Big Numbers (2 page)

TWO

Through my ’93 Chevy pickup’s bug-stained windshield, I watch Branchtown’s odd-shaped line of store-fronts pass, architecture from fifteen different decades, every building mean and dirty despite last night’s rain. As they have across centuries, Branchtown’s sidewalks bustle with generations of immigrants and the displaced. First the African-Americans, then the Irish and Italians and Germans, now Latinos and Chinese. A mini third world, chasing the American Dream along Central New Jersey’s Atlantic coastline.

I think of a story my ex-wife Susan’s grandmother told me about prohibition, how two rival smuggling gangs dueled one winter night on the Navasquan River, their ice boats circling and firing shots at each other until dawn. The gun battle kept half of Branchtown awake all night, yet no one called the cops, not even when daylight revealed three dead bodies on the ice.

“
Faccia rozzo
,” Susan’s Italian grandmother said when I first moved here from California and she told me the ice boat story. “Branch-a-town is a hard face, Austin. You be the hard face, too.”

Later, a
cup of fresh coffee in my hand, I try to remember Grandma’s words when I spy my monster in the glass conference room. Gerry’s back is to me as I stride across the main sales floor; his sexy wife gives me the full-on frontal.

Standing or sitting at neatly rowed desks, pleading or lecturing into sleek black telephones and headsets, three dozen off-Wall Street brokers fill the barn-size room with birdlike chatter, some loud and incessant, others soft and rhythmical.

It’s good to hear the phones busy for a change—times are not good for stockbrokers—but I don’t have time to find out why there is so much activity. I have to focus on this monster client waiting for me in the conference room. Gerry’s old. He takes my advice. He keeps half a million in his checking account.

Do I sound crass? Less than totally interested in my client’s welfare? Let me explain. My alimony and child support payments were established by New Jersey’s family court during more lucrative times, and for the last eighteen months I have failed to earn my monthly nut. I’ve had my Maxima repossessed, my salary attached, and my visiting rights temporarily suspended. I bought that twelve-year-old Chevy pick-up with the rusty camper
for eight hundred bucks last month because another landlord tossed my ass in the street.

I glide into Shore’s glass conference room and pull the door closed behind me. The warm friendly smile on my face is a product of seven years training and experience, plus the heart-twisting desire to earn my way back into the lives of my children
, Beth and Ryan.

“What a pleasure it is to see you two,” I say.

“Good to see you, too,” the monster says. “I think you’ve met my wife Kelly.”

Once.
I’ll never forget. “Yes. Last year.”

My client Gerry Burns thinks he’s a Mexican cowboy, although I doubt the old geezer spends much time on horseback. He’s about five and a half feet tall and carries over two hundred fifty pounds. I get a kick out of his lizard-skin boots, the Mexican silver and turquoise belt buckle, the pearl-gray Stetson, but it’s the young wife who makes my heart beat faster. Kelly has more curves than the racetrack at Le Mans, shoulder-length
candy red hair, and green eyes as bright as a “go” signal in downtown traffic. I met her when she dropped off a check. Something clicked with her, too, but I never followed up. Not with my monster’s wife. Although I still have the hard-on.

“Eithe
r of you care for coffee?” I say.

Gerry and Kelly both decline my invitation, so I situate myself behind the conference room’s primary piece of furniture, an eight-foot-long mahogany desk it took four brutes to move in here five years ago. An imposing throne I doubt will ever be moved again. Kelly’s eying me like she knows
about my arousal. I’m telling you, something clicked with her, too.

“
Business still slow?” Gerry says.

Slow ain’t the word for it. Every investor in my book is sitting on their assets. Why? Because the Dow Jones Industrial Average hasn’t recovered from the one-two-three
-four punch of a collapsed tech bubble, September Eleventh, a decade of slow growth, and a housing market collapse that ruined all mortgages and most other paper investments. Wall Street pretends things are getting better, but the smart money’s buying guns and canned food.

“Business is picking up,” I say.

Gerry nods. “Glad to hear it, because the reason for my visit today is not going to do your sales production any good.”

You know that loosey-goosey feeling you get when a
TV station logo interrupts your show and a serious voice says, “Stay tuned for an important news bulletin.” That queasiness in your stomach? The tingling at the back of your neck because you don’t know if you’re going to hear about a snow storm or thermonuclear war?

