Irish Tiger

by Andrew M. Greeley

  “A lot of people are going to get hurt,” she said, “and you and your friend Frodo are not going to be among them.”

  By that time Frodo had achieved a certain fame, which my father’s son that I was, I did not like. I told myself that I would not believe the good things The Wall Street Journal said about me. However, I rented the office next to mine in the Conway building, fixed up the two offices so they looked mildly prosperous, and hired a couple of assistants.

  Faith prospered at her desk, recommending several new stocks for my increasing variety of products. She went home early in the afternoon to be with the kids, though her family leaned on her the way they could that she should be home with them all the time, just as their mother had. By definition, any idea I had for my wife was wrong. However, those months when we shared both home and office were the happiest time in my life.

  The Frodo Managed Fund (FMF) was my pride and joy; some of the stocks in it I had inherited from my father, so Frodo spanned the generations. It became a legend in wealth management. Some years it ran a full ten percent above the Dow. It was of course an instrument in gambling. My investors bet that they could trust me to deliver a presentable profit every year. And I bet that my instinct and sense of the markets could achieve that goal. The riverboat gambler in me loved the contest and the instincts, both of which I had inherited from my father. If the instincts started to fade I could go into the business of being a floating corporate trustee, not that I didn’t have some personal money protected in the safest of safe havens.

  The so called “dot-com bubble” was a merry time for us three-piece-suit bettors. I sensed it was a bubble and protected my friend Frodo from most of the trolls lurking in the bushes and the alleys. When the bubble burst my clients and I felt that we had been kicked in the stomach by an NFL field goal kicker. But, because I had taken a good hard look at the cards, we survived and bounced back quickly.

  Unfortunately for Faith the bottom fell out of one of the stocks she had persuaded me to take on. It was the only truly devastating loss for Frodo, my fault rather than hers. I had very little doubt about it when I decided that Internet food markets would certainly prosper. Dumb! I told Faith not to worry about it. She had warned me of some of the possible downsides of the stock. The buck at Donlan Assets stopped at my desk. I never blamed a researcher who sold me a lemon.

  My reassurance was not enough for poor Faith. She had to blame herself. When I arrived home (riding the L as my father had) I found the three daughters crying in the parlor. Mommy was sick in the bedroom and grandma was taking care of her.

  “Well, I hope you’re proud of yourself,” Lallie shouted at me. “Look what you’ve done to her.”

  I ordered Lallie to leave the house immediately and never come back again. She called the wrath of God down on me as I forced her out the door. My daughters swarmed around me and hugged me.

  “She’s a terrible woman,” Evelyn informed me. “Thank God you came home.”

  “Any time she tries to get in here when I’m not around, call me at the office. . . . Also if Mommy comes home sick again.”

  They solemnly promised.

  She went to an AA meeting the next night but it didn’t help much. I told her the job would always be waiting for her at my office. She replied with a bitter self-hating laugh. A week later she whispered to me one night, “I think I’d better try Betty Ford again.” This time the effect of that splendid institution lasted only a couple of months.

  I tried to persuade her to help me set up a new Nasdaq fund (I called it DOT), which was for the high rollers among my clients, including myself. Faith had read The Wall Street Journal every day at the Betty Ford. I never consciously gambled for high stakes with clients’ money unless they wanted me to. But I had no scruples about gambling with my own. In truth I was much more of a high roller than my father would have tolerated.

  So I made a bundle for all us high rollers with DOT, including Faith, for whom I put a bundle in our joint investments. “We’ll make a killing on it,” she said to me confidently and she was right. We went to Ambria in the Belden-Stratford Hotel on New Year’s Eve to celebrate that we had made enough money to pay for the college education of our kids. She refused to appear again in the office, but continued to provide me with first-rate research. Our interludes of happiness lasted longer, but they were never permanent. The final one ended when she attended her mother’s birthday while I was in D.C. I felt certain that they invited her to the party just so they could prove to her once again that she was not an alcoholic.

