the school celebrated its gridiron greats. The honorees included the wife-beating bag of runny squirrel shit. He ranked fourth on Yale’s list of all-time leading rushers.
Hurley never heard cheers that crisp autumn day in New Haven. As a lone biplane circled low over the stadium, the crowd’s raucous laughter robbed him of all glory. Trailing the plane was a long banner that read: “Hurley has a small dick.”
The crowd guffawed. The frenzied Yalies chanted at the top of their lungs and the peak of their IQs, “Small dick. Small dick.” That was how the ex-fback became an all-time joke and ex-legend.
No one understood the power of public humiliation more than Lila Priouleau. She had good reason, having learned her lesson as an undergraduate at Wellesley.
Lila was standing with her father now, silently thanking Charlie like the rest of us. Non-Catholics, the Priouleaus watched curiously as Monsignor Byrd consecrated the Communion hosts. Cash had flown in from Atlanta to pay his respects, and I wondered what he was thinking. Perhaps Cash sensed my interest. He caught my eye and nodded, no doubt aware that Charlie had once come to my rescue.
Up to that point of the funeral, I had given a wide berth to Sam. It was not clumsy sensitivity holding me back. It was self-preservation. When Sam turned to take Communion, it proved impossible to avoid her glassy blue eyes any longer. Tears, visible even through a black veil, streamed down her cheeks.
There are no words for what she is feeling.
Our eyes locked with immediate intimacy. With sorrow. With memories of the last time death had touched both our lives. That was eighteen months ago. A policewoman, her eyebrows etched high in a worried expression of permanent surprise, had said, “Mr. O’Rourke, I know how tough this is.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
With those words the officer led me inside a refrigerated New Haven morgue. There were two stainless-steel gurneys in the center of the frigid room, a covered body on each. One adult. One child.
I prayed the Our Father a million times, hoping for a miracle. I pledged never to miss Mass again if only God had somehow spared my family. Evelyn was my college sweetheart, my wife, my lover, my rock, my friend, the generous woman who had given me Finn, our daughter. I longed to hear our four-year-old’s peals of laughter.
Charlie’s posse recited the Our Father in St. Joseph’s now, a grim reminder of how my frantic prayers had gone unanswered in New Haven. A trucker had fallen asleep while driving his eighteen-wheeler just outside the city. Evelyn and Finn died instantly in the ensuing crash, their bodies disfigured by the impact and the jagged edges of disintegrating vehicles. The memory stung, and I shook uncontrollably inside the cavernous church as Annie took my arm.
Not until the funeral procession arrived at Woodlawn did I regain my composure. The rain probably helped, in part because it camouflaged my tears. As the posse laid Charlie to rest, the clouds buried the sun and suppressed the hot mugginess of July in the Bronx. For a while I savored the
air’s moist breath. It smelled fresh, the scent of cut grass at dusk. I gave thanks for overcast skies. Bright sun had always tested my fair complexion. With the mild temperatures, however, it seemed my best friend had couriered one final act of comfort from the heavens.
That was Charlie Kelemen. He was always there. He was the one who forced me to pick up the pieces after Finn’s and Evelyn’s deaths. He was the one who insisted I move into Greenwich Village with him and Sam. It took me six months before I could function on my own.
Thank you, Charlie.
Sam helped. She opened their home to me, the broken guest, while soldiering through her own grief. Evelyn had been her college roommate and best friend, Finn her goddaughter.
During the graveside services Sam reminded me of the Wellesley student from over a decade ago. Charlie’s death, it seemed, had sanctioned a full-scale retreat. There was no hint of the bright, fire-engine red lipstick she had taken to wearing. Her black dress was unremarkable. It looked like a sack.
Nor did I see her signature jewels, like the cluster earrings made from marquise and pear-shaped diamonds or the blue-green peacock brooch fashioned from diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, and at least one black opal. Perhaps Sam’s necklace of black pearls would have been more appropriate. But none of the baubles, all gifts from Charlie, were anywhere in sight.
She only wore the jewels to please him
.
She had never been showy at Wellesley. She was too much of a Yankee. Frugal to the core.
Crunch, subdued and fidgeting with his wraparound sunglasses, studied Sam intently. Except for the sergeant major stripes sewn across the chest of his black slicker, he looked like a mortician standing and dripping next to Monsignor Byrd. Crunch must have seen something change in Sam’s demeanor, for he suddenly rushed to her side.
Sam buried her face against his chest and, without the slightest hint of a warning tremble, began to rock from spasms of grief. Crunch steadied her, the power of his arms evident even under the slicker’s vast rubbery folds.
I wished it had been me comforting Sam. I berated myself for not getting there first or even second. Like Crunch, Alex Romanov had moved more
quickly. He gently grasped Sam’s shoulder from behind. His reassuring touch proved just the right antidote, for her shudders stopped. I resolved never to mock the next Warren Buffett again.
Sam, though surrounded by her family and Charlie’s posse, never seemed more alone. She had given up on her umbrella. The rain ran off the sides of her hat, like water off a tile roof with no gutters. It gushed onto her black trench coat, carelessly open. She no longer cared about getting soaked.
Charlie was gone. His sealed mahogany casket, eerie in its finality, reminded me that Evelyn’s and Finn’s caskets had also been closed. The parallel, between my best friend with no head and my wife and daughter with disfigurements that haunt me still, made me sob. Annie took my arm for the second time that rainy day.
Lost in my grief, I floundered in a sea of personal disbelief. Charlie’s murder, the spectacular carnage in front of five hundred people, made no sense. It was all too bizarre. Something more conventional would have been so much easier: gun, knife, or even defenestration. But why?
Everybody loved Charlie.
I would later learn that almost everyone—Sam, Romanov, Crunch, Lila—had moved beyond denial. For their own reasons they were each struggling with a more vexing question.
