The Domino Effect Read online

  She had known two important relationships, one in college and the other during her first year with the bank. Both had turned out to be disasters. The men had wanted to confine her. Nowadays she stayed busy enough to ignore the yearning for a husband and family and a life beyond the bank. The only time she really noticed the absence was when she woke in the night, her pillow wet with tears from dreams she could not remember.

  As she drove along East Boulevard, Esther used the hands-free to call her office. Esther managed a team of seven analysts and nine admins, all of whom she considered the best in the world. Jasmine, her number two, answered with, “Everything is too calm.”

  “What time did you show up?”

  “Early. Might as well. I sure wasn’t sleeping.” Jasmine was half African American, half Bahamian and spiced her speech with a hint of the conchy’s accent. She had been raised dirt poor, her father a seine fisherman on the Alabama Gulf. Her brilliant mind had taken her to the University of Miami and then to UNC-CH and finally here. She said, “I kept waiting for the world to explode. It didn’t. Lucky me.”

  It was an old joke and normally good for a smile. But today the words only sparked the same fears that had kept Esther up most of the night. “I think I’ll stop by and see my brother.”

  “Good idea.”

  “If anything comes up, my phone is always on.”

  “Why should I bother you? I mean, other than the bank going bust or markets entering total meltdown, right? Jason won’t be asking for any new investment analysis, that’s for certain. Our division is so overextended, if I went hunting the aisles, I couldn’t find a loose nickel.”

  “You’re not making me feel better.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought my job was to analyze risk. Silly me.”

  Esther cut the connection. Many of the bank’s traders found Jasmine hard to take. She was smarter than all of them, and her comments turned biting when she confronted a trader’s blind optimism. Jason’s team referred to Esther and Jasmine, the slender white analyst and the dark-skinned former athlete, as the Downside Twins.

  Esther drove past the Carolina Medical Center, Charlotte’s largest hospital, and a block later pulled into the rehab center’s parking lot. As she stepped from her car, she was halted by the sight of three dogwoods whose blooms were just emerging. It had been a warm March, and now the trees were defying the crisp April dawn. They hinted at a season Esther almost could not recognize. She felt captivated by the trees’ delicate beauty. Their limbs were bare as pale bones, which heightened their sense of defiant hope.

  As she entered the medical center, an all-too-familiar voice said, “Esther, excellent. You’ve just saved me a phone call.”

  Carter Cleveland was an osteopath who a decade earlier had left active practice to build and run Charlotte’s finest rehabilitation center. He was an angular man in his sixties with no bedside manner whatsoever. Esther considered him something of a bully. “I need to see Nathan.”

  “And you will, right after we’ve talked.” Carter reached out a hand, and the nurse was alert enough to know which file he silently indicated. He cut off any further protest with, “We can do this here or in my office. But we’re doing it.”

  The foyer was empty save for the receptionist and duty nurse. “Here.”

  “Your brother needs to be moved. Sooner rather than later.”

  “Nathan is comfortable. I really want him to stay here.”

  “Your desire was enough to keep him here this long. But the time has come—”

  “I pay on time.”

  “Money is not the issue. Well, that’s true and not true. Money is always an issue. But the simple fact is that your brother is not getting better.”

  “Give him time.”

  “Esther, we’ve given him seven months, which is a new record for our center.” Carter opened the file. “For nine weeks now your brother has refused to participate in his daily treatments. His vitals are declining. There is nothing to indicate he—”

  “I’ll talk with him.”

  “Esther, if talking to Nathan could make any difference at all, you would have had your brother up and jogging long ago.”

  Seven months and eight days ago, Esther’s brother had been involved in an accident on the interstate that had killed his pregnant wife. The police were fairly certain that Nathan had been speeding. Esther suspected Nathan’s unresponsiveness derived at least in part from guilt. “I don’t understand. Where am I supposed to take him?”

  “I see your court-appointed guardianship is in order.” Carter shut the file. “I suggest you consider moving him to the Davidson Mental Health Hospital. They have a long-term wing that may be ideally suited to your brother’s requirements.”

  “Out of the question.”

  “Esther, from time to time I am faced with a patient who simply does not want to get well. The mind is a powerful instrument. If the patient has given up on life, there is only so much modern medicine can accomplish.”

  “But Nathan . . .”

  Carter gave her a moment to complete the sentence. But Esther found no strength to shape the words, Nathan is all the family I have left. He said, “There’s a social worker on duty at the hospital next door who has considerable experience with this. I urge you to give her a call. She can help you prepare for the transition.”

  4

  Nathan’s rehab center was the finest in the state. It was also outrageously expensive. Esther’s brother had previously been a freelance graphic designer, which had paid quite well. But he had never bothered with private top-up health insurance. Why should he, since neither Nathan nor his late wife had been sick in years?

  The upshot was as devastating as it was simple. Nathan’s seven months in the center had racked up a debt almost as large as Esther’s mortgage. She had not hesitated to pay, not for an instant. They had lost both their parents when Esther was still in grade school. They went to live with their mother’s parents, a silent couple who treated their presence as an imposition. Nathan was nine years older and had fitted himself into the role of Esther’s surrogate parent. The following year, he left for university. But Esther had never felt abandoned. Nathan had joined her for every vacation and many weekends. For her sixteenth birthday, Nathan paid for them to have a month together in Europe. Of course she was there for him now. The cost was manageable.