  The light went out of my life. She was a lovely, brilliant woman and good bed partner. I would miss her forever. As I have said, I was glad to be rid of her family, but I would have gladly put up with them and with her problems, if only she had survived.

  I was paralyzed by grief and guilt for the year after her death. Her daughters insisted that it was not my fault.

  Two years later, firm in my informal vow of celibacy, I was looking over the research on Elegant Homes, feeling very dubious about a start-up corporation from Oakdale, Illinois, formed by a woman real estate person. The prospectus looked good, however, and Jim Leavy, my most brilliant research guru, suggested we ought to think it over for DOT. I do three sessions with my staff about each research suggestion. Then I do one thought session by myself in which for the first time I look over all the papers.

  Joe McMahon, my research director who keeps his eye on start-up stories, brought the project to me from a lawyer in Rockford. While I trust Joe’s good sense, Rockford is downstate—which is to say any part of Illinois beyond Cook, Lake, and DuPage counties. Rockford is in fact north of Chicago but it still is downstate and good Chicago Democrat that I am I don’t trust downstate. I had never heard of Oakdale and have rarely been west of the DesPlaines River. The ELG project had a lot going against it, i.e. Rockford, downstate, luxury homes, a real estate woman, all of which raised warning flags.

  Joe is a rotund little leprechaun of a man who went to work for my father fresh out of high school. He is an absolute genius at separating good buys from bad buys and is a pleasant if eager man with whom to work. He cannot make decisions or even recommendations. My father paid him well for a man who had not attended college (just as he had not), but not what he is worth. When I took over I gave him a big raise to what he was worth and continued raises and bonuses through the years. He always seemed grateful but hardly surprised. He’s in his middle seventies and may or may not want to retire. I know nothing of his personal life, but he has two sons about my age, both of them MDs of whom he is very proud. His wife died (of cancer) I think ten years ago. I was surprised when I went to the wake and funeral in Bridgeport by the crowd and the grief. She must have been a remarkable woman. I regret that I never met her. Somehow I had gained the impression that he did not want me to meet her. As far as I can tell he is very devoted to me.

  The proposal was that instead of the firm going to a bank to float the IPO, DAM would undertake to acquire a large block of stock at the IPO asking price. Since the stock would presumably shoot up in the first week, we would make a tidy sum of money. The company would be protected from underwriters’ fees. And everyone would be happy.

  It is not the sort of venture that I would normally make. The bubble of the late nineties became a bubble precisely because too many people engaged in such crapshoots. ELG properly belonged in a hedge fund in which the truly high rollers played with chips worth millions of dollars. I don’t do hedge funds because there is too much money involved, too much uncertainty, and too many ruthless investors. Joe McMahon has been pushing me for years to edge in that direction. Each time I decline with thanks.

  I wouldn’t let ELG within a light-year of Frodo. The loyal fans of Frodo would think I had lost my mind. Jim argued that because much of the strength of the concept of designing boutique homes was dependent on specialized software that enabled clients to design splendid homes online before a single spade of dirt was displaced, it might well belong in the
DOT fund, which I had renamed Samwise. Besides there were so many odd stocks in Samwise the customers wouldn’t notice one more madcap toss of the dice.

  I didn’t like the proposal, however. Real estate markets are notoriously volatile. The data from ELG made a persuasive case that luxury and quasi-luxury markets were more stable. People with lots of money or moderate amounts of money consistently bought special homes. ELG’s contribution to this market so far had been to provide a range of choices in such homes that would be environment-friendly, attractive to men and women of good taste, and easy on the purchasers’ time. ELG was not for those who wanted to spend most of their time for a year or more agonizing over the details. Rather it was for those who were in a hurry but wanted a home that would have their own imprint on it and confirm the discrimination of their owners. Moreover because ELG had market power in the areas where it had offices, they could virtually guarantee that builders would finish their work on time. In an afternoon or two you could design your house and decorate it on a computer, make your down payment, and move in a year later.

