Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street (27 page)

“Hi. I’m Warren Hament from Weldon Brothers. I’m here to see Karlheinz and Pete. Also, there’s another person from my office…” Warren was speaking to the receptionist, a pleasant-looking woman in her midforties.

“Yes. That’s Mr. Combes. I’ve sent him up to the conference room already. Just take this elevator to the fifth floor. It’s on your left, second door. Julie’s Karlheinz’s secretary, and she’ll look to anything you need. Here’s your pass.” She gave Warren a nice grin, and he took the adhesive pass, thanked her, and stuck it on his lapel. He peeled it off as soon as the elevator door closed.

On five, he stepped off the elevator, which was an express, and turned to his left. He almost ran down Julie Gordon, Beker’s assistant.

“Hey, Warren, take it easy. Nobody’s in there yet except your guy.” She was a trim, petite woman in her late twenties, smart and dedicated. He found it amusing that the receptionist had referred to her as a secretary. She had so much more on the ball than Pete Largeman that his time would have been spent more productively getting her coffee. Warren had met her when they came to New York. Warren discovered that he needed Julie’s help to get ideas presented intelligently to Beker when he was too busy or distracted to take Warren’s calls. Explaining things to Largeman was a waste of energy. He generally only wanted to talk about Dodgers tickets, or to plot out how he could arrange a business trip to his hometown, Chicago, which could tie in nicely with a Bulls, Blackhawks, Cubs, White Sox, or Bears game and dinner at Morton’s. Recently, he’d taken up golf, and salesmen from all the Wall Street firms were lining up for the pleasure of escorting Pete, in his billowing neon double knits, onto some of the finest courses in California. The joke around the Street was that Largeman had played at Los Angeles Country Club more times that year than its head pro. Largeman still sported a 36 handicap despite the practice, and he was a consistent cheater. Caddies avoided him like the plague since he never tipped them more than the minimum.

“Jesus, Julie, sorry. I’m a little distracted this morning. You met Anson?” Warren touched her shoulder affectionately. She worked for a couple of lowlifes, but she always maintained her sense of humor, and he genuinely liked her.

“Yeah. Real charmer. Asked me for coffee, with Coffee-mate. Then gives me some stuff to copy. I was going to ask him if he wanted a blow job too, but I was afraid of the answer.” Her sarcastic tone indicated she didn’t really mind taking care of this stuff. It was normal business-meeting crap, and she knew she was stuck doing it because she was junior, not because she was female.

“Glad to see he’s making an impression right off the bat. Where’s Pete? Maybe he could jog over to Dunkin’ Donuts for us all.”

“Oooh. That’s a good one.” She laughed out loud. “The Michelin Man is in the head. Karl’s on his way. Let me get this stuff copied. Oh, yeah, I got this message for you.” She handed him a slip of notepaper. “Could you grab the coffee? It’s over in that kitchenette. No Coffee-mate, though.” She pointed to an open door down the hall.

“Yup. I remember. See ya in a sec.” Warren stepped into the kitchenette, which had a full range of appliances, a pantry stocked with food, and a refrigerator filled with fruit, cheese, vegetables, and all sorts of interesting-looking snacks. A smaller, separate fridge held lunches people brown-bagged. It was all well planned and expensively done. The countertop was light gray granite. He started to reach for the tray and realized he still had the phone message in his hand. Kerry had called from New York and left him a message to call Mr. Wittlin. It took him a second to realize she meant Detective Wittlin, but probably chose to make the message a bit less conspicuous to a client. He stuck the paper in his jacket pocket, then grabbed the tray, which had been sent up from the company dining room, and balanced it with his briefcase as he crossed back to the conference room. He pushed open the door. Anson Combes was on the phone at the far end of the room, across an ocean of more tiger maple—a custom-made conference table with small teleconferencing devices in front of each seat.

Combes looked up and covered the mouthpiece. “Hey, Hament, you the coffee boy now too? Big step up, eh?” Combes laughed his hissing, nervous cackle and quickly scratched his left ear.

