Текст книги "Water from My Heart"

Автор книги: Charles Martin

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Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

Chapter Four

Given the size of Harvard’s endowment and the immense block of recently freed-up time in my schedule, and having worn out my welcome in and around Boston, I began looking into study abroad scholarships and found one custom-made for guys like me—finance-minded juniors with off-the-charts test scores, all A’s in math, no parents, no siblings, and no extended family. What the scholarship board called a “child of prodigy and hardship.” Funny how there’s so little difference between “prodigy” and “prodigal.” The summer after my junior year, the Pickering-Kuscht Scholarship sent me to London, where I studied derivatives, leverage, and the emerald-green eyes of a goddess named Amanda Pickering.

Amanda was beautiful, self-confident, loved to run, and—​fortunately for me—directionally challenged. After I quit track, I rediscovered my love of running—much of which I did at night, so while most of my classmates made the rounds of the British pubs sampling gallons of Guinness, I ran the streets of London. Incidentally, so did Amanda. Only difference was that I could find my way back to my hotel once I turned around. We’d been in a couple of classes together but given that she was a bit guarded, it was no wonder that we’d never said two words to each other. Amanda also had one other trait much talked about among the fathers and sons of the New England elite: She was the sole heir to the Pickering fortune. Her college experience was her father’s personal talent search among the East’s best and brightest to find someone to manage his precious money. One night, about 1:00 a.m., I found her—several miles from our hotel—standing next to an Underground sign attempting to read a map. She glanced at me but was too proud to admit she needed help.

It was pretty common knowledge that her father had put her up in one of those top-floor penthouses at the Ritz. I put my finger on the map. “The Ritz is here.”

She glanced at me out of the corners of her eyes, nodded, and acted as though she were studying the map for an alternate route home. “Yep.”

Her eyes still had yet to land on any one point on the map. I pointed again. “And…you’re over here.”

This only served to push the skin between her eyes closer and deepen the wrinkle, so I pointed behind her. “Which means you should run that way.”

She tilted her head, still trying to make sense of the map and not admit defeat. Finally, she turned to me. “I’ll bet you’re good with a Rubik’s Cube.”

“Fifty-two seconds.”

She shook her head and spoke, still trying to make sense of the map. “Been coming here my whole life but”—she wiped the sweat off her face—“looks so different in the daytime, and we always had a driver.”

I pushed against the lamppost like I was stretching my calves. “Yeah…me, too. ’Cept mine would never shut up. Talked the entire time. Couldn’t help but learn something. Knew this town like the back of my hand by the time I was eight.”

“I’m lost, and you’re making fun of me.”

I shook my head and continued to poke fun at her. “Good help is just tough to find these days.”

She smiled. “I’ve heard of you.”

“Really?”

“You’re that arrogant runner who’s been taking everybody’s money in poker. Even won a car.”

I shrugged. “It was his father’s and he’s got several more.”

A knowing chuckle. “Yes, he does.” She continued. “Then you went in front of Father’s scholarship board with some song and dance about how you’re all alone in this world. Making everybody feel sorry for you.”

“Father’s?”

“You’re Dad’s scholarship pick.”

“I thought a board decided that.”

She didn’t look at me. “You thought wrong.”

“I spent over an hour answering their questions.”

“Evidently, you answered them quite well.”

“I have a talent for telling people what they want to hear.”

“Are you always like this?”

“Like what?”

“Self-effacing.”

“If I knew what that meant, I’d answer you.”

She shook her head once. “An honest man at Harvard.”

That’s twice in my life I’d been called honest. Funny. I didn’t feel it. I shrugged. “Sometimes being honest and telling the truth are not the same.”

She sized me up. “Daddy will be so impressed.”

“You tell him everything?”

“What I don’t tell him, Mr. Pickering discovers on his own.” A pause. “Money has its…responsibilities.”

“A lot of guys would shoulder that burden for you.”

A pause. “That include you?”

“I think whoever shoulders your financial burden will get your father’s approval long before he gets yours, and I have no desire to play that game.”

As one of the richest twenty-five and unders in the United States, my guess was that Amanda was not accustomed to being spoken to so plainly and with so little regard for how much financial leverage she wielded. I didn’t know whether she believed me or not, but she perceived my honesty as a breath of fresh air. “And you’d be right about that.”

“I’ll bet your high school experience was a blast.”

“It had its moments.”

“How many times did you run away?”

She smiled. “Every night.”

I chuckled. “Like now.”

More honesty. Another nod. “Yes, like now.”

I held out my hand. “Charlie Finn.”

She held my hand several seconds. “Amanda Pickering.”

I turned. “Come on. This conversation would’ve been over long ago if you knew your way home.”

