The Darlings (11 page)

“I'll say.” They made eye contact. Jean put his cap down on his suitcase and began opening the locks on the filing cabinets.

“Okay, see here?” he said after a minute. “It's organized by date. All the trade confirmations are in the first two drawers. They go back six months; Alain has the old ones scanned to disk so they don't take up too much space.”

“Trade confirmations? They send actual, hard-copy paper trade confirmations?” Paul had never heard of anyone who still relied on paper trade confirmations. They were a thing of the past. For years, it had been standard industry practice for funds like RCM to provide their investors with online access to their accounts. Investors demanded real-time information. Relying on the postal service was hopelessly archaic; millions, billions even, could be lost in a matter of minutes, not to mention the time it would take for a trade confirmation to be printed out at RCM, mailed, and finally reviewed by someone at Delphic. Paul couldn't imagine why Alain would ever agree to invest in a fund that didn't provide him with up-to-date trading information.

Paul felt a chill as he remembered what Alexa had said about the manager who pulled out of RCM because of a lack of access.
Sidorov? Sergerov? Fuck
.

“Yeah, RCM doesn't allow anyone access to their accounts. They send daily trade confirmations by mail. It's kind of weird because we get them on a five-day delay, but it's the best they're willing to do.”

“
A five-day delay
? They can't fax them? I've never heard of not having online access. That's insane.”

Jean shrugged. “Reis's famously paranoid. Or was, I should say. He said he didn't trust fax machines. Thought there could be a confidentiality breach, or something like that. I don't know. It's a little crazy. Working with RCM is like working with Blackwater or something. They're really protective of their information. Who knows, maybe they were in bed with the Russians or something.” He gave a sour smile, aware that a joke about Reis felt awkward under the circumstances. Then he said, “That's why I'm not sure if Alain would be happy with my opening up his files. But there you go.” He gestured at the cabinets as if to say,
you asked for it
.

Paul nodded. “Thanks. It's important. Don't worry if you need to take off; I'll close up here.”

“Yeah, I gotta catch a flight. Have a good holiday. Will someone tell Alain about Reis?”

“I'll send Alain an e-mail. I imagine it'll be all over the news, but I'll make sure he knows. Check your e-mail this weekend. This is gonna shake things up around here.”

“Yeah, I figured. The guy's running thirty percent of our money.” Jean shook his head. “When you're done with the files, do me a favor and just close the locks for me.” Paul nodded. He was already digging though the first drawer when he heard the
ding
of the elevator doors closing behind Jean.

Paul had no idea what he was looking for. Most of the files were unlabeled, except for dates. Feeling helpless, he decided to take what he could carry and try to make sense of them later, when his mind had slowed. The files were chronological, so Paul pulled the last six months. It was an aggregation of trade confirmations, e-mails, investor documents. He locked the cabinets before heading back to his office.

Paul dropped the RCM files on his desk. On top of the stack, he laid the envelope from Alexa. He stared at it for a minute before the stillness of his office got the better of him. He pulled open the tab and withdrew a thin sheath of papers, loosely joined at the top by a paperclip. The top page was a chart, colorful and computer generated, like something out of a textbook. It bore no label, but it only took Paul a moment to comprehend it. The chart's Y-axis was marked Q1—Q4 of years 1998 through 2008, and the X-axis showed Net Asset Value. Across the chart was a single red line, marked simply “RCM.” The red line rose from right to left in an unnervingly steady progression, forming a forty-five degree ellipse on the chart.

In the upper right-hand corner of the page, Alexa's tiny handwriting caught Paul's eye.

It read: Perfect Performance. She had underlined it twice.

Below that:

1. Unusually high and consistent returns (<5 down months in 7 yrs)
   
2. S&P 500 performance has no bearing on RCM's performance. If RCM's whole strategy is split-strike conversion based on the S&P 500, this doesn't make sense. The two return curves would appear correlated. RCM could theoretically outperform the index, but it was still going down when the index went down, and up when the index went up. Here, RCM's curve appears untied to anything. It's essentially statistically perfect.
   

Paul's heart fell to the pit of his stomach.

He pushed his chair back from his desk, as if that would distance him from what he'd just read. Even from three feet, all he could see was the perfectly formed red line. He didn't read anything else; he didn't need to.

He knew what it said. It all said the same thing: RCM was a fraud.

