Preview: Banksters, Part 1

Yep, I'm very late in beginning to share these. But it's time to get underway with our next story, Banksters, due end of October/early November. Ride shotgun with a sociopath accelerating his ascent to corporate power.

Point of interest, Banksters was originally syndicated daily, as written, during National Novel Writing Month 2011. It's a funny tradition of mine, to peel back my skin a bit and share my work as it happens. If you want to tag along for this years NaNo project, Twist, a psychological thriller, visit NicolasWilson.com and check the blog daily, beginning November 2nd.


Banksters, Part 1, Howdy

My name's Mark Dane. I’m a sociopath. Howdy. It's my first day as an associate vice-president. Like most sociopaths, I work in finance. It’s the sector of the economy where smart, unscrupulous bastards can legally take money from people who don’t know any better.

And get a pat on the back for it.

See, people are stupid. They’ll sign a document that financially chains them to an agreement they may not live to see the other side of, all without understanding it. Sometimes it’s because they don’t speak legalese; sometimes it’s because they’re lazy- but that’s even stupider. I mean, somebody incapable of understanding their loan agreement, evolution didn’t prepare them for this complicated world we live in. But the moron who glanced at the pages and decided his future wasn’t worth fifteen minutes of reading- that’s a nurture problem, there. Mommy and daddy loved them too much, so now they think the world is here to wipe their ass- when it’s my job to kick them right in the racing stripe.

I started in home loans, back when that was still a lucrative market, before people started to realize that every strip of dirt was worth, you guessed it, dirt. Okay, maybe not dirt, exactly, but closer to dirt than the wishful thinking, pie in the sky, just because wages are flat doesn't mean people can't pull extra greenbacks out of their backsides forever inflated real estate prices of yore.

But the glory of the mortgage market is we found a way to make money off making bad loans. That's how goddamn brilliant the financial sector is. We figured out how to talk people into home loans that they could never pay back, because we didn't care if they couldn't. We knew the moment they signed on the dotted line, we would package their loan with dozens like it, call it a security and sell it off to some half-wit investor.
It worked mostly because we convinced people we were selling sacks full of money for 80 cents on the dollar. And initially, it wasn't such a bad deal. But at a certain point, we ran out of good mortgages to sell. By then, people believed we were handing out free money, and weren’t looking too closely at what was in the sacks. So we paid people to take a heaping shit in the sacks, and sold those, too. And people stomped all over each other to buy them.

And the dirty little secret: any smart loan packager knew how absolutely shit his loans were, but still bundled them up, had one of the ‘credible’ ratings agencies put their legitimizing stamp of approval on it and then sold it to some poor schmuck who didn’t do enough research to know better. It was like taking candy from babies, only we offered them less than wholesale for it. So it was nice and legal, and they were actually happy with the transaction.
Even people who should have known better, like hedge fund managers, whose existence is supposedly justified by the fact that they're the people who know better, thanked me, personally, for taking their money in exchange for worthless strips of paper.

Of course, that's just how I got my foot in the door. That particular gig is up. Not that it's illegal, just that the rubes who bought the ratings-inflated securities know better, now, and the ratings agencies themselves already got pretty publicly caught with their hands up the cookie jar's skirt, so they don't want to risk the bad press of a second go round- at least not for a few more years, when collective memories have moved on to other bogeymen.

Not that any of that matters. Because those of us who made money off the deals still have it. And our bosses, and our shareholders, they have even more money than the bundlers and traders.

But that was the past. Like I said, it was my first day in the new job. The man in the ugly gray suit prattling on, but likely too stupid even to recognize it, was Edward Noakes; to look at it, you'd think it was a cheap suit, but I've seen in it on the rack and I knew that wasn't true. Kudos to Ed for finding a way to look like a bank teller while still paying more for a suit than said teller paid for his car. He's an AVP, too, and he's been helpfully showing me the ropes; though, as we're both now in line for succession to the vacant VP slot, I imagine he's hoping to loop some of that rope around my neck.

At least, that's what I'd be doing in his place.

This floor was only three stories from my old one, thirty feet as the shit falls, but it seemed so much farther away from the little cubicle farm I just escaped. No more chintzy partitions, just white walls, fine art prints, and personal offices.

And my own secretary. F. Though I imagine she saw herself as the waiting-for-M kind, the boys she “dated” in college notwithstanding. She was pretty, with shoulder-length blond hair, and blood red lips. She seemed to recognize me, but she also didn't seem happy to. “She belonged to Jameson,” Ed told me, then lowered his voice, but not so low she couldn't hear him- which I figured was intentional. “I don't know how much you heard from the lower floors, but he left under a bit of a cloud. The feeling is that his secretary's been tainted by it. I'd get rid of her; don't want the stink of another man on your girl.”

I saw terror in her eyes, and opportunity. “I think I'll keep her,” I told him. “Maybe she can teach me how things work up here. Wouldn't make sense to have both of us wet behind the ears at the same time.”

He seemed taken aback. Even though he was probably used to people ignoring him, it was the first time I'd contradicted him, and probably in record time. He wasn't used to people from my floor coming with their own backbone. But contrary to how he wanted to perceive it, it wasn't about him. It was about her. I was new, untested, and without much a power base to call my own. I was going to need every ally I could muster- every ally who mattered, anyhow, and one look at her told me I'd take her over a dozen Eds. “And what's your name?” I asked her.

