by Tom Connolly
The work was still there, her equities analysis operation at Blackthorn thriving and challenging. But only that. So much was missing—if only Edward and not David.
David was one of those brainy little dudes that powerful young women somehow become attracted to or somehow get trapped in one of their brainy little plots to snare beautiful women. Edward represented risk, to her sense of self, to her organized life, that sense of control she had over every element of her life. With David she could keep her freedom. He worshiped her; whatever she wanted she could have. Not so with Edward. He was the man. It was about him. It could not possibly work; she loved him too much. But he left her. And she still did not know why.
Because Valerie knew the game, she was valuable. Most equities firms and their managing directors did not get it. She did. The markets had become casinos. The concept that an individual investor by carefully researching stocks, with enough foresight and discipline, could over time, through dollar cost averaging their investments in stocks, build substantial savings that would carry through to the end of life; that concept was gone. There was no new model so the investment banks and trading houses began concocting new ones: ring it up!
How could the investing public on one side, with capital hungry corporations on the other side, not see the giant and ever growing leech between them? You couldn’t miss it. At every turn it was there sucking the blood of earned money from the process and the people. Short selling, naked shorting, front running, insider trading, publishing worthless equities analysis and recommendations, creating questionable derivatives, courting and corrupting not-so-ignorant politicians who thrived on the Street’s largess; and this giant leech was equipped with tools that let them front run, sell clients stock at the same time they shorted it, collaborate across firms with electronic hand signals, orchestrate flash sell-offs that would confound even their peers, yet be celebrated nightly for the simple deviousness of their workings. Insider trading had become so common that whenever the SEC started an investigation, it would immediately grow exponentially; there was no end to the links, cells, pods, pools, firms, and individuals involved in it.
The giant financial leech had become so big it was the industry. Right there, in plain sight with full support of the governing legislative and regulatory bodies, who themselves were made up of smaller leeches shuttling back and forth between the mother ship.
Valerie did get it. She thrived on it. On the very edge of criminality and yet without penalties for doing what she did. It was all legal, all written down in laws, exceptions, loop holes, and company policies for all to see. Transparency. How could it be wrong? In the post-god, post-values world of the street, it was so wrong, it was right.
David didn’t get any of this. He would never believe his bride was involved in a criminal enterprise. It wasn’t that she wanted him to believe she was a criminal. She wanted him to know it; she wanted someone else who got it to know how clever she was at the game. There she said it. That wasn’t David; it was Edward. Edward could help her wash the slime off with rationality. David could not.
Valerie thought about her recent telephone conversation with Edward Wheelwright. There was an opening; it was not too late. She needed to share an idea that would fulfill his striving and end her emptiness.
“Edward, when you get this message, please call me. It’s urgent. Good urgent. Eddie, it’s great urgent.”
Jim Conroy, the New York City police detective monitoring Valerie Samson’s phone, was part of a continuing investigation into insider trading. The cybercrime unit of the department had linked up with the Securities Exchange Commission to crack down on all forms of pillage occurring in the investment community.
Detective Conroy captured the message digitally that Valerie Samson had left Edward Wheelwright and the phone numbers of the sender and receiver. As the data was entered into the data base file on Rocket Solar, Detective Conroy noted that the Wheelwright number was new and may not mean anything. He traced the Wheelwright number; it was for a cell phone registered to Edward Wheelwright, III, address 671 Central Park West.
Monday came quickly. Val took the early train and was at her desk by 7 a.m. At seven fifteen Sid Rogers was in her office.
“I don’t appreciate being blanked out for the weekend,” Rogers said in an aggravated tone.
“Well, good morning to you, Sid,” Samson said, almost jauntily.
“Sorry about the shouting on Friday, Val. But I need the report done right.”
“How’d your discussion with Carol go?” Val said.
“It is that!” he almost shouted. “Damn, Val!”
“Damn, Sid. This is important to me too,” she said, rising in her chair. “I need to be back in the city.”
“And David?”
“I told you; this does not concern him. Let it go at that.”
Sid Rogers knew David Samson. They both ran trading desks at Blackthorn before David moved to the other side of the world at Blackthorn: bonds.
“Is he coming with you to the city?”
“Sid, Carol. What did she say?”
“She said ‘yes.’ She can get your son into the day care and that will give him a leg up in a couple of years as well as get him on the list for pre-school.”
Val Samson sat back in her chair, an immense burden lifting.
“Thanks, Sid, that’s awesome.”
“The report?”
“By noontime.”
“Good,” Rogers said.
Val Samson was home by eleven fifteen. Her nanny was just bringing little Edward home in the carriage when the phone rang.
“Hello,” she answered, not noticing it was her husband’s office number.
“Val, what’s going on? Sid Rogers just came to see me. He wanted to know where you were. He said you left work, and he couldn’t reach you or your cell.”
“David, I needed to come home,” Valerie told her husband in a pained tone.
“What’s wrong? Is Edward OK?”
“He’s fine.”
“Then what is it?” David asked again in his nasally city accent.
“Nothing. I’ll tell you when you’re home.”
“I’m not home tonight, remember? I leave for Chicago from the office today. I did mention I’m gone till next Thursday. Can we talk tonight?”