Did one of Charlie’s business deals go bad?
CHAPTER EIGHT
Had Charlie’s death threatened a merger or bond offering, our I-bankers would have attended his funeral en masse. Not so much to mourn or pay their respects. It would have been to kick-save their fees, the holy grail of finance.
There were no pending deals. Charlie’s money management firm, insanely lucrative, was too small for our bankers to notice. The capital markets thundered forward Wednesday without Annie and me.
Well, almost.
Chloe ran the desk and fielded all calls. Among them, one came from a CEO named Thayer. Another came from Sutherling, a sandy-haired energy banker with a bourbon-on-rocks voice. His team had just edged out the empty suits at Morgan, and we were on a six-month countdown to take Thayer’s company public. Through Chloe, Sutherling insisted I meet with the CEO and pitch him on SKC’s wealth management capabilities. She dutifully scheduled an appointment for Thursday, good timing for Thayer, who was here on business from the West Coast.
Crappy timing for me. I had planned to visit Evelyn’s and Finn’s graves in Rhode Island that day.
Need to spend more time with the family,
I thought in a black moment at Charlie’s graveside.
I also had professional misgivings. Many regarded wills, durable powers of attorney, and the other tools of mortality as my industry’s response to Ambien. Not me. Estate planning was the single most important topic to discuss this far in advance of an IPO. Thayer could save a bundle in taxes by establishing trust accounts. It was my job to describe the benefits and outline his options. One problem. The financial side of death was hardly my favorite topic at the moment.
How do I keep my shit together?
Deferring the meeting was not an option. Thayer’s net worth would total something north of $100 million after the offering. Appointments with that kind of wealth were too hard to win.
Plus, there was Sutherling to consider. Investment bankers were notorious for drop-everything mentalities. Putting Thayer on hold would piss off Sutherling, not a winning strategy. Bankers could shower anyone with referrals, not just me. And my PCS colleagues would rip out drills and interrupt root canals midway to meet with someone of Thayer’s net worth.
One hundred million is size, real size.
Thursday morning came all too soon. The police had left a voice mail for me sometime the previous night. Distracted, underprepared for a meeting, I couldn’t deal with them. I sat in one of our mahogany and leather conference rooms, smiling at Thayer and considering where to begin.
Ordinarily, prospect meetings all started the same way. We would two-step the small talk. It took about ten minutes to circle the dance floor, me probing for common interests and gauging personal chemistry.
Next, I would produce inch-thick pitch books stuffed with glossy exhibits and assorted propaganda from the firm’s marketing library. The presentations could be tailored to specific needs. There was no end to our choice of topics. Zero-cost and put-spread collars, portable alpha, bond durations, or correlation coefficients—we had something mysterious for everyone. SKC’s graphs looked great, and our lingo sounded smart.
Unfortunately, there had been no time to assemble a pitch book. Nor had I persevered through my grief and researched Thayer’s company. That was a problem. It was more important to connect in Thayer’s comfort zone, his area of expertise, rather than mine. The reason: Outside of New York City,
America distrusts Wall Street. What do you expect with the subprime mortgage fiasco?
No pitch book. No preparation. That Thursday morning, I felt “nekkid.” For all the meetings through the years, for all the business won and asses kicked over at Goldman and Merrill, I still suffered from butterflies when meeting new prospects. All-star athletes often barfed before big games. First meetings with wealthy prospects brought the same anxiety, even to top producers.
One hundred million is size, real size.
Perhaps Thayer sensed hesitation, the sure sign of a newbie, for he dispensed with pleasantries. He attacked. A thin, fit man with a shock of black hair, he looked at me impassively through rimless glasses. Glancing at his watch, he announced, “You have forty-five minutes.”
You scheduled the appointment,
I thought to myself.
“Plenty of time,” I replied, glad the game had begun. The butterflies disappeared in that instant. They gave way to the confidence that accompanies practice and years of training. Slick pitch books and exhaustive research were never a substitute for experience anyway.
Thayer saw nothing different. He wore the kind of face CEOs pull out of the closet when unimpressed. “There’s no one joining us?” It was more accusation than question.
“No.”
“At Goldman Sachs, a dozen people met with me. Same thing at Merrill, Morgan, and Lehman. Your competitors fill the room every time with portfolio managers, stock-hedging teams, even their chief strategists.” Thayer had mastered the fine art of putting people on their heels. He drummed his fingers on our conference table.
“If head count is important to you,” I replied calmly, “half the firm will join us. But it’s not what I recommend during a forty-five-minute meeting.”
“Forty now.”
Zing
. “Don’t you want me to understand your firm’s capabilities?”
Zing
. Even in his chair, he lorded over me like a boxer who had just decked an opponent.
“The problem with a roomful of suits,” I countered, “is they trip all over each other trying to sound clever. No one listens. I can’t understand what’s really important to you if everybody’s competing for air time.”
Zing
.
“I like that,” Thayer mused. Sometimes a simple jab changed the dynamics
of a meeting. “In fact, your bankers told me all I need to know about SKC,” he continued, warming to our discussion, ceding ground. “I’m more concerned about what to do now. My money is tied up in private stock, and once we go public, there won’t be much time to evaluate advisers. I have a business to run.”
“Do you have children?” That question was the one I feared, a sure segue to financial topics involving death. I had to ask. It was my job.
“Two. A daughter, she’s eighteen. Her little brother is fifteen.”
“How do you feel about taxes?”
“Four-letter word.”
Time for a war story, the sure way to establish myself as a seasoned veteran. No one with money ever volunteered to serve as a tackling dummy for stockbrokers starting their careers.
“Several years ago,” I began, “one of my clients put thirty percent of his stock into a grantor retained annuity trust. At my suggestion he made the contribution prior to going public.”