by Stephen Frey
“He respects your work just as much as he does mine, Sara.”
“He wouldn’t want to hear you were leaving,” Sara said firmly.
“I think he’d be happy for me.” She didn’t want to tell Sara the extent of Robinson’s support. Sara might get the wrong idea. “He’d encourage me to go to New York.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.” Sara hesitated. “Look, I know I sound negative. I’m sorry about that. I know you’re working really hard with the job and school, and I admire your drive and determination.” The hard edge in her voice faded away. “Come out with us tonight,” Sara urged. “We’ll have fun. Besides, you need to get back into the dating scene. We’re both going to be thirty pretty soon, and it won’t be easy to find a husband after that. Look at the statistics.”
Jesse wadded up the napkin and tossed it at Sara. “God, you are a perfect revenue agent, aren’t you? So caught up in statistics and probabilities.”
“Good morning, ladies.” Helga Ketzer’s thick German accent preceded her through the doorway. “Here is the file you wanted, Jesse,” she said loudly, moving into the office. Helga, the secretary Jesse shared with several other revenue agents, was short, stout, and opinionated. She placed the heavy file on the desk and turned to go.
“Wait a minute, Helga,” Sara called. “We need your opinion on something.”
Helga turned back around. “Yes?”
“Don’t do this, Sara,” Jesse implored. She hated being the center of attention, even with people she knew well.
Sara ignored the plea. “We were just talking about Jesse’s love life, Helga.”
“Please don’t,” Jesse begged.
“And I was saying how she needed to start dating again,” Sara continued. “How she needs to find someone.”
Helga put her hands on her hips and looked at Jesse. “Yes, child, you must find a husband soon. It’s such a waste for you to be alone. You are so nice, and beautiful. Well, you could be beautiful.” The older woman brought her hands to her mouth and laughed. “Did I say that?”
“Excuse me?” Jesse managed a smile through her embarrassment.
Helga moved close to Jesse. “You have natural beauty. Blond hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones, and beautiful skin. But you need to pay more attention to yourself.” Her voice became more forceful. “You always wear your hair up in a bun. Let it down once in a while. Use some makeup. And these clothes you wear, they are so loose and baggy. Let men see what you have. A little cling on a curve never hurt. You know that’s what they see first. It’s a shame but it’s true.”
“Helga!” Color rose to Jesse’s cheeks.
Helga pointed at Sara. “Jesse, you should do as Sara does. Wear makeup and fix your hair.” A sly smile crossed the older woman’s face. “Of course, if you fixed yourself up, you would have the men’s undivided attention, so perhaps Sara wouldn’t want you to do that.”
“What?” It was Sara’s turn to be embarrassed.
Jesse laughed quietly. Helga was a piece of work.
“Sorry, Sara, I call things as I see them.” And Helga was gone, humming to herself as she walked away.
Sara stood up, as if to follow Helga. “Sometimes that woman makes me so mad.”
“Hey, you invited her into the conversation,” Jesse pointed out. “Besides, she just likes to talk. You know it doesn’t mean anything.”
“That’s easy for you to say. She said you would have the men’s undivided attention.” Sara made a face as she moved toward the door. “Hey, how about a little clothes-shopping at lunch? I heard about a great new boutique in the Galleria.”
“Sounds fun.” Sara was always shopping. She had inherited $20,000 from her grandmother last winter and was burning through it quickly.
“Well, I guess I’d better get back to work.” Sara sighed. “We’ll talk more about tonight at lunch. We haven’t gone out at night together in a long time.” She hesitated. “I miss that.”
“I’ll tr—” Jesse’s computer interrupted her, beeping three times in rapid succession, indicating that she had a new E-mail. She tapped on the keyboard and retrieved the message.
“What does it say?” Sara paused at the door. “Is this evidence of an office romance I don’t know about? Are you exchanging secret E-mails with someone?”
“No, it’s about a meeting I have to attend later today.”
