Party Time_Raving Arizona Read online

  ‘That sounds fine,’ I say, unfazed.

  ‘What you need to understand about Kruger Financial is that you’ll be employed as an independent contractor. That means you’ll not be making any money until you begin to generate commissions from selling stocks.’

  Here’s the catch.

  ‘’Cause you’ll not be on any fixed salary, the amount of money you can make is unlimited. It all depends on how hard you work and the commissions you generate.’

  ‘I like the sound of that, but I want to start earning commissions right away. How hard is this test? Maybe I can do it without the classes.’

  ‘It’s not the policy of this firm to enter a trainee for the test without doing the classes. There’s a lotta math in it.’

  ‘My degree involved loads of calculus and statistics. This test can’t be any harder than that.’

  ‘There’s a lotta options questions in it.’

  ‘I’ve traded options.’

  Johnny laughs. ‘I’ll show you the study book. It’s a big book. Then you’ll see you need the classes.’ He fetches the book.

  Opening it, I say, ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’

  ‘I told you so.’

  ‘No, not the size of it. It’s all multiple-choice questions. This is easy. How soon can you put me in for the test?’

  He narrows his eyes as if assessing whether I’m worth taking the risk. ‘If you’re that confident, I may be willing to let you skip the classes. Are you sure you won’t let me down?’

  ‘I definitely won’t.’

  ‘When I put my trust in someone, I’m not the kind of guy who likes being let down.’

  ‘It’s not going to happen,’ I say, trying not to imagine what he does to people who disappoint him.

  He smiles. ‘The earliest I can get you in for the test is in about two weeks.’

  ‘No problem.’

  ‘Take this book home with you.’

  ‘Thanks, boss.’

  Johnny says to study at Kruger to absorb the atmosphere. The brokers, about thirty power-dressed men, arrive before 6 a.m., sporting sleep creases on their faces. They greet the secretaries and join the battle for the coffee-maker. From the vending machines, they load up on candy and Mountain Dew. The workplace is mostly open-plan. The majority of the brokers are sat four to a quad: a cross-shaped table with corkboard divides. As 6.30 a.m. nears, their rate of caffeine consumption rises exponentially, as do their spirits. When the opening bell rings on the New York Stock Exchange, the brokers spring from their chairs and yell into their phones at volumes normally reserved for the hard of hearing.

  ‘Dow’s up 27!’

  ‘Techs are on the move again!’

  ‘Market or limit order?’

  ‘It’s ten and a sixteenth. Crap! They just raised the offer to an eighth!’

  ‘ASA International’s off three thirty-seconds on low volume.’

  ‘I’m telling you, it’s a dead-cat bounce.’

  ‘Dump that dog!’

  ‘It just bust through its year high!’

  ‘You bought ten thousand at a buck fifty!’

  The phones ring constantly. Each handset has a 24-foot curly cord, enabling the brokers to pace. Gripped by the action and unable to study due to the noise, I long to be on a phone, converting words into cash, laying the foundations of my empire.

  Next to the conference room, Johnny is in a glass-walled office, sitting heavily on a black chair resembling a throne. Every so often, he emerges to lord it over the brokers. ‘I wanna see everyone stand up! If you pace, your enthusiasm will travel down the phone lines, energise whoever you’re pitching to, and they’ll wanna piece of what you’re excited about. You’ll open more accounts and close more sales. Grab your mirrors and look at yourselves smiling while you’re on the phone. Smiling brokers close more sales.’

  His words excite the brokers. They stand and pace, criss-crossing the room with curly cords. To get around the cords, brokers duck, swerve and limbo dance.

  In the middle of each quad is a Quotron: a rotating metal box with a screen flashing green stock quotes. Competition for the Quotrons is fierce, priority going to brokers writing trade tickets. The mood of the brokers goes up and down with the numbers on the Quotrons. With their own Quotrons, the biggest producers occupy four offices at the back. Every so often, one dashes to Johnny’s office waving a trade ticket – usually an investment so large that the floor brokers watch enviously. It’s noisy until the trading session ends. Then the producers swagger home, abandoning the cold-calling floor brokers to a workplace redolent of trashcans overflowing with polystyrene coffee cups and sweat seeping through starched shirts.

