The Big Killing Read Online Free Page B

bonds? Or private placements?”
    “Naa,” he had said. “Mostly stocks now. Stocks and options.”
    “So you wouldn’t need a firm that was special in limited partnerships or bonds?”
    “Listen,” he said, drumming his fingers impatiently on the table. “You’re a nice lady, that’s why I’m sitting here talking to you, but when I move, the only chemistry I’m interested in is the big green, get what I mean?”
    “Even if it’s with a weak firm?”
    “Who cares about the firm? What do I care? I’ll get the money up front, then if anything happens, I have the money.”
    “But what about your clients?”
    “They’ll come with me wherever I go because they know I make money for them, and if they don’t want to come, who needs them. I got them easy enough, I can get others. The bottom line for me is the money.”
    “What kind of money are you talking about?” Wetzon asked, her voice cool, her gray eyes narrowing.
    “Forty, fifty percent up front. I got the offer already.”
    She drew in her breath, felt a flush clear up to her hairline. “That’s hard to believe. It’s the highest deal I’ve heard.”
    “Do you know any other kind of business where a poor kid from the Bronx can clean up legally?”
    “That’s more than any of our clients are prepared to offer. In fact, that deal is so good, what are you waiting for? Why haven’t you taken it?”
    “I’m waiting to build more—when my gross hits four hundred fifty thou, for my trailing twelve, I’m taking off. Then it’s bye-bye Mother. I want a check in my pocket for two and a quarter.”
    Wetzon nodded. The up-front deals were based on a broker’s trailing twelve months’ gross production. And in this bull market, each month Barry stayed where he was brought him closer to his goal. “How were you introduced to this company?”
    “They called me. I have connections.” He took a small, flat, foreign-looking box from his inside pocket, removed a brown cigarillo, and replaced the box. “Listen, I’ll tell you the company, but you have to promise me you won’t spill it. I know the guy who runs the company. Real smart guy. Did all right for himself. No one can get around Jake. He’s the best. I can make a lot of money there, besides the up front. It’s the way they handle the new issues. I’ll make the big killing and retire. I’m not going to do this the rest of my life.”
    “That’s some connection,” she said. Wetzon knew without asking that Barry was talking about the financial wunderkind Jake Donahue, who had parlayed a fortunate marriage and a smart plunge into the lower echelon underwriting business into a fortune.
    “But look,” Barry went on magnanimously, “you really are a nice lady, and you’ve listened to me bitch and moan for months and you haven’t pushed me or hustled me. I appreciate that. So if you can come up with something else that’s in the ballpark, I’ll listen. What do I have to lose?”
    “Jake Donahue.” She wrapped her napkin around the swizzle stick, bemused. “I’m surprised. Donahue’s a single-play shop, isn’t it? They just do new issues. Their new issues.”
    “Yeah, and I’ll be able to get my hands on as many shares as I want—ten thou, fifty thou even—not like at Merrill, where there are too many mouths to feed and you have to kiss ass to get anything. And at Jake’s we can mark them up before we sell them.”
    “But won’t you be taking yourself out of the mainstream? What if the new-issues market dries up? It’s done that before, and meanwhile your clients are buying their Big Board, bonds, and mutual funds elsewhere—”
    “Right now, new issues are where the big dollars are, and that’s for me. But Jake’s expanding, getting into other things, and I’ll be part of it. I’ll be there.”
    “Barry,” she had said, unwrapping the swizzle stick, “I’d love to work with you. You’re really good, but how could I tell you not to take a deal like that? You’d be