The Garden of Betrayal - Lee Vance [13]
“Tough day,” I said.
“For lots of people.” Alex pushed his glasses up with one hand to massage raw-looking indentations on either side of his nose. “What’s the death count now?”
“North of three hundred.” The only good news I’d received all day was a follow-up text from Gavin, saying that he and his family had made it back to England safely.
He winced.
“And here I am feeling sorry for myself because I got my socks blown off by the market. It puts things in perspective, doesn’t it?”
Yes and no. Tragedy put unimportant things in perspective, but genuine pain was tougher to mitigate. Alex had been born with enough money to support any lifestyle he chose, but the only thing he really wanted was his father’s approval. He’d been working at it as long as I knew him, and the harder he worked, the more it eluded him.
“How bad did you get hurt?” I inquired, thinking it was marginally less awkward than not asking.
“Drink first,” he said.
We rode the elevator down together and walked around the corner to Pagliacci, an upscale restaurant-cum-lounge that was usually deserted at this time of day. The wallpaper, the cocktail napkins, and the bar menu were all decorated with clowns; even the light fixtures had clown faces stamped on the brass escutcheons. The place gave me the creeps, but Alex liked it for some reason. The barman saw us come in and reached for a bottle of Stoli. He settled a half-full highball glass in front of Alex as we took stools at the empty bar, then tipped his chin at me.
“Amstel.”
Alex gulped at his glass three times, and the barman hit him again.
“You want to talk about it?” I ventured.
“Let me ask you a question,” he said, staring down at the bar. “I’ve been hearing guys in the office call me Eddie behind my back. What’s that about?”
Walter had named his firm after a classic American muscle car, the Ford AC Cobra. His first few apprentices who’d spun out on their own had followed suit, calling their funds Mustang and Charger. It caught on. When Alex briefly ran his own fund, he’d named it Torino. Like the Cobra, the Torino was a Ford.
“No idea,” I said.
“You could do me a favor.”
“What’s that?”
“You could not lie to me.”
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Five years back, when I’d been foundering, Alex was the one who’d persuaded his father to throw me a lifeline. I was indebted to him. I didn’t want to hurt him, but I didn’t see that I had any choice.
“Eddie comes from Edsel.”
He nodded and took another swallow of his drink. The Ford Edsel was Detroit’s most infamous mistake, a hugely touted vehicle that had failed utterly.
“That’s funny,” he said. “The Edsel was named after Henry Ford’s kid, right?”
I nodded.
“Who came up with that?”
“I don’t know.”
He swiveled on his stool to face me.
“Didn’t I already ask you not to fucking lie to me?”
I picked up my beer and took a sip, meeting his gaze levelly. I really didn’t know who’d come up with it. Jokes and nicknames swept across trading floors like wildfires, and you rarely learned the source. What I did know was that there were a lot of guys who resented Alex because he was the boss’s son, and because anyone else with Alex’s track record would have been out on his ass years ago.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized a few moments later. “I’m kind of a wreck right now.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
The barman cutting limes a few feet away was obviously listening, so I suggested we move to a table. Alex had his glass refilled first. Less than ten minutes after walking through the door and he was on the equivalent of his fifth drink. We settled in a corner beneath a clock with oversized clown feet swinging side to side like a pendulum. A polka dot–painted arm protruding from the side rocked back and forth in time with the feet, perpetually threatening to launch a cream pie.
“You know what sucks?” Alex asked, elbows on the table as he rubbed his scalp with both hands.
“What?