  Two weeks later, I ace the Series 7, boosting my confidence. I strut into the 6 a.m. sales meeting, take a seat and cock my head back.

  Standing by a whiteboard displaying brokers’ names, commissions and new accounts for the month, Johnny and two young men loom over the brokers. My fellow rookies look half asleep, but the men with Johnny have the wide, alert eyes of ravers on speed. The taller one has thick, curly hair; the other has a crew cut and is chewing gum aggressively.

  ‘All of you know that to make it in this business,’ Johnny says, ‘you’ve gotta stay on the phone. And I don’t mean taking personal calls from your wives and girlfriends. That’s gotta stop. You need to be on the phone generating trades and opening new accounts.’

  Fixing us with stares fit to melt our eyeballs, the two men nod.

  ‘Producing brokers should be calling their clients and asking for referrals.’ Johnny raises a pretend phone to his ear. ‘“Mr Jones, who else do you know who’d be interested in taking advantage of this stock while it’s still cheap?” It’s as easy as that, but some of you seem to be afraid of your phones. Well, I’ve got news for you: it’s been scientifically proven that people cannot travel down phone lines to hurt you. Maybe Mr Jones’ stock has gone down from where you bought it. If it has, then you pick up your phone, and say, “Mr Jones, we thought ASA International was a good buy at one dollar. Well, it’s an even better buy at 50 cents. You bought 10,000 shares before. Let’s go in and buy another 20,000 at 50 cents, and that’ll get your average price right down.”’

  The gum-chewer punches a quad divide. A few of us jump in our seats. ‘You should be asking for 100,000 shares and then settling for 50!’ His eyes find mine. Feeling a threat to my existence, I look away.

  ‘That’s right,’ Johnny says. ‘I brought these two here today so you, especially the rookie brokers, can meet the two top-producing brokers from Bezner Securities. Some of you older brokers know Jimmy Shargal and Ben Gleeson. Jimmy here’s gonna give you new brokers some advice.’

  Jimmy spits his gum into a trashcan. He scans the audience sneeringly. With the conviction of a religious fanatic, he recounts his rise as a stockbroker from rookie to Tyrannosaurus rex. I’m spellbound. He’s got the military discipline to build an empire. Every so often he punches a table top or quad divide. ‘How many calls does a rookie have to make? At least 500 cold calls a day! That’ll get you ten to twenty leads! From those leads, you’ll open one new account! That’s thirty new accounts a month! How many of you have ever opened thirty accounts in one month in your miserable lives?’ Sighting us down his nose, he inhales in a way that says he owns the air around us. ‘You should be in here before the market opens cold-calling the East Coast! You should be in here late at night cold-calling the West Coast and Hawaii! You should be in here on the weekends catching local business owners while they’re relaxing in their homes in Paradise Valley and Scottsdale! Johnny has given you everything you need to succeed like me and Ben!’

  Lapping it up, we nod. My veins swell, pumping up my body.

  Ben spins an arm and slams the board with a fist, nearly knocking it off the wall. ‘Don’t ever, ever forget, you’re only as big as where your numbers on this board are at for the month!’

  At fever pitch, I’m ready to tear people to pieces on the phone. They’ll buy stocks or else.<
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  After the meeting, Johnny takes me aside. ‘I’m not gonna seat you in a quad with the other rookies at the front of the office. They’ve had no investment experience before coming here. They’re pitching certain stocks. You’re different. I’m gonna let you pitch whatever you wanna pitch.’

  I feel special. ‘Where should I sit?’ I ask, searching for the youngest and friendliest faces, which are mostly near the front.

  ‘There’s a space in the quad at the very back.’

  I crane my neck to get a better look at the three men sitting there. Anxiety shoots up from my guts, collapsing my high. With hard, menacing faces, they look like convicts in suits.

  ‘Just grab yourself a phone book and start cold-calling. To get used to cold-calling, try pitching Salt River Project bonds to numbers in Sun City. That’s where the old people with money live. They trust Salt River Project.’ Johnny hastens to his office and greets a big man, bald and eyebrowless, leaning on a cane topped with a silver skull.

