Chapter 1

Dreyfus sat back in the large chair and stared at the guy behind the desk. He didn’t see the flashing screens, the luxurious surroundings or the spectacular view of the East River.  The man in front of him had his attention.  Even if he was a beaten man.  It wasn’t the markets that had done it.  A damned kid not yet thirty years of age had turned his colleague’s world upside down and inside out. Slumped down in the seat, it was hard to see how Trader Vic had won his nickname.  Dreyfus raised an eyebrow.

“I told you. Go ahead.”  Trader Vic may have been down; he hadn’t forgotten how to make decisions.

Dreyfus reached forward and pulled the landline across the desk towards him. Suddenly, he remembered. The listening ears.  All calls were recorded. Standard operating procedure in the securities business. He held out his hand.

Trader Vic looked puzzled.

“I forgot my cellphone.”

Trader Vic gestured at the console on the desk.

“I don’t think so. Your cell.”

“Oh!”  Suddenly, the man behind the desk got it.  He handed over his BlackBerry.

Dreyfus pressed the small keys and waited “Hannigan?”

“Yeah who’s this?”

“This is Henri Dreyfus”

“Sure Henri, what can I do for you?”

“You remember that kid we discussed?”

“The asshole from Harvard?”

“You got it.”

“What about him?”

“We just met with him. He’s not open to reason.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. Didn’t think he would be. From the way you described him. Did you try money?”

“First thing we tried. Didn’t work.”

“That’s too bad. Persuasion?”

“We’re past that.”

“What can I do? Hannigan offered helpfully.

“Kill him.” Dreyfus said. He sounded sad.

**  **  **  **  **

 

The Friday evening on which the decision had been made to put a bullet in Murray Weeks’s head was like any other. Except, it was the last day of his internship.  Almost the last day of his summer.  The last day he could forget about the unrelenting daily grind of B School life. The second year of his MBA program would commence shortly.

Three months. A month spent in each of Summit’s major business groups. Even though Weeks had only completed his first year at the venerable Boston institution, he had become the MBA asshole since his arrival at Summit. Deservedly so. He had brought everything on himself. His unsmiling face, inability to relate to people, know it all certainty about everything and constant criticisms had led to the christening.

The Ivy League has a lot to commend it.  It can deal with inherited wealth and the establishment.  Super jocks have a place. Rebels and radicals can find a home there.  The poor and the deprived and the racially different have quotas to fill.  Lots of targets for the super intelligent to shoot at.  And genius, genius is at home there. Murray Weeks was a prodigy.  Intellect personified. Somewhere off the top of the Mensa scale. Passed the CPA on his first outing. He already had a JD degree from Yale on top of his Cornell undergrad. No difficulty for him landing a resting place in a third institution with halls of ivy.

But, there is no mechanism or process in the Ivy League for weeding out the super nerds and freaks like Murray Weeks.  No problem at Cornell, the boy was able to hide there. Yale had been more of a challenge, but he could get lost in the library researching Supreme Court judgments and legal precedents. Harvard Business School was a different challenge.  The case study method meant that there were no lectures, no text books, no right and wrong answers and no hiding.  Just case study after case study, day after day.  Unrelenting. He could crunch the numbers, work out the logistical challenges, solve the theoretical puzzles, all in isolation from the world in which the various scenarios existed. But there was no avoiding his peers and the profs. Murray had never functioned in the real world.  He had never worked, just piled up the academic knowledge.  He had no experience on which to hang solutions.  The study group to which he belonged looked after him, guided him, prompted him, sheltered him, used his genius and told him when to keep his mouth shut – always; and, when to open it – only to them.

Murray hadn’t had a drink with anyone in five years. Single, he showed no interest in women. Outside of his smarts, the man had no redeeming features.  There were no study groups in the real world to closet him.  There were none at Summit.  Murray thought he was coping.  Not just coping, excelling.  He was not unlike many of the extreme personalities that hit the big time on the trading floor.  Had they given him a trading role or a desk, he might have been okay.  But, as an intern let loose in an organisation to scavenge for mistakes and miscalculations and fraud and deception, he was a disaster. No one there to advise silence.  Murray hadn’t known it.  He was never going to get his piece of sheepskin from Harvard.

