Reckless by Andrew Gross Read Free Book Online

over the years. Yes, he’d been paid millions over that span. Yes, he had the cushy duplex on the park and the compound at Lyford Cay in the Bahamas, not to mentionthe place on the beach in East Hampton. But most of what he had was still tied up in company stock. And he’d been buying it all the way down. He had to show faith, didn’t he? Now, having borrowed against a substantial part of it, he had to wait it out. At their current value, his holdings were only worth maybe double what he owed.
    And now Marc. Cantwell turned away from the screen. He had barely been able to sleep the past two nights. There was pressure from everywhere. The board. The investor community. Even the Fed. Now the fucking press…People were saying they might have to merge. Cantwell responded with defiance. Wertheimer Grant doesn’t merge. The firm had been around for ninety-five years. It was an American icon. Wertheimer Grant acquires firms. Maybe it stumbles; maybe it loses its way for a while. But it doesn’t fall.
    Wertheimer Grant is Wall Street.
    Cantwell’s stomach tightened as he watched the stock tick down to a new yearly low. Eight and a quarter. Just two months ago it had been fifty! “Murder of prominent trader creates market unrest…Redemptions reportedly high. Wall Street speculating on whether the firm can remain independent…”
    They didn’t need this kind of exposure now.
    “Mr. Cantwell…” His secretary Mary’s voice buzzed in. “Mr. Biondi and Ms. Pearlstein are here to see you.”
    “Sure, yes,” Cantwell answered. He got up and turned away from the screen. “Send them in.”
    Stan Biondi was his senior investment manager who oversaw all trading at the firm. He was Marc Glassman’s senior boss. Brenda Pearlstein was their corporate counsel in charge of compliance issues. They’d buzzed him a while ago to see if they could come on up. What the devil could the two of them be up to?
    “We have to stem this fallout over Marc,” Cantwell said, stepping over to the conference table as they came in.
    Biondi shut the door behind them. He and Brenda came over to the table. Biondi’s face looked like the Dow had just nose-dived eight hundred points. “Roger, we need to talk.”
    Brenda, always tough to read, wasn’t providing any more cheer.
    “Here, sit down.” Cantwell pulled out a chair. But as he did, Biondi pointed to his desk. “No, over at the screen.”
    The head of trading went around Cantwell’s large architect’s desk. He bent over his monitor and punched in a request. At the prompt, he added his security code.
    Cantwell tried to read their faces. “What’s going on, guys?”
    “It’s about Marc.”
    “I know. A complete nightmare.” Cantwell sighed. “I don’t know how we’re ever going to replace…” He was about to say him, but, in fact, what Cantwell knew he meant was the trader’s earnings .
    “Roger,” Biondi said, “I don’t give a shit about replacing him. Come around.”
    An unsettling feeling rose up in Cantwell’s gut as his manager steered the computer screen around. Several columns appeared on the screen. Cantwell immediately saw it was Marc Glassman’s trading positions. They would be current as of today, and Cantwell saw many of the numbers were highlighted in green, representing profits.
    He exhaled. “We’re actually lucky to have all that now, Stan, considering…”
    “Considering what ?” Biondi clicked to the summary page, known as the Recap. It listed the cost and current value of all of Glassman’s positions. “Look,” he said to Cantwell, and fixed his eyes on him, his face ashen.
    He ran the cursor to “Total Outstanding Position.” It showed Glassman had open positions of $4.9 billion. Cantwell looked at his head of trading, puzzled. That couldn’t be right. No individual had that kind of limit. The firm’s exposure could be fatal. Even a senior trader like Marc had maybe three, three and a half as his max.
    “What’s going on here,