The Money Makers (22 page)

Matthew smiled. He stepped even closer to her and felt for the ticket with his fingers.

‘Fais attention!
You’re only allowed the ticket, you know.’

‘Maybe I’ll leave the ticket for now and see what else I can find.’

But Matthew was impatient. He’d have as much time as he wanted to explore the contents of Sophie’s shirt front on other occasions. He pulled away, gave Sophie a perfunctory kiss and dived back into the throng. She shook her head. She tried to withdraw the ticket from its resting place, but it had made itself at home and resisted disturbance. She left it and got on with her own trading.

Matthew watched his rivals to see how they fared. Scott Petersen stood head and shoulders taller than a throng of Japanese around him. Tickets flashed to and fro as the frenzy continued. He heard Petersen’s voice calling out prices. Damn the man. His prices were spot on. Exactly the same as those Matthew was offering. He checked out Karen Onsley and Heinz Schiffer. Both of them were busy. Both of them were dealing at the correct prices.

Damn! Matthew knew that he wasn’t as mentally agile as either Petersen or Schiffer. He certainly wasn’t as smart as Sophie, whose own trading was doubtless impeccable. The whole advantage he had obtained from the illicit notes amounted to this: he’d been able to bring himself up to the level that Petersen and the others reached by their own merit. And Petersen, in particular, looked very busy with trades, as did Karen Onsley. Matthew wasn’t especially popular on the course, as he was well aware. He had no time for popularity for its own sake and divided his energies equally between work and Sophie. But now, while he had to yank people away from whatever they were doing to get a trade done, Petersen just stood and watched customers stream towards him.

Double damn!

He left the melee for a few minutes to update his accounts and to grab a cup of coffee. He sat with his back to the wall and worked quickly. The table he sat at was draped with a floor-length baize cloth. Sophie saw him leave the throng and slipped over towards him.

She sat down beside him and, in the shelter of the green baize, moved her hand down to his trousers, tucking a slip of paper neatly into his underpants. ‘My tum to return the compliment,
Monsieur.
lf you need help in removing it, please don’t hesitate to ask.’

She kissed him and moved off. Matthew heard her, calling out accurate prices to all who asked. Sophie was popular too. People moved towards her when they saw her. They moved away from him. Triple damn!

Matthew took the piece of paper from his trousers. It was a blank trading ticket, signed by Sophie. He smiled, but his mind was elsewhere.

2

Amy-Lou Mazowiecki wasn’t built to run fast, but she was doing a good job of it now. They ran from the taxi to the check-in counter, Zack arriving narrowly in front.

‘Can you get us on the London flight? No bags.’

‘Take-off in twenty minutes.’ The SAS check-in attendant was dubious. ‘I’ll call the gate.’

She dialled the gate and said something in Swedish.

Her face registered neither pleasure nor displeasure at the answer. She replaced the handset.

‘OK. Please show your tickets at the gate and collect your boarding passes there. But you’ll need to run.’

They ran. There was no wait at passport control, no line at security. At the gate, twenty or thirty people were still waiting to board. Seeing them, Mazowiecki stopped.

‘Heaps of time. I wish they wouldn’t tell you to run when the plane’s not even full.’

If everyone in the world lined up according to their consumption of fossil fuel, at the very head of the queue, jostling rudely for position, would stand the world’s corporate financiers. It’s perfectly common for London-based bankers to take a hundred and fifty flights a year or more, many of them intercontinental, many of them just for a single meeting. In his brief career, Zack had already flown to Houston for a meeting, to Dubai for a day-trip, and to Tokyo for no reason at all that he could remember. Distance is no barrier to business. Airplane seats are beds, jet lag a way of life. To such people - and Mazowiecki had long since stopped collecting air miles for holidays she rarely took - the idea of stepping on to a plane more than a couple of minutes before take-off is anathema.