“This isn’
t easy for me to say,” Gerry says.

Oh, come on, Gerry. Spit it out. Sweet Jesus. Seconds ago I’m tickled because I think my monster is about to spend some of his half
a million in cash, and now I’m in a panic, terrified by words no one wants to speak.

“I’m dying of pancreatic cancer,” he says.

THREE

Sweet Lord
. Gerry Burns is about to die? Gerry Burns, whose buying and selling of stock options generates half my already depleted monthly income?

My monster is terminal?

I’m speechless. A ball of frozen numbness grips my feet and rises throughout my entire body. Like once when I was kid and ate a twenty-four-count box of grape Popsicles in two hours. Must be a full minute before the air-conditioning pops back on, jarring my icy brain back into activity.

“Sorry,” Gerry says. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

My monster and his trophy wife Kelly look worried, and I realize the color must have left my face. Indeed, I notice my breathing is shallow and I feel wobbly just sitting. “I’m so sorry…I don’t know what to say.”

Gerry holds up his left hand like he’s directing traffic. “There’s nothing you can say. And Kelly and I didn’t come here for sympathy. I wanted to let you know so you can begin cleaning up my trading positions…turn the options and speculative stuff into cash. And I wanted Kelly to meet you so it’ll be easier for her later dealing with my estate. As you know, Austin, it’s a lot of money.”

Boy, is it ever. I close my eyes and imagine Gerry’s pages in my client book. Five million in tax-free bonds. Another five million in blue chip stocks. Maybe half a million in stock option trading positions, half a million in cash.

“I should tell you I’m seriously thinking about cashing in everything, transferring the funds to my bank,” Gerry says. “Let their trust department manage the money for Kelly. She doesn’t know a stock from a bond.”

I’m not often at a loss for words. Salesmen without a bent toward blab do not survive. But staring at my round and friendly New Jersey-based cowboy, those bushy eyebrows underneath the Stetson, I can’t conjure a single word of advice. All my brain sees is numbers. Twenty thousand shares of this, five hundred contracts of that. The thousands in back child support and alimony I owe my ex-wife Susan.

“Austin?”

Some career being a broker. I push numbers to get people on the telephone. To sell them stuff, I tell my clients about all kinds of numbers—earnings, yields, and price-to-book ratios. And when I do make a sale, I write numbers on the trade ticket, enter commission numbers in my book. Pretty much the whole damn business is numbers, numbers, numbers.

And Gerry’s account is big numbers.
My very biggest. My monster.

I stand up behind the desk, walk around to the front
edge, and lean my butt against the mahogany. The measured smile is a standard technique to convey intimacy, straight talk. I have no idea what I’m going to say yet, but a little silent reflection is okay. It warns people that my words will be important.

“Are you okay, Austin?”

I stare through the conference room’s glass at my associate Walter Osgood. Walter sold pots and pans door-to-door before his wife convinced him to try stocks and bonds. Now he lives in a forty-room mansion on the Navasquan River, owns three Mercedes. What would Walter say?

“Austin?”

“Maybe you’re about to make the same mistake a lot of husbands make,” I say. “You’re trying to protect your wife from the responsibilities associated with handling her finances.”

I’m not totally sure where I’m going with this, so I pause to assess. Gerry is shaking his head negatively. Kelly on the other hand seems to like what she’s just heard. Her breasts are sm
iling at me. No, I mean her lips are smiling at me. Vulnerable. That Marilyn Monroe “help me” look. Stockbroker instinct tells me to keep pressing. Maybe even pour it on.

“The truth is,
Gerry, Kelly is still a young woman. She’s going to be rich for a long time. Is it really your belief she doesn’t have the desire or the intellect to handle her own money?”

Of course I’ve gone too far. I made it sound like he thinks his wife is stupid. Not only that, I’ve reminded him the pretty redhead is going to be around
doing damage to men’s heads long after he’s playing ghost riders in the sky.

“If Kelly were my
wife,” I say, “I’d want and expect her to take care of herself. I’d want her to know how to handle money. How to talk to accountants, lawyers, and stockbrokers. Heck, Gerry, I’d teach her what she needs to know.”

Gerry’s bushy eyebrows are now a single line of disapproving fur. I suspect he’s angry at the way I’m playing to his wife. Screw him. I now fully understand what my instincts
whispered a few seconds ago; Gerry has terminal cancer. Barring a miracle cure, or black magic, Kelly’s going to end up with all the loot.