  I take my seat and open the phone book near the back, afraid to talk to my quadmates or make eye contact with them.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Washington! This is Shaun Attwood calling from Kruger Financial to see if you’d be interested in some 7 per cent Salt River Project bonds.’

  ‘I’m eating my freaking breakfast right now!’

  ‘You do want to make money, don’t you?’

  Click.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Washko! This is Shaun Attwood calling from Kruger Financial to see if you’d be interested in some Salt River Project bonds yielding 7 per cent.’

  ‘Our son handles our investments.’ Click.

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Washnock! This is Shaun Attwood calling from Kruger Financial to see if you’d be interested in some 7 per cent Salt River Project bonds.’

  ‘Take my name off your list or I’ll sue your goddam ass!’ Click.

  Mocked, sworn at, hung up on, I eavesdrop on my quadmates, hoping to learn what to say on the phone.

  Scott Virani – a brawny New Yorker of Persian descent with facial muscles that ripple as he talks – is fresh from the big house. He was sentenced to two years for breaking a man’s nose with a pool cue in a bar fight. To explain his absence, he tells his clients he was in chemotherapy, battling a disease that almost killed him multiple times. He calls cancer survivors, bonds with them through their shared suffering and sells them stocks.

  Troy Ireland – a gaunt and grizzled ex-Marine with bulging shell-shocked eyes and scars across his face so deep his stubble fails to disguise them – snorts crystal meth off the desk and hangs out with Hells Angels.

  Curt Pritchett – a brilliant salesperson with an icy disposition, whose elongated head and deep-set eyes lend him the look of an underwater predator – keeps a bottle of Smirnoff in his briefcase at all times. His vocal inflection ranges from army-general commands to sing-song whispers that would put a baby to sleep.

  These three have christened our table ‘the criminal quad’. I spend hours trying to absorb their sales pitches. For the first few weeks, they offer little by way of conversation other than an occasional grunt and appear to be contemplating doing me harm. But, over time, they start schooling me, including putting their clients on speakerphone. I listen, thrilled, to entire conversations, filing away for future use how they respond to objections.

  Far more approachable is Kruger’s youngest broker, Matt Bedford, 19, greyhound lean with a friendly face and big eyes. Even when the stock market is falling, he oozes enthusiasm, making stocks sound like tickets guaranteed to win the lottery. He’s adept at pacing. When his curly cord reaches its maximum extension, he about-faces with the agility of a guardsman on parade. Matt and I work the latest. Our friendship blossoms. Over drinks, I tell him how much I miss English raves and he promises to find a local party.

  My first few months, I generate no commission. I use most of my credit to get an apartment by the office. Local family members donate a hodgepodge of furniture. With little money and no time to cook, I live off cheese on toast, and bananas. Poor diet, financial stress and fear of having to return to England cause ulcers in my mouth. Am I cut out for this?

  I change my strategy to pitching America West Airlines’ junk bonds. Trading at ten cents on the dollar, they offer a 900 per cent return if the company doesn’t default. Having read that Asians have high incomes and like to gamble, I look them up in the phone book. The strategy works. My first customers are Chens and Mengs. Opening accounts lifts me from a mini-depression to a high like when I lost my virginity. That people send thousands to invest based on a few brief telephone conversations astounds me. Now I have numbers on the board, I matter in here! Johnny applauds me at the sales meeting for being ‘shit-hot definite millionaire class’, turbo-charging my morale.

  A month later, Scott Virani – whom I’ve grown closest to in the criminal quad – confides that nothing at Kruger is as it seems. Most of my colleagues worked for a defunct firm that defrauded investors. The National Association of Securities Dealers banned Johnny from stockbroking. He’s operating under a false name. Shocked, I don’t know what to do. I feel naive for trusting Johnny, for allowing enthusiasm to blind me into working for a telemarketing operation rather than the reputable firm I dreamt of.

  Most of the rookies hired at the same time as me have quit or been fired. But Johnny keeps recruiting more. He likes to say, ‘I just love throwing people against the wall to see how many stick.’ The brokers with the biggest numbers on the board cannibalise the clients and sales leads of each broker who leaves. Due to my rising new-account numbers, Johnny starts to cut me in on the action.