They ambled on to the plane. Zack had some documents to read, while Mazowiecki had come in from New York the day before and intended to catch up on her sleep. But before settling down, she said, ‘Zack, we should have a quick chat about the firm and your future and stuff. I should have done it when you joined, but I guess we’ve been kind of busy.’

‘Busy? Call this busy?’ said Zack. This was his nineteenth working day in a row.

Mazowiecki smiled feebly. Humour is one of the first things to go when a bunch of highly able and competitive people work together for eighty hours a week.

‘OK. Here’s the beef. What is Weinstein Lukes? Well, it’s an investment bank, but it’s something else as well. It’s a partnership. Not metaphorically, literally. At Weinstein Lukes there are about a hundred partners currently employed. There are a few hundred more retired partners. Between them, these guys own the firm. When we make a billion and a half dollars in profit, those guys get to share it. The ones who are still employed get most of it, of course, but the retirees still get a cut. If you stay at Weinstein Lukes and make it to partner, you will be very wealthy indeed. Last year, the worst paid partner took home around four and a half million bucks. The highest paid partners - well, they find enough for their heating bills.

‘And that’s it. That’s the secret. That’s how come we can work people so hard. That’s how come people put up with the job insecurity, the absence of a social life, the relentless pressure. We stick it, Zack, you and me both stick it because one day we hope to make it to partner.’

‘You ever think of quitting?’

‘Sure I do. Everyone does. I get called by headhunters maybe six times a year with real offers. Nice ones. Less work, more money. But I’m a senior vice president. Either I make it to partner in the next year or two, or the firm tells me ever so gently that they don’t need me. If I’m not wanted, I can go and work in an easier firm. Enjoy the money, the respect, see if I can patch together my wreck of a personal life. But if I’m invited to partner, then I’ve got it made, financially at least.’

‘And the pressure eases, right?’

Mazowiecki laughed out loud. ‘No way. The pressure never eases. Listen.’ She snatched a napkin from the tray in front of her and scribbled on it, drawing a rough triangle. ‘This is how the firm works. At the bottom we have analysts. They work eighteen-hour days, six-day weeks, for two, maybe three years. After that, we fire most of them. We keep about one in three. Those who make it go on to the next level, associate. Our associates are the engine room of the firm, the slave drivers for the analysts. After associate comes vice presidents, like you. It’s a big-sounding title, but the firm has over a thousand VPs. The main difference between you guys and the associates is that you actually have to market the firm’s services. You have to be able to meet a chief executive old enough to be your father, and convince that guy that he needs -
needs
- to hire you for what could be one of the most important events in his company’s life. An awful lot of our associates can’t make the transition and we lose a lot of associates and VPs because of it. But that’s fine.’ Her pen jabbed again at the scrawled triangle on the napkin. ‘We need to lose people to keep our pyramid structure. We need to be thin at the top, fat on the bottom if we’re going to pay our top people as we do.

‘As a first-year vice president, Zack, you need to bring in revenues of six million dollars for the firm. Next year, it’ll be eight. The year after that, twelve. If you miss your targets, we’ll hear you out. Sometimes even good deals go wrong. We’ll be sympathetic. But if you get in the habit of missing targets, you’ll soon be looking for a job elsewhere. Remember the pyramid. As a senior vice president, I face the same challenge but my targets are higher. Quite soon I need to be convincing people I’m good enough to make partner, or again, I’ll be out on the street.’

‘And how much do you need to earn for the firm to make partner?’

Amy-Lou smiled at the question. Zack was a little young to be worrying about that, but she liked his directness. Here was a guy comfortable with money.

‘There’s no set target. Not at that level. But if you bring in revenues of thirty-five million bucks or more, then they have to consider you. If you make a habit of it, you’re as good as in.’

‘And after that?’

‘And after that, the pyramid continues. You have to continue to perform, or they push you out. If you don’t keep bringing in a little more each year, they worry that you’re getting soft and they bring in someone younger. But though the pressure’s the same, you know you’ve made it professionally. There’s nothing better than being a partner of Weinstein Lukes. Not on Wall Street. Not anywhere else. And, as I say, you don’t need to worry about your heating bills.’

