The Stark Truth

by Peter Israel

  Somehow we got to our cottage. Somehow we got to our bed, or near it, Kitty still sobbing, raging, I, intoxicated now by her jealousy, pulling at her trousers until strands of sequins peeled off onto the woven straw rug.

  “I’ve ruuu-ined it. I’ve ru—Oh, my God, Tommy!”

  The next day, under the thatch roof of the beach bar, her hat on the table and her sunglasses perched among the black curls of her hair, she made the remark that prompted this idyllic recollection in the first place.

  “But if I told you who my source was, Tommy,” she said, “how do I know you’d need me anymore?”

  11

  One of my first needs, in setting up on my own, was a new team of brokers. This was no knock on the people we’d used at the firm—indeed, they were the very model of what I wanted: stable, reasonably competent, unimaginative—but the fact that I’d used them before ruled them out. I wanted no eyebrows raised, no questions asked. I also wanted a surplus available, so as to be able to move my accounts around the trade.

  In one sense this was the easiest of my tasks. True, I had no use for the Gucci hotshots, those ambitious young MBAs Wall Street continues to attract, who are out to make seven figures before they’re thirty and eight before forty. But for every one of them, there were still dozens of what I wanted, wearers, if you will, of traditional brogues from Church or Brooks, those sturdy, hail-fellow account execs of Ivy League background who were happy as not to have me do their work for them and collect their commissions on my trading.

  “Thatch” Thatcher (Harlan Russell Thatcher Jr.) was, I suppose, my ideal broker in every respect save one. A heavyset specimen with a taste for blue blazers and kelly green trousers, he had known me since prep school, where he’d flunked out. In fact, I think he was the first of his line of Thatchers not to have played football for Harvard, which, whatever his family thought, hadn’t fazed Thatch in the slightest. Thanks to his connections and his general, round-faced bonhomie, he’d found his niche in stocks and bonds, which was where I’d run into him again when I was still at the firm. Married and the father of three, active among the Colgate alumni and in his church and yacht club, he was the ideal customer’s man—genial, outgoing, and almost painfully eager to accommodate. He’d been very successful at it, too. By the time I’m talking about, he ran his own virtually autonomous unit within a large brokerage house, with a couple of those MBAs on his staff to, I suppose, keep him from making any truly flagrant blunders. He was my one holdover from my time at the firm, and I’d have given anything to get rid of him—for the very reason I couldn’t. He was Wanda Russell’s nephew.

  God knows it wasn’t for want of trying. Hardly a meeting went by without my recommending to Wanda that we ought to make a change.

  “Oh, Gawd,” she’d say with a sigh, “what’s the boy done now?”

  Thatcher himself gave me ammunition from time to time—either he’d been slow to execute an order, or he’d been off on the golf course when I needed him, or his commissions were too high. All true, if not critically important. And Wanda, shaking her head and sighing, would say, “But he’s such a nice kid. How could we do that to him?”

  “He’s hardly a kid anymore, Wanda, and this is business. He’s costing us money. Besides, he’s not going to starve.”

  Another, deeper sigh.

  “Why don’t you let me talk to him, Tommy?”

  “Please don’t”—having had the experience before.

  “Well, you do it, then. But I want to give him another chance.”

  The best I was able to do, in time, was to wean away from Thatcher his aunt’s other interests. But the Russell estate remained sacrosanct, this despite the fact that Wanda routinely referred to her late husband as a mean son of a bitch who’d tried to squelch her all his life, and her husband’s sister (Thatcher’s mother) was cut from the same cloth. Whereas Thatcher himself, whenever I confronted him, bent with the wind and came up more eager to please than ever.

  Under my pressure, he did cut his commissions, and when I pushed him harder invariably found another fraction of a point to give me, saying, “We’re losing money on the account as it is, old man, but if they’d let me, I’d do Aunt Wanda’s work for free. You know that.” At the same time, he courted me assiduously, inviting me to those intimate high-level seminars his company held for big investors, offering me tickets to sporting events and Broadway openings, and worse, with his wife’s participation, trying to fix me up with this or that eligible woman.

