Man in the Middle (9 page)

After several minutes of catch-up, they got around to ordering a bottle of Cabernet. Once the wine arrived, Peter said, “You look great. I can’t believe you’ve grown up into . . . well, into this . . .” He spread his arms, palms upturned in the gesture of a man offering up something special.

“Little ol’ me?” she asked, flapping her eyelids in mock Southern Belle style. “You mean this beautiful, alluring, sexy diva?” Kate smiled, then laughed. The combination represented a pattern both genuine and frequent.

“My thoughts exactly.” Peter put his hand over hers and rubbed. The gesture reminded him of the last time he had seen his mother alive. As they stood in the shadows of the building that morning, he had taken her hand and circled the back with his thumb in an attempt to calm her. In a reflex, Peter abruptly withdrew his hand from Kate’s.

“Did I do something?” she asked.

He exhaled deeply and regretted the sudden melancholy, but his emotions had just caromed around a place he found difficult to escape. Peter wondered if his mother had seen Kate at any time over the years. And did Kate suspect her father and his mother had once been intimate?

“Did you . . .” He wanted to ask, but if she didn’t know about the affair, wouldn’t it be better to keep it buried?

She reached across and covered his hand. Her flesh felt comforting.

“Did you ever see my mom, these last few years? Since our families stopped being social friends, I mean.” He stared, vainly searching for clues.

“A couple of times at the office. I meant to say something—how sorry I was, but I didn’t know how you’d react.” The wet sheen over Kate’s eyes built into droplets that she wiped away. “Father says he worshiped your parents. And even though your father broke off their friendship those last few years, Father never stopped admiring him.”

“Jason’s been a good friend.”

They worked their way through the painful conversation and by the time dinner arrived, they were back to sharing happier thoughts. Later, just after Kate paid the check, Peter said, “I’ll repay you for dinner once I get my first paycheck.”

“Not so fast,” Kate said. “I don’t want your money. What I want is for you to reciprocate. You can buy
me
dinner next time.”

“Sounds good. I’ll call.”

She wagged her head. “When a guy says he’ll call, it’s a blow-off. I’m not letting you off so easily. Your paydays are the fifteenth and the last day of each month. Next Tuesday you are once again solvent.”

“You know what day I get paid?”

“I told you: Father and Morgan have a relationship that goes way back. Our firm has a department that handles payroll for many of our clients, including Stenman Partners. We do most of their paperwork, banking, even some client billing. When I heard you got the job, I peeked at some of their records. Don’t tell anybody, but I know Father’s computer password and user name. If they found out, they’d change the entire system. Supposedly impenetrable.”

“Then how did you tap into the thing?”

“I was doing some work at home, over a weekend. Father was having a hard time—I think it was the weekend your mother . . . well, it hit him hard and he’d been drinking. He left his laptop on and I remembered his password: Hannah-anne-kate. Your mother’s, my mother’s, and my names, all pasted together. I also have a semi-photographic memory and recalled his ten-digit username.” Her mouth pleasantly stretched. “Okay, so I don’t have a photographic memory. I’m nosy, and I wrote the letters and numbers down. So today, I gave it a try. Bingo-bango. I had Stenman Partners’ payroll records staring at me.”

“That’s a lot of trouble, but at least I can alert my landlord he’ll be getting paid soon. With that settled, how’s Friday of next week for dinner?”

“It’s a date.”

“On another topic,” Peter said, “maybe you can tell me something about Morgan Stenman.”

Kate nodded. “She’s gruff, but she’s been like a kind aunt to me.”

“Can you tell me anything about her partnership? I know nothing, yet I’m about to dive in and swim amongst the sharks, so to speak.”

“Some, though I’m far from an expert on stocks and bonds.”

Stenman Partners managed, she said, a hedge fund that made leveraged bets on everything: stocks, bonds, currencies, and commodities. They went long all of these instruments—which meant they owned the asset. They also could short each asset category—which she explained was a transaction that allowed the fund to make money when the asset value went down, rather than up. “Shorting has something to do with borrowing stock, selling it, then buying it back later at a lower price. Don’t ask me how it all fits together, because I still don’t get it.”

“That makes two of us,” Peter said.

Kate next detailed some of Stenman’s overseas interests. “They’re aggressive, moving quickly as they acquire information from their global network. And the partnership is phenomenally successful. They have money flowing into and out of developed countries in addition to Eastern Europe and dozens of underdeveloped markets. Morgan is considered one of the most astute traders in the world.”

“I noticed she speaks with a slight accent—maybe Slavic.”

“You have a good ear. In the early nineteen-forties, according to my father—and I guess he ought to know—she escaped Poland. Her family was Jewish and she was rescued, but not her parents. The Nazis captured them and they disappeared.”

Peter became enthralled by Morgan’s tale. She had no money when she arrived in the U.S. With a few poor relatives working in the navy yards in San Diego, she eventually made her way through U. C. Berkeley, then nurtured family contacts from Eastern Europe who had prospered after the war.

“She began investing money for some of them,” Kate said. “Over time, her track record attracted international attention. The rest is history. Morgan and her staff get paid one percent of assets under management, plus twenty percent of profits.”

“How much money does she manage?” Peter asked.

“I’m not sure. She has dozens of offshore accounts, and the money flows in and out so fast from overseas that the amounts fluctuate, but at any one time, I’d say several billion in client funds are under management.”

Peter whistled. “Say it’s five billion. The one-percent fee totals fifty million. If Morgan’s making as much money for her investors as people say, twenty percent of that would be what? Another four hundred million dollars? Maybe more. Who makes hundreds of millions of dollars a year?”

