“A grantor what?” Thayer asked, taking notes on a pad from SKC’s conference table.
“GRAT for short. In any event, thirty percent of his holdings were worth a million dollars while the company was private. The stock took off after the IPO. That same thirty percent equaled fifty million when we sold.”
“You just set the bar for my deal,” he said, salivating over the appreciation. “What was the point of the GRAT?”
“The CEO paid nothing in gift taxes.”
“What about capital gains taxes?”
“He still paid those. But here’s how the numbers worked. After capital gains taxes on the sale, the CEO had forty million left. The money was inside the GRAT and outside the estate. Had he died and left the forty million outright to his kids, his estate would have paid around sixteen million in taxes.” I paused for my words to sink home and then added, “Not now.”
Thayer blinked once, then again. “You saved him sixteen million! Bet he genuflects when you meet.”
“Sometimes the most important decisions are the ones you make before investing the first dollar.”
Thayer took off his glasses and cleaned them absently with his tie. “Do GRATs take much time to draft?”
“You need a trust and estate lawyer. I work with the best.”
“Good,” he replied. “Now, what else should we discuss?”
Thayer stayed more than forty-five minutes. Two hours later I wrapped up with my signature line: “My job is to bring you the best of Wall Street.” Heavy pause. “And to protect you from it at the same time.” There was nothing better than a hard edge to seal a deal. Skeptics sounded shrewd and battle tough.
Thayer did not commit. Nobody with $100 million ever signed paperwork at the first meeting. But he said all the right things.
I should have been elated. New prospect. Strong start. More money on the horizon. Don’t get me wrong. It wasn’t the money driving me. My motivation was more about the game, helping clients, crushing competitors, winning over and over again. I understood why Roman warriors poured salt over the ruins of Carthage. One day I hoped to pour salt on Goldman Sachs.
The thrill of a new prospect, however, was lost on me. In the aftermath of Charlie’s funeral, I wondered whether he had left his affairs in order. That’s the problem when three sharks surprise someone in front of five hundred horrified people. There’s no chance to study what-if scenarios with your financial adviser. Charlie was not a client. Never had been. He was my friend. And that was it.
So much for winning over and over again.
Charlie was also a professional. He knew all the tricks, possessed all the tools to take care of Sam, who had not worked for years. No one ever wants to deal with mortality, though, unless there is a reason. And that reason, in my experience, was children. Kids were always the catalyst to deal with difficult decisions. Kids got parents off the dime. Even though the Kelemens had no children, Charlie was way too obsessive about details. He would never leave Sam in the lurch.
He was a control freak about money.
CHAPTER NINE
Gloom is no path to becoming a top producer. Or staying one. My career is all about making happy, no matter what the day brings.
Your sales assistant fresh out of college takes an order “to cover” 20,000 shares and buys call options with a $25 strike price instead of selling them. Four months later, you discover 40,000 shares in the client’s account because the stock ran past $25 and forced an automatic purchase. In effect you bought 20,000 shares at $25 instead of selling them, but now the stock has collapsed to $21. With mounting horror you realize there is a $160,000 error, 40,000 shares at $4 each, and you will eat the expense because stockbrokers pay for trading errors out of their own pockets. That’s when a client calls and asks, “How are you?”
“Awesome.”
Your legal department reviews documents for a zero-cost collar, a hedging technique that will enable your client to avoid catastrophic loss on 2 million shares and retain additional upside. The stock is highly volatile, and as you wait the excruciating wait for Legal’s okay, the shares fall below the limit price at which you are authorized to transact. To your chagrin, the trade evaporates and with it the opportunity to pocket $300,000. That’s when a client calls and asks, “How are you?”
“Awesome.”
Three sharks eat your best friend. When you seek comfort from your wife, you remember she is dead, too. Thinking you can find solace at the office, you instruct clients about estate planning but realize your daughter is gone, your family no longer exists, and you have no personal need for the techniques you teach others. That’s when a client calls and asks, “How are you?”
“Awesome.”
It’s like I tell the PCS newbies: “Depression and our careers don’t mix, especially when you talk to clients about their portfolios. You need a strategy to stay upbeat.”
On Friday morning Annie’s blue-green eyes blazed with excitement. I knew that look—happy, irreverent, the glint of a born troublemaker and loveable rogue. Annie had no clue, but she was my secret sauce in an ongoing quest for optimism. She made me laugh.
“Boss, did you hear what happened to Scully?”
It was 7:40 A.M., the hour when Wall Street research vied with gossip for mind share. Inside PCS the clashes were no contest. Scandal, hearsay, scuttle-butt, the unthinkable, and the sordid always prevailed. Associates gathered around coffee machines to report the latest sexual trysts. Brokers swapped bar stories rather than stock ideas. And herds of young women invariably thundered into the bathrooms, driven more by chitchat than bodily need. Somewhere, someplace, Annie had scooped a story.
I had been listening to John Dewey broadcast over the squawk box. A cable analyst known for his Texan aw-shucks hyperbole, Dewey declared Microsoft was trading “cheaper than sunscreen in a snowstorm.”
Give me a break.
I focused on Annie, wholly taken by her perfume as she rolled up a chair. “What happened to Scully?”
“Strip club.” Annie smirked. She knew those two words would pique my curiosity.
Other than being a serial suck-up and the world’s loudest stockbroker, Scully was far too priggish to make the grapevine. He worked late and avoided the impromptu bar binges. Like so many other suburban fathers, he knew little about how his wife and four daughters spent their weeks.
“Scully’s too smart to expense anything.” Submitting tabs from a no-no bar was the surest way to get fired.
“That’s not it,” she replied. “The client paid.”