That fact had been slowly sinking in all day. Or perhaps it had been longer than that. Paul felt as though he had been sitting in a rowboat in the middle of a lake, watching as the water level rose slowly up the boat's side. It wasn't until someone threw him a life preserver that it occurred to him that the water wasn't rising; rather, the boat was sinking. And if he didn't jump now, he would go down with it.

He flipped the chart over while he made the calls. The first was to Merrill; again, it went straight to voice mail.

“It's Paul,” he said. “Call me when you get this.” Then he hung up, and his hand lingered for a moment on the receiver.

It felt as though days had passed since they had spoken, instead of mere hours. Paul imagined that she was sitting across a sterile conference room from her client, a trader maybe, or a hedge fund manager, quietly jotting down notes as a partner asked questions. To both the client and the partner, nothing would seem amiss about her. Even today, Merrill would be as she always was: poised. If Paul had been there, he immediately would have picked up on how hard she was bearing down on her pencil, almost to the point of breaking its tip on the page, and the hint of tears that had formed in the corners of her eyes.

The second call was harder. Paul could feel his heart pump hard as he dialed; he closed his eyes and tried to slow it with long deep breaths. When David Levin answered—he picked up quickly after only one ring—Paul realized suddenly that he had no idea where to begin.

WEDNESDAY, 4:47 P.M.

S
he had called twice, once late the previous evening and then again early in the morning, before he had even left the house. When the first call went to voice mail, she hung up. When the second did, she left a message. This was unusual for her. The message was short and without detail, but her voice was thick with urgency.

The missed calls collected on his BlackBerry like impatient taps on the shoulder, raising his blood pressure. He resolved to call her the following day, and not to give her a thought until then. This, of course, proved impossible. He was thinking of her constantly now: at work, running in Central Park, in meetings with clients. Even at home, with Ines.

Carter had always prided himself on his ability to compartmentalize. Lately, though, his thoughts about her were uncontrollable, bubbling to the forefront of his consciousness at random, inhibiting his work. He was sleeping poorly; he would go for days now without more than an hour or two of continuous rest. Because he feared they would dull his thinking, he refused to take sleeping pills. Instead, Dr. Stein had prescribed Xanax to help with the anxiety. He had resisted at first, but it was reflexive now; he couldn't imagine life without it. He popped one as he waited for the garage attendant to pull the station wagon around from the underground lot.

As he waited on the curb, Carter felt his BlackBerry vibrate in his coat pocket. Reluctantly, he pulled it out. If it wasn't important, he decided, he would let it go to voice mail. If it was her, he would answer, but only to tell her that he couldn't talk during the holiday weekend.

When he saw that it was Sol, Carter answered straightaway.

“Are you sitting down?” Sol sounded agitated, but then, Sol always sounded agitated.

“No,” Carter replied. “I'm standing on the curb at the garage. They're pulling my car around. What do you need?”

There was a momentary silence. Carter wondered if he had lost reception. He held the BlackBerry away from his ear to check the signal. When he put it back, Sol was saying, “I take it you haven't turned on a television lately.”

“Why? Don't give me bad news about Lanworth.”

“No, no, nothing like that.” Sol paused again. “Look, something's happened,” he said. “Morty . . . Carter, Morty's dead.”

Carter felt his legs buckle out from under him. Without thinking, he flipped his suitcase on its side and sat down on it, his knees rising above his torso like an adult at the kid's table. He was having trouble breathing. He pulled a few shallow breaths in through his mouth, but it didn't feel as if it were enough. The garage air felt suffocatingly hot. Carter knew that the attendant behind the desk was staring at him, but he didn't care.

“I'm sorry to have to tell you. It's just that it's all over the news. His car was found this morning. They're saying it was a suicide. There was a note. And a bottle of pills.” Sol's voice had a hollow echo, as if he were calling from an airport terminal. When Carter stayed silent, Sol offered, “I'm so sorry. I can imagine this is very difficult for you to hear.”

For a moment, Carter wondered if this was actually a real phone call. Perhaps it was an elaborate hoax?
What a cruel, strange pointless prank
, he thought. Yet somehow more plausible than the proposition that Morty Reis, the Morty Reis he knew so well, had driven himself outside the city limits before it was yet light, parked his car, taken pills, and jumped off a fucking bridge.

The Morty he knew never drove himself anywhere. He was a terrible driver. Carter didn't even know Morty
had
a car in the city. That was the irony of his car collection. Carter used to kid him about it:
You collect them, but can you drive them? A car like that, don't you think it deserves a real driver at the wheel?
Morty didn't give a shit what anyone thought about him. He loved his cars—his favorite was a 1963 Aston Martin DB5—and it gave him pleasure just knowing that they were his. He kept them in his garage out in East Hampton, sleeping peacefully beneath their canvas covers. Except, perhaps, one.

