“All those are reasons why they will sell for you. Most Jews wished they had your looks and your body. They’ll sell for you out of identity empathy. The women Jewesses will go crazy selling for you. To them you’ll be like eye candy. They always give their sales to the cutest guy, as long as he’s a Jew.”
“Okay. Where do I sign up to be a Jew?”
“It’s not that easy. It’s not like buying a candy bar or a movie ticket. You need to study with a rabbi and learn the religion. After you learn the religion, when the rabbi says you are ready, then you get a circumcision and a mikveh ritual bath. Then you get a certificate that says you’re a Jew. There’s a lot to it. The study can take many years, and getting a rabbi to teach you can be difficult.”
“Why difficult? I would think that after the Holocaust the rabbis would be trying to recruit and rebuild.”
“No, quite the contrary. Rabbis are terrified that if they recruit people they will be seen as proselytizers. Other religions hate to lose market share, and the rabbis don’t want to give other religions any reason whatsoever to be upset with Jews. They’ve been through enough shit with the Inquisition, the pogroms, the Holocaust, and those who disappear. They say, ‘Enough, already.’”
“I’ll think about it,” said Bob, which was his polite way of saying he wasn’t ready to consider David’s suggestion.
After another year of grueling road work, Bob was ready to trade places with Sisyphus. Every new sale was offset by redemption money leaving. It was a losing uphill battle. Salesmen he’d cultivated switched allegiances to other fund groups. Brokerage firms staffed mutual fund departments to keep their reps selling the family of funds concept or see their commissions docked. Brokerage policies were obstacles to managed funds competing with national distribution networks. Bob felt demoralized. He wondered if David deliberately selected stocks that were more likely to go down than up. He sold based upon his own prognostications instead of the fund’s results.
Selling past performance is infinitely easier than selling forecasts. Great past results are irrefutable proof that your management style works. Futuristic-based sales pitches are problematic. If a salesman agrees with the idea, he’ll just as likely use it somewhere else or just go buy the stock that seems to be the core of the strategy. If he disagrees, there will be no sales at all. While no one can dispute a successful record, it’s easy to disagree about the future. It’s nigh impossible to sell on the basis that although the past five years were terrible, the next five will be wonderful. Sales representatives find it hard explaining to a client that they recommended a subpar performer if subsequent years also return subpar results. They fear being in that position and avoid the risk. When a multiple product salesman has one fund performing poorly, he simply trots out another fund and sells that one. Bob implored David to consider a change.
“You need to perform better or we’re going to bleed assets. Do something! Get different newsletters, change your thinking on the markets, or merge the fund into a smaller one with a better track record. Use their track record and I’ll sell that. I don’t care what we do, but we need to make something happen. This is urgent. Everything I’ve built is in danger of coming undone.”
David, ever quick to turn the tables, retorted, “You’re never going to build the right kind of relationships if you’re selling performance. You need to sell the salesmen on the basis of their relationship with you. Performance selling puts the clients first. A good salesman doesn’t give a fuck about his clients. A salesman’s relationship with you is the sale you want.”
“I’ve got hundreds of relationships, but they’ll never stick if the performance doesn’t turn around. Even the best salesman can’t persuade a client that a piece of shit is a candy bar!” Bob’s frustrations boiled over.
“Nonsense, and don’t be disrespectful.” David snorted. “You have the wrong kind of relationships.”
“Listen for once. These guys have been incredibly loyal to us and we’re letting them down. What kind of relationship are we giving back?”
“You need the right kind of relationships. I keep telling you that. You don’t have the right kind of relationships.”
“What kind of relationship is that?’
“Jewish relationships are what you need, the kind that will stick with you through thick and thin. We’ve all, through our ancestors, been through the Holocaust together, the Inquisition, pogroms—” David was waving his arms wildly above his head like a mad man trying to fend off demons when Bob interrupted.