“Okay,” I drawled in the precise time it takes to say, “What do you know?”
Annie understood my intonation perfectly. “His assistant told me everything. He drives Jeanie up the wall, you know.”
“Got it.”
“Apparently, Scully has a huge client from Denver. The guy flew in yesterday morning, and they spent all afternoon behind closed doors reviewing the portfolio.”
“Bet the poor guy’s ears took a beating.” Four walls and the world’s loudest stockbroker—it struck me as cruel and unusual punishment.
“Don’t interrupt,” Annie admonished. “After dinner, the client says he wants to go to a strip bar in Times Square. Scully freaks out. He’s afraid somebody will recognize him.”
“But agrees to take one for the team.”
“Exactly,” Annie continued. “The client insists on sitting right up front. And Scully drags his heels, trying to look as small as possible, when he sees the dancer onstage.”
Annie rose from her seat and retreated five steps. She turned and walked toward me, swinging her waist and swooshing her hips like a stripper. Both arms were bent at the elbows and raised over her head.
Nice body English.
“Something about the dancer looks familiar,” Annie said three struts into her walk. “But Scully can’t place her.” Annie frowned momentarily to imitate deep concentration.
How many women can tell a story about a strip bar?
“The dancer, however, knows Scully right away. She takes one look at him and covers everything up.” Annie folded her arms in an X over her own chest.
“I get the picture.”
“She runs offstage screaming something in Norwegian.”
“How do you know it was Norwegian?”
“She’s Scully’s au pair.”
“No way.”
“Apparently, the girl was disappearing every night around eight-thirty until the wee hours of the morning. She was so good with the kids that his wife didn’t say anything. And Scully gets home late. He always thought the au pair was in bed.”
“What did the client say?”
“Oh, he’s pissed. A bouncer threw them out of the bar. The girl was hysterical.”
“I would have paid to see that.”
“It gets better. There were two police outside, and the bouncer complained to the cops. Big ruckus, you know how loud Scully gets. A few reporters showed up at the scene, and now the
New York Post
may run a story.”
“With SKC front and center,” I noted.
“Not to mention Scully and the client,” Annie replied. “I wonder what their wives will say?”
We both laughed, and Annie’s face warmed with the pleasure that had exited my life. For a long, lingering moment, I considered inviting her downstairs for coffee.
No,
I told myself.
Annie works for you. She’s eight years your junior.
I decided to ask anyway. It had been months since I last met a woman for a cup of coffee. And yesterday had been tough, talking to Thayer, teaching him the financial side of death. I could use Annie’s company. And it was important to venture out. The Scully story, working like a tonic, seemed to release unwanted memories. My career was taking hold again, distracting me from my past. Annie, PCS, and a new prospect—it was all good in that moment.
The phone rang, however, and robbed me of my opportunity. I never asked Annie. The interruption reminded me that things would never be the same. There was no going forward or moving on. There would always be something to suck me back inside the world of Charlie Kelemen.
CHAPTER TEN
“May I speak with Grover O’Rourke?”
“Call me Grove.”
I’ve always wanted to say that.
“Mandy Maris here.” She sounded energetic and commanding.
“How can I help?” I looked at my watch and signaled Annie to wait a second.
“Well, you could buy me a cup of coffee,” Maris replied, outgoing, all butter and charm.
You’re keeping me from one now
.
“I understand Charlie Kelemen and you were close friends,” she continued.
“Okay,” I said, hitting the brakes, “maybe you should introduce yourself, Mandy Maris.”
Annie sensed a prolonged engagement and returned to her desk. In our business we never knew when a new opportunity, or problem, would surface.
Damn.
“I’m with the
New York Post,
” Maris explained. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
Not this
.
“Hang on,” I said, and transferred Mandy Fucking Maris to SKC’s Department of Public Relations. I didn’t warn her, just punched the transfer button, keyed in the internal extension, and bam, punched the transfer button again.
It wasn’t a proud moment. Force of habit or Broker 101, advisers learned never to speak with reporters. There’s nothing but downside. The press terrified me, sort of a Pavlovian response from eight years of brainwashing.
The phone rang instantly, leaving no time for me to second-guess my rudeness or for Maris to dial back. “Heard you were in the office yesterday,” Cliff Halek whispered in his gravelly voice. “I thought you were going to Rhode Island.”
“Graveside referral from the bankers. Literally.” Sometimes I hated my BlackBerry.
“Big sitch?” he asked, using SKC’s shorthand for “situation.”
“IPO. My guy’s got a hundred million dollars in stock.” There it was, the word “guy.” Consciously, I had already closed Thayer and moved him from prospect to client. Subconsciously, I was trying hard to flip into the swagger-speak of finance. It wasn’t working, though. No enthusiasm in my voice. No “awesome.”
“Don’t forget your starving pals in Derivatives,” Halek teased, always asking for the order. A $100 million block of stock offered a hedging opportunity for his team. He was also testing me. He heard something foreign, none of the kick-ass bravado of a top producer.
“It’s early, Cliff. Six months to the IPO. Six months of banker’s lockup. Who knows when the corporate windows will open? I bet it’s eighteen months before he can trade.”
“Got it.” Changing the subject, he probed, “How was the funeral?”
“Decent eulogy, but I wish Monsignor Byrd had wrapped it up sooner.”
“Catholics have it easy. Just be glad you don’t sit shivah. That’s seven days.”
He chuckled. I didn’t. We both had better things to do than make small talk and listen to me bitch about a Catholic priest. New ideas swept through the trading floors during morning hours, the busiest time of day. Cliff had broken from his daily grind, however, to check on me.
“Do you need to be in the office?” he ventured.
