treated Jake like family. His vast fortune came from Guance Rosee, his exclusive line of skin care and makeup. Women shelled out for the overpriced products, unaware the popular lipsticks—Ciliegie, Peonia, and Viola—carried nothing from Italy but the name. Klein chased every dime. When Uncle Gus, his childhood friend, introduced Klein to Jake, he said, “Ask Louis to show you his first nickel.”
“Here’s the bad news. Three of G&G’s biggest fish decided to invest in some start-up company. They took out everything.”
A familiar cold swept through him. “How much?” He girded himself. Tomorrow he’d start on a game plan. Write an outline to put everything in order. No more bullshit. After he paid his clients the amounts shown on their statements, he’d shut down the Club. Concentrate on the brokerage. Fuck it. This arrangement had gone way past the sell-by date.
“A blip compared with everything else.”
“How much of a blip?”
“Five hundred K.”
Jake covered the phone’s mouthpiece. Fuck, fuck, fuck! “Thanks, Gita-Rae. No big deal, but glad you’re tracking it, darling.” He knocked the tips of his fingers against his upper chest, right in the center, where Phoebe said anxiety rested.
“Always earning my keep, boss.”
Everyone in the ghetto up on the thirty-seventh floor believed that he sat atop alps of cash, which, of course, was Jake’s intention. On the downside, Gita-Rae assumed a withdrawal of $500K meant no more than an accounting entry.
What did she think of the daily tally he insisted upon? Did she gossip about the numbers with Charlie? Not with Nanci—Gita-Rae prized keeping her distinction of boss lady. She considered Charlie a peer, notwithstanding his raise in stature since Jake named him the company’s chief financial officer.
Despite the swanky new offices that JPE had occupied for a year now, the Club staff still rolled around in a dusty pigsty, believing they had one up on the straitlaced brokers and management above them on floor thirty-eight. They played by different rules, locked away in their clubhouse, thinking that Jake allowed this because they knew the real deal. They thought he exploited some ultimate irony of investment. While feeder fund managers talked about his secret strategies of buying in and selling out with a razor-sharp timing particular to Jake’s spectacular system (believing him a virtual savant of investing), the Club staff understood that the seeming investments he made—the ones listed on statements—were made possible by wedding a brilliant computer program to his staff’s slog work. The statements represented nothing more than numbers on paper. They assumed his transactions were made outside the realm of acceptable—thus needing padding between reality and public information.
Some of their guesses about where the money rested traveled to his ears: Swiss bank accounts that allowed singular interest rates available only to a chosen few; treasure chests of illegal doubloons growing in value at an unprecedented degree; or maybe secreted stores of oil, ready to be uncovered when a depleted world would pay quintuple the rate.
While they crowed at the piracy they imagined him pulling off, they never doubted that the provenance of growth existed—that a pile of cash, wherever it might be hidden, grew each day. This he knew, because to a man, they invested with the Club themselves, devoting a portion of their princely salaries and bonuses to their own Club accounts, convinced of the safety, if not the legality, of their bottom lines.
Jake vowed he’d catch up and make it whole. He just didn’t know how or when.
“Okay. Got it,” he said to Gita-Rae. “Call Ronnie at G&G and also Cook and Baylor’s girl.”
“Cynthia?”
“Whoever. Give them a message: April is now our bonus month. A four percent incentive kicker for all new accounts over 200K. Solomon can put in the proper bullshit language to make it kosher.”
Jake hung up, secure in Solomon’s way with words and Gita-Rae’s dogged follow-through. He scribbled down the numbers Gita-Rae had given him and then dialed his father. His mother answered with her usual whine of a greeting.
“Ma, I need to talk to Dad.”
“No time for even hello?”
“I’m on the mobile phone, with maybe five minutes left.”
“Fancy-pants family on the move. How are the kids? Are you enjoying the trip? I don’t care, but your father should occasionally see a piece of the world out of Brooklyn.”
“Ma, I bought you a car.”
“How far do you think I’ll drive with your father and his shaky hands?”
“Put Dad on. Phoebe’s waiting for me.”
When nothing else worked, citing Phoebe made the difference in shutting down his mother. His wife induced subservience, likely the worship of beauty dressed by money.
“Jakie?” His father sounded tired. “You need something?”
“Gita-Rae has a new list of senior centers. She’s gonna set up some presentations for you to give. Put on your good suit. Bring us new clients.”
He heard his father growing taller. The old man loved doing the act and believed every word he said.
Jake returned to the table with thoughts of needing to make up 500K thrumming like a curse. He barely heard the kids and Phoebe’s words as he tried to process the number. When Phoebe’s hand came to rest on top of the New York Times, pulling down the page to see him just as Jake began reading the second paragraph of the story, his heart was racing. He pressed his lips together and flicked her hand away.
“Are you going to read throughout the entire brunch?” she asked. “First you’re out there on the phone and now the paper? This trip’s about Katie. What went on out there? Your mood was fine before you talked to the office.”
“I’m here! Should I gaze into Kate’s eyes every second?” He turned to his daughter. “No offense, honey.”
“It’s okay, Mom,” Noah said. “Nobody cares if Dad reads the paper.”