  So long as Esther kept working for the bank.

  The clinic’s front lobby and halls had oak wainscoting and wallpaper with a soothing beige pattern. The patients’ rooms were decorated like an elegant inn, and the food was excellent. There was even a wine cellar. The center delivered its guests the best of everything.

  Esther knew Dr. Cleveland and the clinic nurses all assumed Nathan was simply a loser at life, content to play patient while he sapped all the finances he could from his pliant sister. The doctor probably thought he was doing Esther a favor, inflicting on them both the tough love Nathan deserved.

  Nothing could have been further from the truth. Esther knew her brother did not care whether they kept him or shipped him off. The exquisite décor and fine lifestyle was lost on him.

  Nathan was simply looking for a place to die.

  As she rounded the corner and arrived at her brother’s room, Esther was halted by the sight of a stranger seated in her chair.

  For months she had been Nathan’s only visitor. Esther was sure she had never seen this man before. He leaned in close, a smile creasing his handsome features. He gently prodded Nathan’s arm with two fingers in time to his words, an intimate gesture like a friend might make while telling a joke.

  Esther felt oddly excluded. Her brother’s body language was the only part of the scene she recognized. Nathan’s face was turned toward the window on the bed’s opposite side. He had started doing this about nine weeks ago. He was sleeping more and more these days, or at least pretending to. Shutting out the world as best he could, using drugs and slumber with equal ease. His determined dismissal of any interaction ha
d punctuated her every visit for over two months. But if the stranger even noticed Nathan’s lack of response, he gave no sign.

  Esther returned to the front lobby and approached the nurse-receptionist. She held to an air of polished elegance that fit the station. Esther detected a faint glint in her eyes, suggesting the woman agreed it was time that Nathan became someone else’s problem.

  Esther asked, “Who is that in my brother’s room?”

  The receptionist’s frosty expression softened. “Oh, that’s Craig.”

  “I’m sorry, who?”

  “Craig Wessex, a divinity student at the local university. He’s a friend of Dr. Cleveland. They’ve known each other forever.”

  Esther wanted to tell the woman her comments explained nothing, but she felt jarred by the warmth and approval in the receptionist’s words.

  The woman took Esther’s silence as an invitation, and continued, “Craig started coming in here, oh, it must be a couple of weeks ago. It’s part of some class assignment. Craig is wonderful. Would you like me to introduce you?”

  “No, I . . . Another time.” Esther pretended to check her watch. “Right now I need to get to work.”

  When Esther arrived at the bank, she followed her normal routine, first crossing the main trading floor, smelling the air, taking its pulse.

  The chamber was dominated by young, fiercely aggressive males. The few women scattered among them tended toward rather severe suits and assertive manners. They had to compete with the men. Success in this business was based on maintaining solid alliances and being the first with new intel. Either the women developed an aggressive attitude and a tough shell or they were erased.

  Esther had never been interested in going for a place on the floor, though a good trader could earn ten times her salary. And she was certain she could have been very good indeed.

  The trading floor was fairly quiet today because the investment banking division was overextended. The tension was a palpable force. The traders sat focused on their trading screens, flexing rubber balls or flicking pens. Esther knew they hated the forced idleness. They loved the risk. They wanted action.

  Esther also thought they looked scared. Which, given the circumstances, was probably a good thing.

  She crossed the skyway and pushed through the main doors. Her assistant met Esther as she entered the analyst division. Jasmine Dubrot had played basketball for the University of Miami and moved with an angular grace. “There I was,” Jasmine said to Esther, “driving to work and listening to some talk-show host ask her listeners what they were going to do with their weekend.”

  Esther made a face. “Why were you wasting time on that?”

  “Boredom and tension in the same blender. Couldn’t listen to the news. I kept scripting that the bank collapsed and my future was gone.” Jasmine waved that aside. “So this woman calls in, and she spends five minutes complaining about how her awful mother-in-law was coming over for an outdoor barbecue and bringing the worst potato salad anybody ever fed to some poor dog.”

  “She didn’t need five minutes to say that,” Esther replied. With Jasmine, there was no telling where these exchanges would take them. Which was why Esther enjoyed them so much.

  “Okay, maybe it only seemed like five minutes. Probably lasted ninety seconds. Do you have any idea how long ninety seconds can be?”

  “The woman caller,” Esther reminded her as they entered the office.

  “Right. So I start talking back to the radio. Asking the woman what she knew about anything. Did she have any idea how lucky she was, having a mother-in-law in the first place?”

  Esther set her briefcase on the desk, crossed her arms, and waited.

  “The woman goes, ‘You got no idea what you’re talking about. You want this woman, you got her. Matter of fact, you can have the potato salad and her son. Take the whole package.’ Can you imagine?”

  “Wait,” Esther said. “You actually phoned the radio station?”

  “From the car. Don’t worry, I used my hands-free.”