  This last had become something of a problem for me. While I could, and did, turn Thatcher down much of the time, I couldn’t turn all my Thatchers down all the time. Part of my success did involve socializing, party-going. In addition, I was single, and I still bore the reputation, from the days before Kitty, of being both eligible and available. At the same time, Kitty insisted on keeping our relationship private.

  “They’re not my kind of people,” she said.

  “For God’s sake,” I’d retort, “do you think they’re mine?”

  “No, but you know what I mean.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Look, Tommy. This is business. Your business. And we’ve agreed to keep my involvement in it strictly at arm’s length. I don’t think we should be seen together so much, that’s all.”

  “Are you saying we can’t mix business with pleasure?”

  “Something like that.”

  “But that’s nonsense, Kitty.”

  “No it isn’t, not when there’s so much at stake.”

  “But I can’t always go alone.”

  “I know that.” Then, with a slow wink: “But remember, love, nobody under sixty.”

  The “stake” Kitty referred to turned out to be Safari Mining and Drilling. Safari was a sleepy Louisiana company not even quoted on the Amex, much less the Big Board, and at the time Kitty told me to start buying, Thatcher himself had never heard of it. The thing about Safari was that, years back, it had acquired drilling rights to very considerable undeveloped oil and gas reserves. Most of these were underwater, in Gulf of Mexico tidelands protected, and in some cases owned, by the federal government.

  Then, at hearings in Washington that fall into energy preparedness, several key congressmen reopened the old what-if questions: What if the war in the Middle East took a new and bloodier turn? What if the oil fields of Saudi Arabia were set afire by terrorists? What if OPEC decided to shut off its wells? What, finally, were we doing to develop our own natural resources?

  At its height, the bidding war for Safari involved four major companies. Safari stock, which had been trading in a range between 11 and 13, rose rapidly through the 20’s (at which point Wanda Russell’s buying was complete), then the 30’s, and once the battle settled down to two serious competitors, it reached 52. What was stranger still was that the competitors’ stock rose proportionately. Normally in a takeover situation the reverse happened, under the theory that the bidders would be overpaying, expending capital, diluting earnings, and so on. But articles began to appear projecting Safari’s earnings into the twenty-first century and quoting experts who said that, even at 52, it was the last true bargain in the energy business. Then another scheme emerged, orchestrated, it appeared, by good old Braxton’s, who had been called in by Safari’s principals to advise them, to take the company private. Now you began to hear predictions that $70 a share would be the ultimate price, and not an unfair one at that.

  I had originally, out of prudence, bought Safari only for the Russell estate, but all my accounts had invested in the companies bidding for it. All had made substantial paper profits. All (on Kitty’s instructions) had cashed in, Wanda included, a few points short of the top but a good week before the bubble burst.

  Overnight, it seemed, the congressional environmentalists woke up, and they switched the media focus to the negative side of the story: Was the government going to give away still another slice of our national heritage to big business? With all that that meant in the destruction of the ecolo
gical balance in the Gulf and the loss of how many miles of national coastline? Safari became, overnight, another Santa Barbara Channel issue, and the politicians in question stampeded, claiming they’d been misquoted, that their concern for our strategic reserves was surely legitimate but that they’d never meant to permit Safari to begin drilling right away. Whereupon a White House spokesman (allegedly quoting the president himself) said that under no circumstances would the administration permit the interests of the many to be sacrificed to the greed of the few.

  Thatcher called me the same day to congratulate me.

  “Hey, big feller, you sure must be doing something right!”

  “What do you mean, Thatch?”

