Authors: Tom Connolly
“No, Eddie, it’s not bad. It’s good. Today they went up 40 percent. They released earnings early. Revenue and EPS beat by a lot. Guidance for next quarter is up 30 percent on a large new Chinese contract they got. And they announced a stock buyback.”
“And we sold?”
“No. I couldn’t reach you.”
“What? Kish—rule one—25 percent on any investment in a week—we’re out.”
“Eddie, rule 2. We both decide on investments more than four million dollars.”
“What?”
“Yes, with the gain today it pushed those stocks up over four.”
Valerie and Sophie chatted and watched as their two young men enjoyed a giddy dance as they walked back to the blanket.
“And we’re happy because?” Valerie asked.
The Brunswick Fund was created for the altruistic reason of keeping a group of boys together in a lifelong friendship. The job of managing the fund had always belonged to Wheelwright and Moira. Edward had envisioned it and together they managed it, through high school and now through the first years of college, with extraordinary success. Edward was initially guided by his banker father but more recently relied on the combined research of Kish and himself. They rarely discussed the fund beyond the seven of the boys, Valerie McGuire being the exception.
“Some success with the fund,” Eddie replied. Usually the furthest the twenty year would go in discussing the fund in front of anyone else.
“We’ll be going,” Kish said, “just wanted to share some good news with you.” In the early evening in the meadow, the four young people stood. An elderly couple passed by the top of the meadow as the girls hugged. The boys shook hands and hugged the other’s girlfriend. “I’ll talk with you Kish.”
As Kish and Sophie ascended the meadow, Valerie asked Eddie, “Do you think Kish is taking Sophie to the secret garden?”
Eddie turned and looked at Val, his eyes gleaming. “That’s our spot. I never talk about that,” he said, tugging Valerie back to the blanket.
“Not here, Eddie, didn’t you just see that other couple?”
“Then let’s go to the garden.”
“Let’s just stay here for now. It’s so pretty this time of day. You can beguile me with your financial exploits.”
“Well, last week…”
“I’m kidding. I don’t care about that,” Valerie said, glancing up and seeing no one else. She rolled over on top of the only boy she had ever loved.
************
Later, as dusk turned to dark, after making love in the open meadow, they lay naked facing the night sky.
“I told you about the problems my father’s having, “Eddie said.
“Yes.”
“Well, it’s getting worse. As much as I know about what he does, it seems I know nothing.”
Valerie turned on her side, her breasts spilling onto Eddie’s arm. She raised her head up, positioning her elbow to support her head in the palm of her hand. “Is he going to be alright; I mean what else has happened?”
“I thought it was just the drinking. But it’s not. The problem is what’s causing him to drink.”
“I don’t understand.” Val asked, “You want to talk about it.”
“Not really,” he said, but then he went on, “except my old man worked for Buck Simon at Oceans Bank. Cut him in two, he did. Guy’s the nastiest bastard in the world. Even let one of his henchmen can his son before he canned the henchman.”
“Over what, I mean I knew your father worked at Oceans, but what did Simon do to him,” Val probed, getting more interested.
“Dad was one of Simon’s vice presidents. Oversaw risk management. He tried to control Simon from his egomaniacal ambition to put the financial supermarket together. He saw what Simon was doing: buying off the politicians, getting Glass-Stengel repealed, allowing the mega-bank to come into being,” Edward said, now sitting back, now leaning forward. Anxious.
“But it was Simon’s total disregard for any constraints that got my father. My father played by the rules, he knew what they were, why they existed and he knew what exceptions could be made. Simon was reckless, insulting. Rules, principles, laws. They were a challenge for him. They drove him,” Edward said.
“And?” Val chirped in.
Edward sat up, “Dad said that what started to push him over the edge was the abuse of shareholders. Simon rewarded himself and his henchmen fabulously. He spread money around the city buying largess through charity.”
“But Simon gives tons to charity. How can you object to that?” Val asked
“He doesn’t give two shits for charity. It’s the new grease for the system and his ego,” Wheelwright added, using his right hand emphatically as if lunging with an epee.
“Huh?” said Val, trying desperately to fathom what Edward meant.
“It’s grease. It’s ego. It’s leverage. It gives him an edge for whatever he wants to do.”
“How do you figure?”
“Spitzer when he was Attorney General had his ass. He was going to do time. My father said he never saw the bastard so afraid. Simon met with my father every day, for weeks trying to find a way out. My father was actually enjoying it. All the pain had been worth this to watch the weasel squirm.”
Val asked, “But I never heard of an indictment.”
“Bingo,” Edward said lunging with his epee once again. Smiling sarcastically, he added, “There wasn’t. Simon bought Spitzer off.”
“Your father told you that?” Val asked.
“The world knew that. Simon paid a 400 million dollar fine.”
“Big fine.”
“But not with his money. With Oceans’ shareholders money.”
“And Simon got nothing, right; I mean no personal fine, no indictment, nothing?” Val asked.
“Viola! Except his picture in the
Times
the next week for being a model, generous New Yorker.”
“It paid off,” Val said, “the charitable giving.”
“It became the model for all the other crooks. Spitzer had them all. Let them all buy their way out. The banks were using their investment banks to spin IPOs, give them favorable ratings, and give IPO shares away to favored politicians. Fined ten banks 1.4 billion dollars and not an indictment or day of jail time for any one of the bank heads he caught breaking the law.”
“And Spitzer, what does he get out of this?” Val asked, knowing the answer.
“The governor’s office.”
“But my father didn’t leave Oceans because of what ultimately happened there.”
“What then?” Val came back.
“When my father tried one last time to get Oceans out of the packaging-of-mortgages business and CDO derivatives before everything turned into the great recession, he said Simon stood in his office and laughed at him.