“Which car was it?”

“What?”

“You said they found his car. Which one was it?”

Sol paused. “I don't know. They may have told me, but I don't remember.”

It made more sense, Carter supposed, than any of the alternatives. Morty was too squeamish to slit his own wrists. He was terrified of blood. And he was terrible with guns. Carter had taken him shooting once, a pheasant hunt with clients, and Morty had managed to injure his shoulder from the kick of a 20-gauge Remington. He had spent the rest of the afternoon back at the lodge, making phone calls and drinking Diet Coke and eating jellybeans by the fistful. He never would have kept a gun in his house.

A minute went by, maybe thirty seconds, and then the front of Carter's black Mercedes station wagon appeared over the ramp and pulled up beside him. The attendant got out of the car, leaving the driver's side door open. He walked toward Carter, his extended hand offering the key. He was a young kid, and his pants were slung too low, revealing a slice of his boxer shorts. With irritation, Carter noticed that he had left the radio in the car tuned to a rap station. Ordinarily, Carter would have said something disapproving. Instead, he got up from his suitcase and stood there, frozen. He had forgotten he was on the phone.

“I'm sorry,” Carter said finally to Sol. “I just need to be sure I understand this.” He paused, glaring at the garage attendant.
Go the fuck away
.

When the attendant didn't move, Carter cupped the phone and hissed, “You're going to have to give me a minute here.” Then he turned his back to him and said in a low voice: “You're telling me that Morty has taken his own life. Just now, just today. Am I hearing this correctly?”

“Yeah, it's all over the news, Carter. Turn on any channel. I spoke to Julianne about an hour ago. We're trying to get her on a flight back from Aspen, which is proving to be something of a challenge.”

“Jesus Christ. This cannot be happening.”

“I know. I feel the same way. Morty, of all people.”

“I mean,
Jesus fucking Christ
. He was supposed to be at Thanksgiving with us. Did I tell you he was coming? I'm on my way out to East Hampton now.” Carter realized that his voice had risen; he was becoming hysterical. From across the garage, the two attendants were staring at him, whispering now in Spanish. They were gesturing. His car was blocking the garage entrance.

“You sure you want to go? There's going to be . . . fallout.”

“I have to go. We have to go. It's fucking Thanksgiving, Sol. Ines will lose it if we ruin Thanksgiving.” He had to get off the phone. He had to get out of there. He was yelling, and sweating like a pig. He mopped his brow on his shirtsleeve.

“Carter, look. I know you're upset. We'll play this however you want—however you're comfortable. Listen, please let me send a car. I'll send my guy Tony. He can take you out to East Hampton. I'm not sure you should be driving right now. Okay?”

Carter was shaking his head,
no no no
, against the phone.
No. Un-fucking-believable
.
This wasn't happening
. And there was no fucking way he would be answering his phone. At least, not until he talked to Ines. “No,” he said, “No. I have to go. I need to go pick up Ines. Give me three hours and I'll call you from East Hampton. Get in touch with Julianne. Tell her we'll get her back here as fast as possible. Call the Marshalls, or the Petersons; if they aren't out in Aspen, they'll know someone who is. Tell them we need a plane for her, and we need it now.”

“Okay. Look, drive safe.” Sol said. “Don't worry about Julianne; I'll take care of her.”

“How can I not worry about Julianne? No one else will.”

“I know. You're a good man. Listen, we're driving out to East Hampton tonight. I'll be on my cell. Marion drives, so I can be on the phone the whole way. Okay? And Carter?” Sol's voice had taken on a softness that Carter wasn't used to hearing from his lawyer. “My heart goes out to you. I know how close you guys were. You'll be in my thoughts.”

“Thanks,” Carter said. “That means a lot.” His voice cracked. He realized that his face was wet; he wasn't crying exactly, but his eyes were running, and he felt a strange mix of anger and deep affection for Sol thick in his chest. He cleared his throat. “Go home to Marion, please. I need three hours. Then we'll figure out what happens next. Take care of yourself.”

“Be well,” Sol said, but Carter had already hung up the phone.