“David, stop. Just stop! You did not go through the Holocaust or the Inquisition or any pogrom. You are American born. Your ‘feel sorry for me’ song because you’re playing your Jew card will not sell UGGA fund shares.”
“Aha, that’s where you’re wrong! It resonates in the soul of every Jew. It sells.”
“So you believe that, if I go to the Jewish firms and tell them I feel their pain from the Holocaust, they’ll begin to sell our shares? You can’t be serious! I can’t see how that will get us anywhere!”
“I can.”
“How?”
“It will work if you become a Jew yourself. I’m sure of it. They’ll identify with you because they’ll see that you identify with them.”
“We’ve been here before, David. I don’t even look like a Jew. I have the blue eyes and blond hair, remember? I look more like a Nazi than a Jew.” Bob was incredulous, but David was serious.
“Doesn’t matter. I’ve seen some tall blue-eyed, blond-haired Jews in shul. It’s the words, the Hebrew, the Yiddish, not the looks that the Jew picks up on. Trust me on this. Let me go over it again so even you can understand it. Half the people in the securities business are Jews. In order to relate to Jews, to get along with them, you must become a Jew yourself.”
JOINING THE TRIBE
“This is America. It’s a secular world now. Tribalism is history, David. The world has gone modern, secular, and global. You can’t be serious. You expect me to change my religion?” Bob thought David was being illogical.
“The world is only secular on the surface. Down deep inside your soul, and down deep inside the soul of every Jew, there’s an unbreakable tribal bond. You may have had nothing to do with the Holocaust, since you were born in the last month of the war, but in truth you had everything to do with it. You lived and a Jew’s baby died in those years. No Jew will ever forget that their cousins and brothers and sisters not yet born are not here because you are here. Your ancestors killed our ancestors. What do you think the words ‘Never forget’ and ‘Never again’ mean anyway?” David made the illogical sound plausible.
“Jesus Christ, you’re serious about this. You really are serious!” Bob was shocked, but he believed what he was hearing.
“Yes, I’m serious, and don’t give me any more of that Jesus Christ shit. That’s just gentile code for it was okay to slaughter Jews by the millions because we killed Jesus somehow. Maybe if you can believe stuff that was written about Jesus two hundred years after he died then it’s okay to talk about him, but I don’t like hearing his name. To us Jews, it’s just the okay to kill us again. I hate to hear those words. Most Jews who know their history know what those words really mean and it terrifies them, so please do not ever utter them in my presence again.”
David was waving his hands in front of his face as if to ward off a swarm of bees.
“I am very sorry. I had no idea the impact of words I’ve used every day since I was a child.”
David sensing vulnerability, decided it was time to drive his point home.
“You say you want to have a big asset management company. You say you’re willing to do what it takes. I’m telling you the Jews’ sales will stick because the relationship will stick. It’s the tribe, man. It’s the tribe! It’s that old-fashioned religion, that old tribal relationship. It’s more solid than any country club membership. Those country club types just play at acting important. They all have their heads up their asses. They can’t see what’s inside a heart like
a Jew can. It’s great to be a Jew. There’s nothing quite like it. It’s the greatest country club in the world. The gentile clubs don’t even have a purpose, just about members screwing other members. Just trust me on this. You want to be a Jew, and you need to be a Jew. You’re going to love being a Jew.”
“All right, so how do I get started?” Bob was frustrated enough to try anything. He was about to undergo a religious metamorphosis from a pedestrian gentile caterpillar into either a heavenly butterfly or a neurotic moth, he wasn’t sure which. What the heck! Sales are in the dumpster anyway. If it might help sales, I’ll try anything!
“First you’ve got to overcome the rejections. You’ve got to convince a rabbi you’re serious about this. He’s going to turn you away three times, reject you. If you come back a fourth time, maybe he’ll accept you, if conditions are right.”
“This sounds like the cock crowing three times when Peter rejects Christ. I wonder if that Bible story comes from the rabbis’ three rejections.”