 *  *  *  *  *

 

There had previously been a closing meeting with each of the other two division chiefs for whom he had interned.  On the final day of both June and July. Both meetings had been fraught. Now, this time around, Trader Vic was doing the honours. Victor Shaw, Trader Vic, to everyone, but only when he wasn’t present, didn’t like wrap ups. He certainly didn’t like smart ass kids with jumped up attitudes who knew it all. HarvardHarbord MBAs were a pet dislike. At the end of each monthly stint in the first two divisions, Murray reported verbally on his findings to each divisional CEO.  They listened to his account of his time with them with astonishment and disbelief. The fact that his conclusions may have been  accurate was not helpful.  He hadn’t pulled his punches. Word had gotten around. The kid had attitude. Today, the end of his third and final month, Trader Vic had ordered him to report in person at a wrap-up session scheduled for 7.30 to discuss the report which Weeks had e-mailed to him three days previously.  Weeks had also sent a copy to Group HR, a requirement of the internship.

Weeks should  have listened to the signals. Word on the Street was that Trader Vic was gunning for him. Well, not on the Street. Around the dealing room. The whole building knew he was not going to get the usual send off. The e-mail telling him when and where to report had not been friendly. A heads up had come from another intern. Sally Ann Kincaid, the cute redhead from Stanford in the Private Equity Division in midtown, had suggested to him that he should retract or moderate the tone of his final report.  His earlier ones had not been appreciated, she had told him.

The final indication of trouble brewing came late that Friday.  At 7.00 p.m., the consigliore from HQ on Park Avenue, Henri Dreyfus, swept into 21 Wall. The town car had barely pulled up outside, before the Executioner, scowling, had stormed through the revolving doors and across the great expanse of marble.   He went straight to Trader Vic’s office, where they huddled furiously. Dreyfus, head of Support Operations for all of Summit, was the guy originally responsible for the intern idea. He had pushed it through against the advice of almost everyone.  No one had wanted transients anywhere near the place. His annoyance that they were right and he was wrong was eating at him.  Being summoned by Trader Vic to help deal with the miscreant was more than just hassle. It was duty.  Had to be done.  The other divisional chiefs and the CEO were adamant.  But, the report which the dammed MBA asshole had e-mailed to midtown, the only copy of which was clasped tightly in his hand was really riling him. It had been the subject of intense discussion with Trader Vic who had the only other copy.

Weeks should have known something was afoot. Many of the five hundred or so high octane, stressed out addicts who lived at 21 Wall for up to sixteen hours a day, were not known for their endearing qualities or their consideration of their fellow man. Trading is a high tempo, macho, winner-take-all business, where only the paranoid survive. In that milieu of know-it-all self-confident Alpha personalities, Murray Weeks had carved out a reputation for himself in his first two weeks. Everywhere he went, he saw inefficiency and ineptitude on which he was not slow to make his opinions known. In the first few hours every day, he studied some new facet of the Division’s activities.  By lunch, he had worked out a way to improve on it. He spent each afternoon advising anyone who would listen about his startling discoveries and his radical prescriptions for improving the bottom line. It might have helped had he been a cool dude, or even a little bit simple. Maybe that was the explanation – off the scale in native intelligence, lacking in everyday common sense and social graces.

It didn’t help that he didn’t look the part.  Had he been able to get three piece suits, he would have worn them. His suit was the darkest shade possible this side of black. Never without a tie.  Apart from a single occasion.  On  August 14^th, when the A/C went on the fritz and the outside temperature hit ninety, he loosened his neck tie but refused to remove his jacket.  He was twenty eight going on fifty eight and shaved twice a day, the second time in the second floor men’s room at lunchtime, after his five-minute sandwich. Somewhere near the North Pole on the genius spectrum, Murray Weeks was never going to win a popularity contest.  Nor would he ever pick up on portents, markers or even fog horns.

 *  *  *  *  *

For the third time, Trader Vic picked up the hard copy of the report which he had thrown down on the desk five minutes earlier. By the time he was half way down page one again, he had finalised his earlier decision that not one page of the heresy could be allowed to surface. As he flicked the pages, he confirmed the tentative conclusion that he had arrived at during his phone discussion with Dreyfus earlier that afternoon.

Trader Vic turned to Dreyfus. “I don’t know what the other CEOs thought about their sections of this report…” He tossed the offending document back on the desk again, “but we can’t let this piece a shit outta the building.” It wasn’t clear whether he was referring to the document or its author.

Dreyfus, out of his chair, was striding up and down in front of Trader Vic’s desk.   The large corner office had no appeal for him.  “You know what the others think. Look at your own reaction. Your division’s activities are relatively straightforward. Everything is marked to market. Both Ralph and the Ice Queen are subject to sentiment, judgement and opinion.  They are both apoplectic.” Ralph Kincaid ran Summit’s Advisory and Consulting business. Mary Miles, the Ice Queen, ran Private Equity.

