The Investment Club

by Cooper, Doug

  Even though that was true, Penny took offense to the remark. “Why would you say that? You don’t think I’d make a good mother?”

  “It’s not that at all. I just can’t see you staying home wiping noses and asses.” Alec got up from the bed and walked up behind her. “You’d be an incredible mother.” He wrapped his arms around her and kissed her exposed neck.

  She dropped her head forward. “But what do you want?”

  “I think we should practice as much as possible.” He loosened the belt on her robe, which fell open. Penny turned toward him. He said, “Practice makes perfect, you know.”

  She pushed him back onto the bed. “I guess there’s not much to really worry about anyway. You goaltenders have never been known as great scorers.”

  “Don’t underestimate us.” He rolled her over on her back. On top of her, his gaze burned through and melted her, just like the first night they met. “We know where the defense is most vulnerable and weak.” With her guiding him, he thrust inside her. “And can slip one by anytime we want.”

  Fear shot through Penny, not because she believed he could and would, but because she wanted him to.

  Dow Jones Close: 10,572.73

  Chapter Twenty

  Date: Saturday, December 15, 2012

  Dow Jones Open: Closed

  After Les decided to leave the Church, for the first time in his adult life he was on the outside looking in. His first call was to the one person he knew who shared his passion and belief but had chosen to practice and share his benevolence outside the structure of religion: Martin Samuels, an old friend and classmate from his time at the Institute for Black Catholic Studies. Whereas Les opted to go into the ministry, Martin hadn’t agreed with the direction and support provided by the Church for lower-income urban areas, so he went a more general philanthropic route and opened the Oasis, a homeless shelter in Vegas, about twenty years ago.

  Les and Martin initially became friends over long and often late into the night debates over the balance of power in the Church. Martin believed in more collaborative governing, allowing the bishops freedom to fix their positions on public issues. Les was more willing to acquiesce and trust the decisions made at higher levels for a more aligned and unified Church. While as the years progressed their discussions didn’t happen as frequently, Les and Martin had always remained connected, first by letter then by email. They never fully agreed, but with the appointment of Pope Francis and his guidance toward a more synodal practice, they were as aligned as they had ever been.

  It had been six weeks since their last email exchange, just before the incident and accusations surfaced. For as deep as their conversations usually delved, Les started his phone call as simply as he could. “Martin, it’s Les.”

  Martin’s voice escalated, infused with energy. “Well, Father Banks, so nice to hear from you. Tired of the delayed gratification of our correspondence and finally call to argue with me in person?”

  Les said, “I was actually hoping to do it face-to-face. Thinking about coming for a visit.”

  “Don’t I feel special?” Martin said. “Twenty years and you’re finally willing to spend some of that abundant vacation time on an old friend.”

  “It’s not really a vacation.” Les paused, still not comfortable with the words he was about to say. They jumbled in the back of his throat then just tumbled out. “I’ve chosen to leave the Church.”

  The enthusiasm emptied from Martin. “What? Where is this coming from? None of your last e-mails even mentioned this. What happened?”

  “There will be plenty of time for questions,” Les said. “I’d rather not get into it on the phone. Consider this more of a spiritual pilgrimage for counsel from a trusted advisor. That is, if you’ll have me.”

  “Of course. We have plenty of space and could always use another set of hands and a heart like yours. Actually, your timing couldn’t be more perfect. I could use some of that pragmatic Banks perspective as well. When should I expect you?”

  Les said, “Sooner rather than later. I have a few things to wrap up here but should be finished by the end of the week. I’ll book a flight for Saturday and email the details.”

  The excitement returned to Martin. “Wonderful. Indeed a blessing. I’ll come pick you up at the airport.”

  As a priest, Les was used to being looked after. He knew that would all stop, and thought it best to start fending for himself. “Thank you, but that’s not necessary. I’ll take a taxi. I’m sure you have plenty of better things to do.”

  Martin said, “Don’t thank me yet. You haven’t seen the old beater of a truck I have. Mostly just a grocery wagon, but it can make it to McCarran and back. You might want to pack your rosary in your carry-on though and say a few prayers.”

  From their years of debate, Les knew he wasn’t going to change Martin’s mind. Only God could do that. Martin didn’t leave the Church because of his lack of faith and commitment. He left because of it. The Church just happened to be on the wrong side of his beliefs. Martin trusted that if God had wanted him to stay in the Church, he never would’ve been able to leave. Of all the cardinals, bishops, and priests Les had known, Martin was the most spiritual, and that was why Les knew Martin was the right person to seek out. Even something as trivial as a ride from the airport, if Martin had it in his head he was going to fetch Les, Martin would be there, whether Les accepted or not. “OK, my friend,” Les said. “I’ll send you the arrival details and you tell me where to meet you.”

  Seventy-two hours later, Les’s plane touched down at McCarran. Martin had said he would come inside and wait at the bottom of the escalators by the baggage claim to ensure he wouldn’t miss Les. Both had taken care of themselves, so despite some wear and tear from the years and the loss and graying of their hair, they easily recognized each other. As with all dear friends, the time apart faded in a blink, and the two picked up right where they had left off.