“Who knows? I don’t know jack about Christianity. Religion is just mumbo jumbo anyway. You just have to get past it. It’s kind of like running a gauntlet. You can do this if you put your mind to it! You can become a Jew!”
“You said conditions. What conditions?”
“Oh that. I was referring to your kids if and when you have some. See, the rabbi doesn’t really give a shit about you, but he’s going to want to see that you’re enough of a Jew to want your kids to be Jews too. He’s going to want to believe kids of yours will get a good religious education, and a Jewish religious education is the very best a kid can get. The rabbis hammer the crap out of the kids. They got to learn all the Bible stories and what they mean. They learn all about right and wrong, how God guides a good person’s life. The rabbi wants to hear sometime in his preliminary talks with you that he has a shot at teaching your future kids the Jewish ways, so they’ll grow up to be good human beings, mensch material. Rabbis are about saving humanity from its base dark side and helping people love life and love God and being a force for good in the world. He’s going to want a shot at that.”
“David, I have no kids.”
“Well, you might someday if that Indian minx drags you into her teepee.”
“You’re giving me ideas, David,” Bob pretended to jest. David pretended not to hear.
“You’ll have to study like you’re back in school again. It’s not easy. It can take years of nights of study. You’ve got to learn the Hebrew language, the holidays, the rituals, the services. The rabbi, your teacher, will want to see you are taking it seriously.”
“How long must I study?”
“Until your rabbi says you are ready, not before. It could be three years, could be ten, and could be never. It’s up to the rabbi. He’s not going to turn you loose on his congregation until he’s satisfied he can present you as a bona fide Jew. It’s an extremely serious process. I could never do it myself, to be honest, but we Jews who are born to it get in easier. We just have to go to Bible school and get our Bar Mitzvah. You’ll have to learn all the mitzvahs.”
“What are mitzvahs? Some kind of matzo?”
“Mitzvahs are the rules. There’re six hundred and nineteen of them. They cover everything you should and should not do in life, from not killing to not walking behind a woman who’s not your wife because her ass might tempt you, to looking into a stream when a woman crosses because the reflection of her pussy on the water might give you a hard-on and tempt you to fuck her, to licking up your wife’s pussy before you screw her so she’s got an easy slippery time getting your dick into her. If you follow the mitzvahs, you’ll find life is just better.”
“Do the Muslims have mitzvahs too?”
“I have no idea. I don’t know much about them except they love being pissed off and they want to kill everybody. They’re angry and miserable if they can’t hate somebody. They like to shoot guns into the air and beat their women. Maybe that’s required in their religion. That’s all I know about them.”
“So Jews and Muslims aren’t similar, but both are from the Middle East?”
“Right. The two main differences are that Jews like life and Muslims seem obsessed with death. The other big difference is they ended up camping over the oil and we Jews ended up camped on the major trade route, the Levant. That’s why we also have that third kind of Jew besides the Ashkenazis and the Sephardics. We have the Tel Aviv Jew.”
“What kind of Jew is that?”
“The Tel Aviv Jew is the Jew who likes to do a quick trade and then move on to the next. They make good stock traders and deal guys, always looking to do a trade or put a deal together. They make the world go around but they have no integrity beyond the transaction, kind of like agency brokers compared to advisors. There’s no care about a relationship or ongoing business with them. They don’t care about peanut butter on matzo either. They live on pastrami.
“Thanks, this really helps a lot.”
“You’re welcome. Any time you have a question about how to be a Jew, just ask. But remember to always just do as I say, never as I do. I’m not what you’d call a model Jew.”
“Okay, after I’ve finished all the studies and I’m rabbi ready, then what?”
“Then you get to have your service.”
“Like a prayer service?”
“Sort of. You get to do some praying, and then you get your mikveh bath. That’s a ritual bath. Then the molke comes. He’s the special rabbi.”
“What does he do?”