Zack’s face was almost expressionless. If anything, his short mouth was a little tighter than usual, his narrow eyes still narrower. But little as he showed, he was lost in wonder. Weinstein Lukes was in a different league from Coburg’s, a different world. This truly was the Olympic squad, and, for the first time in his life, he felt it a privilege to be a part of something instead of feeling that that something was privileged to have him in it.

But that wasn’t his main thought. His main thought was this. If he made thirty-five million dollars for the bank, he’d be in line for partnership. A partnership would net him millions of dollars in the first year alone, millions of dollars which would unlock his father’s fortune. If Zack had ten years to do it, he’d be as certain as anyone could be that he’d make the grade. But he didn’t have ten years, he had just two and a half.

3

George’s belch rose from his stomach like a whale fart. His hand leaped to his mouth, but dropped back before reaching target. He could be himself here. His belch emptied itself cavernously into the room.

‘Sorry. Great tea, Val. Thanks.’

‘My pleasure. You’ll do tea tomorrow, will you?’

‘Yeah, OK. Can you leave me a recipe and a shop- ping list?’

‘If I’m going to do that, I might as well do it myself.’

George was silent. This was a familiar routine of theirs. After a short pause, Val conceded.

‘If you want, you can mulch the garden and I’ll fix the tea.’

‘What’s mulching?’

‘Spreading manure. Just pretend it’s your dirty washing and the garden’s my lounge and you’ll do fine.’

‘OK.’

And you do the washing up.’

‘OK.’

‘And one day you can learn how to use a saucepan.’

‘Alright. If you like, I’ll do you my liver and onions one day.’

‘Idiot,’ said Val. He knew she hated liver. She knew he couldn’t cook it. ‘I’ll wash up now if you tidy up next door. Tea?’

‘Please.’

George went next door and lugged the sofa into position. He made a pile of his laundry, shoved his dirty socks at the bottom and threw a towel over the mound. Oddly enough, George hardly missed his Chelsea flat with its twice-a-week cleaner and acres of pale carpet. He didn’t miss the playboy crowd either. He didn’t phone them or write to them. Only Kiki did he miss. His infatuation had grown with absence and he thought about her incessantly, day and night. Many images recurred to him in his dreams and daydreams, but three above all. The two times they’d kissed - once in Monaco, once in his flat back in October - and the time he saw her off at the airport for the last time. She was so lovely, so fragile; so removed from this dirty, plain Yorkshire world. Whatever happened to Gissings and his father’s fortune, George seriously doubted whether he could ever be happy without her. Val interrupted him.

‘Take this, and mind, it’s hot.’

George took the mug of tea. Val had only one way of making the stuff - hot, strong and sweet - but George had grown to like it. He had his father’s heavy build, which, in his previous life, had been kept in check by women friends who twittered with horror if they saw him eating the wrong thing. Those days were gone. Nowadays George let himself eat what he wanted - mixed grills, pork pies, chips from the chip shop - and he took no exercise beyond walking around the factory. He had outgrown his old suits and he needed to find new holes on his belts. He was getting fat.

George and Val sat down for a rare evening in front of the telly. The film looked cruddy, but neither of them were fussy and they slurped their tea, watched the film, and ruined it by talking. Val was in good spirits, laughing a lot and teasing him about his growing belly. He laughed too, feeling comfortable. Once he sighed. His hand fell against her leg. He let it lie there and she didn’t move. It was a pleasant evening.

When it was over, George took the mugs through into the kitchen.

‘I’ll get breakfast in the morning,’ he called, assuming Val was still next door.

‘Thanks,’ she said right behind him. Then: ‘Are you happy?’

‘Happy? What, with Gissings and stuff? It’s going alright, I suppose. I don’t really know.’

‘I didn’t mean that. I mean with living on the floor of my lounge.’