Majid didn’t answer. Which was worse than answering.

“Unhedged?” said Ron.

Majid nodded.

“For fuck’s sake,” said Ron. “We’re called a fucking hedge fund!”

“I didn’t want to limit our upside.”

“Brilliant,” said Ron. “Fucking brilliant.” He rubbed his nose with his right hand and slumped into a chair. “So, tomorrow morning, at 9:05?”

Majid finally turned and looked at him. “We’re fucked.”

“So . . . if any of our clients should want to redeem . . .”

“We need more capital.”

“Under the circumstances,” Ron said firmly, as firmly as he ever said anything, “I’m not inclined to go back to my uncles.”

“I know,” said Majid. “I’m working on it.”

Pleski

PLESKI

The glassed-in room at the Holborn Bank was called “the fishbowl,” a name that had two explanations. One was the obvious one that its glass walls made it transparent, so that anyone in the adjacent reception area could see in. The other was that it was where the bank’s “relationship managers” met current and potential clients—the fish.

Catherine was meeting there with a not particularly pleasant fish named Stanley Pleski. He was in his early fifties and pudgy, with a futile combover and suits that should have fit better, considering what he paid for them. Catherine thought he was repulsive, but he had ten million dollars invested with Holborn, under Catherine’s guidance. He was her fish. Today he was pulling on the line.

Half of his investment with Holborn, five million dollars, he had put, on the bank’s advice, on Catherine’s advice, into low-priced shares of a company called Kemper Media that owned a chain of struggling newspapers in the midwestern United States. It had seemed like a good idea at the time. The bank’s analysts had predicted, and Catherine had proceeded to advise Pleski, that Kemper Media was ripe for a takeover (to be followed by dismemberment), and in fact a takeover bid had come, from a media conglomerate called Plenum, the consummation of which would yield Pleski a handsome profit. But the deal had not been consummated, at least not yet, and it should have been.

“The offer expires next week,” Pleski said, which of course Catherine knew, and he knew she knew, which Catherine restrained herself from pointing out. “Plenum will renew it,” she said, “if it comes to that. They know the delay is a temporary situation.” She was sitting across a polished mahogany table from Pleski. The chairs were rich and comfortable. Her dress was pale blue, which was said to be a calming color.

Pleski was not calmed. “Temporary? You sure? You want to tell that to my five million dollars sitting in the stock of a dead company walking?”

Which Catherine chose to take as a rhetorical question. “Kemper Media is family-controlled,” she said. “Selling a company like that, it’s always an emotional issue.”