The Futures(84)

But I shrugged. “I might go stay with Elizabeth in New York this weekend.”

“I need to know by tonight, so I can save you a place in the car.”

“I’m not sure.”

He stared at me, quizzical. “I’m not going to wait around forever, Jules.”

We emerged from the cool darkness of the restaurant onto the too-bright sidewalk. I was squinting, disoriented, my vision spotty from the sunshine, and when Rob said good-bye he kissed me square on the mouth. His lips were still spicy from the noodles. “Let me know by tonight, okay?”





Chapter 15


Evan



There were thunderstorms over New York that December night, earsplitting booms and low rumbles that would have kept me awake if I hadn’t been already. I lay fully dressed on top of the covers in the midtown hotel room, counting down the hours until it was time to go back in.

David Kleinman had been stuck in DC because of the storm. The thwack of helicopter blades overhead greeted me as I hurried into the lobby on Tuesday morning. I arrived on the floor just as he did. Kleinman walked through the silent hallways without meeting anyone’s eyes. He went straight to his office, dusty from the previous few months, and slammed the door behind him.

Roger plopped down across from me with a wolfish smile. “How’d you sleep, my friend?”

I stared at my steaming coffee, willing it to cool so I could start drinking it.

“Listen, you lawyered up yet? Huh? Hey, I’m talking to you here.”

“No, Roger. I haven’t.”

“You haven’t? Shit, Peck, what are you waiting for? You know they’re gonna be after your ass.”

“Knock it off.”

“Whoa, whoa. So hostile. I’m just trying to help.”

“It’s none of your business.”

He snorted. “You’re kidding, right? You don’t think you and Michael made it my business when you decided to fuck everything up for the rest of us? When you broke the law?” Roger shook his head. “You could have said something, you know. Why didn’t you go to Kleinman?”

He waited, but I didn’t have an answer.

I went past Michael’s office that morning, but it was empty and dark. Wanda’s desk was vacant, too. Rumors raced like wildfire: Michael had hired a security detail to protect him and his wife. He’d fled to Europe. He’d lawyered up and was refusing to talk. He’d come in at dawn via the freight elevator and cleared out his things. No one knew what was true and what was false. It wasn’t like the market crash back in September. We weren’t in this thing together. This time, everyone fractured into distinct modes of panic, scrambling for seats on invisible lifeboats. Some claimed they’d seen it coming. Others were already on the phone with headhunters. I came around a corner in the hallway and heard a pair of angry voices, one of them saying he couldn’t believe what Michael had done. But when the pair saw me, they shut up. That’s how it went that day. Conversations halted when I came too close. I was persona non grata.

Kleinman gathered everyone that afternoon in the same conference room where he’d addressed us on the day he left for Washington. The mood was more somber this time. He once again emphasized that this crisis—a new crisis, one of our own making—would not be the undoing of Spire. This was an aberration, one rogue actor. A man who didn’t stand for what Spire was. Spire would be cooperating fully with authorities. The rest of the firm was clean. Kleinman wasn’t going to let this destroy us. Us. Us. That’s what I focused on. I was still there, still part of the team.

A hand touched my elbow as I filed out. David Kleinman’s secretary, giving me a sympathetic look. “Evan? He’d like to see you.”

Kleinman was waiting inside his office. A grandfather clock ticking in the corner marked the silence. He watched me sit, fiddle with my cuffs, shift in my chair, like he was waiting for a truth to reveal itself. Or did he want me to speak first?

At last he said, “I hear you were the one working with Michael on this deal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’ll have access to a lawyer, one of ours. From now on you shouldn’t say a single thing about this without your lawyer present. Okay? Complete silence unless the lawyer is there. Not to your mom, your friends. Your girlfriend, whatever.” I swallowed; my mouth went dry. “But right now is the exception. Right now I need you to be totally straight with me. What did you know and when did you know it?”

After I told him everything—the beginning of the deal, what I’d overheard in Vegas, the briefcase for Chan, the $20,000 in cash from Michael—he nodded and dismissed me. Kleinman didn’t say anything about where Michael was, or what was going to happen to him. Maybe it would have been stating the obvious. On the walk back to my desk, I noticed a team of strange men in dark suits in the conference room. Files and stacks of paper and laptops covered the table. The blinds were lowered on the windows. They looked like they were setting up for war.

The SEC took over one conference room, and our lawyers took over another. The nameplate outside Michael’s office had been pried off by the end of the first week.

Kleinman’s speech his first day back didn’t do much good. The death spiral began immediately. Investors pulled their money. No one bought what Kleinman was selling—that this was a contained crisis, the mistake of one greedy egomaniac. Michael had been the acting CEO. His fingerprints were on everything. Any deal conducted during his tenure was tainted. Every last skeleton was going to be dragged out of every last closet. We were getting hammered.