“Well, that’s not very interesting. See you at lunch,” she called as she walked out.
“Right.” Jesse made certain Sara was gone, then her eyes raced back to the screen.
If you are reading this, something has happened to me. You must pick up where I’ve left off.
Go to the Greyhound bus station in downtown Baltimore. Find locker 73. The combination is 22-31-7. Inside is a key to my house on the Severn River near Annapolis. The address is 6 Gull Road. In the lower left-hand drawer of the desk in the den is a file of information I have obtained regarding a U.S. Senate race. There is a cover memo on top of the file outlining certain suspicions I have about the race. It’s being manipulated by outside interests. The supporting documentation will explain.
Get there as fast as you can. I’ve never told anyone about my house on the river, but they will still find out about it quickly enough because they can find out anything about anyone. They are that powerful. I’m sure they’ve already been through my home in Baltimore. Be careful. Trust no one.
Neil
For several moments Jesse didn’t blink as she read the message over and over. Finally the words blurred on the screen. And then she smiled. Of course. The day after tomorrow was her birthday. Her coworkers were setting her up. They were going to have a wonderful time watching her run out of here and surprise her at Neil’s river house, or maybe at the bus station.
Suddenly Jesse heard a sharp cry from the hallway, then Helga appeared in the office doorway, hands over her mouth.
“My God.” Helga’s cheeks were wet with tears.
“What is it?” Jesse flipped off the computer screen.
Helga sobbed, unable to speak.
Jesse rose from her chair. “What is it, Helga?” she asked more firmly, moving out from behind the desk to comfort the older woman.
Helga dropped her hands from her face. “I have terrible news,” she said hoarsely. “It’s Neil Robinson. He died of a heart attack last night in the lobby of the Hyatt Hotel.”
Chapter 3
The Hughes Building—a modern, glass-encased edifice—rose fifteen stories above the heart of Towson, an upper-middle-class Baltimore suburb located just north of the city limits. On a clear day David Mitchell could see Baltimore’s skyscrapers rising out of the downtown area twenty miles from his ornate top-floor office. He could see Glen Owens too—the poverty-stricken east Baltimore row-house neighborhood where he’d grown up.
When David had first joined Sagamore Investment Management Group four years ago, he’d brought his widowed mother up to his tastefully decorated office to see its dark wood paneling, antiques, and rich Oriental rug. The blue bloods had enjoyed the apple-pie gesture—and his mother’s polyester pantsuit—but David paid no attention to their snobbish smirks as she turned away after shaking their hands. She wanted to see what her youngest son had made of himself, and he wanted to show her.
David had kissed her good-bye in the lobby after her short visit. She had been so proud. He shut his eyes tightly. What would she think of him now if she knew? He hated to think about it.
Sagamore managed almost $200 billion and would have ranked as one of the country’s largest investment funds, except that the firm shunned publicity and didn’t publish the figure. In their endless search for financial information, Forbes and Fortune used every means available to determine the number, but only a few people at the firm knew, and they would not divulge it during the infrequent interviews they gave the press.
Sagamore did not accept money from just anyone, and so it didn’t have to make the public filings required of Fidelity, Vanguard, and the other hug
e money managers. Sagamore took cash exclusively from wealthy individuals and corporate pension plans in private transactions, and only after the executive committee deemed the investor worthy. The investor list was a closely guarded secret too, known only by the same short list of people who knew the amount of money the firm managed.
Investors had to pass an extensive application process before Sagamore would accept their money, but it was worth enduring such unusual treatment because of the firm’s extraordinary success. Begun in 1979, the firm had struggled initially. But in the last fifteen years it had beaten the return on the Dow Jones Industrial Average every year, and usually by a wide margin. A million dollars invested with Sagamore in 1984, its first year of stellar results, would have been worth almost $100 million today.