“Hi, Anson. Yeah, actually Malcolm had asked me to meet you at the hotel and carry your bags out for you, but I overslept. Sorry, no Coffee-mate. Will that be one lump or two?” Warren put the tray down and poured himself a cup from the thermos of coffee. Anson had turned his attention back to the telephone. Warren shrugged and poured Anson a cup too, then handed it to him. He was busy berating Brad Brooks, an associate, about some data-processing snafu. His tone was condescending, sour, and demeaning all at once.

“Yes, but, Brad, that’s no excuse. We’ve got to have those numbers today, and they’ve got to be right. If they sent the tape in the wrong format, that’s our fault for not telling them which one we run. This is inexcusable. You fucked it up, you fix it. I don’t give a damn who else has to wait, I want those numbers now.… Yeah? Well, Holik’s a fucking moron, okay? He bids what I tell him to bid anyway. He’s a fucking loser. I know you agree. You wanna listen to that clown? I’m telling you, get those numbers to Diane now. Don’t talk to Holik. I’ll deal with him later.”

Warren stood there impassively, knowing that, at a key moment in the future, Combes would use this conversation to put Brooks in a compromising position. Combes would say that Brooks had told him he thought Jamie Holik was a moron and a bozo, simply because Combes had said it and Brooks was too intimidated to demur. Whenever Combes started it with him, Warren would immediately change the subject, never agreeing with Combes implicitly or explicitly.

Combes had hung up on Brooks and swiveled his chair back to the conference table. Suddenly, as if some sort of drug had hit his system, Anson became friendly, charming, flattering, and funny. He complimented Warren on arranging the meeting, how well he had developed the client relationship and the business, and how much he appreciated the way Warren had included him. He said he was looking forward to the golf trip and hoped they could sit down and discuss some of Anson’s ideas for the improvement of the mortgage department and explore some of Warren’s own ideas. As Warren was figuring out how to respond, Karlheinz and Pete came in the room, followed by Julie with a stack of papers, which she distributed. Introductions were made, and Anson launched his pitch.

The papers were charts of Weldon’s prowess and standing in all the various capital markets functions. These included its rankings as a seller of all the various categories of stock and bond offerings, and its “firsts” in financing structures. Anson whipped through them all quickly, summing them up by pointing out that Weldon was a top-five firm in virtually every area that could conceivably be of use to Warner. He heaped compliments on the bank’s strategy and execution in the markets and expressed appreciation for the opportunity to meet with them. Finally he turned to Karlheinz Beker.

“Basically, Mr. Beker, Weldon—we—want to get deeper into bed with you. What do we have to do to get more of your mortgage business? If it means stepping up our junk business too, we can deliver. I’ve gotten the Investment Banking Committee to agree to sell your CDs, under certain conditions. We’re pulling out all the stops.”

Warren’s jaw dropped. Not only had he not been informed that the IBC had changed their mind about selling Warner’s paper, he was dead against it. He saw Warner for what it was—a bloated, overleveraged house of cards that relied on the federal government’s guarantee of its deposits to borrow the money it lent to Mike Milken. If its returns on those loans—the junk bonds, partnerships, and other investments such as commercial real estate mortgages—should fall below the cost of its borrowings, the bank had enough capital to last maybe a couple months. Considering nobody could tell from their statements what half their investments were, Warren had agreed that selling Warner’s certificates of deposit to Weldon’s valued customer base was hardly a confidence builder for the firm or its reputation.

Karlheinz Beker slowly put his pen down on the conference table. “I appreciate the lengths you seem willing to go to for some of our business, Mr. Combes”—Beker’s accent was not heavy, just a trace of Austrian intonation—“but, as I told you in our telephone conversation, right now we are very pleased with the service we are getting from Drexel on nonmortgage products. Perhaps at some point in the future, if our needs change, we can review the situation. It is not as if our firms aren’t doing a fair amount of business together as it is. Warren has been doing a very good job of keeping us up with developments in the markets, and I must say that your mortgage trading desk seems first-rate, and very willing to work with us. Warren executed a rather large IO strip trade for us just recently.” Beker reached into the case he had carried into the meeting and pulled out a stack of Weldon Brothers spiral binders. “I took the time to review these, and I wanted to return them to you. They were very helpful.”