“No, it’s nothing, I’ll tell you next week when were together. Have a good trip,” and she hung up. The “what” she planned to tell him was that their marriage was over.
Chapter 43
“Parker, I need to meet with you,” Leonard Crane said urgently as Parker Barnes answered his office phone. “Are you still in the city?” Crane was sitting at his outdoor office in Central Park calling from his cellphone, once again unemployed.
“Lenny, what’s up?” And he listened… “Yes, I’m just finishing up. I’m about to get the car,” Barnes responded.
“I need to see you right now. And it’s going to be awhile,’ Crane continued in an excited manner.
“Why don’t we grab dinner at Cite, say in half an hour?”
“Yes, that’s terrific. I’ll see you then.” Crane concluded.
“Lenny, are you OK?” Barnes asked, sensing the heightened state Crane was obviously in.
“Yes, fine, Parker. I have an opportunity I think you’ll want to hear about.”
“Looking forward to it. See you it a bit,” Barnes finished, smiling to himself. Life was never dull with Leonard Crane around.
Barnes arrived at Cite Grille, the fashionable eatery, on West 51st. It was a favorite of the TV crowd from Sixth Ave. He spotted Crane right away seated at a table across the foyer to the right.
Barnes couldn’t help noticing Mike Francesca, the sports talk show host, already having dinner two tables away with Jim Nance, the sports announcer. Francesca better stop drinking those giant Cokes on his show, Barnes thought to himself, noticing his girth.
“Hey, Lenny,” Barnes announced when Crane’s eyes, which had been trained on Parker since he
entered through the revolving door, met his.
“Did you see who’s over there?” Crane asked nodding toward the talking heads.
As Barnes reached out to shake Crane’s hand, he said, “Yeah, I did. Mikey boy better back off from the table,” Barnes concluded as he sat down. The comment was just loud enough where Francesca thought he heard something about himself and looked around at the two friends with a scowl.
“So, how are things going with you, Eddie and Kish?” Barnes asked, now focused on his friend.
Crane tucked his chin in and pulled his head slightly down, “Not well.”
“Not well? How?” Barnes said.
“I’m out. Eddie fired me,” Crane said looking up.
“What the hell happened,” a now impatient Barnes asked.
“I got a tip from a girl I worked with over at Blackthorn. They’re doing a lot of investments in solar. We had a pact when we last worked together. If either of us ever got something that was game or life changing, the other could execute it and we’d share the profits. I talked to Eddie about it. It seemed like he was interested at first, then later on he comes back and cans me.”
“That’s a little weird,” Barnes said, adding, “Must be something more, Lenny, Eddie’s a pretty fair guy.”
“Well, I had a couple of minor screwups, nothing major, in the last couple of months, but this was the reason. This tip.”
“What was the tip?”
“Eddie said it was insider information. He said if we acted on it they could trace it directly back to my friend Alice, and therefore to Blackthorn, who has the solar company as a client.”
“Well, if he saw it that way, you can’t argue with him. Look, I get it. I’ll talk with him. See if we can get you reinstated,” Barnes said empathetically.
“Thanks, Parker, but that won’t do any good. He was pretty emphatic, and I see his point, “Crane said.
“Then, that’s not why you wanted to talk with me, getting hired back?” Barnes asked.
“It’s the tip, Parker. It’s good as gold. Just sitting there. It’s worth millions. This is the once in a life time shot you get to do it all at once,” Crane said, suddenly alive.
A waiter appeared and asked about drinks. Barnes ordered a bottle of San Pellegrino. “Do you want to share a bottle of the water, Lenny,” Barnes asked.
“Sure, sounds great,” Crane said fully aware of his friend’s past addictions and willing to forego an alcoholic drink.
The waiter left menus and hustled off.
Barnes said, without any more than casual interest, “Tell me about the tip.”
One never knows why an obnoxious person will not give up when they’ve lost or why an impulsive person won’t use sources available to them to confirm facts. Whatever the reasons, Crane and Barnes were toxic together and set off on a ruinous cause that night. Perhaps desire overcame judgment or longing for independence outdid reliance on knowledgeable sources. Crane ignored the danger he knew to be present, especially after Alice’s warning. Barnes could have counseled with Wheelwright or Trout but didn’t. Crane’s case for riches put Barnes in the thrall of becoming his own man. Barnes and Crane met with Kish Moira later that night, told him what they wanted to do, and Barnes gave Kish eight checks in denominations of five hundred thousand dollars to buy Rocket Solar on margin.
A life of risk can be compounded in so many ways. Taking risks in his past to buy drugs or drive while drinking or “borrowing” from Barnes Construction to invest in Brunswick Fund were all measured, and while individually destructive, not compounding, in the way Parker Barnes now exposed himself.
His impulsiveness pushed him into a risk category he had not been in before. Risk spread across multiple fronts. He dared take insider information and use it to buy stock; he was taking information from a source who, while a friend, had a reputation for lying; he compounded the risk by taking four million dollars from his father’s company without authorization after discovering he had the ability to write checks above his authorized level; he was buying a stock he knew nothing about without any personal due diligence; and he was buying the stock on margin, which allowed him to buy twice as much as he had the money for by borrowing from his account at Brunswick Fund.