  Neither had ever been one for small talk, so it wasn’t surprising that before they had even turned off Russell Road, leaving the airport, Martin was grilling Les about the events leading up to his departure. Les had expected Martin to be supportive and approve of the move if for no other reason than as a vindication of Martin’s own actions so many years ago. Instead, with the changing attitudes in Rome and the years Les had put in, Martin challenged and questioned Les’s decisions for almost the entire ride. It wasn’t until Les explained the details of his exit and the choices he would have had, or the lack thereof, if he had stayed that Martin conceded. It actually might have been the only time Les bested Martin in a discussion. Most ended in a draw. This one went to Les for the simple reason he turned Martin’s own thinking on him. “If God had wanted me to stay,” Les said, “He probably wouldn’t have let me leave.”

  “I can’t argue with that.” Martin smiled, acknowledging his defeat as he pulled up in front of the Oasis in the Arts District. There was only one other car on the street, and most of the other surrounding buildings were boarded up, with the exception of a locksmith on the opposite corner from the Oasis. A sold sign and picture of the future development stood in the vacant lot across California. Les surveyed the desolation of the surrounding area. “Looks like your neighbors don’t give you much trouble.”

  “Not yet at least,” Martin said. “This whole neighborhood is changing over though. Everyone else has been forced out by rising rents. Good thing I had the foresight to sign a ten-year lease. People said I was crazy and that I overpaid, and maybe I did the first few years, but now I’m one of the few left.”

  Outside the door, a line or rather organized encampment had already formed in search of dinner and a bed for the night. Fortunately, in late September there were always plenty of both. Most days the temperatures hovered in the low to mid eighties during the day and sixties at night, so many of the regulars were happy to fend for themselves and sleep outside. It was the June to August
and December to January periods when food and space were both tight. Martin grabbed Les’s suitcase out of the back of the truck. “Here we are. What she lacks in personality, she makes up for in character, or maybe it’s the other way around.”

  “Are we talking about you or the building?” Les said.

  With dinner only ninety minutes away, Martin immediately put Les to work. He explained how the volunteers usually showed up about an hour before, but since he never knew how many would come, he liked to get an early start in case he was on his own. Saturday was spaghetti night, so he put Les in charge of boiling the pasta, showing him how to transfer it to the silver serving trays to keep it warm in the oven while making another batch. As Les churned out the pasta, Martin tended to the sauce.

  While they worked, Martin filled Les in on the operation. Thirty to fifty people usually showed for dinner, so all the recipes were made to feed forty. Martin directed the volunteers to serve smaller portion sizes until he was sure they had enough to accommodate everyone. After that, he made seconds available for those still hungry. In all the years Martin had been serving dinner at the Oasis, he had never run out and never had leftovers. Sometimes twenty ate for forty and others, the same amount served sixty. Most important was that everyone who came to the Oasis received a hot meal.

  After dinner was served, anyone who wanted to stay for the night could choose a bed in the billet, which was simply a five-thousand-square-foot rectangular space with four rows of ten single cots. Any remaining beds after dinner were made available on a first come, first serve basis to late arrivers. The doors stayed open from six to ten p.m. If the beds filled before that, Martin locked up for the night. For liability and safety reasons, following several altercations a few years back, Martin had installed video cameras and hired a security person to work through the night from ten to six in the morning, when he got up to prepare breakfast.

  Anyone who spent the night got breakfast the next day, which was more continental than traditional, consisting of a banana, a yogurt, a bagel, and an orange juice. When they first opened, Martin had tried doing two hot meals a day, but it was just too much work. Anything left after the overnighters ate was made available to the public. Unlike dinner, they almost always ran out due to the prepackaged portions. Everyone had to be out by eight o’clock, when he locked up again and reset for the evening.

  Seeing it for the first time, it seemed like a lot of work to Les, and it surely was. But for Martin, he had been doing it so long that it had become an efficient operation, and he did get a lot of help from volunteers. The cleaning and prep work were usually done by ten or eleven in the morning, so he had his afternoons pretty much free other than shopping a few days a week. Since Martin didn’t require more than five to six hours of sleep, he also always had a few hours of free time after closing each night.

  On the night Les arrived, Martin took him up to the roof, where he liked to spend most of his evenings, after the work was done. The building was only two stories, but in the Arts District, hardly any of buildings were more than two, so he had a 360-degree view of all the twinkling lights from the strip to downtown and all around the surrounding valley. For being in the middle of a city, it was surprisingly peaceful and quiet. The occasional squeaking bus brakes, a car horn, or an accelerating motorcycle were the only sounds.

  Martin walked to the edge and lit a cigarette. Les shook his head. As long as he had known him, Martin had been a smoker. “All these years, and you still got that bad habit?” Les said. “You always said you would quit.”

  “Well there’s a lot I always said I would do.” Martin filled his lungs and exhaled slowly. “I’ve cut back a lot…at least on the smoking. Down to just one a day. I still talk more than I should.”

  “Seems like you’re doing a lot here.” Les walked up beside him, standing shoulder-to-shoulder and looking southward toward the strip. “Almost twenty years of forty people a day. That’s roughly fourteen thousand a year times twenty…uh, two hundred eighty thousand people. Pretty impressive.”