Dreyfus continued, “they both believe the document is beyond dangerous or slanderous. They want the guy locked up and the key thrown away.   They want the report shredded, suppressed, or erased. The same goes for Weeks. They never want to see another intern.”

“I don’t care about them. Any of this gets out.  .  . ”

“Yeah, yeah, we know all that. It’s how we approach him.” Dreyfus’s mind was in calculation mode.  Group Human Resources  was part of his responsibilities.

Trader Vic flipped through the dossier again, scowling; he could see no way that the kid was going to deal. “If the State’s Attorney, or the SEC,  gets wind of any of this, the outcome is likely to be a fine in the $1 billion plus range.”

“C’mon Vic, don’t be an idiot.  Don’t say things like that.”

“Okay, five to ten upstate.”

“Don’t joke about it.  These things have a way of becoming fact. Just expressing such sentiments might make us guilty. Jail sentences are a possibility.”

Trader Vic slowly read a couple of excerpts from the report.  His tone was morose. There was fear evident in his voice. No doubting the damage that its content would cause.

“Okay, enough already.  I read it.  Fifteen times.”

“Did it sink in? The ramifications? What we gonna do?”

“We gotta focus.” Dreyfus sipped from his coffee, which had gone cold.  He went silent and stared at his own copy of the report lying on the desk.  “I know,” he said, “money.”

“Money? Whaddya  mean money?” Trader Vic asked.

“Buy him off.” He left it to Vic to sweat the meaning.

The division head was not appeased. “You can’t just offer him money. A bribe?” He said it distastefully, overlooking his own use of the gambit up to a dozen times a day. “You can’t have him going back up there to Harvard and telling his classmates that we offered him a bribe to keep his mouth shut.”

“That’s all those kids are interested in.”  Dreyfus said without pressing the point.  He fell back on his HR train of thought. “He has to keep his mouth shut. He signed a confidentiality agreement.” His words had no sense of belief.

“You’re not going to rely on that?” Trader Vic was horrified, knowing that the old Wall Street maxim of a man’s word being his bond had disappeared maybe fifty years previously. Confidentiality agreements had ceased being honoured sometime later, in the eighties.

Dreyfus gave him a look.  It was almost a sneer.  “We’ll offer him a job. Make him the highest-paid MBA to ever come out of Harvard.” He snorted it.  “We’ll tactfully remind him that until he starts with us in a year’s time, when he completes his MBA, that he is still governed by the confidentiality agreement he signed when he took up his internship here.”

Trader Vic liked this thought. He picked up the report again. He immediately placed it back down on the desk, leaned forward and scribbled something on the cover. He sat back and stroked his cheek.  He smiled. “I like it.” He said.

 *  *  *  *  *

 

Forty minutes after the appointed time for the meeting, Weeks was fuming at his desk in the cubicle farm on the second floor. The floor was silent. Friday evening.  The grunts had checked out by 6.30. Enough was enough.  He decided to beard his idiot boss in his office. He took the stairs to the sixth floor.

Trader Vic was CEO of the whole division but still sat in splendor just away from the trading floor where he had built his reputation. Victor Shaw had come up the ranks.  Had made his mark as a trader.  Was continuing to make his mark, supervising the outsized personalities that worked their magic on the screens and phones sixteen hours a day.  Europe was closed. Asia wouldn’t open again until Sunday evening. The Bloomberg screens were flickering their orange and  green codes.  The huge flat-screen TVs with CNBC and various other services were droning on about nothing important. There were only a few ragged bodies remaining at the stations.  The highly charged voltage that electrified the place for sixteen or so hours every day had dissipated.

Weeks wasn’t interested. His dammed fool head of division had kept him waiting for an hour on his last day in the place. Tomorrow, Saturday, he would take Amtrak back to Boston ahead of the start of his second year in the MBA programme in a few days’ time. He didn’t need Victor Shaw, Trader Vic or whatever they called him playing games with him. He just needed to make his obligatory goodbyes, signoff and do whatever was necessary to get the hell out of the place. He didn’t even care what they thought about him or his report. His report was his report. He said what he said. Just reported on his findings. That was it. Nothing to discuss.

He charged up to the door of Trader Vic’s office. Unusually, it was closed. Not bothering to knock, he opened it and stuck his head in.

“Hey kid, we’ll be with you shortly,” a voice said.  Obviously, it was going to be a two on one. Weeks backtracked to one of the trading desks and five seconds later was lost in the screen in front of him.

 *  *  *  *  *

It was exactly 8:30 PM when Dreyfus was satisfied that the idiot outside would have cooled his heels sufficiently.  He stood up, buttoned his jacket and opened the door.