David had joined Sagamore at twenty-eight, upon earning his M.B.A. from the University of Virginia. After two grueling years of the case method he had graduated number three in his class. Numbers one and two had hurried to Wall Street, but Sagamore had enticed David home to Baltimore with a generous compensation package, the important attraction of avoiding the hardships of a New York City lifestyle, and the implicit guarantee that the pressure to perform at Sagamore would be nothing compared to what was required by the Street. David particularly liked that aspect. It wasn’t that he couldn’t take the pressure, he simply had no desire to devote every waking hour to his job.
As was customary at Sagamore, he had spent a year as a portfolio assistant, then become one of fifteen full portfolio managers, initially responsible for $5 billion dollars of the firm’s money, then, six months later, $10 billion. The work was stimulating, exciting, and, though the senior people had advertised differently during the recruiting process, every bit as pressure-packed as a Wall Street position.
Every portfolio manager’s performance—no matter how senior the individual—was reviewed monthly and rated on an absolute basis against the Dow Jones index and on a relative basis against other Sagamore portfolio managers. On the first day of each month the firm sent an E-mail message to all employees ranking the portfolio managers from first to last based on their previous month’s performance. Too many months on the bottom half of the list meant intense scrutiny from the executive committee and the very real possibility of being fired from the high-paying job.
This acute pressure led to a variety of consequences. Ulcers were commonplace. At least five of the portfolio managers regularly visited psychiatrists. And since David had joined Sagamore, two men in their early fifties had committed suicide—one with a closed garage door and a running car motor, the other by leaping from the Chesapeake Bay Bridge.
The bottom half of the monthly E-mail list was a nasty place for a Sagamore portfolio manager. David had found himself mired there shortly after becoming a manager and had been unable to escape since. He gazed at the skyscrapers in the distance. He would be out of the lowly position soon—as long as tomorrow went well.
“David?”
David continued staring out the window, lost in thought.
“Little brother, I apologize for rushing you, but I’ve got to get back to the garage.”
David turned away from the window and sat down in the desk chair. “Sorry, Will. I’ve just got a few things on my mind.”
“I understand. You’ve got a lot of pressure on you here.” Will was the oldest of the four Mitchell brothers. Will had never gone to college and was now a mechanic, as were the other two brothers. David was the only one who had made it to college—and out of Glen Owens. “You know I hate asking you for this.”
“I know.” This was difficult for both of them. “How much do you need?”
Will picked at the grease lodged beneath his fingernails. Finally he glanced up at his brother, then looked away. “It’s just so stupid. I should have had insurance on the damn car. But I’m trying to save money, what with the twins and—”
“How much do you need to fix it, Will?” David interrupted. He didn’t have time for this.
“Five thousand dollars.”
“Okay.” Being constantly strapped for cash could break a person’s spirit more effectively than a physical beating. David had seen it break his father. Now the same thing was happening to his older brother.
“Hello, Mr. Mitchell.”
David recognized Art Mohler’s tight-jawed, upper-crust voice immediately. Mohler was Sagamore’s senior portfolio manager and one of three members of the executive committee—the delegation that ran the firm and kept its important secrets. He was the man to whom David and the other portfolio managers reported. The bane of their existence.
Mohler didn’t actually run his own portfolio, but presided over everyone else’s. No portfolio manager could enter any stock position worth over $20 million without Mohler’s prior approval, which David had originally thought would be a good thing. If a stock lost value, there would be someone else to share the blame, he reasoned. But it didn’t work that way at Sagamore. If a stock performed well, Mohler took a large share of the credit. If a stock tanked, he blamed it on you. And the other members of the executive committee allowed Mohler that privilege.
“Good afternoon.” David forced himself to be polite even though Mohler constantly rode him about his lowly standing in the monthly rankings.
“It’s only a good afternoon if we’re making money.” Mohler was in his late fifties but appeared younger. He was short and thin, wore half-lens tortoiseshell glasses, and dressed as though he were about to film a Brooks Brothers commercial.
“Art, this is my older brother, Will,” David said as he stood up. “Will, this is Art Mohler. Art is one of our senior executives.”
