Mount Pleasant (6 page)

“You think maybe someone took advantage of him?” Dixie said. “Someone he works with saw he was losing it and somehow got his money? I mean, how would they do that?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said, moving her gently aside so he could go clean himself up in his father’s bathroom.

“But who would do that?” Dixie called after him.

“Someone who wanted the money.”

FIVE

T
HE MORNING BROKE
with that awful knowledge. Sex with his father’s nominal widow. It sat inside him, a monstrous growth. When he looked in the shaving mirror, he expected to see Richard III, hunchbacked, withered arm, spitting evil, his moral lapse translated into physical deformity. Dixie would assume they were partners now, both of them on the trail of Dale’s money. She had used sex as barter in the past, had used it with Dale, a diminishing commodity that she tracked daily, he guessed, gauging its worth the way investors checked their portfolios on their smartphones, conscious of each tiny dip.

Outside, the late September weather was still golden, the glorious apex between the thick heat of summer and damp misery of winter. Through the window, Harry tasted the cold in the air. He dressed quickly and made coffee, and squirmed in the presence of his wife at the breakfast table. When he left, he leaned to kiss her, but she deflected it to her cheek
with a brisk turn of her head. He drove to the BRG offices with his burden.

Harry hadn’t been there since he was twelve, when Dale brought him to work and introduced him to Press and August and others long gone now, each of them, he remembered, rubbing his head, telling Dale his son would be joining them at BRG someday, cornering the goddamn market.

Back then, the firm had seemed to Harry to be a powerful and exclusive club, a gentleman’s cabal that ran things. This was the hub, and around it were layers of money supplied by retail empires, pulp and paper concerns, developers. Some of the younger generation had decamped, looking for more aggressive approaches to money management. The city changed, and the shape of money shifted. The markets were filled with sharp operators and odd niches and incomprehensible products. Harry assumed that BRG had held on to its core clientele, but he knew it no longer had the kind of presence and influence it once did. BRG had become quaint, safely steering the money of old white people to safe harbours.

Harry checked in with the receptionist, and a few minutes later Prescott strode into the tasteful lobby, glowing with false vigour, his tan impeccable, the whiteness of his shirt almost blinding. Press had expert facial expressions. He could convey all the key emotions: concern, empathy and, perhaps most critically, collusion. His great gift was to make you feel that you and he were part of something secret and successful. When he greeted you, he shook your hand and clasped your shoulder and said something enigmatic in your ear as he stared past you into the crowd. He spoke out of the side of his mouth
sotto voce
, and this manner drew you to him; it made you feel that the two of you were in something together. And this was the greeting Harry got.

“It’s a great loss for everyone,” Press said, shaking Harry’s
hand, the other tanned hand folding over top in a grip of condolence. “For you, for Felicia, for Erin, but for all of us here as well, Harry. We lost a good one.”

Press led him to Dale’s office. “Take whatever you like, Harry,” he said, then shook his hand again and left him to it.

His father’s office was spacious, a throwback. There was a large, solid desk and a leather couch. There were a few minor trophies—golf, tennis. No photographs of the family or of Dixie. A banker’s box filled with files had been placed on the desk for Harry. The cream-coloured folders were neatly labelled, the statements with the company letterhead arranged by year. He filled another with trophies, a crystal Scotch decanter and a leather shaving kit.

Harry’s own investments were a vicious battleground, and each monthly statement brought fresh casualties. Ethical Trading stabbed in the back, Global Sustainability hospitalized with asthma, Japanese Growth burdened by its ancient, shrinking population, Global Bond sodomized by its 2.26 MER. Five-Year Reset Preferred Shares and Linked Barrier Notes lay dying as the smoke cleared in a blur of red.

Harry did his own investing, tinkering online with the money he’d managed to put into his anemic, undercapitalized retirement fund. During those years when the market enjoyed one of its greatest historical runs and anyone with a pulse was making money, some small part of Harry believed the gains he made were the result of his foresight and market wisdom (oil would go up because the Saudis were overstating their reserves, and demand from China, India, and Brazil would drive up the price). When everything came crashing down, Harry, like so many, was hard hit and felt betrayed, not just by the market and the banks, but by himself. He estimated that he could finance a retirement of about three years.

During the week, somewhere in the world, regardless of the time, money was flowing, threatening to engulf the London bond market, hitting the Nikkei like a tsunami, spilling onto the parched fields of Kansas and Saskatchewan and snuffing out the engineered promise of ethanol. Electronic fortunes rode on minor blips from the yen or the euro, distress signals that rose from Wall Street and zipped through ten million hard drives like tracer bullets and lit the battlefield as thieves crawled away with gold or growth or emerging markets. The binary commands sluiced through the world’s exchanges, and some of that money charging through the ether belonged to his father, belonged to Harry. He was sure of it.

Harry went to Prescott’s office and poked his head in. “Do you have a few minutes, Press?”

“Of course, Harry.” Press gestured to a leather club chair.

Harry sat and observed Press’s perfect head, the Roman profile, sweeping silver hair that shone against the contrast of his olive skin. His handsomeness was reassuring rather than off-putting. Press pointed out the window to the buckling marble veneer of the bank tower across the street. Seventy-two storeys of scaffolding bracketed the building.