The best way to describe our friendship was one of curious amusement. Unlike the other guys who’d literally stalked her, looking for the opportunity to strike and share their résumés—and, hopefully, her money—I’d stumbled upon her, and rather than play the rescuing knight, I’d poked fun at her—which set me apart from everyone else and which I think she appreciated.

My reason for this was pretty simple. I’d been playing poker long enough to know that there’s always somebody with greater skill, more chips, and better cards. This dictated that my chances with Amanda were zero, so why waste my time acting otherwise. As a result, we adopted somewhat of a take-it-or-leave-it attitude with each other. That meant unlike all the other guys lining up to take her out, we actually spent a good bit of time together.

The finance class I was taking culminated in a single project. On the first day, the professor had issued everyone a hundred thousand dollars in Monopoly money, then told us to create our own portfolio and keep him abreast of all trades. Stock picking had never really been my thing but research was, so I made some good decisions, shorted a few stocks, covered myself with some options and calls, and, as was consistent with my personality, held very few long positions. When the summer semester came to a close, my portfolio had outperformed my classmates’. This, more than my relationship with his daughter, caught the eye of Marshall Pickering. On the day before my return to Boston, Amanda offered to let me tag along on the family G5. A couple of other guys would be there. As tough as it was, I knew that if I wanted a chance with that girl I needed to not be like those guys. I needed to play it cool. I also had a pretty good idea the invite came through her father, given that I’d just won his portfolio contest. So I declined. “I’ve never traveled Europe much, so I’m going to take the train back through France and Spain. Get lost for a few days. Sample the beer and maybe the food.” I knew if I invited her that she’d come, and I knew she wanted to. I also knew that this relationship would never make the return trip across the ocean. Daddy would see to that. I waved her off. “I’ll see you back in Boston.” I smiled and then pointed west. “It’s that way.”

She laughed, held my hand for a second longer than she should, and that’s when I knew she’d fallen for me. Amanda was strong, independent, highly intelligent, incredibly good-looking, and she had—or would have—more money than she could spend in ten lifetimes. She was also a pawn in Daddy’s world. And while her dad loved her, I had a feeling he loved his money more.

The next two weeks were some of the loneliest I’d ever known. I forced myself to stay gone a week longer with no contact just to give an impression. The bluff worked. When I landed in Boston, her driver was waiting on me at the airport. He stood next to his limo. “Mr. Finn?”

The window behind him rolled down slightly and Amanda’s emerald-green eyes smiled at me. We didn’t leave each other’s side for nearly a week.

A month later, she invited me to have dinner with her folks, private plane, helicopter, yacht, the Hamptons, all in a casual effort to meet the family. I was no dummy. Mr. Pickering had a file on me six inches thick. I was pretty certain he knew my grades in grammar school, how many pizzas I’d delivered, that I’d had my wisdom teeth pulled my senior year of high school, and he could recite my college transcripts from memory. He was either allowing me to come to dinner to publicly undress me in front of his daughter and show her the fraud I really was, or he was raising an eyebrow and wanting to know what I was made of. His future son-in-law might marry into this family, but he’d earn every penny of her money.

After kissing his daughter, he extended his hand and put his arm around me. “Charlie. Welcome. Come in. We’ve heard so much about you.” He could not have been warmer. My first thought was, This guy is good. Remind me to never play poker with him.

Too late. We were already playing.

I chose my words at dinner, speaking only when spoken to, responding to Amanda’s mom, who fired off most of the questions. These people had made up their minds long before I walked in that door, so I enjoyed my meal and answered honestly and casually. I figured that by not trying to impress her folks, I was actually doing a better job of impressing them—if that was possible. When asked, I gave the short details of my life—which I was pretty sure they already knew. Dad drove a cab but killed himself when he wrapped it around a concrete barrier with a blood alcohol of about .3. Mom worked two to four jobs to support us but followed Dad my junior year of high school. Three questions shy of acing the SAT. Harvard full ride. 4.0 GPA. Four-minute, seven-second mile. Would graduate a semester early.

Her mother raised a finger. “Following the death of your mother, who raised you? Supported you?”

“I did.”

“How did you survive? Buy food? Pay the power bill?”

“I delivered pizza and sold drugs.”

While she laughed at the joke, thinking I was making one, he sat back and smiled smugly—telling me he knew I was not.

Amanda’s dad poured wine for everyone at the table and saw it as his personal mission to stoop to the level of a butler and make sure everyone was sufficiently happy with his “house” wine, which, Amanda whispered, wholesaled at $200 a bottle. I didn’t touch it and every time he offered I declined.

He noticed my lack of consumption before we ate our salads and watched with curiosity as my wine sat untouched all night. When they lit the bananas Foster, he asked almost with disappointment, “Could we get you something else?”

