“He’s been texting me since we got here. There’s an EBITDA mismatch on the Anvira Pharma deal, and DB is digging their heels in. Lloyd told Bernardo he wouldn’t get into it with a principal.”
“Christ. I’m the one who has a relationship with Lloyd, why didn’t he text me?”
“Because we’re with your family.”
“Alright. I’ll give Lloyd a call.”
“Right now?”
“Why not?” Carver laid down across the bed, kicking off his loafers. “It’s an emergency, and he likes me.”
Lillian got up and started stripping down to her black, lacy underwear. Carver stared at her hard abs, which were one of his favorite things about her. “Lemme call Bernardo first so he can catch us both up.”
“You’re gonna talk to him in your underwear?”
“On the phone, who cares?” Lillian came over and encroached on his personal space. “Move over.” Carver groaned. Lillian put the phone on speaker and called Bernardo; they waited as the phone rang.
“Hey boss,” Bernardo answered.
“Hey there. You’ve got Carver too.”
“Fantastic,” Bernardo said. “Both my bosses, and here I sit with my dick in my hand.”
“This shit happens,” Carver said, running his hand through his hair and doing his best not to sound stoned. “Just fill us in.”
Bernardo started to explain the situation. Lillian handed her cell to Carver and got up so she could pace and toss a tennis ballfrom hand to hand. Carver fought his enervated body’s urge to roll over and ignore this conversation.
“So it’s what we expected might happen,” Lillian said, cutting across Bernardo, who had made the mistake of continuing to talk after he already communicated all key info. “DB isn’t buying the projections in the McKinsey report, they think our EBITDA is off by — you said five million?”
Bernardo cleared his throat. “Yeah, five.”
Lillian stopped mid-stride to look at Carver with her hawk eyes — round, light brown, with a certain alert blankness behind them. “That takes us outside the covenant, right?” Everyone looked to him when they needed some quick mental math. His first boss at Blackbrick gave him the nickname Rain Man, which luckily didn’t stick.
Carver stifled a yawn. “Yeah, by point eight turns of leverage.”
“Seriously? I thought point five.”
“No, Lil, from six times to six point eight.”
“Ew,” Lillian said, and punctuated this with a toss of the tennis ball. “They’re not going to letthatslide.”
“Nope,” Carver agreed. “Listen, let’s keep this inside, let’s go back to the investment committee tomorrow morning and ask for more equity. The fund has the cash, this shit has to get signed by Monday, and we’re out of town.”
“No,” Lillian said. She resumed pacing. “I’m not caving to those German pussies on the credit committee. This isn’t about the fundamentals, this is because they don’t think in terms of growth.”
“So you think I should call Lloyd and beg him to fight them?”
“Yes, and if that doesn’t work then we can go get more equity.”
“I hate to lean on Lloyd too much,” Carver said. “There’s only so much he can do.”
“That’s what he wants you to think,” Lillian said. “We’re not asking for charity, the amount of business we bring them is the fee we pay to lean. Bernardo, we’re done with you, but keep your phone on.”
“Got it,” Bernardo said, and hung up.
Carver rubbed his eyes, feeling light-headed. He did enjoy solving a problem, but this situation was overly familiar, almost rote. He had solved this exact problem before. These problems always got solved somehow, anyway — the sheer amount of capital and man-hours that went into these deals had a gravity all their own. Small things went wrong all the time while the institutions themselves chugged along, unstoppable, too big to fail. Right now he was the person who needed to pick up the phone and fix this, but if he got hit by a bus tomorrow then it would just be someone else picking up the phone. Lloyd Harmer of the Deutsche Bank deal team could have easily talked to Lillian, he would just prefer to talk to Carver, who he liked better. If Carver was an option — if he had no ready excuse like “I am climbing K2 without cell service” or “I got hit to death by a bus” — and Lloyd got Lillian instead, he would perhaps feel slighted and be less cooperative in the future. Perhaps. And while they could gamble with billions of dollars, they did not want to gamble with one guy’s ego, even though Lloyd himself could also get hit by a bus tomorrow.
All of Carver’s clawing and climbing and late nights, all the frantic hard work of the last fourteen years, had lifted him into this gilded cage. He barely even got to do interesting math anymore — there were so many people under him doing his scut work and producing his creativity for him. He was mostly needed for his institutional wisdom or as someone with the gravitas to make a kill, and his appetite for the latter only diminished as he got older. He suspected that part of his appealfor Lillian was that he was happy to let her make so many of his kills.
