By one P.M. I had returned all client calls and cleared the Post-its from my desk. No word from Detective Fitzsimmons. That was just as well. Unfortunately, the receptionist took a message when I dialed Charlie’s auditors.
Accountants like early weekends, too,
I reminded myself.
I should have phoned Crain and Cravath sooner.
My in-box required immediate attention. It had become a towering stockpile of M-bombs: management memos about compliance changes, sign-up sheets for management outings, personnel changes affecting management org charts, and sales productivity articles circulated by management. The requests for information never ceased.
“Who are your top ten clients?”
“Are you on the verge of winning any new business?”
“How can you increase revenues ten percent, twenty percent, or more?”
The paperwork was one fucking nightmare. Rather than fill in the blanks, I opted to send a headache back to my boss. Why empower dysfunctional corporate behavior? “Annie, do me a favor,” I whispered.
She leaned forward, all ears, that conspiratorial smile.
“Spread the word I have ten dollars on Patty Gershon resigning this afternoon.” It was Friday after all, the traditional day for changing shops.
A gung-ho accomplice to any mischief, Annie cocked one eyebrow and grinned wickedly. She reigned supreme among the gaggle of PCS sales assistants, mostly women in their midtwenties en route to graduate schools. They worked hard, gabbed constantly, and punctuated every other sentence with the exclamation “Shut up!” It would not take long for Annie’s whisper campaign to coax Frank Kurtz from his office. Soon, he would start sniffing around Estrogen Alley to assess the rumors about Patty himself.
Chloe was still on the phone. More accurately, the phone was still on her. She sported a prodigious headset. Two massive bowls crowned her ears and obscured much of her short brown hair. The headphones belonged to a different time and place, perhaps the landing strips of World War II rather than the crazed commerce of Wall Street.
Would you wire seventy-five thousand dollars from my account to Sam Kelemen?
I mouthed the words and handed her Sam’s voided check. The numbers at the bottom contained details necessary to route funds.
We communicated all the time like this, Chloe locked in deep conversation and me using hand signals to communicate instructions. I dared not speak aloud. Otherwise, the mouthpiece on her jutting boom would broadcast my words to someone else. Chloe had an uncanny ability to speak with several people at once. The skill made her invaluable.
Underneath the headset, Chloe’s forehead furrowed into long extended lines. Her eyes dilated. Her expression, a mix of gatekeeper and surrogate mother, challenged me. “Are you sure?”
I nodded yes with my most commanding face.
In all honesty the external conviction belied internal Ping-Pong. Spontaneity, the thought of wiring $75,000, was never my thing. Bucks had been sparse during childhood, hard to make as an adult. That was my left brain.
But this was Sam. She needed me. I owed Charlie. I had given my word and overpromised on the deliverables. “You can bank on it.” Neither of the Kelemens had blinked about my six-month stay in their town house. That was my right brain.
The phone interrupted the match. Three short bursts indicated an internal call. Ordinarily, we regarded this special tone as the frightful harbinger of incoming M-bombs.
Frank Kurtz’s name appeared on all three of our LCD displays, and I thought Annie would kick off her heels and dance. She swiveled round in her chair and stopped yakking into the receiver. She flashed a blinding mouthful of pearly whites, a shit-eating grin for the ages. “Mission accomplished.” Triumph rang in her words.
“Damn, you’re good,” I congratulated Annie while punching the talk button to greet Frank. Her gang had delivered.
“What’d you say?” Frank bellowed, his voice frothy, bold, and robust, a stein of good cheer.
Frank was not a large man at five-eight. He just seemed big. Thanks to a daily regimen of lifting weights and quaffing red wine, Frank had bulked his torso into oversized, almost comic proportions. His hard-packed belly, an uneasy détente between muscle and fat, dwarfed the skinny, spindly, spiderlike legs underneath. He exuded physical strength when he spoke, his thunderous voice jostling the thin office walls. His words were another matter. They never fit the physical presence. They regularly betrayed indecision underneath.
“Damn glad you called,” I replied, working quickly to mask the praise intended for Annie. “I need to ask you something.”