  “I don’t care if you . . . They put you on the air?”

  “That was strange, let me tell you. Talking to my steering wheel and hearing my voice come out of the radio. With that woman. The way she talked about her mother-in-law, I hope the old lady lives in Borneo.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Somewhere without electricity. On account of how otherwise some busybody neighbor is gonna run in and say, Turn on your radio and listen to the trash coming out of your daughter-in-law’s mouth.”

  Esther sat down behind the desk. “For an extremely intelligent and highly gifted analyst, you are making no sense whatsoever.”

  “I know it. Don’t I just know it? Who am I to be worrying about what some old woman thinks about her son’s wife?”

  This was one of Jasmine’s many gifts, her ability to temporarily ease Esther’s worries, all in the space of one absurd comment. But today was crunch day, and there was no putting it off any longer. Esther looked up at Jasmine. “Anything new?”

  “Not a thing. Not a whisper. Seems like the markets are holding their breath. Along with the rest of us.”

  Esther’s computer system had cost the bank one hundred and seventeen thousand dollars. She scanned the screens. They all told her the same thing. “The markets are holding stable.”

  Jasmine paced like a caged tiger. “How long do we have?”

  “Sit down and I’ll tell you. You’re making me nervous.”

  She sat, but twitched like a schoolgirl in the principal’s office.

  Esther said, “The portal closes in thirty-two minutes.”

  “So we’re half an hour from the wire.”

  “Unless the bank opts for another trade.”

  Jasmine’s response was halted by a knock on Esther’s door. Jason’s secretary entered and said, “Jason wants to see you. Now.”

  Esther grabbed her tablet and cell and followed Jason’s secretary back across the skyway to the trading floor. She knew most investment banks separated their various trading divisions, arguing that this fostered a greater sense of competition and also limited the risk of a bad decision or faulty information striking at multiple levels. But Esther’s company had been the first in Charlotte to develop a full-scale investment banking group. Originally called Carolina First Mercantile, the bank had been through so many acquisitions that almost none of the younger executives had any notion of the group’s origins or the role it had played in developing the city. Nor did they care. What they saw was a mildly out-of-date trading floor housed in a massive cube.

  The open space was almost exactly the same size as the nightclub many of these young employees frequented. There were 146 trading stations, each powering a minimum of three monitors. The front wall held six of the largest flat screens ever made, each nearly seven feet wide. The incoming data being fed into this chamber might have been somewhat quieter than the nightclub’s din, yet the energy was just as frenetic. Many of the traders went straight from the trading floor to the club.

  Jason’s secretary led Esther into the executive conference room and asked if she wanted coffee. When Esther declined, the secretary said, “I’m instructed to say that he will be with you shortly and you are to wait for him here.”

  Esther felt tendrils of uneasiness creep through her gut. “I thought you said this was urgent.”

  The secretary was a battle-hardened veteran with less than two years to retirement. “I have learned it is best not to question the boss when he is in one of his moods. Know what I mean?”

  Esther did not reply.

  The secretary smiled, as though Esther’s silence was the correct response. “Let me know if you change your mind about that coffee.”

  Esther swiftly realized the conference room was scrubbed. The word was old-tech, from pre-internet days. Originally a room was scrubbed when all listening and observation devices had been eliminated. Nowadays it signified a room where electronic access was denied.

  Esther�
�s tablet would not link to the bank’s system. The flat screens at either end of the room were blank, the controls nowhere to be found. Walking to the outer windows made no difference. When she picked up the conference room phone, it buzzed straight to Jason’s secretary, who asked, “Can I help you?”

  “I need an outside line.”

  “And I will need to get back to you on that.”

  Esther set down the receiver and said to the dead air, “You do that.” She returned to her chair feeling exposed, vulnerable. She knew what Jason intended by this confinement. He wanted Esther to understand that he held the authority to deny her total access. All real power was held by him.

  She also understood why he was doing this. The mock imprisonment had nothing to do with the bank’s current exposures. Jason wanted Esther to understand that he fully intended to take the same risks again.

  Jason had no plans to return the two billion the bank had granted him for this trade. He would fight tooth and nail to keep the money on his division’s books. Jason did not care about her reservations. He was after power.

  And to a certain extent, his silent tactic worked. Esther was indeed frightened.

  But mostly it made her angry.

  Esther could hear nothing within the soundproof room. Through the interior glass wall she could see the electronic ticker tape flowing around three sides of the administrative bullpen. The clocks below the data stream counted down the minutes. Esther felt increasingly constricted, less by the room’s walls than her solitary tension.

  She took a deep breath to calm herself and focus. Wall Street’s latest derivatives craze was called capital-relief trades. In this particular instance, Esther suspected “craze” was absolutely the way to describe them.

  Capital-relief trades were means by which banks could hide their high-risk assets, at least temporarily. When a bank identified a potential shift in the market that might draw their derivatives portfolio into dangerous territory, they had only two choices. Either they dumped the hazardous asset, which meant taking a loss. Or they slipped beyond the boundary for risk-weighted assets set by the US Securities and Exchange Commission, which meant fines and snooping regulators and bad publicity.