  Ron McDaniel was Johnny’s boss in the ’80s. The oldest stockbroker in our office, Ron has the tough air of a New Yorker and seems unlikely to get preyed on. He urges me to ignore what the rest are buying and invest in a stock I’ve never heard of called Microsoft.

  A rumour starts that Ron has fallen out of favour with Johnny and that the business he’s spent decades building – hundreds of clients, thousands of leads – is on the verge of cannibalisation. To hasten Ron’s demise, Curt starts a rumour that Ron is a sex offender in financial difficulty, living out of a car with an underage girlfriend he pretends is his niece.

  Johnny summons Ron to see him. As Ron enters Johnny’s office, Johnny nods at the criminal quad. When Ron sits down, my quadmates leap up and descend on his workspace like wild beasts. The rookies watch the ransacking from a safe distance – silent, still, wary – like zebras observing lions devour one of their lame.

  ‘Get over here, Shaun! Get you some sales leads!’ is all I need to hear from Scott Virani.

  I spring from my seat and join the frenzy. Intoxicated by the aura of my quadmates’ ruthlessness and the value of what I’m about to take, I rifle a drawer and seize paperwork. It takes minutes to cannibalise a lifetime’s work. A security guard arrives at the reception.

  Ron emerges from Johnny’s office. ‘Can I just grab my lunch box?’

  ‘No way!’ Johnny says.

  The security guard, whom Ron has greeted daily for years, yells at Ron as if arresting a murderer: ‘You need to come with me!’

  My quadmates quarrel over Ron’s lunch. Chewing a sandwich, Curt starts dialling Ron’s clients.

  Ron befriended me, yet all I can think about is exploiting his demise. I call his leads and open my biggest account yet. There’s no stopping me now. I’m applying Mo’s advice: it’s fuck or be fucked in the business world.

  Working late, Matt and I discuss the rumour that the National Association of Securities Dealers is about to close Kruger down.

  ‘Maybe we should jump ship,’ I say, slumped in my chair after pacing all day.

  ‘If we try to get hired by another firm and Johnny finds out,’ Matt says, standing, staring at me, ‘God knows what he’ll do to us.’

  ‘One thing’s for sure: they’ll raid our clients.’

  ‘How can we stop them doing that?’ Matt asks.

  ‘We can’t.
But I’ve got an idea. The account paperwork for everyone’s clients is in those drawers by the secretaries. If we photocopy it, then when they call our clients, we can call all of theirs.’

  ‘Dude, that’s brilliant!’ Matt says, reaching out to shake my shoulder. ‘There must be thousands of accounts in there! Imagine all the new accounts we could open.’

  ‘There’s no way we can photocopy them all in one night. We’ll have to do it slowly, over a few weeks, and hope no one shows up and catches us red-handed.’

  We photocopy so many accounts, we run out of paper. We have to use the fax machine to keep going.

  ‘Would any of you like to tell me what’s been going on with my photocopier late at night?’ Johnny asks at the sales meeting, his eyes bouncing from broker to broker. ‘The counter’s showing hundreds of copies have been made.’

  The damn machine has a counter! Afraid to look at Matt, I imagine the guard on his way up to show us out.

  ‘Someone in here must have an explanation,’ Johnny says, scowling.

  Troy and Curt titter.

  Johnny marches towards the criminal quad. ‘Does someone at the back there know something I don’t?’

  Radiating guilt, I pray my expression doesn’t betray me. My upper body freezes, but my legs shake below the desk. I press my knees together.

  ‘Nope.’ Troy juts his chin.

  ‘Look, if no one has an honest explanation, then I’m left with no choice but to assume something dishonest’s going on.’ Johnny stops by Matt.

  Patting Matt’s shoulder in a fatherly way, Johnny says, ‘Let me tell you what I think’s going on.’

  The guard appears at the reception.

  It’s all over! Pressure rises in my body. My face heats up. I feel my pulse in my throat. My eyes dart to the back door. I swivel my chair, ready to dash out.

  ‘Someone here has secured a job at another brokerage.’ Johnny takes his hand off Matt, and struts to soft-spoken Paul Lines. ‘That someone is photocopying accounts and leads. That someone is not happy here. And who’s been whining the most about Kruger Financial? We all know who: Paul Whines.’