  “I mean Safari. S-A-F-A-R-I. I didn’t think you knew what you were doing when you bought it. Hell, we’d never even heard of the company down here.” Thatcher had a way of referring to his office as though it was in the catacombs of Wall Street even though he was actually a few blocks south of me. “And I sure as shooting thought you were wrong when you unloaded it. I even said so to Aunt Wanda, but she told me to mind my own business.”

  “So?” I said, though I already knew. “What’s happened?”

  “You haven’t heard? Come on, Tommy, it’s all over town. You can’t sell Safari at any price. It’s so bad people are practically giving out certificates on the street like handbills. Some pretty heavyweight people are pissed as hell. But not Wanda. Come on, how’d you know to get her out?”

  “I didn’t,” I said. “Just lucky. But I’ve got a rule of thumb, Thatch.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Greed doesn’t pay. It almost always makes sense to quit while you’re winning.”

  “No kidding? But that’s what I always try to tell my clients: You don’t lose money when you’re cashing in profits.”

  “You’ve got it, Thatch,” I said.

  I tried to get out of the conversation then, but he wouldn’t let me go. Had I talked to Wanda yet? No I hadn’t. Well, she’d be calling me, she was going to throw a party.

  “She says we’ve made her a fortune,” Thatcher said. “That means you, Tommy, not me. She’s hell-bent on celebrating. Besides, she says there’s somebody she wants you to meet. Says you’ve been single long enough, that it’s not fair to women. Well, you know how Wanda is when she gets the bit between her teeth.”

  That I did, and in case I’d forgotten, Wanda called that same day.

  “I won’t take no for an answer this time, Tommy,” she boomed at me. “I’m calling it the Safari party—that’ll be the theme—but it’s in your honor. I’ll schedule it whenever you’re free. And don’t tell me you’re busy all the time, you won’t get away with it.”

  “I’ll be glad to come, Wanda, but on one condition.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That it not be in my honor.”

  “Come, come, Tommy, you’re too modest by far.”

  “No, I’m dead serious.”

  “I can hear that. Goodness. Well, it doesn’t matter. I’ll drink a silent toast to you anyway, young man. Now when do you want me to schedule it?”

  We set a date. Then I tried to talk her out of the safari theme—did she really want everybody to know how rich she was?—but to no avail. Then I asked her if I could bring a date.

  “Aha!” she exclaimed, bursting into rumbly laughter. “You’re too clever for words, young man.” Then, subsiding: “I gather you’ve already talked to my nephew?”

  “Yes, I have.”

  “Well, that’s too bad. Of course you can bring anyone you want, but there’s still somebody I’d like you to meet. In fact, she says she already knows you.”

  “Oh? Who’s that?”

  “Never mind. She’s a superb young woman, and she remembers you vividly.”

  “But Wanda, that’s not fair,” I protested.

  To no avail, however. The more I argued with her, the more she scolded me for trying to deprive an old lady of a little fun. I got no further with Thatcher. He called frequently in coming weeks. His aunt, he said, had become a legend in his office—their only client, it turned out, who’d made a killing on Safari, and they’d had several who’d been scorched. Of course, people in the know knew who was behind Wanda’s success. How? Because he’d told them. And not just about Safari but the string of winners I’d put together that year. People were intrigued, he said. In fact, one of his senior VPs had suggested they ought to hire me. Did I think that was such a crazy idea?

  “Is that a joke, Thatch?” I asked him. “Or a feeler?”

  “It’s more than a feeler, old man. I think you could write your own ticket here.”

  “Thanks,” I said. “I’m sincerely flattered, Thatch. But no thanks, after all.”

  “Well, that’s what I told them you’d say. You can’t blame us for trying. But if things ever change, old man, you only have to pick up the phone.”

  The offer may have flattered me, but it also brought on the jitters. Kitty herself agreed that it was time to let Wanda’s accounts lie fallow for a while, but that was easier said than done. Wanda had already started to ask what we were going to do for an encore, and for every Wanda and her nephew there were my other blue-haired heiresses, and their brokers and advisers.

