Preview: Banksters, Part 3

And here's the last preview for Banksters. Ride shotgun with a sociopath accelerating his ascent to corporate power. Looks like it'll be released the 28th or 29th, after I get the results of the final proofread.

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 year's NaNo project, Twist, a psychological thriller, visit NicolasWilson.com and check the blog daily, beginning November 2nd. Performance art, but with only metaphorical nudity.

Since my time will be directed towards Twist for the next month, we'll have a bit of a break before it's time to start sharing excerpts of Homeless, a post-apocalyptic horror novel due for release early 2014. It's going to be weird taking such a long break, but that's life. Thanks for tagging along!

Previously:
Banksters, Part 1, Howdy

Banksters, Part 2, Secretive

Banksters, Part 3, Party

A younger me would have asked Petra to the party. Of course, a younger me cared more about getting laid than getting anywhere.

She wanted to go. She hinted as much, when we got back to the office. She told me schmoozing with the other executives sounded dull, but that if I was there maybe it'd be more interesting. What she probably meant was it might afford her the opportunity to get her name on someone else's lips, which might be a step up for her career.

“I'm afraid I already have a plus one,” I told her.

“Oh, I wasn't,” she said, and tried not to look sad about it.

I once heard that if you want someone to love you, open your heart; if you want them to do anything for you, close it. And that was why I didn't tell her that my plus one was Arnie Powell. I knew him from my time on the lower floor. He had a real creative mind for finance. He was one of a handful of people who had a reasonable claim to creating credit default swaps. And it was partly on the strength of his ideas that I'd risen to be an associate vice-president- that and a timely suggestion I made to drop our status as a 'bank' to avoid having to repay TARP funds. And it would have worked, too, if not for Dodd-Frank.

But Arnie was still a golden goose. Just last week, as they were finalizing my promotion, he came up with an idea. The government had moved to limit swipe fees, the charge that credit and debit card transactions incur from retailers. This was good for small businesses, good for consumers, good for the economy as a whole. And bad for banks and financial institutions such as our company, which was going to lose some of its profitability.

But Arnie figured out a way around the new rules. We couldn't charge businesses what we had been, but if we started to charge customers a monthly fee of $2 to continue using their debit and credit cards, we'd break even. I told Arnie that if $2 got us even, $3 gained us an extra 50% on top of that. He tried to brush that aside; it was the first real resistance I'd ever gotten from him on improving one of his ideas.

I intended to throw his idea to the bosses that night at the party. I brought him along for the technical song and dance; I could pitch better than Nolan Ryan at the height of his game, but when it came to the details, even if they couldn't make sense of what the hell he was saying, the execs knew the difference between me spit-balling numbers and him giving them the real ones.

At least, that had been the plan, anyway. When I heard Alice talking, and the intermittent breaks in her voice, I knew that wasn't going to happen. “Cliff had a heart attack. That's why he didn't show this morning. He was dead by the time his daughter found him.”

Cliff Pembroke was a fat bastard, as mean as he was drunk, and sloppier even than that. The only surprise was that Cliff hadn't dropped dead choking on a whole hock of beer-battered ham years before. But the fact that he was in vaguely the same generation as the executive vice presidents meant their heads were jammed fully into their navels, and were going to stay there until morning, or they crawled into a bottle, whichever came first. I could have shown them a perpetual motion blowjob machine and they still would have found fault with its inability to counteract their mortality.

I didn't see Daria, though she was supposed to be here. I didn't allow myself to worry too much about that; she was probably around, lurking in the shadows.

What I did see was a red head hanging off Richard Morgan's arm. A red head ten years younger than his wife. F. She was vibrant, energetic, with a warmth that made her a campfire around which all of Richard's usual hangers-on gathered instead. And he didn't give a damn. Not in the least. He seemed to tolerate her, because she kept his usual parasites too preoccupied to try to pick the scraps from his teeth, but he didn't even care enough to feign interest in her- which meant he wasn't planning to sleep with her later. Seemed like a criminal waste of talent.

People drank to excess. I held the same watered-down rum and Coke in my hand, but I didn't drink it- mostly because it was watered down, but also because I didn't want any part in the revelry. And that was when Richard found me, standing in his boardroom, looking out the window. “It's nice to see I'm not the only man who doesn't feel the need to drown his dread. The reaper takes his due, on his day. Fearing it only makes us weaker.”

He touched my shoulder. Amongst friends, and equals, it was a gesture of kindness, and care. From an employer to an employee, it was a gesture of dominance; he touched me because he could, because I wouldn't do a damned thing to stop him. “You're the new AVP in finance, right? What was the name, Zane?” So was that.

“Dane,” I corrected him, and met his gaze full on.

A little smile cracked from beneath his stoic visage. “I may seem callous. But no one here is mourning Cliff. This is all self-indulgence. George is picturing himself in a coffin. Alice is obsessed with her empty home and her similarly empty womb. Allistair's worrying over his empty bed- at least he had been, until he passed out- which is more than a little ironic, given that he came with one woman and groped another. Of course, the one he came with was a groupie; as soon as he was out she wouldn't let go of my arm until she had to pee. You should take that as a lesson. At this level, everyone is out for themselves. This is a shark tank; if for a second you're not one of the apex predators, you're prey. And there’s no honor amongst carnivores.”

“I gotta say, Rich,” I could barely make out George's voice around his slur, “this is one of your better parties, and certainly your best birthday, ever.” He wanted to come into the conference room, but the doorway was the only thing keeping him off the floor.

Richard let go of my shoulder, shuddered, and turned. “You're only saying that because you aren't the only one who's embarrassingly drunk.”

“And you're only saying that because you aren't,” George said, chancing his feet and falling forward, and clapping his brother on the cheek harder probably than intended. “It wouldn't kill you to lighten up a little. It's a party.”

“It's a bacchanalia of fear, self-loathing, and guilt.”

“So wouldn't that make it your kind of party?” George asked, then grinned.

Richard put his shoulder under George's arm. “Some of us have to be respectable come the morning. Excuse us,” he said to me, then helped his brother out of the room.

That made me wonder where my own wunderkind had gotten to. I found Arnie in the executive lobby conference room, shooting heroin into one of the Administrative AVPs’ feet. “Jesus, Arnie.”

“It's a party,” he slurred. “But you got a second?”

He led me out of the room, and into somebody's office. He was silent for a good long while, getting up his balls to speak. “I need to be my own man,” he finally said. “Look, I don't care that you've taken credit for my ideas. That's not what I'm talking about. My ideas were only so good. Before you came along to sell them, I was ignored in my position, for years. And thanks to you, I've been noticed. But I want them to be my ideas again. You've learned a lot from me, and I've learned a lot from you, too. I think I can sell ideas as well as you can create them. I've thought of you as a friend for a long time, and despite the fact that I had to get ploughed to get up my nerve to say this to you, I think you know what's right, and that you'll help me get to where you are- especially now that you're in a position to help. And it might not hurt, if you started letting people know you've had a silent partner all along, somebody who didn't get as much of the glory or accolades, but maybe deserves them.” I barely heard that last little bit, because he was in the process of passing out onto a leather couch.

That wasn't good. It was going to need to be dealt with. I looked at the pillow on the other end of the couch, and wondered if I could use it to smother him. And had he had any heroin? People would buy that he ODed; but if he was just drinking there was no way people would swallow him suffocating in an office. Regardless, it was a stupid idea. Witnesses milling around. In God knows whose office- which might have a camera in it. Impulsiveness is never wise, particularly as regards homicide.

Check back next week for another excerpt or join my mailing list to be notified when Banksters is available for purchase.