That was always his mantra: spread it out. No more than a certain number of shares in one transaction, because anything over that number supposedly tripped SEC radar.

“Huh,” Devon said. “How about that. I was just reading that they were doing really well.”

A silence.

“I know, I know,” Devon said. “The less I know, the better.” Adam sounded like he was in a taxi. “So what shall we talk about, then? How’s the family?”

Adam laughed, not unkindly. “They’re good, thanks. Listen, you know we shouldn’t stay on any longer than we have to. I’m sure a single guy like you has got plans, anyway.”

“Mos def. I have a date.”

“My man,” Adam said. “Enjoy.” He hung up. He was so fucking cool all the time. In one way it would have made Devon feel better to hear, even just once, a little panic in his voice, but in other ways it would have made him feel infinitely worse. It was like high school all over again with that guy. He was one of those alphas, master of every situation, receiver of every gift, one of those guys you made merciless fun of until the day he actually brought you inside the circle and then you turned into a simpering little bitch. They saw each other very rarely-maybe three or four times in the last year-but in the aftermath Devon always felt humiliated by how slavishly he had said yes to everything.

He put the phone down on the dresser and went back to the screen, but Kasey was in the bathroom; there were cameras in there too, of course, but he scowled and went to the kitchen to see if there was anything to eat. Some people were into some perverse shit.

They’d brought in a couple of other people-they’d had to, to keep things sufficiently spread out-friends of his from the old boiler-room days on Long Island who now worked at more legit houses. They’d set up accounts for one another’s aunts, cousins, whatever they could get documentation for, and siphoned the trades through there. To most of these guys Devon himself was the ringleader, the mastermind, though without a tip to act on, of course, they were all nothing but a group of enlisted men with a willingness to get ahead. His stomach felt like shit again. Maybe because he hadn’t eaten anything, but that, he was reminded as he opened and closed the freezer a couple more times, was only because there was fuck all to eat around here. He took the bottle of pear vodka out of the freezer instead, and in the cabinet it turned out there was still half a bag of salt-and-vinegar potato chips. Presto. Dinner.

He poured himself some vodka and sat down in front of the computer. Kasey was sitting at the kitchen table writing something-paying bills, maybe?-but at least she had her pants off now, which was promising. His own apartment had a pretty Spartan look to it, which was to say that it had a couch and a flat-screen TV that were both huge and expensive, and a rug that was huge and not expensive, and that was it. Nothing on the walls. He’d bought some kind of print of the Golden Gate Bridge and hung it on the wall over the couch, but he just felt stupid and pretentious looking at it-like, do I actually give a fuck about the Golden Gate Bridge?-and he took it down. In the bedroom was a bed and a dresser and a closet, and underneath a ceiling panel in the closet was a gym bag with about a hundred and sixty thousand dollars in it. This, Devon felt, was the true source of his stomach problems, though he also wondered if that was just dramatic nonsense, if his stomach would quiet down if he ate the occasional well-balanced meal and generally just took a little better care of himself.

He went back to the kitchen to throw out the chip bag and returned with the pear-vodka bottle. The stuff tasted like Jolly Ranchers after a while. Why did he have to get stuck with all the grunt work? The money was pretty much its own answer, even though the more he made, the harder it got to figure out how to spend it, or even where to put it, without attracting attention. Jesus, just one good blowjob would go such a long way right now, he thought. There was an outcall service just a few blocks away; he had it on speed dial. He called them up and asked if Teresa was available tonight, just so he could clear his mind of the whole thing. Fuck Bantex, until tomorrow anyway. It was all that paranoia about being watched that was making him feel sick all the time. He bet the rest of them felt sick too. But no one is watching, he thought as he logged off of Kasey and put the bottle back in the freezer and picked some laundry up off the floor. He was the one doing all the watching. That’s what you paid for. I see you, but you don’t see me.

Titles were considered unimportant at Perini but a natural hierarchy evolved and was respected. Sanford’s reliance on Adam made him the de facto number two; he spent more of his time out of the office now wooing investors in the fund, drinking with them, charming them, impressing them, seducing them into confidence even after the rare misstep or during the always-brief lean times. Precisely the kind of thing Sanford himself used to do all day long-and still did, though he had less of a taste for it now, and also seemed to recognize that youth itself was part of the package that investors wanted to be sold. Sanford himself didn’t really look any older, just more dissolute, a little puffier and less put together.

No one else there begrudged Adam the boss’s favor; it was a measure of their comfort with it that they made jokes about San-ford’s obvious late-stage conversion to homosexuality at every opportunity. Every job but Adam’s and Bill Brennan’s had turned over at least once since Adam had arrived there; Parker had finally been belittled into quitting almost three years ago, and since he’d stopped coming to basketball, Adam had no idea what had become of him. The office’s basic fraternal atmosphere was unchanged. Most of them were younger than Adam now, but he could still outrun them and outlift them and outdrink them and while they honored his status as their superior, in every important way he fit right in. Still, there was of course something momentous about his very presence in that office that none of them even suspected, and their not knowing sharpened the borderline Adam prized between his own character and theirs.

Friday afternoons at work tended to devolve into a head start on the younger employees’ bachelor weekends, with beer and foosball tournaments and a general disengagement from their adrenalized professional selves; usually the last hour of work was turned over to discussions of why the bar they went to last Friday sucked and which one they should try tonight instead, but on one particular spring afternoon they managed to talk Adam into coming with them to some catered event they knew about that was taking place inside the Delacorte Theater in Central Park. A fund-raiser for something or other. Brennan had tickets and they all wanted Adam’s company so badly that they even offered to pay for him. “I cannot get too hammered,” Adam said. “Tomorrow’s my son’s birthday.” Something else to drink to. They took over one of the round tables on the bare stage and there they met their waitress, whose name was Gretchen. Gretchen was provocatively tattooed and reluctantly conceded that she was an actress and would not tell them her age, which led to a general consensus that she was no more than twenty-two.

“God, I love me some of that hipster pussy,” Brennan said.

“Because they hate you. That’s why.”

“Yes,” he said. “Yes. Because she hates me. That is precisely why.”

They kept ordering more drinks so that Gretchen would have to return to their table, and each time she stopped there they did a clumsier job of chatting her up. They thought their own artlessness was hilarious. Gretchen knew better than to flirt back, but she was enough of a pro, Adam saw, not to let her contempt for these guys show either. The tips were becoming outrageous.