There was no thought to the potential for loss; it would take a miracle for this process, with all its potential pitfalls, to turn out right. Crane, the same person who maliciously smacked the ball into the face of his water polo opponents in college, now recklessly ignored the legal danger and played to Barnes’ weakness of desire for quick wealth. Barnes, the builder’s son who repeatedly gave into impulses that drove his addictions, moved forward toward self-destruction.
Chapter 44
Billy Stevens hid in the back of the parking lot of the Stamford Mall. He had walked to this spot earlier. The parking lot was particularly full this Friday night. It was still early, and Billy figured he could ID a rich woman, snatch her handbag, and beat it out the side stairway into the foot traffic by the Bank Street Brewery across the street.
He was right; there were hundreds of walkers this dark night—many working late in the office tower adjoining the mall, others going to the restaurants and clubs just up the street at Park Place, and still others going to the condo complexes that had sprung up in downtown Stamford to accommodate the giant new trading floors of some of the world’s largest investment banks. Even Donald Trump had just completed a luxury forty-story condo. Stamford was fast morphing into a segment of New York City—build big financial services and their trading floors, build lots of tony condos, add in a hot nightlife scene, and they will come: lots of expensively educated twenty and thirty somethings did.
Stevens had come up the stairway fifteen minutes earlier. It was a rarely used stairwell. Most shoppers drove into the mall; walkers generally avoided the few isolated traps like this stairwell.
Stevens was unemployed once again; nothing seemed to work. The drug dealer he worked for wanted all of his guys to have regular jobs in addition to dealing. Stevens would keep jobs for a month or two, somebody would give him a hard time, Stevens would give him some lip back, next thing you know Billy’s gone. Always worked the same way. This time it wasn’t his fault. He was driving policies around for an insurance company. Stopped for a red light, light turns green, he goes. Then wham, guy runs a red light and the company car is wrecked. Cops cited the other guy for running the red light; when they asked for Stevens’ license, he didn’t have one. Insurance company fired him on the spot. He asked for another chance since it wasn’t his fault and said he’d get the license. Office manager was so upset he walked Stevens to the front door of the office, opened it, and just pointed the way out. Stevens, never one to shy from a confrontation, grabbed the door knob, pulled the door closed behind him, not quietly but loudly, strongly, pulling-it-through-the-other-side-closed, closed so strongly that the glass in the seven-foot-high door came chasing after Stevens with a shattering screech and crash.
That was two hours ago. Now he needed money for a buy. Imagine that, Billy Stevens needing money for a buy. He’d told his friend Curtis Strong that he was no longer into that game; he was so far into it. He was using up the profits anyway he could to get the products into him: smoking, needles, inhaling.
His supplier cut him loose. Said he was bad for business. Said he couldn’t have a runner, a dealer using like Stevens was. Casual use was OK with the supplier but you had to control it. Not Billy, it had him, it wouldn’t let him go. He was in love with the stuff. He’d wake up in the morning, if he ever got to sleep, thinking about his first hit of the day.
The supplier was a son-of-a-bitch; he was very strict. But that wasn’t the problem that he was a tough business man. He was tough. And the tougher he had to get, the meaner he became. There were a lot of things said about him, about where he came from and how he got started. Stevens believed most of it because he had seen the supplier, had seen him beat guys up for welching on a debt. He made Stevens go to a customer’s house one tim
e with him when the customer wouldn’t pay. He knocked on the guy’s door, and when his wife answered and said he wasn’t there, he punched her in the mouth, hard, knocking out the front teeth. She was bleeding like crazy. Billy’s supplier tells her, “Get your old man to pay my boy Billy by tomorrow night or I’ll come back and knock the rest of your teeth out.”
When he woke up the next morning, Billy Stevens found an envelope that had been slipped under his door. All the money due was paid.
Now he was on furlough from the supplier. He told Billy to get right or don’t come back. He needed to get back, and the supplier needed him back—he had grown into one of his better dealers. He had a steady group of customers and had brought along two tiers of subdealers. The money that flowed to him overwhelmed Stevens. As much as he made, he was always broke. Using, gambling, or spending way too much, especially on the girls. The girls were the worst. They’d party with him for days, days, and then they’d be gone and so would his money.
So here he was, biding his time, waiting for a mark that he could take easily and disappear with a few hundred—enough to have a good time.
This night he was all alone. The Brazilian supplier had given his territory to one of his amigos. He promised if Stevens got himself straight he’d give it back to him—but only after he was straight for a month. A month, he’d die in a month without a steady source of funds to get right, but not straight. It was a balancing act; you could still use and manage it and be right. To get straight, like Pedro wanted, well, that was asking too much.
There she is he told himself. Excited at the prospect of the money.
A middle aged woman, neatly dressed, probably a business woman by the look of her clothes, had exited the mall door and was walking directly to where Stevens had located himself behind a large reinforcing column. The stairway was off to his right. To his left, along the rear most wall in the parking lot, was a row of four cars with one space in between the third and fourth car.