“He told my father ‘mind your own fucking business.’” My father was lost. Simon was up to his ass in creating the financial disaster that took the whole world down for six years. After that the relationship was shot. My father retired early. As if that wasn’t enough, Simon got the rolodex out and spread the word through his network in the finance community. My father was done in the industry.”
Wheelwright’s face reddened in the black night.
“And your father now?” Val asked, sadly.
“It’s not a happy ending. He’s really troubled. My father thought he’d have freedom after telling me. Now whenever he drinks he comes crying on my shoulder that I shouldn’t think badly of him. I don’t. I try reassuring him, but it’s the financial disaster that destroyed so much. Simon was responsible for it. My father felt he should have done more. He can’t get over that his own anger at Simon.”
Chapter 14
Edward Wheelwright was different. He alone was unfazed by all around him, but then he had Valerie McGuire at his side. At sixteen they met at Tod’s Point beach in Old Greenwich; the following year they became lifeguards at that beach. Each summer through high school, they spent together; each winter they were mostly apart as their schools were in different towns, their families’ social circles in different orbits. Through their separation they grew stronger; through their togetherness they found their life.
Valerie McGuire cared about much and wanted little. Both encompassed Edward Wheelwright, whom she cared for so much and when with him needed so little. When they went to different universities, they were not so far apart. School breaks were often, and with a five-week vacation over the Christmas holiday that brought them home, they saw each other frequently. During the endless summers during their first two years in college, they were together constantly as lifeguards at Tod’s Point and as lovers. When not engaged in those activities, they spent time with their mutual friends—Eddie’s six “brothers” and their love interests. During the school year once a month, they alternatively took the Acela high speed train—she to Boston and he to Manhattan.
While there was a heart and mental meld between Eddie and Valerie, her focus on Eddie exceeded his for her. He did love her and was not distracted by other young women, but he needed more. Despite the family wealth, and it was considerable as Mark Wheelwright had been a senior VP at Oceans Bank, Edward strove for something larger. Not for wealth or power, for when Valerie pressed to know what this inner drive was, he could not define it. Not yet.
Valerie thought it was the peer pressure, being tied to his brothers. The Ball’s, Barnes’ and Bridge’s fortunes were great and derived from ownership, even the Trout’s fortune was growing significantly with the establishment of Trout Solar and it’s coming initial public offering. And yet by establishing the Brunswick Fund as a way to keep their friendship ties tight and grow his investing prowess, Eddie was inextricably linking himself to a subservient role in support of his brothers.
Valerie could see it. She tried nudging Eddie towards self-sufficiency. He was strong, confident, smart, and handsome and did not need the brothers to grow. They, on the other hand, clung to his youthful exuberance and leadership. They relied on him for life outside the stuffiness of the stultifying life they led behind tall hedges and gate houses. Still, it was Edward Wheelwright who needed much and brought everyone along in his quests.
There was a time when they crossed the Charles Bridge, went to the Pantheon and slept in on Sunday mornings in Kensington. They bargained for oil paintings like Bohemians on Nevsky Prospect, ate tomato salads in San Gimigiano, and swam at Majorica. The summers during and after their junior year of college were spent on the modern day version of LeGrande Tour. They took trains from Amsterdam to Bitburg; they took boats on the Rhine and buses up to the other coliseum in Verona or to the Palio in Siena. They fell in and out of love so many times with so many beautiful women the concept of beauty became love. The sight of a stunning Spanish girl in the Prado became the thunderbolt. Walking along Grafton Street beside a redhead with freckles and skin kissed by the air of Eire fulfilled a young man’s life.
By the time Eddie and Valerie were seniors in high school, their families became friendlier, realizing there was a very strong bond between their children. The Wheelwrights were monied; the McGuires were middleclass. Through Val and Eddie’s college year, they often dined together in each other’s homes or at the Wheelwright’s Club at Indian Harbor in Greenwich.
So close had the relationship between the two families become, so sure of their future to become one family, that they vacationed together sailing in the Wheelwright yacht to Edgartown during the week after their children’s lifeguard duties ended.
At the Wheelwright’s summer home on Martha’s Vineyard, Mrs. Wheelwright, older than Mrs. McGuire by fifteen years, came to have such affection for Valerie that she seemed more Val’s grandmother. In the early morning, Margaret Wheelwright and Valerie McGuire would walk down Katama Road and along South Beach, hand in hand. Mrs. Wheelwright, a kind gentle soul from an earlier time, loved Valerie; she loved the substance of the girl—still a girl, but the future woman was visible. “Bright, kind and loving,” was how Mrs. W., as Val called her, described the girl she hoped would one day marry her son.
Valerie was all that and more. During the school year while at Columbia, two nights a week she tutored reading for illegal immigrants on the lower east side of Manhattan. The subway ride from her apartment on One Hundred Tenth Street was a far cry from the circumstances she found in life’s nomads from Guatemala, Africa, and China on East Tenth Street.
And from all the joy shared by Valerie and Edward, there came the time when Edward left Valerie McGuire.
Chapter 15
The late spring snow had stopped falling. He watched the wind through the light snow blowing on the back lawn and out on the Sound. The wind lifted the snow, pushing it up off the ground. It formed into a mass, looked like a ground-bound cloud, and moved over the water. There the wind blew it apart sending the snow shooting upwards, then sideways. Then the wind stopped, and the frozen crystals blew back over and settled in the back yard.
He lifted his glass and drank, immersed in the moment.
Then the ache returned to his head. There were windmills everywhere in his life now. Was what he saw on the ice the wind blowing the snow or was it an unseen windmill kicking up a ruckus?