Carter drove for exactly one block before he pulled over. He turned off the ignition and looked at the clock on the dashboard. It blinked 4:59; he was two hours behind schedule. Ines would be annoyed. She hated rush hour traffic. If they got stuck on the Long Island Expressway, it undoubtedly would now be considered his fault. This seemed unfair, given that it was Thanksgiving and there was inevitably traffic on the Long Island Expressway. And also, his business partner had just taken a swan dive off the Tappan Zee Bridge without so much as a fucking phone call. All that said, fairness was rarely a compelling argument with Ines. Lately, this had been particularly true.

Driving, however, would be impossible until his hands stopped shaking. That was the first order of business. Carter reached into his pocket and fished out the bottle of Xanax. He swallowed it dry. He closed his eyes for a second, and pressed all ten fingertips against each other, waiting for the rush of calm to sink in. He checked the bottle for another Xanax but it was empty.

As he sat in the driver's seat on the corner of Seventy-first and Lexington, Carter shuffled illogically through the events of the past few days. He had spoken to Morty the previous Friday. Or was it Thursday? Morty had called about redemption requests, which was unlike him. He seemed stressed out,
who didn't these days
, by the topic of redemption requests, but by the end of the conversation, they were talking about Thanksgiving dinner in the Hamptons.

Then there had been dinner at Café Boulud—that was Saturday night—with Leonard Rosen, a major investor. No call from Morty. Frederick Fund team meeting on Friday, over breakfast. They had discussed RCM's redemption request situation. Shrink appointment after the meeting. Drinks on Sunday evening at Roger Sinclair's place. That was it. That was all he could come up with. What the hell had happened since last Thursday? Why hadn't Morty called him? They could have worked it out together. Hell of a solution.

Of all the ways to go, there was something so unnatural, so unseemly, about electing to die. Carter's father had, if only indirectly. Charles Darling Jr. drank himself to death by age forty-five. He was found dead in his bed, wearing only a dressing gown and reading glasses. A highball of scotch was on the bedside table, and under that was a letter. The letter was addressed to a Mr. Sheldon Summers at One Christopher Street in the West Village. Who, as it was later explained to Carter, had been his father's lover for over a decade.

Carter never forgave him for it. For years, Carter lied about how it had happened, telling teachers, friends, and colleagues that his father had died of stomach cancer. To Carter, stomach cancer sounded less self-induced than cirrhosis of the liver. The Darlings were of good New England stock, well educated and well-bred, not Irish peasants who drank themselves to undignified ends. It never occurred to Carter that his mother, Eleanor, might say otherwise, or that everyone already knew that Charlie Darling was an alcoholic and a homosexual. Everyone who was anyone, anyway. Carter said “stomach cancer” for so long and so convincingly, that by the time he met Ines, he himself believed it. Ines knew only that Charles had been sick for a great many years before he had died, and that his sickness had rendered him unable to work, and that this had caused the Darlings to lose what was left of their family fortune. Carter was a self-made man. Ines liked to put a pleasant spin on it, saying things like, “Well, he was a reminder of why you should live every day to its fullest.” That was Ines, stubbornly positive, unfailingly able to bend the world's contours to her own.

It was the dead of winter when Charles Darling died, just four days before Christmas. The presents remained beneath the tree, entombed in gold wrapping paper, forgotten about. Carter was too shy to ask for them. Eleanor's sisters, Hilary and Cathy, came down from Massachusetts for the funeral and had stayed at their apartment for what seemed like an eternity. To make Hilary and Cathy more comfortable, Carter had been asked to give up his bedroom. Told, really: No one ever asked Carter anything. He'd slept on a foldout couch in the den, the one with needlepoint pillows, hard and square. Eventually, he was told that he had been withdrawn from the Buckley School in Manhattan and would be sent to Eaglebrook, a junior boy's boarding school in Deerfield, Massachusetts.

Cathy had been the one to drive him up to Eaglebrook. His mother, Cathy said, was too tired to make the trip herself. The other students were still on winter recess, and the dorms were empty but for a few international students whose parents didn't care enough to send for them. Before she left, Cathy told him that he was a very lucky boy to enroll in the middle of the school year. An exception had been made just for him because he was a Darling. Cathy gave him a hug and checked her watch. Carter wondered if she had played a game of rock-paper-scissors with Hilary and whoever lost had to be the one to drive him there. They both had curly blond hair but Hilary was prettier, more outgoing, more authoritarian. Cathy seemed like the type who always lost at rock-paper- scissors.

Eventually, the house master appeared and helped them with his suitcases. Carter didn't feel like a very lucky boy. As Cathy drove away, he felt only the nauseating pain of loneliness.