“They’re taking off the whole facade,” Press said. “Forty-five thousand slabs, I don’t know how many tons. One hundred million it’s going to cost. Same marble Michelangelo used for David. It lasted five hundred years in Italy, thirty-five here. Fucking winter. Some genius picks Carrara marble but doesn’t consider the context.” He gestured around his large office. “Our world, context is everything. You don’t want anything sneaking up on you—hurricanes, banking regulations, new technologies. You invest in something, you consider the context or you leap out the window.” Press leaned back in his chair expectantly.

“Press,” Harry said. “Look, I need your help with something.”

One of Press’s hands performed an encompassing wave that meant, Anything, Harry. Anything I can do to help.

“My father’s estate … it’s not what I had anticipated. I’m trying to make sense of it. He left thirteen grand, Press.” Harry watched Press receive this news with appropriate solemnity.

“I’d have to see the paper, Harry, but it doesn’t make sense.”

“You worked with him. What kind of investor was he?”

Press shrugged. “He did for himself what he did for his clients. Took a few more risks. Every once in a while took a shot. That’s the usual pattern.”

“But conservative. He always told me to do my homework.”

“Big on homework.” Press’s left hand was spread out on the polished wood of his desk, and he examined it.

“Did you notice any change in his personality near the end?”

Press looked up from his hand. “What do you mean, Harry?”

“More forgetful. Or medicated.”

“Everyone in this business is medicated,” Press said with a smile.

“Would he be trading through some other account?”

“The whole world’s online. Everyone’s secret vice.” Press picked up his phone with one hand and held his other palm out toward Harry. “Helen, can you round up Aug and bring him in here?” He hung up the phone and looked at Harry. “August might know something.”

They sat in that lull. Press stared at his hand some more, then looked up. “Hell of a golfer, Dale. Had that swing. Loose as a Vegas hooker.”

August Sampson finally entered, his stooped walk. “Harry,” he said. August’s mournful face had been undone by gravity, his tuberous nose and surplus cheeks pulled south. A mask. His parts were shrinking at variable rates, giving him a mismatched look. His ears had expanded brilliantly. His suit was a sober
two-button flannel in a British cut, the shoulder lines drooping, the sleeves an inch too long. August might remember the twelve-year-old Harry, if he remembered anything. Maybe he’d seen Harry a few times when he was college age, parties at the house. And then as a grey, middle-aged man, reading a eulogy. August’s own decay was nothing compared to Harry’s: from shiny-faced youngster to this.

“Harry has some worries about Dale’s estate. He left thirteen grand, which I’m sure you’ll agree … Anyway, I thought you might be able to help, August.”

“Anything I can do,” August said.

“Do you know anything about Pathos?” Harry asked.

Press and August glanced at each other, and August’s face had a sudden interrogative cast, silently asking a question of Press.

“Oil sands,” August finally said. “Flavour of the month. Not this month. But it had an interesting ride.”

“Was Pathos something you bought for your clients?”

August shook his head. “People called me about it. It was one of those stocks that had a lot of play. So investors would hear about it. It was going for, I forget, I think something around a buck, then it moved to four pretty fast. People called and said they wanted in. They’d hear the name at a cocktail party, someone would tell them it’s going to explode, the Chinese are going to pick it up and move ten thousand peasants up to Fort McMurray, pay them five bucks a day, profit’s going to go through the roof. But the fundamentals were never rosy. They hadn’t set up the operation; they weren’t producing any actual oil. They still haven’t turned out a single barrel. So no, I didn’t buy it. For those people I couldn’t talk out of it, I picked up a few shares. That was it.”

“My father bought some.”

“For himself,” Press said. It wasn’t clear if this was a question.

“I think so.”

“Well, you can play with this stuff. You know it’s going to collapse, but you bid it up with the rest and hope you’re first out. Dale was a complicated man.”

“Complicated,” August affirmed. “Was he under some kind of pressure?”

“I wasn’t aware of anything,” Harry said. “I mean, there were the health issues, but I can’t see that … Unless he felt he needed to make a lot of money in a short time and suddenly got reckless. But it would be out of character. Wouldn’t it?”

“Completely out of character,” August said.

“Dale was all about character,” Press said. “Have you spoken to anyone else here, Harry?”

“No,” he said.

Press glanced at August.

“Is there anyone you could suggest I speak to? Someone who might know something?”

“We’ll ask the troops,” Press said.

The carpet in Press’s office was massive and worn. A ray of sun sliced through the room and lit the wood of his desk in comforting amber tones.

“How many clients was he dealing with?” Harry asked.

“Well,” Press said, “most of his workload had gone to others. Natural scheme of things. He still did the Thorncliffes, Teddy and Ella. By the end, most of the larger accounts had been moved over. Dale was half-time, not even. As you know.”

Harry didn’t know. He didn’t know how much time his father had been spending at the office. He didn’t know how Dale spent his days. Or his nights.

Harry smiled. “I wonder if I can get some help with those boxes.”

“Boxes,” Press repeated.

“My father’s effects.”

“We’ll get someone to carry them out for you.”

Press and August held their expressions of sympathy for a longish moment more. Harry was curious to see what they would be replaced by. He met August’s mournful gaze. How far had his cancer advanced? His face was an ancient rune, and Harry imagined that if he could decipher his expression it would tell him something revelatory. Harry looked over at Press, who glanced quickly at August, his eyes the only thing that moved. Harry finally stood up, shook hands and left them both.

When he got home, he went through his father’s files. He followed numbers through prescribed mazes, hoping to see Dale taking shape, like the faint outline of the Virgin Mary on the wall of a Mexican restaurant that got half a page in the paper: a sign, a miracle.

SIX