The 25th Hour Read online

  He passes a diner on Second Avenue. A beautiful girl seated in a booth smiles at him, her chin propped on a menu – but it’s too late, she can no longer help. In twenty-four hours he boards a bus for Otisville. Tomorrow at noon he surrenders his name for a number. The beautiful girl is a curse. Her face will haunt him for seven years.

  Two

  Nose pressed to the plate-glass window, Slattery wonders how close to the Hudson a good jump would get him. Standing on the thirty-second floor – assume each floor has a ten-foot ceiling, a two-foot interstice between that ceiling and the floor above, 320 plus 64 equals 384, a 384-foot fall. And how far from the building to the river? Call it 300 feet. A 384-foot vertical, 300-foot horizontal, for a hypotenuse of . . . Slattery frowns. Wait a second. A jump out this window will not be a slide down the hypotenuse. Gravity will suck him earthward as soon as he loses momentum. So, a leap of 300 feet.

  First he would have to break through the glass with a chair. Position the starting line by the water cooler on the far wall; that gives him a twenty-yard sprint. Timing the jump is critical: a moment too early or too late and his foot fails to clear the window frame, leaving him toppling shame-faced over the edge, catcalls and laughter the last sounds he hears.

  Not that it matters, thinks Slattery. He could run his fastest, jump at the perfect moment, catch a strong tail wind – the river is too far. He would never reach water, never come close. Instead his effort would end, colorfully, on gray concrete. The pedestrians below would remember the arc of his fall, the curious pumping motion of his legs, mimicking Olympic long jumpers. But it’s hopeless, leaping for the Hudson. Moments after impact, the traders, clustered around the broken window, would return to their desks, begin composing their jokes. Within minutes, all of Manhattan’s investment bankers would know the story, reduced to a blurb, compact and honed for a supper recounting among family and friends: Slattery splattery.

  He bangs his head softly against the glass, then straightens up. All this morbid fantasizing might be premature. After all, he argues with himself, he owns the highest batting average on the floor. None of the other traders in his department has gathered so much loot for the firm. Discounting the misadventures of early July, that succession of horrid maneuvers (and what slugger does not suffer a seasonal slump?), discounting that fortnight and Slattery is the local star, a true-blue rainmaker, the Hank Aaron of the thirty-second floor. It doesn’t matter, he tells himself. One hour from now it will all be over.

  A pale blue light arcs over the black river as the sun rises behind Slattery and reluctantly begins to illuminate the Jersey shore. Rising over Brooklyn, he thinks, rapping the glass with his knuckles. Screw this deal up and I’m going back to Brooklyn, say goodbye to the West Village apartment, hello again Mom, Dad, Eoin, and Aunt Orla from County fucking Wicklow, that witch, with her inside information on every situation planet-wide. Any disturbance between men that has ever occurred in the world’s turbulent history, Aunt Orla has her bitter opinions. Mention an agrarian dispute in ancient Sumeria, Orla chooses her side by the third word; she’ll be spitting maledictions at the enemy, the eejits, chanting benedictions for the aggrieved ally, the poor lambs, and claiming distant relations among that flock, the Akkadians or whatnot, and weren’t they the long-suffering Irish of Mesopotamia?

  Every transaction, for Slattery, is a choice between two closed doors. Turn the wrong knob and the trap is sprung, fall back into Bay Ridge to bunk with a dim-witted little brother and breakfast with the endlessly irate Orla, the thirty-second floor a fast-fading mirage, and Dad clapping his hand to your back, telling you not to worry, a union card’s a cinch what with a crane operator for a cousin.

  Slattery returns to his desk and sits with his hands behind his head, staring at the rows of numbers marching across the screens of his seven monitors. He taps a few keys and the numbers of one column freeze, today’s close in the Hong Kong market. Slattery rubs the bottom of his chin with a clenched fist and looks to the clocks fixed on the wall, the precise minute in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, London, New York: 7:57 here on the Eastern Seaboard. Half an hour till the number comes out. The trading floor hums, the low and nervous murmur of every month’s final Thursday. Big money to be made today, big money to be lost.

  Slattery’s eyes are undercast with black crescents. He wakes each morning at five-thirty and rides ten imaginary miles on his stationary bike. An hour later he arrives at the office, seats himself before his array of electronics, and scans his seven screens for information, for clues he might have missed the previous afternoon.