“Murray Weeks?” He extended a hand. His smile was  friendly, his voice cordial. They shook hands.  He gestured towards the other large chair in front of the desk. “I’m sorry for keeping you waiting.” Dreyfus’s  smile widened.  Just a hint of condescension and viciousness in it, as he offered the untruth that served everyone in the business world.

“You’re not sorry.  It’s been an hour.” Weeks sat down in the  chair in front of Trader Vic’s desk.  He turned sideways and glared at Dreyfus. “My meeting was with Mr. Shaw. Who are you?” The insolence wasn’t lost on either of the corporate types.

Dreyfus decided the kid was upset.  He would ignore the remark.  He was all teeth. “I came down especially to meet you. My name is Henri Dreyfus. I’m  Corporate Vice President for Support Services.” He was still smiling, downplaying it, but there was a hardness about his eyes. He continued, “this is your last day isn’t it?”

“Yes, it’s my last day. That’s why I’m upset at being kept waiting.”

Second time around, it had lost impact.  Dreyfus would have ignored the remark, except he risked upsetting him further.  His grunt of acknowledgement didn’t sound friendly. Trader Vic behind the desk watched, saying nothing.  He was no stranger to rudeness and bullying himself. However, it was Dreyfus’s show.  He could watch with freedom. He sat back comfortably in his chair as Dreyfus took control of the meeting.

Dreyfus was professional, accomplished and looked the part. The senior executive from an investment bank chasing another deal. He didn’t sound formal or businesslike, just friendly. The initial exchange had been a little testy.  So what?  His voice was fluid and mellow now. As head of Support Services, his responsibility extended from their extensive IT installations to finance, real estate, legal and of course HR. Sometimes he was described as General Counsel or Executive Vice President,  more often as Consigliore and rarely, only by the very few, as the Executioner. In his sixties, he was well used to dealing with selfish and self-centered employees.  He had learned to handle them.  Putting constraints on some of the wealthiest investment bankers in the city was part of his job. He was on a mission to recruit Murray Weeks. How difficult could it be?

“We were interested in your analysis.” Dreyfus lifted the report then placed it respectfully near the front of Trader Vic’s gigantic desk.

“I think you have some problems.” Weeks shot back.

“That’s why I’m here. We wondered if you might be interested in helping us grapple with them?” Dreyfus held out the bait.

Were these guys serious? Weeks wasn’t interested in investment banking. The tone of his report should have made that clear. He wanted a career in consulting. He was likely to make Baker Scholar at the B School. Top 5% of the class. Money wasn’t a motive, though  consulting paid well. It provided the intellectual challenge he needed. The analysis, the formulation of solutions without the drudgery of having to implement them. “You mean a job?” he asked.

Dreyfus picked up on the more reasonable tone. “We think you’ve done a good job of analysis. We see a role for you here. We’ve tossed it around a bit.” He nodded at Trader Vic, as though the two of them had spent the afternoon discussing  how to make exactly the right pitch so that Murray could join the Summit team.

“I was thinking more of a career in consulting. The diagnosis, the analysis, you know?” He said it reasonably, explaining to the two dolts that only geniuses like him could choose exactly where and to whom they might offer their great talent.

“I can see that consulting might interest you,” Dreyfus agreed reasonably, while Trader Vic nodded along. “But what about the money?” He was inferring that consultants may have had smarts but that most of them were on the poverty line.

“Well, money of course is an aspect of anyone’s decision,” Weeks agreed very evenly.

Everything was on track.  No raised voices.  No hysterics.   No more emotion.  Just business.  The subject was money.  A matter close to everyone’s heart.  A subject which investment bankers understood better than most.  “We want to make you an offer.” Dreyfus was the father figure.  In control. Friendly. The moneybags.

“Let me have it. I’m listening.”

“Two hundred  grand to start, work with us midtown. September of next year?” Staccato like, he delivered the essentials.  No time for corporate speak. He watched the kid, waiting for a reaction.

Trader Vic adjusted his posture.  Just a fraction more upright in the chair.  He was still doodling as if the low level activity of negotiating employment terms with the MBA asshole had no role in his existence.

“Bonus? Benefits?” Weeks’s  voice was still reasonable.

Dreyfus looked at Trader Vic as if they’d agreed to consult on anything over the basics.  He looked at the young man in the chair beside him.  He could detect no attitude. They’d got him.  Dreyfus was now on familiar ground. He looked Weeks straight in the eyes. “Benefits, best in the industry. Bonus, 25% of salary.” He spelled it out for him, “that’s quarter of a mil.” He smiled, the friendly father figure anxious to reward the achieving son.