  An appealing idea perhaps for those in a hurry, but also a comment on our speed-crazy culture. So too, however, to be fair, were asset management services like mine. Yet could any good come out of Oakdale, a suburb of Rockford out in the prairies? Moreover it was a start-up created by a woman real estate agent, albeit one with a good technical team. The prospectus was well done and had cleared my technical team. I couldn’t base my decision on my residual sexism, could I?

  I turned over the last paper in the file. The woman stared up at me—Maria Angelica Sabattini Connors. I gulped. It was a color photo cover of a magazine called Chicago Markets that did puff pieces on local entrepreneurs. Ms. Sabattini was unquestionably beautiful—dark skin that suggested the Mediterranean, perhaps Lebanon or North Africa, brown, smoldering, and intelligent eyes, a hint of a smile which implied mystery and perhaps romance, and a delicately carved face that could haunt a man for the rest of his life, especially if loneliness made him susceptible to haunting by such a one.

  I sighed and turned the magazine over. It would be most unwise of a man in my situation to become involved even in a business relationship with one like that. I was overcome by the temptation to read the article.

  Nonetheless I had to know more about her. There was little in the article to support my romantic fantasies—how could there be romance in Oakdale? The youngest daughter of an Italian immigrant from Tuscany and an Irish American GI who worked as a mechanic at a garage in Oakdale. Homecoming queen at Oakdale High School, Miss Kishwaukee County, a year at Northern Illinois University, married high school star quarterback who had attended Notre Dame. Like any Catholic kid in Chicago I knew the names of all the Notre Dame quarterbacks for the last two generations. Peter Connors wasn’t one of them. Rabbit in an Updike novel?

  Went to work for the Connors family real estate and development company at nineteen. Mother of two daughters and two sons. Named president of firm when she was thirty. Won a national award for a high-scale development along the Rock River. Involved in civic and artistic activity in Oakdale; led committee which rejuvenated the town. She and her husband inherited the firm, renamed it Elegant Homes. Has been refining the concept for years and expanding it beyond Illinois. May go public soon with a listing in Standard and Poors. Vivacious, charming, witty. Rebounded from her husband’s death three years ago with the usual clichés about how much she missed him. After her children were raised went back to school in computer science at NIU. Earned a master’s degree. Has designed much of the software for the new Elegant.

  A lot of shallow stuff about the firm, covering some of the material that was in my file.

  And pictures. Maria Angelica as a sumptuous Miss Kishwaukee County. Maria Angelica with her four kids. A still sumptuous Maria Angelica at a benefit ball in Chicago in a black gown that showed just enough to be provocative and not enough to be immodest. Did she look fragile in that picture? I glanced again at the cover. Yes, there was a hint of vulnerability, or at least my brain, now perturbed by racing hormones, thought so.

  I threw the magazine in my wastebasket and closed the file. Then I realized that my secretary, Elfrida, would check to make sure that I had looked at it. Better not to give that woman any hint of my reaction. I retrieved the Chicago Markets issue, placed it in its proper place at the end of the file, and put it in my out-box.

  I had to leave in ten minutes for my weekly tennis match at the Racket Club. Still I sat motionless at my desk, thoroughly ashamed of my adolescent reactions to the woman. My reactions, however, remained the same. Was I so hungry for womanly flesh that innocent pictures could fill my imagination with a stew of lubricious fantasies? No way could I enter into a business relationship with that woman. My team had set up a meeting to discuss our purchase of their stock for Samwise. I would cancel the meeting.

  For a couple of decades four of us Loyola grads had played tennis every Thursday—two matches of two sets each. We purported to be equally skilled. In fact, over the long haul, I had won more matches than anyone else, though I was the only one who counted, and that secretly. My competitiveness in the assets management game marked, perhaps blighted, my whole life. The day I had fixated on Maria Angelica Sabattini my need to win, now driven by my male hormones, was fearsome. My friends suggested that I was about to make a “killing” in the market.

