New York_ The Novel - Edward Rutherfurd [430]
What made it worse was that Juan was having a bad time. Mayor Koch had done well by the city below Ninety-sixth Street, but not so well for the districts like Harlem, El Barrio and the South Bronx. Some people reckoned he didn’t care that much. Others pointed out that, when the problems were so huge, even Koch couldn’t do everything at once. Either way, Juan had been able to make very little progress. “Things in El Barrio are getting steadily worse, not better,” he’d told them. He was so discouraged that he was thinking of taking a job in one of the big utilities, where at least he could use his business skills.
As soon as the baby was born, Gorham promised himself, he’d make it an occasion to call Juan and have him and Janet to supper.
Despite these regrets, which could certainly be remedied, Gorham should have counted himself a very fortunate man. And he would have, had it not been for one problem: good fortune wasn’t enough.
It wasn’t surprising. When one thought about it, Gorham considered, New York had always been a place for people who wanted more. Whether a poor immigrant or a rich merchant, people came to New York to get more. In bad times they came there to survive, in good times to prosper, and in boom times to get rich. Very rich. Fast.
And as the eighties progressed, New York had been booming.
It was the stock market that was booming. The market and all the service industries, including the law firms, that went with it. In ’84, the market had experienced its first million share trading day. Traders, brokers, anyone dealing in shares or bonds had the opportunity to make a fortune. It was all beautifully summarized in Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities, which had just hit the best-seller lists as Maggie’s pregnancy began.
Greed was everywhere. Greed was exciting. Successful greedy men were heroes. Greed was good.
But Gorham had to ask himself: Had he been greedy enough?
Sometimes, sitting in his office, he’d take out the silver Morgan dollar his grandmother had given him and stare at it sadly. Would the Masters in times past, the merchants and owners of privateers, and speculators in property and land, would they have sat quietly in a corporate office and taken a salary—all right, a salary with bonus and stock options—but would they have been so cautious when others were making rapid fortunes? He didn’t think so. New York was booming and he was sitting idly by, trapped by his own caution and respectability.
Was everyone of his own, old-money class doomed to mediocrity? No, some, like Tom Wolfe himself, had kicked over the traces.
Gorham hadn’t kicked over the traces exactly, but he had begun some quiet trading of his own, and he had done well. He’d borrowed to invest, of course—that was the only way to make money fast, and the risk was not so great in a rising market. In fact, by the time of Maggie’s pregnancy, he’d built up an impressive portfolio.
He hadn’t told Maggie. He reckoned he would when he had put by enough to really impress her—and that would take some doing for a lawyer used to dealing with clients who had very substantial assets indeed. But he was working on it. Concealing his activities from her was perfectly easy, because they filed separate tax returns.
It had been her idea, right at the start of the marriage. He didn’t know what she made, and she didn’t know what he made. They kept tally of their living expenses, which were split evenly between them, and that was all they needed to know. Until Maggie made partner, he’d assumed that he made more money than she did. Now that she was a partner, he wasn’t quite sure. Not that it really mattered, of course. But with the stock options and the bonuses he always earned, he reckoned that, yes, he probably still made more—though partners in the big law firms did awfully well. But when he finally cleaned up in the markets, he had thought with secret satisfaction, that was when he’d let her know.
And everything would have been all right, until the disaster last month.
For in October, the market had crashed. Not a crash like the Great