Weeks was silent. Obviously considering what this fortunate lightning bolt from left field would mean for him and his future.

They studied him while he considered the offer. They knew it was enough. Dreyfus had another $100K up his sleeve.  Just in case. They waited for the smile that would indicate acceptance. Even a serious face and an attempt to come back at them for more. A frown might indicate serious consideration of an offer that was just not good enough.

“No.”

“No?” It was the wrong answer. Trader Vic couldn’t restrain himself he sat forward in his tall leather chair.

“No. You have a lot of problems. You guys are finished.  It’s only a matter of time for you. The Summit Group is finished. I’m sorry.” He sounded contrite.

It was too much for Trader Vic. He lost it. Dreyfus could suck it up.  He wasn’t going to listen to this shit. “You jumped up Ivy League prick. How dare you abuse the hospitality we’ve shown you. How dare you come down from your academic hothouse and think you know what’s what in the real world. How dare you tell us what’s wrong with one of the most successful firms on Wall Street.”

Weeks was still relaxed, sitting back in the large wingback chair while he thoughtfully considered this outburst. It wasn’t possible for a senior VP of one of the best-known firms on Wall Street to call one of his interns a jumped up Ivy League prick.  It just wasn’t possible, but.  .  . Weeks knew he had heard it. It couldn’t be the case, no way. Not that investment bankers didn’t use bad language. They did.  But the  boss of a white-shoe firm just couldn’t say such things. He couldn’t. He knew he couldn’t.  But, he had heard it. Distinctly. He was no jumped up prick. Sure, he was smart. You might even say he was direct. He called it as he saw it. If you’re in business, you can’t run away from the facts. These guys were in denial. He was sure he had heard it right. “What did you call me?” He said it slowly.

This time Trader Vic was less impetuous, more deliberate. “I called you a jumped up Ivy League prick. You’re an idiot. All attitude, no ability. No finesse. A smart prick. A prick. That’s what I called you.”

Weeks laughed as he stood. It was ridiculous. These guys were a joke. Could they not see what was coming down the line at them? He knew he was forthright but he had manners. “I would like to thank you for the privilege of having worked here. I greatly value the experience it has afforded me.”

“You, you.  .  .” Trader Vic was searching for words.

Dreyfus held up a restraining hand. “Mr. Weeks is there nothing that we can offer you that would cause you to reconsider?”

The reply was definitive. “I’m sorry.”

As he heard the words, Dreyfus’s role changed from smooth front man in executive recruiting mode to consigliore with a problem.  His tone was still friendly and informal. “Murray, you will recall the confidentiality agreement you signed when you joined us. I should remind you that it was open-ended. It obliges you to keep a lid on  anything you may have learned in your time with us. It inhibits you in any way from acting against our interests.” He lifted the offending document which Weeks had e-mailed them. As we have pointed out to you, the conclusions in this document are incorrect but, right or wrong, our agreement binds you to be silent about any faults or flaws you may have observed.” He had the upper hand, still friendly, “as Victor has said, we don’t agree with your conclusions.  In fact, we refute them. All of them. But we don’t wish to discuss them with you. And, we don’t want you to discuss them. With anyone.”

“I hear you Mr. Dreyfus. Thank you again.”

It wasn’t clear that the kid had noted the warning. He had certainly not specifically agreed to honour their agreement. “I wish you well in your second year at the B School,” Dreyfus said as he  opened the door. “Please remember my admonitions about discussing your time here.”

 *  *  *  *  *

“Do you think for one moment he’ll keep his mouth shut?” Trader Vic was slumped back in his seat scowling at his senior colleague from mid-town.

“Of course not. It’s Friday night. If  he took a drink, or if he had any friends, he’d be discussing the gory details on the Upper East Side in an hour’s time.”

“It will  be an MBA case study by this time next year.” Trader Vic announced.   “What do we do?”

“You called me down from midtown to deal with it. We gotta take care of it.”

“I agree, but how? This gets out, I’m dead meat. So is the division. So is the Group.”

“Let me be sure I understand fully before we decide on anything.  This is serious right?  Catastrophic you said on the  phone earlier. You’re not exaggerating?”

“Yeah, it’s beyond that. This is life and death. It can bring us down. I mean it.  This leaks, we go under. It’s as simple as that. ”

“So let me be clear about this, we do what’s necessary?”

“Yeah, whatever it takes. We can’t risk any disclosure. From what I saw in that damned report, neither can any of the other divisions.”

“So, whatever it takes?”

“Yeah, he’s gotta be stopped. Shut up. Shut down.”

“You sure?”

“Sure, I’m sure. Do it.”

At that point,  Dreyfus made his fateful call.