  After our showers, I went into the dining room for a salad and a glass of iced tea with Lou Garner, a financial adviser on the North Shore. Neither the cold water nor the frugal meal calmed me down.

  Lou, moderately successful in a tough market, was an incorrigible gossip. He kept up with all the rumors in the financial services world, especially the scandalous ones.

  “Are you really going to hop into bed with Maria Connors?” He demanded.

  “I gave up that behavior when my wife died,” I said primly.

  He was unembarrassed.

  “Didn’t mean it literally but with her it usually comes to the same thing. She sleeps with anybody that can promote her career and then dumps them when she’s got what she wants out of them.”

  “That’s her reputation?”

  “Everyone knows it’s true. . . . Hey, one year at DeKalb and the daughter of Sicilian immigrants and from Oakdale? Gimme a break. . . . She’s really vicious, but so far it’s worked.”

  “One would think the reputation would catch up with her.”

  “It will eventually, I suppose. . . . But stay away from her.”

  “I am forewarned.”

  My team does excellent due diligence work. They do not screen, however, for Jezebels.

  Back in my office I phoned Mike Casey, a former police commissioner.

  “We’re involved with a project that would imply a relationship with one Maria Sabattini Connors from Oakdale, Illinois, a firm called Elegant Homes Incorporated. We would in effect be taking a long position on her firm. Would you be able to run a screen on her . . .?”

  “Reputation, trouble with the Feds, record, that sort of thing?”

  “Yes . . . She has a reputation of being promiscuous in her business dealings. I mean that in the strict sense of the word.”

  “That you don’t need. . . . I’ll be back to you in a couple of days.”

  I was relieved. I could tell my staff, all very eager on a project they thought was right down our alley, certain confidential matters had arisen that made our taking a position in ELG inappropriate at the present time. They would not press me on the point.

  Mike Casey called me back on the following Tuesday.

  “The woman is a chaste and modest matron, Jackie. There are rumors in the financial services community in Chicago, based on envy. But out in Oakdale, a place everyone knows everything about everybody and they don’t particularly like beautiful and successful Sicilians, they’ll tolerate no criticism of her. The sheriff out there in Kishwaukee County, a shrewd old bird, told me Chicagoans had dirty minds. Which may be true. ‘Chaste and mode
st matron’ are his words.”

  I thanked him and went into another fantasy tailspin. A chaste matron was even more of a potential delight than a woman out of an Eric Ambler novel.

  “Eric Ambler” dated me.

  Nothing would happen at our meeting or at any other event as we added her to Samwise. I would certainly decline to accept a position on her board of trustees.

  Maria Angelica

  I DRESSED very carefully for my meeting with John Patrick Donlan—competent, professional businesswoman—somber grey dress, loosely fitting, longish skirt, one turquoise pin, hair severely combed back, hardly visible makeup. My due diligence had revealed that Jack Donlan was generally thought to be a “gentleman,” not known for hitting on women. However, widowers in their early fifties are often a problem, especially for a widow in the same age range. I have had enough experience with men hitting on me to cope with them, though it’s always distasteful—an occupational hazard for a woman who is thought to be attractive.

  There had been one love in my life, my high school sweetheart and husband, God be good to him. The sex in that relationship left a lot to be desired because poor Peter Connors knew very little about women. However, I had learned that most men know very little about women. Real orgasms, as opposed to fake ones, are few and far between. It doesn’t take very many to produce four kids. As our marriage went on, sex became unimportant, for me because it wasn’t much fun and for Pete because it required too much of him as had everything else in life.

  I was very frank about sex with my sons while they were growing up, about how a man should love a woman. They were surprised and grateful. Peter Junior told me how important my lecture was in their marriage. Vicki, his wife, told me in an awed whisper that my son was a great lover. That made me very proud.

  I don’t recommend the celibate life to anyone, except a priest or a nun. I tell the latter that they don’t know how lucky they are. They laugh at me. Uneasily.