  “What did you expect?” Kitty said. “You’ve made yourself a rich man, and you’re making them richer. Did you really expect them not to notice?”

  “No, not really. But the more visible I am, the more likely it is that somebody will put two and two together.”

  “What somebody?”

  “The SEC, for one. Thatcher said he’d heard rumors that Safari was going to be investigated. A lot of important people got burned, and apparently they’re more than a little annoyed about it.”

  “I don’t blame them, do you? Nobody likes to lose. But suppose they do investigate? Suppose they even found you, which is unlikely. After all, you’re still a fairly minor player by Wall Street standards. But supposing they did? Then what?”

  “Exactly,” I said. “Then what?”

  “Then you’d just tell them what you told Thatcher. You got lucky, that’s all. It stood to reason that Safari was going to be a hot acquisition someday, you just got lucky on the timing.”

  “And lucky in the sell-off, too?”

  “Not lucky. You yourself said it: it’s just that you’re not as greedy as the next guy.”

  All true enough, and whether or not people believed it, there was no way on the face of it that I could be charged with a crime. Still …

  “The link stops with you, Tommy,” Kitty said. “Now maybe you’ll understand why I’ve wanted to keep us quiet.”

  “You mean so that you wouldn’t be investigated, too?”

  She shook her head, protruding her lower lip. I remember she was examining her fingernails at the time, holding them toward her, knuckles bent in a half fist, then outward, palms down, fingers together. I also remember what we were wearing or, more accurately, weren’t wearing. We were lying on her bed, on the silk sheets I’d given her.

  “Well,” I said, still not satisfied, “why do we have to, then?”

  “Have to what?”

  “Have to keep us quiet. Why is it that every time we run into somebody I know or you know, you always flinch, as though you wish you could make yourself disappear? Or me disappear?”

  “I didn’t know I did that,” she said.

  It had happened more than once—in a restaurant, at the theater, in a store. Kitty invariably seemed to duck.

  “Well, you do,” I said.

  She didn’t answer right away. She gave up on her fingernails finally and turned toward me. Her head was propped on one hand, her legs together, her full breasts sagging a little.

  “Look, my darling,” she said, “there’s no law that says you have to do this forever. You can quit anytime you want to. Who knows? Maybe you’ve already gone as far as you want to?”

  “That means quitting you, too, doesn’t it?”

 
; “I didn’t say that.”

  “No. But I haven’t earned you yet, have I?”

  This started her giggling.

  “Oh, God, Tommy!” she said, her breasts shaking prettily. “You’ve got the memory of an elephant! I wish to God I’d never said that.”

  “But you did.”

  “Well, in that case I take it back.”

  She began tracing a line down my flank with her fingernail. Then she reached for me. But something made me pull away.

  “Seriously,” I said. “What would happen if I did quit?”

  “I don’t know. But why do we have to decide that right now?”

  We didn’t, of course. It wasn’t the first time, either, that the idea had occurred to me: that one day the joyride would end, and for any number of reasons. But I think this was the first time I acknowledged to myself that I didn’t want it to.

  “You still haven’t answered my question,” I said.

  “What question?”

  “Why is it that you flinch whenever we run into someone we know?”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll try to change.”

  “But don’t you see the point, Kitty? I want us to stop living like hermits. I want the whole world to know about us. You say you love me, you say I’m the grand passion of your life, you say you’d rather kill than lose me. But why is it that we’ve been together almost a year and still live apart?”

  This last was another sore point. In fact, in the early days of our relationship, no matter how long we made love into the night—and there were times when, reaching the sidewalk on Central Park South, I’d found the sun already up—once it ended, it ended. Time for me to go. We’d gotten past that eventually, but I remember Kitty’s agitation that first time when, stripped of her makeup, her hair mussed, her eyes a little crusty from sleep, the warm and sour smells of love enveloping us in her tousled sheets, she awoke to find herself still in my arms.