Talon took a deep, angry breath. "Mr. Stevens," he said, "I have some very good friends at the Internal Revenue Service. I can make a few phone calls and you would find yourself under very intense scrutiny every time you filed your taxes."
"You're threatening me?" I barked, laughing. "You've got to be shitting. You know damn well you've already had your buddies at the IRS look into my background. You could probably recite my net worth as well as I can. You want to have them audit me every year? Go ahead, bring it on. They'll find nothing. I pay every penny of capital gains tax and income tax that I'm responsible for. I take no questionable deductions. I'm sure my clients have told you that I'm somewhat of a weirdo in that regard. When they bitch about their capital gains tax I always tell them they should be proud to pay it, that there is not nearly enough distribution of wealth in this country. I tell them I think the tax should be greater than it is, that the rich should be hammered with taxes. Bring on the audits guys, you can't threaten me with that."
They both stared for a moment, feeling the balance of power shifting on its axis. "Mr. Stevens," Talon started again.
"Gentlemen," I said, standing up. "I'm a very busy man and I have work to do. I think the time has come to put an end to our discussion. If you wish to talk to me again, please call in advance and set up an appointment. I'll be sure to have a lawyer present. Good day."
Despite my bravado in the face of the feds, the encounter disturbed me greatly. They might not have known what they were dealing with but the fact remained that I had been noticed. I did not like to be noticed. I went home that night and found Nina in the bathtub, fragrant bubbles covering her body as she soaked after an exhausted sleep. She was due back at the hospital at six the next morning.
I leaned next to the tub and gave her a kiss. Somehow my hand just happened to drop into the water and land against her slippery thigh. The kiss deepened and two minutes later I was naked in the tub with her. A considerable amount of water splashed onto the carpet in the next fifteen minutes.
After, as we lay in our bed naked, staring at the ceiling fan going around and around I told her about my visit from Talon and Sparks. She was very alarmed by it.
"Feds?" she asked, looking at me. "You're not in any trouble are you Bill?"
"No," I shook my head. "They were just harassing me. They thought my record was a little suspicious and were trying to see if I was doing anything wrong."
"But you haven't been," she protested sternly. Nina was well aware of my prowess at picking stocks. She used to express doubt that I was committing so much of our net worth to a particular issue but she'd long since learned to trust my "instincts". How could she argue with constant success? If she had any suspicions about where my knowledge was coming from, if she ever thought it was more than just my own common sense and thorough study, she never mentioned it, either directly or indirectly.
"No," I said, "I've always gone out of my way to be on the up and up. I've never cheated so much as a penny on our taxes. We have nothing to worry about in that regards but at the same time I think it's time for a change."
"What kind of change?"
I told her. We talked into the wee hours of the morning. By the time she left for the hospital a decision had been made. I put it into motion the very next day.
On November 16, 1993, at the age of twenty-six, with a net worth of 1.9 million dollars, I retired from work. I was free.
I didn't spare a thought about the clients I was abandoning. After all, those assholes had talked to the feds about me, had shown them records. I could understand that. But not a single one of them, not one out of the forty or so the feds talked to had bothered to give me a little call and let me know that the FTC and the FBI was sniffing at my ass. Fuck them. They'd paid me their money and I'd advised them well. Our relationship ended right there.
Darla was another matter. The closing down of Stevens Consulting left her without a job. I'd lured her away from a job that she'd hated by offering her a handsome salary. This had been in the days before sexual harassment became the issue that it is today and Darla had been expected to offer special services to her previous boss as a condition of continued employment. Naturally she'd been prepared to offer those services to me when I hired her and had been quite surprised when I didn't request them. I had changed her view of the world as she knew it.
She became a very loyal employee, a secretary that other businessmen and women could only dream about. She also became a friend during the many hours we spent alone in the office. She was very attractive and I can't say that I hadn't enjoyed looking at her nyloned legs on occasion as she typed on her computer or answered the phone, but I never once considered bedding her. I told her the news of the closure of Stevens Consulting and she broke into tears.
Her tears dried up when I gave her her severance package. I gave her a check for twenty thousand dollars and a lifelong offer to consult in investment for her free of charge. If she played her cards right she would never have to work again and she knew it. She gave me a huge hug, a kiss on the cheek, and an unspoken offer to continue the affections in my office. I gave her an unspoken denial and we parted.
Though Nina was still locked in the rigors of residency, I had nothing but time on my hands now. Using my computer I could monitor and adjust our investments, dispense advice to my few clients: Maggie and Mike, Jack and Mary, Mom and Dad, Darla, Tracy; by checking my computer and spending less than two hours per week before it. Our net worth had reached the point where it could only get bigger as long as I kept shifting it from rising stock to rising stock. I began to spend a little on self-pleasure.
During the last two years of Nina's residency I learned to fly an airplane and purchased a Cessna that could hold four people. I learned to sail on Puget Sound, even venturing into the open water of the Pacific Ocean and learning the finer points of open sea navigation and handling. I learned to play golf, bringing my handicap from an initial twenty-six all the way down to a nine.
I learned to hunt for deer and elk, my father-in-law taking on the responsibility of teaching me. I purchased a Winchester 30-06 and fired it at a range until I could hit a target the size of a quarter from two hundred yards. My first trip to the Idaho panhandle in October I brought down a four point buck. The next October Jack and I climbed into my Cessna and I flew us to the most remote airstrip in Northern Wyoming that we could find. We spent a week camping out, drinking beer, and basking in maleness. We both bagged an elk on that trip and had to arrange for the meat to be shipped home via ground transport because it's sheer weight would have overloaded my plane.
I kept myself amused by my many pursuits during those days, never recklessly spending money, but gratefully abandoning my miserly ways at the same time. We remained in our simple three-bedroom house, our neighbors never knowing or suspecting that we were multi-millionaires. In fact, since they knew Nina was a doctor in residency, they kind of figured that I was some sort of unemployed loser that had latched onto her. I never bothered to correct this impression.
As the end of her residency began to come into view we began to talk about what was next. Where we would go, what we would do. It wasn't a long discussion. Both of us longed to leave Seattle behind. We hated the weather, we hated the bustle of living in such a large city. We both wanted to go home.