It was all Warren could do to sit still. From Beker’s response he learned that Combes had called Beker at least once without even telling Warren, a serious breach of etiquette. He also recognized the binders. They were highly confidential preliminary reports on a bank balance-sheet management system that the sales group was developing in concert with Weldon’s Asset Finance team. Basically, they were developing a computer-modeling program that could manipulate and reallocate an institution’s balance sheet to take the greatest advantage of existing and future regulations. The plan was to put the finishing touches on the program, then parcel it out, on a fee basis, to the firm’s best clients. They called it BIGS, but Warren couldn’t remember what the acronym stood for. Combes had sent the guts of the project to one of the least trustworthy, sleaziest, and greediest people Warren had ever met. He could guarantee that Beker had sent copies directly to Drexel’s Finance department, and they were busy replicating the system as they spoke. Warren took it personally, as he had spent many late evenings with Weldon’s Asset Finance people building the model.

“Well, I understand that Drexel is really a top-notch firm in many of the markets you need access to, and that they can offer you certain products and opportunities that we cannot. But I think, if you consider it, that a broader relationship with Weldon will benefit Warner over the longer term, in terms of perception and bottom line, when markets and needs change. That’s why I think that, if you give us your next residential whole-loan deal, you’ll find that you have not only gotten great service from a superior firm, but you have also put one of the key blocks in the foundation of a long and mutually beneficial cooperative effort.” Anson sounded like some kind of canned-tape player. Warren could practically envision slides of Weldon’s board of directors, as dried out a bunch of Swiss as you could ever find, flashing up behind Anson. If there were a firm anthem, Warren would have expected it to be playing. It was about as subtle a pitch as “Do you come here often?” The thought brought an image of Sam to his mind, and he had to will it away to focus on Anson, who had gathered his papers into a pile and was looking down at them as he spoke.

Warren decided to jump in. “Karlheinz, I think what Anson’s trying to say is that we are really pleased with the time you’ve given to our ideas, and with the willingness to work with us you have shown. Weldon just wants to be certain that you understand how anxious we are to take this to a new level, so that you can have the next generation of analytics and execution on line, with us. Drexel’s great, but they are actually pretty far behind in many sectors. Working with a firm with the reputation and status of Weldon means something in the marketpace. Drexel is Drexel.”

“Thanks, Warren. I appreciate your translation.” Karlheinz gave him a cold, purely Aryan smile and turned to Anson. “I’ll tell you what. I will give Warren the computer tape for our next loan transaction. We can discuss it after our little outing. I hope, Mr. Combes, that you feel the trip has been worthwhile.” Beker nodded slightly to Anson.

“Absolutely. I think you’ll be pleased with the results we give you, don’t you, Warren?” Anson had that killer look in his eyes. The one he usually got just before he humiliated someone or fired one of his people.

“Yeah. That’s great, Karlheinz.” Warren was absolutely stunned. Anson had given one of the most simplistic sales pitches he’d ever heard, offered nothing new to Warner, handed them about $10 million worth of research, and Karlheinz, who never returned a favor if it would cost him twenty cents, had just opened the door to a new relationship. Something didn’t add up, and Warren’s suspicions were not eased by the fact that Anson and Karlheinz had spoken on the telephone privately, or that Anson had sent the reports to Karlheinz, obviously with a fair amount of lead time.

The rest of the meeting went uneventfully, with Warren recapping the performance of some of the trades he had put Warner into. Largeman pitched in from time to time to take credit for the big winners, and after another half hour, Warren and Anson were back in the elevator.

“Still think it was a waste of time, Hament?” Anson had his teeth out. He called it a smile.

“Anson, you’re amazing. I mean totally. You just absolutely bowled them over. Wow. I can’t believe I didn’t have you out here six months ago. You’re like a cruise missile—a secret weapon. You should be in sales. You…” Warren was laying it on as thick as he could, but started to choke on his own sarcasm. To hell with it, he didn’t report to Anson Combes, and this whole meeting had been bullshit. “You know, come to think of it, you are in sales. You must be, because you called my fucking account without letting me in on it. Hey, Anson, maybe I could hear a tape of that call? I’d love to hear how a pro greases the skids.” Warren’s voice was shaking a bit.

“Hey, calm down, buddy boy. It was just a courtesy call. Malcolm knew all about it.” Anson was serious now, and he pushed his glasses up. “Anyway, I bet we get that deal.”