“
What do you think, Kelly?” I say. “Do you think Gerry should turn control of your money to a bank trust department? A group of strangers?”

“They’re no more strangers than you are,” Gerry says. More of a bark, actually.

I ignore my monster’s snide remark and watch the redhead. I love the way Kelly takes her time, glancing sideways at Gerry, staring at me, slowly twisting the seven-carat diamond on her ring finger. Checking her hole cards one more time.

“I think the best thing would be for us to stop worrying about money and concentrate on beating the cancer,” she says. “The doctors say some people survive pancreatic cancer.”

Sure, Kelly. And somebody wins the Irish Sweepstakes every year, too.

The pretty redhead reaches for Gerry’s hand. “Let’s forget about money, Gerry. I want to go home.”

The tender voice, those glistening green eyes…it all seems a bit much. I swear Mrs. Gerry Burns even threw a little sex into that “I want to go home” line. I’ll bet my monster cowboy’s working up a hard-on right now, ready to go home and ride the happy trail between Kelly’s legs.

I know I am.

Gerry pushes up from his chair and offers his hand, mumbles a few words about thinking things over, that I’ve made some sense. I don’t pay that much attention because Kelly is giving me a much friendlier farewell. Standing close. Staring into my eyes. Squeezing my hand. There was something electric between us last year, and now, me lost in her neon green eyes, that feeling rushes back. An inexplicable knowledge of mutual destiny. Some kind of bond, a spiritual matching.

Oh, my. My financial instincts were dead-on, too. I definitely played up to the right person in this duo, the one open to suggestions.

Walking them into the parking lot’s mid-September sunshine, opening the Cadillac Escalade’s passenger door for Kelly, I wonder what I should suggest next.

FOUR

Late that afternoon, Luis’s Mexican Grill is empty but for me and my favorite bartender. I watch with a smile as Luis puts the bottle of Herradura Gold in front of me along with a salt shaker, a dish of lime wedges, and two shot glasses. He wants to drink with his favorite customer.

“Cruz says you again spent the night in our parking lot,” he says.

Uh, oh. “Truth is, I haven’t found another roost yet, or at least one where they don’t call the cops.”

Luis smiles at me. “Do not concern yourself. I will tell Cruz we have made an arrangement. But I am worried about your drinking,
amigo
. It is your business which still troubles you?”

I’ve never told Luis about my visitation rights being taken away. I’m afraid he’ll think less of me for letting it happen. Bad enough I think less of myself.

“The hell with my business, Luis.” I lick salt from the back of my hand, down the shot of fermented cactus juice. “I’d rather talk about a woman who came to see me this morning.”

His bottomless black eyes flicker with interest.

“She’s a redhead, very attractive,” I say. “And—oh, yes—she’s married.”

The flicker dies. Luis’s forehead bunches with wrinkles. “Then why would you even desire to discuss her?”

I shrug. I know my favorite bartender is not going to like this. Hell, he’s appalled already, might even throw me out. I decide to give him the full-boat Carr grin before I toss the punch line: “Because her husband is my richest client. And he’s dying of cancer.”

Luis’s eyes roll. His square chin moves slowly side-to-side, my favorite bartender maybe thinking over the long list of potential indiscretions. Finally, he pours us another shot of Herradura. “So you think perhaps you will marry this woman when her husband dies? Then you will be rich, too?”

Wow. I am
mucho
impressed by Luis’s working knowledge of my tequila-infected brain. Austin Carr’s wildest fantasies lay before him.

“Oh, it’s just something to dream about,” I say. “Like humping Shania Twain.”

Luis skips the salt this time, minimizing his shooter ritual to the tequila and a juicy wedge of lime. “I think your plan is bad.”

I feel the skin around my eyes scrunch up in puzzlement. I called it a dream, didn’t I? Not a plan.

“When this woman gets her husband’s money, she will leave New Jersey,” he says. “The rich ones always travel. It is what women like to do.”

I am truly shocked Luis is taking this so seriously. The idea is ridiculous. A daydream. Like watching a
two hundred fifty thousand dollar Italian sports car drive by. Sure it would be fun to drive one, but maintenance alone puts the thing out of reach. Forget about the initial outlay.