  The brown curls have begun their slow retreat from his forehead. An ex-wrestler, Slattery’s nose has been broken four times, his ears cauliflowered, his front teeth chipped from an accidental head butt sophomore year of college. His neck remains massive from grappling days, out of proportion to the rest of his body. He hasn’t been able to fasten the top button of his dress shirts since high school.

  ‘Coming out with us later on?’

  Slattery looks up from his monitors and nods at his supervisor, the man who hired him four years ago: Ari Lichter, plump face flushed after walking three blocks from the subway station, cloaked in his winter overcoat though the morning is unseasonably warm.

  ‘You owe me ten bucks,’ says Slattery.

  ‘And good morning to you.’ Lichter thumbs through his wallet, finds a ten-dollar bill, hands it over. ‘I don’t want you to break my thumbs.’

  ‘Thank you, boss. Never bet on the Sixers, they’re uncoachable.’ Slattery snaps the bill taut between his fingers. ‘A little warm for that coat, isn’t it?’

  ‘Supposed to get some snow later on. If you want to start spending that big money, people are getting together at Sobie’s after work, watch the Knicks game.’

  ‘Sobie’s?’ Slattery eyes his boss skeptically. ‘You still trying for that bartender?’

  ‘I like the place. Good beer.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, they’ve got the best Budweiser in town. That girl can’t be twenty years old. She could be your daughter, boss.’

  Lichter shakes his head. ‘Listen, my young friend, I’m a fat, happy suburban dad. And I follow the rules. But I’m allowed to look.’

  ‘Give me a report tomorrow,’ says Slattery. ‘I’m going out with some friends tonight.’

  ‘Big date?’

  ‘Nah, not even. Sort of a going-away party.’

  Mentioning his plans for the night makes Slattery uneasy. So far this morning he has managed to keep thoughts of Monty buried beneath the numbers, the constant calculations and recalculations of his gamble. He wonders what his friend is planning to do with Doyle. The two have been inseparable since Monty found the dog four years ago; Monty has a hard time sleeping when the pit bull isn’t curled up outside the bedroom door. Bad enough to lock a man in a cell, to take him from his family, his friends, his city – couldn’t he at least keep his dog? If Monty had Doyle to lick his face in the morning, Doyle to bark in warning whenever a stranger approached, Doyle just sitting, quiet and content, head on the floor between his paws, brown-eyed and watching – maybe it would make seven years pass a little quicker.

  ‘The other thing,’ says Lichter. ‘You’re still holding on to all those contracts?’

  ‘Yeah. Why, you’re nervous?’

  ‘I don’t like it,’ says Lichter. ‘The claims numbers have dropped three weeks straight.’

  ‘And everybody’s thinking, therefore, if claims have dropped, employment must be up.’

  ‘They probably think that,’ says Lichter, ‘because it’s pretty much always true.’

  Slattery wags his finger at his supervisor. ‘Pretty much always. But not this time. I’ve got a theory.’

  ‘Oh, good, you’ve got a theory. Everybody alive’s got a theory, Frank. How to beat the blackjack dealer, how to pick a horse, how to ace the stock market. I’ve got a theory too. You want to hear it? My theory is called Theories Are Bullshit. Do me a favor. Cut your stake in half, okay?’

/>   ‘You want me to sell five hundred contracts?’

  ‘Five hundred? You’ve got a thousand?’

  Slattery nods slowly. ‘Right, boss. You’re quick with the numbers.’

  ‘At a hundred thousand a pop? Frank, come on, man, you’re in awfully deep.’

  ‘What? They authorized me to a hundred mil. You want to—;’

  ‘A week ago,’ says Lichter. ‘They raise your limit one week ago, and you’re already maxing out.’

  ‘So what’s the point of giving me a limit if they don’t want me to go there?’

  ‘Listen to me. Cut your stake in half. All right? You’ve been doing a great job, everyone knows that. They’re watching you. I’ll probably be fetching your coffee in a few months. But right now I’m still your supervisor and I’m telling you: sell those contracts.’ He grips Slattery’s shoulder, then walks toward his office, exchanging good mornings with the other traders on the floor.

  Marcuse peeks his head over the partition facing Slattery. ‘Better hop to, sonny boy.’