“Me first,” Frank objected. “Have you heard anything about Patty?”
“You mean about her leaving?” It was easy to bait Frank.
“Oh shit,” he snorted nervously. “I was afraid of that.” He was already fretting over his bonus.
“Forget it, Frank. It’s a cheesy rumor. She’s not going anywhere. You’ve been too good to her.”
“You think?” he asked. Puffed-up pride replaced his flaccid inflection. Come-and-go bravado superseded his fear.
“I’d bet your next referral on it. Nothing happens today after four P.M. Mark my words.”
“Done,” Frank bellowed with confidence. “If you’re right, you get the next I-banking lead.” Banker referrals made it easy to meet wealthy executives who had sold their companies or taken them public. Warm introductions could make a broker’s career at SKC. “Now, what’s on your mind, Grove?”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“May I swing by your office, Frank?”
Sam Kelemen was on my mind. The day had slowed. The markets had lost their chaotic urgency as money people switched from price-earnings ratios to weekend plans. And I needed to discuss a few things about my best friend’s widow.
Kurtz, I hoped, would offer guidance. Not about time management. He was the Monthly Nut after all. He reminded me of the tidal-creek catfish from my youth, all mouth and no brains.
But Frank had worked with all sorts of stockbrokers for twenty-plus years. He had seen everything, run into the train wrecks that turned the press yellow. He had survived. That’s 90 percent of the game. I knew how to investigate the Kelemen Group. I hoped Frank could show me where to look for Sam’s missing accounts. Top producer or not, I had no idea where to start.
Like sales managers at all brokerage firms, Frank Kurtz served as a cheerleader. His job was to build revenues. Kurtz also functioned as top cop, the first defense against churning, unauthorized trading, or similar transgressions. He ensured his stockbrokers adhered to the SEC, NASD, CBOE,
NFA, and CFTC, not to mention all fifty state regulators like the BSR in New Hampshire or the DOJ in Delaware—the latter not to be confused with the federal Department of Justice. Taken together these governing bodies equaled NFW, the acronym for No Fucking Way Wall Street could trade in peace.
Frank’s dual roles required the wisdom of Solomon. If he was too strict, revenues would dry up and salespeople would bitch to our CEO. If he was too lenient, we would read about the fallout in
The Wall Street Journal.
The media always reserved space for sensational stories about rogue brokers and their dupes. Either way, Frank Kurtz’s job was on the line.
Frank’s office juxtaposed good and evil. There was a papal blessing on one wall. It vaguely resembled a diploma, except for the autographed head shot of Pope John Paul Umpteen mounted within the frame. Though the pope epitomized everything good, his photo regularly evoked the worst in Frank and me. We debated who had been the altar boy from hell and compared childhood stories about torquing off nuns or chugging wine when the priests weren’t looking. As fellow Catholics we sanctioned each other’s irreverence, past, present, and presumably the future. And that was the good wall.
On the wall behind Frank’s desk hung a collection of celebrity photos: Frank shaking hands with Andrew Fastow, Frank clinking wineglasses with Bernie Ebbers, and Frank sharing cigars with Dennis Kozlowski. The gallery, a murderer’s row of financial corruption, reminded PCS advisers how quickly fortunes change. The photos perplexed us. We wondered if our boss was a human divining rod for Wall Street’s miscreants.
Frank rifled his thinning black hair, a comb-over on the come, and scratched the nape of his neck. “You’re sure about Patty?” he asked, his tanned face a mass of furrows and other calling cards from life on Wall Street.
For a moment I appraised Kurtz carefully, steadily. With a flat palm facing him, I waved my hand through the air. The motion was slow and circular, almost theatrical. “Relax, Frank.”
“What the hell was that?”
“Jedi mind trick,” I said. “Gershon’s not going anywhere.”
Frank sighed, ready to move on but still not convinced. “Do you want a
cigar?” he asked, opening his humidor to display dozens of well-preserved stogies.
About as much as a barbed-wire enema.
“No thanks,” I said.
“They’re Cuban,” he bellowed, enthusiasm in his voice, surprise over my refusal. “Cohibas.” The thin walls of his office had begun to reverberate. Frank always exuded the most power when he discussed his two favorite topics, red wine and Cuban cigars.