“Petra. Valentino.” I saw it in her eyes. A couple of words in her defense, a little attention, and she was mine. She'd do anything for me; it was loyalty like a dog's- and given just as wantonly. Too needy to M; definitely F.
“That's a lovely name,” I said. “I look forward to working with you.”

Ed led me into my office. I had a view of the city I could hardly believe. We were so high up if I shoved Ed through my floor-to-ceiling windows, he'd have time for a full Catholic confession before he hit the pavement, and probably even time to wait for the call to ring through- assuming his bishop had a cell in his pocket and didn't have to hobble to his land line.

The carpet was a little too short to be comfy; I preferred feeling like I was stepping on a sheep, even with my socks on, and it was beige; the perfect color to stain while remaining completely bland.

My new desk was modern in its sensibilities, black wire frame, glass top. “The desk is standard,” he told me, running his hand over the glass table top, smearing his fingerprints across it. I didn't know him well enough to know if it was a dominance play, marking my office, or if he was just that callous and unaware that he was smearing his grease all over my things. “If you want, you can look at the catalogs Suzanne has; there's some nice furniture in there. I'm partial to cherry wood, myself.”

“But I'll let you get settled in,” he said. “Your first staff meeting starts at 11. Feel free to acclimate, until then.”

I sat down at my desk. Then I called in my secretary. “Ms. Valentino. Could you come in here, please?”

“One moment.” She was faster, even, than that. “What can I do for you?” she asked.

“Close the door, and have a seat.” She did, and leaned forward in her chair. I couldn't tell if she intended to show me her cleavage or not, but she did. “I don't want to get off on the wrong foot, here, so I'm trying to figure out what my predecessor did right and did not so right. What were his mornings like?” She averted her eyes. “It's okay, I'm not going to blame you if he spent them on eBay or whatever. I just want to know.”

“Mr. Jameson spent his mornings chatting with under-aged boys on the internet and trying to get them to send him pictures with their clothes off.”

“We'll skip that, then,” I said, trying to calm her with my smile. “What about his afternoons?”

“He spent his afternoons meeting transgender prostitutes.”

“He had a full social calendar. But I'm assuming there were times when he actually did his job.”

“Tough for me to say,” she said. She didn’t look at me as she continued. “I always thought he was working. Video-conferencing, off-site meetings. They wanted to fire me with Denny, but that security bitch interviewed me, and I told her I hadn't known anything before IT came to her with his internet logs.” She was upset; she felt hurt by his conduct, even betrayed.

“The security...”

“Daria, you'll meet her. She'll be at the executive meeting. Always stands at the CEO's side, like she's his little attack dog.”

“Is she all that bad?” I asked, treading that treacherous ground between questioning interest and dismissal. I already knew about Daria. But I wanted a firsthand account.

“She's an inquisitor. I felt like I was a terrorism suspect.” She was a former detective with the local police, vice into homicide. She retired after she filed a sexual harassment claim against one of her superiors, and the rumor was that she received a sizable settlement in exchange for her discretion. The rumor was half-right. She was offered the settlement, and refused it. She didn’t want public money for a private failing. That, and it was hush money, and she didn't want the bastard free to do it again to some other girl.

“Well, I'll be careful of her. And I'll see to it she never has a reason to question you, ever again.”

She heaved a relieved sigh that seemed to surprise even her, then stood up. She checked her watch. “Meeting starts in ten minutes.”

“Thank you, Ms. Valentino. And if you're free, it seems like you've had a lousy morning, I'd like to buy you lunch. Get to know the new boss kind of deal.”
“Sure,” she said, smiling as she left.

At ten to eleven I walked to the executive conference room. It was early enough to be punctual, but not so early as to be wasting company time. Though the meeting proved to be that, anyway, and was boring, to boot. All of the action was happening in Administrative, Alice Mott's division, and I got the feeling that was the case 80% of the time. After all, this company's bread and butter was still banking, even if the margin on it was lousy. Ops and Finance were better money-makers, dollar for dollar, but the senior staff didn't have nearly as much to do with the day to day in those departments- probably didn't really understand them- and even with the better margin there was only so much to squeeze from that stone.

The only bright spot in the entire tepid affair was an off-color remark the president, George Morgan, made at his brother Richard's expense. Big brother Richard was CEO, and board chairman, and he treated his little Georgie like he was still a gawky child. Richard was throwing a party tonight at the office, ostensibly to welcome Sam and Alex Warwick onto the board. But the party just happened to coincide with Richard's birthday. “Finally figured out a way to get people to show up to your birthday party?” George chided him.

Alice chortled at that, and Richard glared. She was the only woman at the table, at least today, and certainly at her level, so his glare didn't faze her. So he shared it with George, then the rest of the room. I dutifully looked down and away.

Cliff hadn't made it into the office, so without trying to figure out who from our division was next in line, George spoke to me and Ed collectively as “finance” and told us to draft up a new memo. We both nodded our heads, without looking up to see if Richard was still glowering.


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