This was it. His first push and I knew it. He was raising me. I shook my head and answered only what I was asked. “No thank you.”

Another push. A raise. “You don’t like my wine?”

I met his raise and raised again. “Don’t know. Haven’t tried it.”

He waited, eyeing the cards in his hand.

Amanda sipped and smiled. More amusement. She tapped my foot below the table.

A single shake of my head. “Don’t drink.”

He knew this, but rather than admit that, he raised his glass and toasted me and then his daughter and finally his wife and their Persian dog. I wouldn’t say that I won that hand as much as I had succeeded in earning myself a seat at the invite-only table.

Following dinner, we “retired” to his porch, looking out across the water. He offered me a cigar. Again, I refused. He rolled his around his mouth, lit it, and then sucked on it until the end glowed like a hot iron. Oddly, the color matched his eyes. Drawing several times on the Cuban, he exhaled and filled the air around us with a haze of smoke. “You don’t appear to have any vices, Charlie.”

I was in way over my head. Any idiot sitting in my chair knew that. This guy ate guys like me for breakfast and picked his teeth with what remained of our backbones. Somewhere around the third course, his stiffening body language told me that I’d be seeing less of Amanda following dinner. Little I could say or do would change that. He wanted someone strong but not someone who would so willingly challenge him—which is what I’d been doing all night. And he knew that. And he knew that I knew that.

Given that I could read the cards I’d been dealt, I again decided on the honest approach. I can’t really tell you why other than I had a pretty good feeling that this guy could read my bluffs far better than I could make them. Besides, I’d never had dinner with a man worth almost a billion.

Halfway through his cigar, he said, “Amanda tells me you’re a bit of a poker player.”

“I’ve played some.”

He pointed to a felt-covered table. An innocent fatherly face. “Shall we?”

I folded my legs and rested my hands in my lap. “No need.”

He studied his cigar, drawing deeply. I think he was starting to get irritated. “Really?”

“I made money by playing trust fund kids who viewed poker as entertainment. And I sincerely doubt you brought me here to entertain you.”

He chuckled, admiring the red tip. “You preyed on gullible people.”

“I provided a service to kids who were burning through Daddy’s money and should know better.”

“And you know better?”

“I saw an opportunity.”

He nodded. “And seized on it. I like that.” The innocence drained out. “I pay a lot of money for people who can read other people.”

“Mr. Pickering, I have the feeling you can read me a lot better than I can read you.”

He smiled and grabbed his imaginary chips off the table. “Touché.” He may not have liked me, but he admired me for folding my hand when faced with someone who held better cards. He glanced at me. The smoke exited his throat like a chimney. “Marshall. Call me Marshall.”

*  *  *

With her parents’ apparent approval, Amanda and I “dated” through our senior year. Harvard seemed impressed enough with my undergraduate record that they offered to take me in the MBA program, and while I didn’t know for sure, I was pretty well convinced that Marshall had more than just a little to do with it. After the first week of classes, Marshall called me into his office and made me a job offer I couldn’t refuse. I decided to play another hand and accepted.

Marshall ran money. His and others’. He also owned companies around the world. The more I got to know him, the more I came to realize that the story about his net worth being a billion was off by about $2 billion. There was a lot at stake. He had three billion reasons to choose wisely. Knowing this, he’d staffed his “firm” with young guys like me under the guise of training us. Mentoring us. Showing us the ropes out of the goodwill of his heart. In truth, he meant to run us through the wringer and see what we were made of. Owners of horses do the same thing. Fill their stable with the cream and see which Secretariat rises to the surface. Butchers also do this with meat they are about to tenderize. Pickering and Sons was a highly successful hedge fund in an era when most were folding up shop. It was also Marshall’s own private joke on the world. He had no sons. His entire life’s goal after becoming otherworldly wealthy was finding the one thing he couldn’t buy.

Someone to guard what he valued in his prolonged absence—i.e., his death.

He showed me around his office, introduced me to the guys, and then casually showed me my cubicle. Gone was the tender father from dinner, pouring wine and lighting cigars. “I have several hundred résumés, many better than yours, sitting on my desk. Each detailing why and how some young man is chomping at the bit to sit in this chair.” He spun the chair around. “Why don’t you take a turn?”

My mother was fond of saying something that had always stuck with me: “Never look a gift horse in the mouth.”

So I started classes and, with Amanda dangling as the unspoken carrot, became Mr. Pickering’s boy. His money also dangled—not so subtly—but unlike the other forty men who worked for him, I wasn’t there for his money.

