Ghosts of Manhattan: A Novel(2)

Most of our trading takes place in about 120 minutes, usually in the morning, unless the Fed is making an announcement. I have plenty of time the rest of the day to contemplate such things as the physics of that abused toilet seat.

I lift my eyes up to the ceiling, bored. The Bear trading floor was built to be state-of-the-art when we consolidated offices a few years ago. Ceilings are about fourteen feet high. The trading floor is by the elevators, food concessions, and bathrooms, with two-thirds of the floor for traders and one-third for banking support. On the floor are about five hundred overpaid minions all out in the open, seated like rows of corn, with square columns spaced throughout the massive room, each column with mounted televisions. No office doors, just long tables where we sit side by side, each with our own phones and monitors mounted up in front of us. This way we can stand up and yell directly to whoever may be on the other side of a deal with us. The more monitors you have in front of you, the more senior you are. In theory this is because the more senior traders need to follow more markets, but it’s also to signal their status.

Around the perimeter of the floor are offices with a window to the outside world. These offices with actual doors are for management. Some people, like me, are mostly out trading on the floor and share an office. I share one with Jerry and neither of us is in it much. We’re mostly on the floor, on the phones.

During the 120 minutes when it’s actually busy, it is true madness. So much chaos, yelling, and urgency—so many sources of sound, like walking into a storeroom full of televisions all with the volume up loud. It gets easier over time, though. Like learning a new language.

I see Jerry come back around the corner. Surprised, I check my watch and notice that only ten minutes have passed. Normally these trips of his are like weekend excursions. He walks up next to me and half sits, half leans on the table that is my desk as well as the desk of the twenty others in my row. It strains and bows lower under the weight. For a moment, I worry that my monitors will now slide across the decline to the left and crash into monitors from the guy next to me coming down the other decline to the right and collide at the center of gravity that is Jerry’s ass.

“Nick, what do you say we get these guys out for some drinks tonight? Take off around four and head over to Moran’s.”

Prying my nervous eyes from the monitor that is so far holding its position, I have a sudden and jarring sense of déjà vu. Whether it is the familiarity of Jerry coming over to set up a drinking event, or the memories of a guy in college just like Jerry setting up drinking events, or if I have truly lived this life before, I don’t know.

I occasionally get these strong bursts of déjà vu. Depending on my mood, I am either very reassured or very alarmed. In the first case, I feel a sense of comfort that I must be on the right path. In the second, I feel it is a disturbing repetition of the same mistakes I have previously made and failed to correct. Lately these moments have me mostly disturbed.

“Sure, sounds good. I’ll get William and Ron to come along.” I’m still hungover from last night, but this is usually the best fix anyway. This job isn’t much different from life in college, except for the 7:30 a.m. start to the day. That’s why it’s a younger man’s game. It’s a hard lifestyle on the body. You need to bank as much cash as you can, then get out by fifty. It’s a career that lasts just a little longer than pro sports, and at thirty-five I need to start planning ahead.

Jerry is a little up the totem pole from me. Technically we’re peers, but there is more prestige on the trading side than on the sales side. While Jerry will make about three million again this year, I’ll make about two million. Not bad for leaving at 4 p.m. to go drinking. And we’ll expense the drinks back to Bear.

There is one noble thing about crime. It is the only true meritocracy on the planet. No one in the crime industry cares whether you went to Harvard or dropped out of the fifth grade. They don’t look at resumes—you eat what you kill.

Trading bonds at Bear has imperfect aspects of this. Sure, it helps to play lacrosse to get in, and, yes, someone ultimately determines your bonus for you. But for the most part, we eat what we kill. The financial markets aren’t perfect. We know how to move money around, take small pieces each time, and make a lot of money for Bear. If I make fifty million for Bear in a year, they should pay me well. Who else should get the money? I made it for them. They seem content to pay me.

I’m happy to take the cash but haven’t always been happy doing the job. That’s the difference between me and Jerry and what makes him so good at what he does. He’s the perfect trader. He has an efficiency of thought. There is an elegant purity to his single-mindedness, the same purity a person would admire in a shark. Nothing in his spirit is at conflict with his profession. This is a real gift for a trader.

Jerry has no distractions, hobbies, or intellectual pursuits. No remorse after nights of booze, cocaine, or strippers. Only fond hazy memories to share over coffee while getting the next trade done. In others you can occasionally see the struggle rise to the surface of a facial expression, the way telling a lie to a loved one can cause a flicker of the eye or a rise in pulse rate. But Jerry is unimpeded. Nothing but clear air in front of him.

At 3:45 p.m., Jerry is back at my desk. Just to the side and behind him is his junior trader Frank Callahan, a twenty-seven-year-old Irish kid from Staten Island. The nepotism continues. “You guys ready?” he asks with a smile that shows he can already taste the first drink.