  Slattery says nothing, stabbing angrily at his keyboard, calling forth further tables and figures. But Marcuse remains, chin resting on the partition like a latter-day Kilroy. ‘I don’t see you picking up the phone,’ he says. ‘Didn’t Lichter just tell you to sell? Sounds like your allowance got cut off.’

  Slattery narrows his eyes but continues to peruse the screens, refusing to acknowledge the taunts. Marcuse, far from being deterred, continues. ‘You’re not going to disobey a direct order, are you? That could get you thrown in the brig. They’ll have you on KP duty for years.’

  ‘You want to back off and let me work? Okay? I don’t come into your bedroom and tell you how to fuck your wife, do I?’

  Marcuse mimes wiping a tear from his eye. ‘I thought you liked my wife.’

  ‘I do like your wife. The fact that she married you is a big strike against her.’

  ‘Getting a little testy, huh, Frank? Hey, I’m on your side. We’re all working for the same team, right?’

  Slattery rolls backward in his chair and looks up at Marcuse. ‘I’ve got work to do, so do me a favor, would you? Just do me a favor and shut up. Whatever happens, happens; it’s got nothing to do with you.’

  ‘You got it, Frank,’ says Marcuse, winking. ‘Give ’em hell.’

  If it all goes sour, thinks Slattery, I will jump that partition, break three of his ribs, and console myself pummeling him till the security guards arrive and throw me out the door. The others on the floor would never interfere. Marcuse is widely detested, from the receptionists to the vice presidents, though redeemed in the eyes of the firm as a proven profit maker. If Charlie Manson showed a knack for picking stocks or trading bonds, every house on Wall Street would lure him with extravagant offers.

  Slattery closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. He knows this is fatal – never allow personalities to distract you from a numbers game – but how do you ignore a Marcuse, a man convinced that his rise depends upon Slattery’s fall? It would be so much easier to leap over the partition, seize him by the throat, demand respect. A little violence to alleviate the pressures of civilized behavior, that’s all.

  Slattery has a hard time letting things go. At night he often dreams of avenging slanders real or imagined, wakes with a feeling of satisfaction, of justice, only to realize that the vindication is mere fantasy, the wrongs still unrighted. All the men he has not fought but should have. One time when Slattery was drinking at closing hour, a bouncer said, ‘Time’s up. Out.’

  ‘Let me just finish my beer.’

  The bouncer knocked the glass from Slattery’s hand. ‘You’re finished.’ Two other large men came over, flanking their co-worker.

  ‘What the fuck was that for?’ asked Slattery.

  ‘Do something,’ said the bouncer. Slattery did nothing. He left the bar and walked home and has been cursing himself ever since.

  Or the mad-eyed man on the R train, who cursed when Slattery accidentally stepped on the man’s foot. Slattery had promptly apologized but the man thrust his damp face inches from Slattery’s eyes. ‘You want to throw with me, motherfucker? You want to throw with me?’ Slattery had turned and walked away and the man hollered at his back, ‘That’s what I thought, motherfucker. You better run!’

  That was ten years ago. Slattery was seventeen. Any rational New Yorker would have walked away from that fight – never brawl on the subway: never brawl with a lunatic – but Slattery is unconsoled by his rationality. He replays the encounter in his mind time after time, imagining the perfect response – the perfect right hook, the perfect double-leg takedown, the perfect head butt. But the mad-eyed man is gone, untouchable.

  What Slattery wants is a ring painted on concrete in the empty desert. With no living spectator around for miles, just him and the grinning demons. A chance to fight them each, one by one – the bouncer, the mad-eyed man, all of them – to leave them broken and humbled, or even to lose the fights, but with nobility, and earn the respect of all the men who have showed him none. I want peace, he thinks to himself late at night. I want peace. But then he dreams of fistfights.

  Even in the cool, sterile environment of the bank’s offices, these brute reveries disturb his concentration. By force of will he returns to the numbers, the endless quotes and codes of money abstracted. Working out the odds, calculating the percentages, slicing and dicing – you begin to forget the immensity of the transaction, that every fractional uptick or downtick represents a mansion by the Englewood cliffs. Slattery has no time for such considerations. Start admiring the vastness of the forest and a tree will surely fall on you, bashing your skull for the crime of perspective.