Amanda and I fell in love—at least as much as any two people can when they’re separated by nine zeros and a father who is little more than a master puppeteer controlling everyone’s motions with the strings between his fingers. For Christmas, we flew the family’s G5 to Vail and then Switzerland. Venezuela for summer vacation and everywhere in between. I studied, managed to hover near the top of my class, and responded to Marshall’s requests. Given my ability to read people and situations, I became his “assessor.” Meaning he sent me into new territory, new acquisitions, and asked me to evaluate the three things upon which all businesses live and die: the balance sheet, the widget, and leadership. Harvard might have printed my sheepskin and been credited with my education, but I cut my teeth with Marshall.

Over the next two years, I got pretty good at it. Better than any “boy” he’d ever had. I graduated with my MBA and then the real work began. Marshall paid me a modest six-figure salary, which I didn’t have time to spend, with the promise of a bonus at the end of the year based on production. He did this with all his horses. I owned a condo in Boston but lived on his Gulfstream. In the first year out of Harvard, I slept in my own bed twenty-six times.

Throughout all of this, I kept up my running. Not quite as fast as I once was, but pain needs an exit so my miles increased. Running was where I worked out my legs and feet what I couldn’t work out of my mind. It was therapy. It was the bubbling effect of Marshall on me. Whether I was running to or from, I couldn’t say.

My first bonus brought me mid-six figures. Sounds like a lot, and it was, except that my work had produced almost a hundred million in balance sheet revenue for Marshall. Upon one of my returns, somebody hung #23 above my cubicle. And they were right. In everybody’s eyes but Marshall’s, I was.

Remember how I told you I never played cards with people who were better than me? That works only if you figure out ahead of time that they’re better. Brendan Rockwell was a pedigree kid, a standout on the Harvard crew team, and first in his Stanford MBA class. That in and of itself created immediate tension between the two of us. Stanford and Harvard have long disdained each other because they both do the same thing better than anyone. While I was traveling the continent and half the globe, Brendan had worked his way up Marshall’s ladder, even earning the nickname “Papa Brown” because of his extensive work brown-nosing Marshall. Evidently, Marshall appreciated the fealty because I soon found myself working alongside him. Teaching him the ropes. He was tall, chiseled, highly intelligent, articulate, crafty, quick on his feet, as good if not better with numbers than I, and would not hesitate to slit my throat if I let my guard down. Brendan wanted one thing and it had nothing to do with Amanda—although he’d take her if she came with the package. He intended to get his money the old-fashioned way.

In Marshall’s battle plan, I was the boots on the ground and he had no better field general than me, but the problem with that scenario is that I was always gone. Reporting in by phone. Brendan, on the other hand, reported in person and Brendan wanted that old man’s money. Pretty soon, he weaseled his way into every reporting relationship and became the hand behind the curtain controlling the levers. Hence the revised nickname “Oz Brown.” I told you he was a better cardplayer than me. He and Marshall were cut from the same cloth. I soon learned that Brendan would take my reports, study them, lift what he wanted, and later use incomplete facts to poke holes in my arguments. It’s not the frontal assault that kills you. It’s the flank attack. Death by a thousand cuts.

My second year in the firm, Amanda came to see me in my office. As she left, she lingered at the door. She was heavy. Anytime she left his office, she was heavy. She leaned against the doorframe and whispered, “You busy this fall?”

“Not especially.”

“How would you like to go on an extended vacation—with me?”

I had a feeling she was talking about more than just travel. “Define ‘extended.’”

She walked to my desk and kissed me, holding her lips to mine for several seconds. “As in, ‘the rest of our lives.’”

It was the first and only time we ever talked about getting married, but it also let me know that Marshall had bugged my office because after this conversation with Amanda, his interaction with me changed. More voice mails. Less face-to-face. The next morning I was on a plane for parts west. Of the next eight weeks, I was gone all but four days. Then came Thanksgiving, on which I was conveniently stuck on a well-drilling platform in the Gulf of Mexico with a bunch of sweaty Texans. Amanda called me and I heard Marshall laughing with Brendan in the background. I could read the writing on the wall. Amanda and I were caught in a machine and the gears were chewing us to pieces.

Given my experience with my office, I was rather certain Marshall listened to all our calls, so, in a sense, I was forcing his hand. I said, “Remember that vacation?”

“Think about it all the time.”

“When?”

I could hear the smile in her voice. “Is this a family affair or just the two of us?”

“That’s up to you.”

“It’d kill Daddy.”

“He’ll get over it.”

*  *  *

The following week, Brendan came to work to discover that his office, which had sat next door to mine, had been—wonder of wonders—moved upstairs. Same floor as Marshall. Just down the hall. Shouting distance. Further, while us boys had been working the chain gang, her father had continued to insert her in the public eye and Amanda had become the face of Pickering. That meant that Marshall began “requiring” more of her presence up front. More face time. Interestingly, those requirements, more often than not, conflicted with our plans.

Then came the Cinco Padres Café Compañía fiasco.