“He circumcises you. He takes this special knife and—”
“What!” Bob interrupted, alarmed. “I’ve already had that done when I was a baby. I’m not going to let some guy carve my dick. I’m an adult. This is crazy!”
“Not to worry. He’s good at it. He’s a prick expert. He just makes a clean pass at it, kind of sticks the knife into your dick and draws blood. It’s ritual, that’s all. His knife never slips. He’s never sliced off a dick yet.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah, I’m sure. You’ll get to keep your dick.”
After trying three rabbis who sent them away telling them they were crazy, David and Bob found one liberal rabbi who, after three rejections, agreed to work with Bob. After eight years of study, he became a Jew.
TRACKING DAVID
True to her father’s advice, Barbara set out to track the human animals that worked at UGGA. For animals, it was enough to listen to the elders talk about the tendencies of each, to hear and remember their stories, as was the custom of oral tradition that served her people for thousands of years. For human animals, the ones who left their tracks on papers, she needed more than memory of who was where and when, who said what and when, who talked about whom, what routines were followed and not followed, what protocols were observed, what information was freely available or guarded, and how the information was guarded. Thus Barbara began keeping a notebook of all these things. Her notebook had journal entries to record the times of observations and was further divided into sections for reference and cross-reference. There were sections dedicated to each employee and each firm contact, vendors, service agents, regulators, attorneys, accountants, and each salesman who sold fund shares. Her notebook blossomed into a miniature library of several volumes. She tracked every conceivable detail, convinced that through her diligence patterns would reveal themselves in her cross-referencing system.
And they did. For example, Barbara noticed that shortly after a visit from executives of a brokerage firm that sold the fund’s shares, commission trades were placed with that brokerage firm. Oddly, but not coincidental, the dollar retention of the broker for the trades, after clearing firm costs, was always two percent of that brokerage firm’s fund sales. Apparently David was paying an additional two percent for fund sales out of fund assets because these brokerages charged substantially more than execution costs of most firms and they had no research departments. Barbara calculated the fund payments in excess commission charges result
ed in the brokerages receiving an additional forty percent compensation above the posted prospectus rate. She surmised David skirted regulations requiring full disclosure of transaction costs, and disclosure of allowable fund expenses.
Her tracking revealed David was a creature of habit. Every Friday he stopped in bookkeeping with a black briefcase before he left the office. He returned to bookkeeping every Monday with the same briefcase before he went to his own office. Prior to her tracking regimen, she assumed David just stopped into bookkeeping to check on account balances or sales, but upon giving the matter greater thought, Barbara noticed he never carried that briefcase any other times. He transported something in that black briefcase that he did not trust to leave unattended at the firm over weekends.
Chief told her the only way to understand the animal was to actually watch the animal. She mustered her courage and invented a reason to barge into bookkeeping while David was there on a Friday, after he entered with his briefcase. She timed David’s stay in bookkeeping for three successive Fridays and calculated that the four-minute mark was the exact halfway point of his visit. The next Friday she made her move.
“Debbie,” Barbara addressed the head bookkeeper as she flung open the door to the area. “Could I trouble you to please pull the files you have for tax payments for occupational taxes?”
David’s back was to the door, but he was in the midst of receiving from Debbie Wasserman a large brass key ring containing a single brass key. Debbie sat in the back corner and the transfer of the key was not apparent to any of the other bookkeepers. Barbara was the only one who witnessed it. David turned to face Barbara, an alarmed look on his face. It was obvious he and Debbie were caught in the midst of an activity no one was supposed to see. David quickly regained his composure.
“Do you need it right now?” Debbie seemed annoyed. “What do you need it for, anyway?” Her add-on was a tell of sorts; bookkeeping had no business asking why an administrator wanted anything. It was plain to Barbara there was something going on between the pair, and Debbie was annoyed at the intrusion. Barbara, equally quick, was ready for this contingency.
When The Butterflies Come Page 20