Will rose quickly from the office couch and extended his hand. “How do you do, sir?”
Mohler grimaced at Will’s grimy fingernails. When they had finished shaking hands, Mohler wiped his palm on his dark suit pants. The subtle snub was not lost on Will—or David.
“I better get going.” Will picked up his jacket off the couch.
“I’ll make the arrangements for what we talked about,” David mumbled.
“Thanks, little brother.” Will nodded deferentially at Mohler. “Nice to meet you, sir.”
“Mmm.”
“See you, Will,” David called after his brother.
Mohler watched Will move toward the reception area, then turned and scowled at David. David Mitchell was tall and dark, a definite distraction to the women in the office, and from the wrong side of Baltimore’s tracks—something Mohler disliked intensely. David’s presence interrupted the old-money consistency that had ruled the firm since its inception. Mohler had voted against offering David a job but the other two committee members had overruled Mohler. He had never forgiven David for that. “David, I don’t think it’s a good idea to let your brother come up to our offices anymore.”
“Excuse me?” David had been about to sit back down but stopped.
“We often entertain high-powered clients here at Sagamore. We want them to leave with a good impression. I think you understand what I’m driving at.”
“He’s my brother. He’s a good man,” David said evenly, easing into his chair. “That’s the only impression people would leave with.”
Mohler smiled condescendingly. “Your fifth anniversary with Sagamore is only a year away now. I would think you’d want to act in the most circumspect manner possible.” Mohler sat down on the couch. “That would include taking a direct order from a member of the executive committee.”
David shifted uncomfortably in his chair at the mention of the five-year anniversary. If you had been in the bottom half of the monthly list a majority of your time with Sagamore, the executive committee quietly requested your presence on your fifth anniversary and terminated you. David had been in the bottom half most of his four years with the firm.
“I’ll be fine,” David said calmly.
“Don’t be so sure.”
“So why did you come to my office, Art?” David ignored the warning.
“I want to talk about General Engineering & Aerospace.” Mohler removed his half-lens glasses, chewed on one of the stems for a moment, then replaced them on the bridge of his patrician nose. “Two and a half years ago, against my better judgment, you convinced me to put a billion dollars of Sagamore’s money into GEA common stock. A billion dollars. Into a new issue of common stock that amounted to buying almost thirty percent of the company. And it’s looking like one of the worst large investments this firm has ever made.” Mohler opened a notebook on his lap, extracted several papers, and reviewed them. “When you bought the GEA stock, it was trading at twenty-five dollars a share. Now it’s at twenty-two. In two and a half years it’s gone down three points. In case you didn’t realize, that’s the wrong way, son,” he sneered. “Remember, we want it to go up.”
A wave of resentment coursed through David, but he managed to keep his temper in check.
Mohler removed another piece of paper from his notebook. “I have a graph here you gave me when you presented the GEA investment idea. It shows that you believed GEA stock would be at fifty dollars a share by now. That we’d make a billion dollars and double our money. Instead we’ve lost a hundred and twenty million. At least on paper. What’s going on?” Mohler was quickly becoming angry.
Once a month they went through this over the GEA investment, and every month Mohler’s criticism grew sharper. “You know, Art, I think—”
“GEA is going nowhere.” Mohler didn’t allow David to finish. “The defense industry continues to shrink, and the company hasn’t won a major Pentagon contract in three years. It’s time to jettison this position. Call the investment banks. Call our people at Alex Brown and Goldman Sachs. See what they can do for us. It’s a big position, but maybe they can arrange a couple of private trades.”
“What?” It was the first time Mohler had instructed David to actually sell the stock. And the directive couldn’t have come at a worse time. “We can’t get out now.”
Mohler rose from the couch. “What if GEA’s stock price drops further? We’ll totally blow this year’s earnings. Do you think this is funny money or something? Because it isn’t. This is real money we’re losing,” he yelled. “Big money.”
