After a few moments of silence, OCD finally said, “I have a sneaky suspicion you will, but I hope for yoursake—and for the sake of the public at large—that you do something more positivewith your next window of clarity.”
“I couldn't agree more,” said the Witch, and she narrowed her eyes at me and cocked her head to the side at a very knowing angle, as if she were studying a tiny lab specimen. “I think what bothers me most about you is how you took a God-given gift and misused it. A common thief or even a thug, for that matter, is much easier for me to stomach. But you—well, it was nothing more than greed that motivated you, greed in all its forms, for all things carnal, and for all things self-serving.It was thatand an unbridled lust for power.”
There was more silence, as the Witch's words hung in the air like nerve gas. Finally the Bastard said, in the tone of the peacemaker: “Well, I think we all agree that the final chapter of your life is yet to be written, but for now we need to stay focused on the present— or the past, I should say, and, more specifically, on your meeting at Lester's office.”
Yes, I thought, you are my savior and protector, Bastard, and that speaks volumes as to the horrific status of my life. After all, you would like nothing more than to see me rotting away in a jail cell, yet there's another human being in the room who wishes me even greater harm than you do.
I nodded and said, “Right… well, by the time I reached Lester's office, my window of clarity was fully open, and I had worked things out in my mind. There were three things I needed to accomplish: First and foremost, I needed to cut a deal with Mike; second, I needed to cut a deal with Jim Taormina; and, third, I needed temporary office space to interview salesmen until my permanent space was set up.
“So when I got to Lester's office, I didn't waste a second. It was just the three of us this time—Lester, Mike, and myself—and I went right to work. ‘Just name your price and I'll pay it,’ I said to Mike. ‘All I ask is that you take the bulk of your pay as a percentage of profits, or, better yet, as a percentage of revenue. This way you'll never have to worry about me trying to fuck you over by running personal expenses through the company.’ I smiled at him, trying my best to ignore that world-class schnozolla of his. ‘I know how valuable you are, Mike, and I can't do this without you. You've forgotten more about this business than I'll ever learn. You're my linchpin, my secret weapon.’
“Mike, of course, loved that, and I knew he would. See, on Wall Street, the back-office people are the unsung heroes, the ones who keep the machinery humming, while the brokers and bankers make a fortune. They're dramatically underpaid, in my opinion, and they're wildly underappreciated. So it came as no surprise to me when Mike said, ‘I don't need a salary. Just pay me whatever you think is fair, and I'll be fine with it.’
“I had already checked this with Lester, and a first-class operations guy was worth one hundred fifty thousand dollars a year, he said. So I said to Mike, ‘How's ten percent of revenue up to half a million a year?’ And that was it. Mike was mine. Then I turned to Lester and said, ‘Call Jim Taormina and get him down here. I want to cut a deal with him before the day is out. What's standard for an OSJ?’
“Lester mumbled, ‘Well… uh—’
“‘Ten percent of revenue,’ snapped Mike, ‘plus a ten-dollar ticket charge, only on the buy side, though. Sell tickets are free. But the most important thing is that I don't want him holding our money. We get to sweep the trading account once a week. He can hold a small deposit, maybe twenty-five thousand; that's it.’
“I nodded. ‘All right,’ I said to Lester. ‘Call Jim, and tell him that I'll pay fifteen percent of revenue, but with a cap of thirty thousand dollars a month; that's the most he can make off me. After that, I keep everything. You think he'll go for that?’
“‘Uh, of course he will,’ mumbled Lester. ‘He's on the verge of bankruptcy. But he's, uh, sort of a low-energy guy, Jim. I'm concerned you might scare him off
“ ‘Don't worry,’ I said. ‘I know exactly how to speak to a guy like Jim. Just get him down here and I'll do the rest,’ and, of course, I was right. And Stratton got started just like that. Lester excused himself from the conference room, and Mike spent the next few hours giving me a crash course in the brokerage business. And when Jim finally showed up, he was a complete lay-down. I cut a deal with him in less than a minute.”
“And what about your SEC subpoena?” asked the Bastard.
I chuckled. “Yeah, well, that turned out to be the biggest joke of all. In fact, by the time they got around to deposing me, Stratton had already been in business for a year! And when they didactually sue Stratton, they never tried to use what happened at the Investors’ Center as a knockout punch.” I shrugged my shoulders. “But that's the SEC for you: The right hand never knows what the left hand is doing.”
After a few moments of silence, the Bastard asked, “How much longer did the Investors’ Center stay in business?”
“About five or six minutes,” I said casually. “In fact, after I left Lester's office, I swung by the Investors’ Center, which bore an odd resemblance to what I imagined the headquarters of the Third Reich looked like as the Russians were closing in on Berlin. There were papers everywhere, and brokers were running around carrying boxes, but that was nothing compared to the next week, when our paychecks bounced. Then brokers started tearing things off the walls.”
I shrugged. “Not surprisingly, the Blockhead turned out to be very adept at this sort of thing. First, he wheeled out an industrial-size Canon copier for our future brokerage firm, and then he used a crowbar to break into the office's safe and steal all the new-account forms. There were literally thousands of them, a veritable gold mine of people who'd shown a propensity to invest in penny stocks. It was those new-account forms that served as our first lead source, when we started cold-calling two weeks later. That was how long it took to get our space together.”
“What did you use in the meantime?” asked OCD.
“I used my friend's car dealership. It was just down the road from the Investors’ Center. I stayed there for about two weeks, until I found the right space, in the town of Lake Success, Long Island. It was just east of the Queens-Long Island border, and in spite of being small, the building was clean and upscale. With a bit of cramming, I figured we could fit twenty brokers in the boardroom. That would be perfect, I thought. With twenty brokers I could make a fortune.”
OCD, with a chuckle: “Twenty brokers?”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah; I guess I set my sights a bit low.”
“What was the breakdown of ownership?” asked the Bastard.
“Seventy-thirty,” I replied. “Seventy percent me, thirty percent Kenny.”
“Danny wasn't a partner?” asked the Witch.
“No, it was just the Blockhead and me. Danny bought in later, over time.”
The Witch again: “How much start-up capital did you put in?”
“About eighty thousand,” I replied quickly. “And despite my owning twice as much as Kenny, we split the investment equally: forty thousand each. That was because I was the lead horse,” I said respectfully. “So splitting the investment seemed fair. The only casualty in all this was Elliot Loewenstern, the budding Penguin. What happened at the Investors’ Center had spooked him, and he took a job in Manhattan, at Bear Stearns. He didcome back, of course, right afterI hit on my idea of selling five-dollar stocks to the rich.”
“And when was that?” asked the Bastard.
“About a month later,” I replied casually. “In early November.”
“What made you think of it?” asked OCD.
I cocked my head to the side and smiled. “Do you mean was there a eureka moment?”