“I got fifty thousand July Fifties!” screamed a broker, two desks over.
“They’re out of the money!” yelled another.
“I’m not getting rich on one trade,” swore a broker to his client.
“Are you kidding?” snapped Scott into his headset. “After I split my commission with the firm and the government I can’t put Puppy Chow in my dog’s bowl!”
Every so often a broker would slam his phone down in victory and then fill out a buy ticket and walk over to a pneumatic tubing system that had been affixed to a support column. He would stick the ticket in a glass cylinder and watch it get sucked up into the ceiling. From there, the ticket made its way to the trading desk on the other side of the building, where it would be rerouted to the floor of the New York Stock Exchange for execution. So the ceiling had been lowered to make room for the tubing, and it seemed to bear down on my head.
By ten o’clock, Mark Hanna had made three trips to the support column, and he was about to make another. He was so smooth on the phone that it literally boggled my mind. It was as if he were apologizing to his clients as he ripped their eyeballs out. “Sir, let me say this,” Mark was saying to the chairman of a Fortune 500 company. “I pride myself on finding the bottom of these issues. And my goal is not only to guide you into these situations but to guide you out as well.” His tone was so soft and mellow that it was almost hypnotic. “I’d like to be an asset to you for the long term; to be an asset to your business—and to your family.”
Two minutes later Mark was at the tubing system with a quarter-million-dollar buy order for a stock called Microsoft. I’d never heard of Microsoft before, but it sounded like a pretty decent company. Anyway, Mark’s commission on the trade was $3,000. I had seven dollars in my pocket.
By twelve o’clock I was dizzy, and I was starving. In fact, I was dizzy and starving and sweating profusely. But, most of all, I was hooked. The mighty roar was surging through my very innards and resonating with every fiber of my being. I knewI could do this job. I knew I could do it justlike Mark Hanna did it, probably even better. I knew I could be smooth as silk.
To my surprise, rather than taking the building’s elevator down to the lobby and spending half my net worth on two frankfurters and a Coke, I now found myself ascending to the penthouse with Mark Hanna standing beside me. Our destination was a five-star restaurant called Top of the Sixes, which was on the forty-first floor of the office building. It was where the elite met to eat, a place where Masters of the Universe could get blitzed on martinis and exchange war stories.
The moment we stepped into the restaurant, Luis, the maître d’, bum-rushed Mark, shaking his hand violently and telling him how wonderful it was to see him on such a glorious Monday afternoon. Mark slipped him a fifty, which caused me to nearly swallow my own tongue, and Luis ushered us to a corner table with a fabulous view of Manhattan’s Upper West Side and the George Washington Bridge.
Mark smiled at Luis and said, “Give us two Absolut martinis, Luis, straight up. And then bring us two more in”—he looked at his thick gold Rolex watch—“exactly seven and a half minutes, and then keep bringing them every five minutes until one of us passes out.”
Luis nodded. “Of course, Mr. Hanna. That’s an excellent strategy.”
I smiled at Mark, and said, in a very apologetic tone, “I’m sorry, but I, uh, don’t drink.” Then I turned to Luis. “You could just bring me a Coke. That’ll be fine.”
Luis and Mark exchanged a look, as if I’d just committed a crime. But all Mark said was, “It’s his first day on Wall Street; give him time.”
Luis looked at me, compressed his lips, and nodded gravely. “That’s perfectly understandable. Have no fear; soon enough you’ll be an alcoholic.”
Mark nodded in agreement. “Well said, Luis, but bring him a martini anyway, just in case he changes his mind. Worse comes to worst, I’ll drink it myself.”
“Excellent, Mr. Hanna. Will you and your friend be eating today or just imbibing?”
What the fuck was Luis talking about? I wondered. It was a rather ridiculous question, considering it was lunchtime! But to my surprise, Mark told Luis that he would not be eating today, that only I would, at which point Luis handed me a menu and went to fetch our drinks. A moment later I found out exactly why Mark wouldn’t be eating, when he reached into his suit-jacket pocket, pulled out a coke vial, unscrewed the top, and dipped in a tiny spoon. He scooped out a sparkling pile of nature’s most powerful appetite suppressant—namely, cocaine—and he took a giant snort up his right nostril. Then he repeated the process and Hoovered one up his left.
I was astonished. Couldn’t believe it! Right here in the restaurant! Among the Masters of the Universe! Out of the corner of my eye I glanced around the restaurant to see if anyone had noticed. Apparently no one had, and, in retrospect, I’m sure that they wouldn’t have given a shit anyway. After all, they were too busy getting whacked on vodka and scotch and gin and bourbon and whatever dangerous pharmaceuticals they had procured with their wildly inflated paychecks.
“Here you go,” said Mark, passing me the coke vial. “The true ticket on Wall Street; this and hookers.”
Hookers?That struck me as odd. I mean, I’d never even been to one! Besides, I was in love with a girl I was about to make my wife. Her name was Denise, and she was gorgeous—as beautiful on the inside as she was on the outside. The chances of me cheating on her were less than zero. And as far as the coke was concerned, well, I’d done my share of partying in college, but it had been a few years since I’d touched anything other than pot. “No thanks,” I said, feeling slightly embarrassed. “The stuff doesn’t really agree with me. It makes me…uh…nuts. Like I can’t sleep or eat, and I…uh…well, I start worrying about everything. It’s really bad for me. Really evil.”
“No problem,” he said, taking another blast from the vial. “But I promise you that cocaine can definitely help you get through the day around here!” He shook his head and shrugged. “It’s a fucked-up racket, being a stockbroker. I mean, don’t get me wrong: The money’s great and everything, but you’re not creating anything, you’re not buildinganything. So after a while it gets kinda monotonous.” He paused, as if searching for the right words. “The truth is we’re nothing more than sleazoid salesmen. None of us has any idea what stocks are going up! We’re all just throwing darts at a board and, you know, churning and burning. Anyway, you’ll figure all this out soon enough.”
We spent the next few minutes sharing our backgrounds. Mark had grown up in Brooklyn, in the town of Bay Ridge, which was a pretty tough neighborhood from what I knew of it. “Whatever you do,” he quipped, “don’t go out with a girl from Bay Ridge. They’re all fucking crazy!” Then he took another blast from his coke vial and added, “The last one I went out with stabbed me with a fucking pencil while I was sleeping! Can you imagine?”
Just then a tuxedoed waiter came over and placed our drinks on the table. Mark lifted his twenty-dollar martini and I lifted my eight-dollar Coke. Mark said, “Here’s to the Dow Jones going straight to five thousand!” We clinked glasses. “And here’s to your career on Wall Street!” he added. “May you make a bloody fortune in this racket and maintain just a small portion of your soul in the process!” We both smiled and then clinked glasses again.
In that very instant if someone told me that in just a few short years I would end up owning the very restaurant I was now sitting in and that Mark Hanna, along with half the other brokers at LF Rothschild would end up working for me, I would have said they were crazy. And if someone told me that I would be snorting lines of cocaine off the bar in this very restaurant, while a dozen high-class hookers looked on in admiration, I would say that they had lost their fucking mind.