  Martin laughed. “Still good with numbers, I see. You could be dangerous in this town. Remember that time after our college graduation before seminary school when we went out on that riverboat and you won over three grand playing blackjack? They banned you from the table. Said you were counting cards.”

  “I was counting.” Les said in a matter-of-fact tone.

  Martin coughed a cloud of smoke. “What? You never told me that. We all gave that pit boss such a hard time. Even pulled the religious card on him. If we hadn’t been out on the water, they would’ve thrown us out.”

  “I’m pretty sure they were thinking about it anyway,” Les said. “In my defense though, I donated that money to the Church.”

  “All of it?” Martin asked.

  “Well most of it. How do you think I supported myself back then?”

  Martin pointed his cigarette at Les, the red tip bobbing in the darkness. “Lester Banks, you dog. All those late nights I thought you were studying, you were actually out cruising the Mississippi, fleecing the casinos. Maybe you coming here is meant to be.”

  The last comment piqued Les’s interest. His voice rose, filled with curiosity. “What do you mean by that?”

  Martin dropped his cigarette and snuffed it out with the bottom of his shoe, picking up the butt and dropping it in his breast pocket. “Nothing really. Just for about the past year I’ve been thinking about a change. Just feel like I need to do something different. Been reading a lot about missionary trips in Africa, but every time it comes to taking action, I think about this place and what would happen to the people who need it. When you called and told me about your situation and wanting to come for a visit, I thought we might be able to help each other. The Lord doesn’t always work in such mysterious ways. Sometimes they’re quite simple and right in front of us.”

  Les said, “I’ll admit, the timing is curious. But I don’t know anything about running a mission or these people or this area. I mean, you’re a part of this community. They trust you. I’d be an outsider.”

  “Trust me, you’d have it down in no time,” Martin said, his cadence increasing as he started to sell Les on the idea. “Every day is the same. And it’s not like I’m just going to run out on you. I’d stay a month or so until you were comfortable with everything and everyone knew you. It’s amazing how quickly people accept you when you’re doling out food and lodging to forty souls a day.”

  Les stared at the blinking lights on top of the Stratosphere. “I guess it’s not something that needs to be decided tonight. How about I just stay for a few weeks and pitch in and help and we see where we are? God has brought us here. Let’s see where He intends for us to go.”

  Dow Jones Close: Closed

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Date: Monday, November 5, 1990

  Dow Jones Open: 2,490.84

  Max boarded the school bus. His morning ride to Raisinville Elementary was the worst fifteen minutes of his day. If he was lucky, he’d find an empty seat at the front and avoid the runway of ridicule he faced going to the back. He didn’t need an entire seat for himself. He would gladly share one. But the unoccupied seats always seemed to have books or backpacks shoved over when Max came down the aisle. If he stopped and asked the people to clear the seats, they either didn’t acknowledge him or conveyed that the seats were saved. He didn’t even try anymore. It just drew more attention to how no one wanted to be next to him, and they teased him even more. On this day, his seat was two-thirds of the way back on the right.

  Max never expected to be at Raisinville as long as he had been. He started in first grade and now was in fifth. Being a foster kid, he just expected to move around. One move was good. It probably meant the child landed with an adopting family for permanent placement or possibly back with his or her original family, as long as whatever issue that put the child in foster care in the first place had been resolved to
the state’s liking. More than one move almost always was bad. It surely didn’t mean the child was in demand. Most likely it signaled problems between him or her and the parents or with the other kids in the home. But never moving at all was even worse. It suggested no one wanted the child, and probably no one would. At least when a child moved, he or she was hopeful things would be better or that the new move would lead to a final move.

  Max had pretty much given up on all the options. His biological mother had surrendered him at birth because she was young and single and he had achondroplasia. Since Max’s dwarfism wasn’t going to change, Max didn’t expect his mother’s perspective on a special-needs child to change either. He actually had been fortunate, being adopted just after his first birthday by a young couple, which was how he ended up in Monroe. The young couple had been trying to have a baby for three years with no success. Eventually learning it was due to the husband’s sterility, they turned to adoption and chose Max.

  Unfortunately, when Max’s adoptive mother became pregnant four years later and it wasn’t by his adoptive father, they divorced. Sadly, neither wanted custody of Max. She was excited to start her new life with her new husband and baby. To his adoptive father, Max was a reminder of the infidelity and his own inability to father children. Optimistic that one of the adoptive parents might change their mind, the foster care review board decided to keep Max in a foster home in Monroe.

  Max, too, had been hopeful for a permanent placement the first few years. Once he started kindergarten and moved on to first grade, he gained confidence and thought for sure someone, either new or old, would come along and claim him. But that never happened, so nothing changed. Well, nothing for him at least. The other foster children in the home where Max lived had changed twice. The first time a girl reunited with her birth mother after the mom finally kicked her drug habit. The other, a three-year-old boy, was adopted by a family from Toledo. Max’s foster parents also had another baby, a girl this time, to go with the two-year-old boy they already had. With the household filling with actual offspring, Max thought for sure he would be moving. But it never happened.