Restitution

Chapter One "Eleven," Tigger crows triumphantly, his shot caroming off the plastic backboard into the hoop. "You got the yips big time today. That's eight hundred bucks you owe me." "Double or nothing again," I say, rising to gather the Nerf balls scattered across my office floor. Glancing through the glass wall over-looking the trading desks, I notice several heads turn abruptly. The junior guys bet on our games. They can't see the basket hanging from the door, but it's common knowledge that the loser collects the balls. Having the guys on the trading floor see me drop four games in a row pisses me off almost as much as losing them. "House rules," Tigger says. "Five-hundred-dollar game limit." "House rules," I agree. "And whose house is it?" "Bad form, Peter. Rules are the basis of civilization." Tigger's Brooklyn vowels defeat his attempt at sounding cultured, marking him as an old-timer, one of the last guys to get a field promotion before Wall Street began recruiting professionals exclusively from the Ivy League. A small man in his early fifties, Tigger has a potbelly, fleshy cheeks, protuberant eyes, and an overly large head. He was my first boss, and still corrects me freely, despite the fact that I long since passed him in the corporate hierarchy. "Eight hundred bucks," I say, grabbing a ball under his chair. "Big money. You could upgrade your entire wardrobe and use the other four hundred to have a HAZMAT team haul off the old stuff." "Never buy anything that doesn't come in a three-pack. What'd you pay for that tie?" "Hundred and ten maybe," I say, glancing down at the chain-link pattern. "In an airport. Retail's one forty." "You're wearin' a hundred-and-ten-dollar tie that was made in China for fifty cents. You buy twenty-five-dollar hamburgers uptown and get hundred-dollar haircuts from guys with one name. I got a responsibility to take money off you because you're so fuckin' stupid with it." Keisha opens the door while I'm on all fours, fumbling for a ball under the couch. "Josh is on your personal line. He needs to speak to you urgently," she says, rolling her eyes. Josh is my boss, the head of Klein and Klein, a former banker from the Rust Belt who's gradually taken on the grandeur of an Ottoman Empire pasha. Everything's urgent. It's just a matter of time until he begins referring to himself in the third person. I pick up the phone. "Peter Tyler." "Hold for Josh," his breathless secretary whispers. "Hold for Josh," I say to Tigger, squeezing the mute button on the receiver. "What kind of asshole can't make his own phone calls?" "Don't give him any money," Tigger warns. "Third quarter ends this Friday. We already made budget, and I want to go into bonus season with a tailwind." "Peter," a bluff voice booms into the receiver, "how are we doing today?" "Fine," I reply, thumbing down the volume. All the clients he used to cover must have been deaf. "Dollar's weaker, oil's higher, and bonds are soft. Generally good for us." "Excellent," he says, not sounding particularly thrilled. "I'm a little concerned this morning, Peter. I've been lookiVance, Lee is the author of 'Restitution ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780307266323 and ISBN 030726632X.