“Not my thing. But thanks.”
“Suit yourself.” Brief awkward pause. “What’s on your mind?”
“Sam Kelemen.”
“Who?”
“She’s my friend’s widow, the guy at the New England Aquarium.”
“Oh, right,” he said, “I’m so sorry. Her name threw me.”
“Short for Samantha.”
“Got it. What’s the issue?” he asked, fussing with his cigar cutter, a double-blade guillotine.
“Sam’s tight on cash,” I explained. “Charlie invested everything in the fund of funds he founded.”
“How much did he manage?”
“Not sure. Probably two hundred million dollars or so.”
“Small shop,” he observed. “And not our problem. We don’t lend against funds of funds. No liquidity.” Having forestalled a margin request, Frank severed the head of his Cohiba.
“I’m not here to discuss a loan.”
Frank pursed his lips. He ran his thumb and forefinger their entire length, as though zipping a plastic freezer bag. Everybody in PCS had seen Frank do the “shut up and listen” one time or another.
“Forget the Kelemen Group,” I said. “It may take time, but Sam will get her money out of the company.”
“Right,” he concurred, pleased to be off the hook for a loan, curious what I wanted.
“She asked if Charlie had opened an account here.”
“Did he?”
“No.”
“What’s the issue?”
“In eight years, Frank, I’ve never heard a widow ask about hidden accounts.”
“Goddamn goofy,” he agreed. Over on the walls, John Paul bounced at his blasphemy. Fastow, Ebbers, and Kozlowski held their ground. Kurtz then added, thoughtfully, only half in jest, “Husbands hide mistress money all the time.”
“That’s different,” I said. “Sam Kelemen has a grand total of six hundred dollars in her name. Nothing else.”
“Why are you screwing around with six hundred dollars, Grove? We’re in the high-net-worth business. Remember?”
Anyone else would have let that crack slide. It was a soft jab, nothing more than an example of the mouth-to-mouth combat that characterizes our industry. No harm, no foul. Right?
Wrong. Top producers don’t back down from overhead line items. I stared at Frank hard. My eyes bulldozed his skull, told him to get fucked, though I said nothing. Let none of the sweet drawl from the saccharine South slip over my lips. Never explained my need to protect Sam as a way to atone for Evelyn and Finn.
Where were you when it counted?
“Sam is my friend,” I replied, suppressing my anger. “Nothing else matters.”
Kurtz tasted bitterness in my words and averted his eyes. He acted like a man who had witnessed something feral and reckless in an old colleague for the first time. So I thought.
“There must be a system for locating lost accounts,” I continued. “Can’t we plug a Social Security number into a database somewhere?”
“Grove,” he ventured cautiously. “We’ve both been in this biz a long time.”
Uh-oh. Lecture.
“We both know financial institutions would never agree how to store personal information or protect privacy.”
“I’m double-checking, Frank. I had to ask.”
“No, you didn’t,” he countered, his force catching me by surprise. “If I were you, I’d keep my distance.”
“Why’s that?”
“For one,” he counseled, “stuff shows up when people die, skeletons, mistresses, investments. All the things they tried to hide while alive. Let it play out.”
“What else, Frank?”
“You don’t want to hear it.”
“Go ahead. It’s okay.”
“You don’t need the distractions. Know what I mean?”
Yeah. You’re worried about your bonus.
“Let me worry about my time, Frank. It’s never been a problem before.”
“Suit yourself,” he said at first. Then he reconsidered. “I’m asking you to back off, Grove. Somebody whacked Kelemen. I don’t want you stepping on the wrong pile.”
Just clean the dog turds off your soles and move on.
“Won’t happen, Frank,” I replied vaguely, before straightening John Paul on the way out. It seemed the good Catholic thing to do.
Back at my desk I hit the speed dial to Ira Popowski. Reaching him on the first try seemed unlikely. We often played phone tag for days before connecting, the victims of busy schedules and competing demands for time. Ira billed about $5 million in annual fees to his clients, a big practice for a trust and estate lawyer.