The Key. Jennifer Sturman

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СКАЧАТЬ lived alone from the day I graduated college until the previous week, and I still wasn’t accustomed to the first person plural being applied in reference to my household. Our household.

      “He said he needs me in the office. In an hour. Actually, more like fifty-five minutes at this point.”

      “Do you think he knows it’s Saturday?”

      “Probably.”

      “And do you think he knows we were going to sleep in? And have a nice leisurely brunch and read The New York Times? And then figure out where I can put all my stuff?” Peter’s worldly belongings had arrived from San Francisco a few days ago, and stacks of unopened cardboard cartons now occupied every available square foot of the apartment.

      “I doubt he gave it that much thought.”

      “Why do you do this again?”

      I sighed and detached myself from Peter’s arms. The rug was cold beneath my bare feet. “Because this is how you make partner at an investment bank.”

      “By letting assholes order you out of bed in the wee hours on weekends?”

      “If I keep it up, one day I’ll get to order other people out of bed in the wee hours on weekends.”

      “Something to look forward to.”

      “Go back to sleep. I’ll call you later, when I know what this is all about. Maybe I can rescue at least part of our day together.”

      But I wasn’t too confident about that.

      By Monday morning, the only thing I was confident about was that I wanted Glenn Gallagher dead.

      My brain was fried and my thoughts scattered from too much caffeine and not enough sleep, but I did know with absolute clarity that I despised Glenn Gallagher and would be delighted to see him die a slow and painful death.

      My firm, Winslow, Brown, had lured Gallagher from a competing bank six months ago, bringing him in as a senior partner and lavishing him with an enormous corner office and matching expense account. He’d been putting together leveraged buyouts for close to thirty years, and while LBOs were no longer as fashionable as they’d been in the junk-bond fueled eighties, Gallagher seemed to be doing just fine, judging by the addresses of his homes on Fifth Avenue and in Bridgehampton.

      Regardless of his impressive real estate holdings, it hadn’t taken long for him to become the most hated man at Winslow, Brown—no easy feat in a place where there were a lot of hated men and even a few hated women. By the end of his first week he’d terrorized enough junior bankers to earn some interesting nicknames, including Adolf and Saddam.

      Gallagher had learned late on Friday that Thunderbolt Industries, a Pittsburgh-based defense contractor, had chosen Winslow, Brown as its advisor on a management buyout. He hadn’t wasted any time scheduling a meeting with Thunderbolt’s CEO for Monday morning, which left just the weekend to get ready. Meanwhile, I wasn’t sure how my name had ended up at the top of the staffing list, but I’d lost this particular game of Russian Roulette without even realizing I was playing. I’d spent most of the past forty-eight hours in the office with Jake Channing and Mark Anders, the other unfortunates who’d been shanghaied into working on the deal.

      The “team” had gathered in Gallagher’s office for a final prep session. He had called another 7:00 a.m. meeting but hadn’t sauntered in until half past, and he was now attending to a few personal matters before we began. First we were treated to a conversation, on speakerphone, between Gallagher and his lawyer regarding his ex-wife’s complaints that he was behind in child support. Gallagher earned more in a year than most people earned in a lifetime, and the fees he paid his lawyer probably far exceeded the sums he coughed up for the basic care and feeding of his daughter, but he apparently was not the sort to open his checkbook on behalf of others without the threat of legal action.

      The next call was to a tailor to complain about the imperfect fit of a custom-made suit, which seemed futile, at best. Gallagher could spend every penny he made on his clothes, and he still wouldn’t be much to look at. He had the physique of a scarecrow, with stooping shoulders and sallow skin. What hair he had was a mousy shade, and the cut did nothing to disguise the way his ears stuck out.

      I stole a glance at Jake, who rolled his eyes in shared exasperation. Like me, he was a vice president, although slightly more senior, and while he’d transferred only recently from the Chicago office, we’d quickly become friends. But I still hadn’t figured out how he always managed to look as if he’d just come from a GQ photo shoot. Today was no exception—his blue eyes were bright and every blond hair was in place—nobody ever would have guessed that he was running on only a few hours of sleep.

      Mark, on the other hand, took nondescript to a new level: brown-haired, brown-eyed, neither short nor tall, and in no danger of being mistaken for a male model. Still, he seemed like a decent guy, unassuming and mild-mannered, and as the junior-most person on the team he’d more than pulled his weight over the hellish weekend.

      Gallagher reached for one of the pencils he kept in a silver mug on his desk and rammed it into an electric pencil sharpener. He sucked on the newly sharpened point as his tailor stammered a response. Gallagher let him get a few words out before he snatched up the receiver, uttered an impressive string of expletives, and slammed the phone down.

      “Where is it?” he barked.

      Jake handed him a neatly bound sheaf of papers.

      “This had better be an improvement over the crap you faxed me last night.”

      “We’ve made a lot of progress since then,” Jake assured him. He’d worked with Gallagher before and was one of the few people around who seemed unfazed by his complete lack of interpersonal skills. I, on the other hand, was gripping my chair’s armrests so tightly my knuckles were white. In an industry notorious for badly behaved people, Gallagher was in a class by himself.

      He flipped through the pages, giving an occasional grunt. The presentation was flawless—we’d double-and triple-checked every detail—but he almost seemed disappointed when he didn’t find even a single typo.

      “I guess it will do,” he said grudgingly. “Now, here’s the drill. Nicholas Perry, Thunderbolt’s CEO, will be here at ten. I do the talking. You guys keep your mouths shut unless I ask you a direct question. And you’d better know every number, every fact in here, backward and forward. There’s big money riding on this. Got it?”

      “Got it,” I said. “But I was wondering about something.”

      Gallagher narrowed his eyes in an expression that made him look even more like a ferret. “Wondering about what?”

      “Well, Thunderbolt—” I winced every time I said the word—what sort of phallo-centric moron would name a company Thunderbolt? “—just doesn’t seem like an obvious candidate for a buyout. Its revenues have been declining, and the union’s making trouble so its labor costs are likely to increase, and—”

      “Your point?” asked Gallagher. “Get to the point already.”

      My grip on the armrests tightened yet further. “The point is that a buyout will add a lot more debt to Thunderbolt’s balance sheet. The company’s interest payments will skyrocket, and I don’t see how it will cover them.”

      An LBO is sort of like buying an apartment СКАЧАТЬ