“It sounds ludicrous, doesn’t it?” Kate said. “And you may have understated the amounts. It’s possible Morgan controls ten to fifteen billion dollars. Only she and a few close associates are privy to that information. Not even Father knows for sure.”

The numerical insanity clotted Peter’s sensibilities enough that he felt mounting intimidation.
Deal with it
, he counseled himself.

When they later left the restaurant and arrived at Kate’s Jag, Peter offered his hand. She shook her head and said, “I’m no longer a little girl.” Her voice then became breathy. “When you say goodnight to me, buster, you better do it right.”

She yanked him from behind his neck, pulled, and kissed. Hard. A moment later, a grinning Kate slid into her sleek auto and drove away.

Peter ran his tongue over his lips. Outstanding, he thought.

Peter drifted down one of many sleepy streets towards his own cheapo-car. He peered into a bookstore, then jaywalked to the far side of Del Mar’s main boulevard. He stumbled past a local library in an old church building, a couple of real estate offices, and multiple stop signs. Families of four slept in suburban homes half a block away. A train, flying over a trestle, blew its whistle from the bluffs just west. The sound mingled with an ocean breeze that licked his skin with a light dew. The full moon illuminated his path.

The wine. The company. The prospect of tomorrow’s employment adventure, all spun like an out-of-control top through his mind. Before dawn, he’d confront things he’d barely heard of: longs and shorts, puts and calls, bids, offers, index options, straddles, strips, futures, IPO’s, share repurchases, fixed incomes, foreign currency trading.

More compelling than any of this was the wealth. Nobody at Stenman Partners had discovered a cure for anything—not cancer, not the common cold, not even a hangnail. But they earned four hundred million in income a year, maybe more, for betting on winning investments.

“Am I selling out?” he wondered out loud.

“No,” he announced to the street lamp. “Dad was a financial failure. Mom lived in a sinkhole of debt. Life is what it is.”

He drifted farther down Del Mar’s main street. Rich people lived in Del Mar. Maybe one day he’d live in Del Mar or Rancho Santa Fe or La Jolla. Maybe he’d have a view of the ocean instead of the freeway. A block from his car, a woman with a small dog on a tight leash passed in the opposite direction. The cocker spaniel defecated in a patch of ice plant. The woman placed her hand in a plastic bag and scooped up the steaming feces while Peter’s head filled itself with foolish gratitude for cat litter boxes. The wine’s affecting my brain, he thought. Or maybe it was the kiss.

In bed, twenty minutes later, he rubbed his moonstone hard enough to raise a blister.

Carlos Nuñoz arrived at the compound at five a.m. Although the guards recognized him, they nonetheless held rifles at the ready.

“
Hola, Señor Nuñoz. Como está usted
?”

Carlos depressed the button activating the driver side window and said, “
Bien. Y tú, Manuel?”

“
Muy bien. Gracias
.”

Manuel, like the 20 other mercenaries patrolling the parameter of the Guzman estate, wore an olive-green uniform, topped off by dark glasses and a soldier’s cap with a black brim and thin rope adornment across the front. Alongside him, a German shepherd lightly tugged against a steel leash.

Manuel yanked a lever that popped open the trunk while the dog sniffed for material that might make a bomb. The dog also had the ability to detect drugs, though that skill had limited relevance with the recent changes in their mix of business. Manuel, his rifle slung over his right shoulder, next raised the panel housing the spare tire. He allowed the dog to poke its head inside. Both satisfied, they worked their way to the engine. Manuel reached beneath the hood, unhooking then lifting it. He and his friend next inspected the interior of the car, focusing on the space under the front and rear seats.

A moment later, the guard used a mirror, mounted on a curved pole, to examine the chassis beneath the hundred-fifty thousand-dollar, steel-reinforced Mercedes sedan. Every car and guest underwent a similar methodical search, with absolutely no exceptions. The word
trust
had no meaning in this part of the world.

“
Gracias, Señor Nuñoz
,” Manuel said as the arm of the barricade swung open.

Carlos coasted through the gate and down the hundred-plus yards of driveway towards the sprawling Mission-style home. He loved Sarah Guzman and did not mind that she was an Anglo. He loved her intelligence. He also admired her estate, where every one of the thirty rooms had a view of the Pacific Ocean and her mile of private beach.

He was loyal because she was unwavering. After the death of her husband, Sarah Guzman had become the family’s
madama
—the head of their house. And he believed in her black magic, the spell she held over men and women. Carlos wished, above all else, he could have been of her blood so he might have inherited her intelligence, been born of
her
loins, not his own mother’s disgusting
choca
.

As he pulled his car up to the front door, an armed valet bowed and took his keys while Carlos fantasized how
he
would handle Sarah’s brother-in-law, Fernando Guzman. One thing he knew with certainty: Sarah Guzman’s solution to this uprising would be genius.

Carlos approached the outer gate with its stone pillars and wrought iron spikes. When he snatched the lion’s paw door-knock and prepared to announce himself, drops formed on his upper lip. Every time he arrived at this place and took in its unimaginable wealth, he felt humbled.

Knocking, Carlos pointed his face at the camera mounted just inside the courtyard. The guard, already alerted by those at the front entrance, verified Carlos’ identity and buzzed him into the patio. A noisy fountain, spewing water from the mouths of posed statuettes—naked cupid-like creatures with tiny penises—greeted him as he stepped toward her house.