  Slattery considers himself a code-breaker, spends his hours deciphering the endlessly scrolling information. Market performance, rate of inflation, economists’ predictions, politicians’ pronouncements, inventories, weather conditions, consumer mood swings – all play a role in determining the outcome. As a scholar of Cabala peruses the books of Moses, certain that a world of prophecy is contained within every letter, so Slattery scrutinizes his own chosen text. He refuses to believe that any other interpretation of the numbers can be valid. No one else is privy to his calculations, his formulae, his elaborate system for devising predictions.

  Phelan, a new kid, eight months out of college, walks by with a cup of coffee, waving a fax sheet. ‘Sollie’s looking for a big number, two hundred, maybe two-twenty. That’s the word.’

  ‘Fuck Sollie,’ says Slattery.

  Phelan pauses, blinks, looks down at the fax sheet and back at Slattery. ‘Fuck Sollie?’

  ‘Nobody’s looking to do us any favors, Phelan. They don’t give us anything they think we can use. You’re wearing a striped shirt and a striped tie.’

  Phelan examines his outfit. ‘Yeah? Is that bad?’

  ‘You look like a fucking optical illusion. Go away.’

  At eight-twenty the futures trading begins. The floor becomes frantic with activity, everyone barking orders into their phones, calling up numbers on computer screens, stealing quick glances at the bow-tied reporter on the television, the man who will release the employment number. Slattery picks up a telephone and begins speaking to the dial tone.

  ‘Slattery!’ Lichter stands in the doorway of his office, a real office with walls and windows. ‘We’re good?’

  Slattery nods and gives the thumbs-up, continuing his bogus conversation. If the number comes out two-twenty, he calculates, we’re losing one and a half million. The equivalent of his father’s total career earnings, forty years’ wages, evaporated. He ignores the man on television reading from his script. The number will appear on Slattery’s primary monitor the second it is known. He stretches his left leg and feels the cartilage creaking; he hangs up the phone and waits.

  Marcuse pops his head up again and Slattery longs to club the miserable bastard like a baby seal. ‘Good thing you got rid of those suckers. Looks like a huge number on the way.’

  ‘Y
ou want to bet on that?’

  Marcuse smiles broadly. ‘I think we already have.’

  ‘A little side wager, just you and me.’

  ‘How much are we talking about?’

  ‘I don’t want your money,’ says Slattery. ‘The loser has to shine the winner’s shoes, right here on the trading floor, every Monday for the month of February. In front of everybody. Down on your knees, shining my shoes.’

  ‘For the whole month?’

  ‘You can handle it; it’s the shortest month of the year. In or out?’

  Marcuse considers for a moment, chewing on his pencil’s eraser. ‘What’s the high/low?’

  ‘Call it one-ninety.’

  ‘Mm, no. I could see one-eighty-five.’

  Slattery shakes his head. ‘You’re a cocksucker, Marcuse. You’re looking two, two-twenty, and you know it. Fine, call it one-eighty-five.’

  Marcuse grins, extends his hand, and Slattery shakes, completely aware that he’s acting like an imbecile. Never gamble angry. Slattery wipes his monitors clean with a tissue, taps the side of his keyboard. He closes his eyes and wills a low number. One-ninety I’m fine, even if I lose this stupid bet. I’ll take a loss but it won’t be a bad loss; Lichter will chew me out but it won’t be a bad chewing out. Two-twenty and I’ll be lifting girders from the cab of my crane come summertime.

  A commotion of shouts and groans riles the floor. Slattery opens his eyes and stares at his monitor, blinks, and checks the television screen for confirmation. From behind the partition he hears Marcuse hollering into his phone. Across the floor someone yells, ‘Stop out of that, Schultz, get the fuck out!’ And someone else: ‘We’re going for a ride!’

  In the month of January, one hundred and thirty-eight thousand new jobs were created, some seventy thousand fewer than had been predicted. Slattery watches his computer screen, dazed, as the treasury prices gap up, screaming forward without stopping for breath. In nine minutes the bond contract jumps two points. Slattery makes a phone call and leans back in his chair, swallowing hard. One thousand contracts at one hundred thousand dollars a pop, a one-hundred-million-dollar position. Two full points. A two-million-dollar profit in nine minutes.