I continued to shove my money into Microsoft exclusively until the price rose into the forties per share. Then I began to concentrate on other IPOs that were just coming to bear.
In June of 1987, only three years after her first day of college, Nina finished her undergraduate degree. She was consistently on the honor roll and had no problem securing both admission and a student loan for the medical school. She began her classes there in September of 1987.
In January of 1988, a semester earlier than most of my classmates, I graduated with honors with a bachelors degree in International Business. Before I'd even been given my degree I was offered a job with one of the more prestigious investment firms in the Seattle area. They were impressed with my honor roll placement, my interview skills, and most of all, my portfolio. I was singled out as a rising star, going to work in a place that usually only hired those with family connections. The starting salary was forty-eight thousand a year; a considerable amount for that time period.
Nina and I stayed in our apartment, paying five hundred and twelve dollars a month in rent and stashing most of my salary into more rising stocks.
I hated every minute of it while I worked there but I learned much. I was considered somewhat of an eccentric, a square peg, but they were very impressed with the witchlike feel I had for the stock market and for picking out trends in it. It wasn't hard to do when you had knowledge of how the system worked coupled with knowledge of future events. I learned to research and invest in small, unheard of stocks that were about to benefit from some technological or sociological advance. Things like the latex glove industry in the face of the AIDS crisis.
Not surprisingly most of my brilliant insights were in the medical industry and the pharmaceutical industry. For instance, I knew from my previous life that there would be a big push to equip every major fire department engine and truck company in the country with semi-automatic defibrillators. So, using the skills I'd learned, I would research which companies made those things and direct my clients to invest their money there. Invariably I was right and my clients made money. My reputation grew and I began to develop contacts; the most important thing in that business. The fact that I couldn't stand most of my clients didn't matter. I learned to put that aside. My clients were my ticket to freedom.
By 1990, just as Nina was starting her third year of medical school I had both the contacts and the impressive reputation I needed. I resigned my position with the firm and Stevens Investment Consulting was born. My price was high, higher than anyone in the Seattle area. I did not advertise in any way shape or form. But I had more clients than I could handle. Word of mouth had spread that if you wanted to make some guaranteed money, you went and saw Bill Stevens. I rented a spacious office near downtown. I hired an attractive secretary to staff the front desk. And I dispensed killer advice that never, as far as I know, cost anybody a dime in losses. Amusingly enough, a good portion of my clients were the investment counselors that I'd worked with at the firm. After all, who knew better than they how accurate my predictions were. None of my clients ever knew that I lived in a pauper's hovel in South Seattle and drove an old Datsun to work. None of them knew that I was cramming every spare penny into the same stocks I was recommending to them.
Our net worth climbed past the million-dollar mark about the time that Nina started her fourth and final year of medical school. We celebrated by making a few purchases. I bought my wife a Volvo with all the bells and whistles. I bought myself a BMW with all the bells and whistles. I bought the both of us a three-bedroom house in one of the middle-class suburbs, putting down twenty percent and assuming a thirty-year loan at seven and a half percent. The real estate agent that sold it to us thought we were mad once she got a look at our credit report and earnings sheet.
"But sir," she'd nearly pleaded. "This house is only two hundred and twenty thousand. With your income and assets, you qualify for well over nine hundred thousand. Why would you want to…"
"Ma'am?" I'd interrupted, "this is the house we want. Are you going to sell it to us or not? If not, I'll be happy to find another agent who will."
She sold it to us of course. She certainly did not want to lose her commission. We moved into our first house on September 18, 1991. We made love in the bedroom that first night before we even began to unpack.
Nina Stevens became Doctor Stevens on June 3, 1992. My parents, her parents, Tracy, even Mike and Maggie flew up for the ceremony. After they all returned home Nina was left with four weeks before her residency in emergency medicine began. I took a vacation from work, it's easy to do when you're the boss, and I rented us a condo on the leeward side of Maui. Except for our honeymoon it was our first real vacation. We spent three and half weeks relaxing on the beach, eating in restaurants, sightseeing, and making love at least twice a day; sometimes in our condo, sometimes on a deserted stretch of beach as the sun went down, and once in the bathroom of a sightseeing dinner cruise boat. That last one was not exactly making love, it was pure lustful fucking, through and through. Not that there is anything wrong with that.
When we returned to Seattle the hell of residency began for Nina. She would work thirty-six hours at a stretch at least three times a week, learning the finer points of treating medical and traumatic injuries in the busiest emergency room in Washington. If she was allowed to get any sleep there at all it was typically less than an hour at a time. When she was home she was exhausted. Many was the time that she drug herself into the house at some forbidding hour and tried to tell me about her shift but fell asleep in mid-sentence. I would carry her to bed like a child on these occasions, undress her, and tuck her in.
I concentrated on my own work during this period, spending hours at my computer terminal in the office or in the den of my house, researching companies, finding out what they made, how they made it, what kind of raw materials they used to make it with. I spent even more hours on the phone with my clients, advising them to buy this, to sell that. My reputation continued to grow to the point where I had to turn down clients because I simply didn't have the time to consult with them. And of course, under the rules of capitalism, my price went up along with the demand for me. I received so many offers of employment at outrageous salaries from large firms that I lost count of them. I had so many rich pricks offer to partner with me that I had to develop a standard speech for turning them down.
I suppose it was inevitable that one day two gentlemen in suits entered my office and approached Darla, my young secretary. They spoke a few words to her, showed her some identification, and a second later my phone was ringing on my desk. She told me about my visitors and I instructed her to let them in.
"Mr. Stevens," said the taller of the two, his eyes flitting around my office, looking for something incriminating. "I'm Special Agent Talon, FBI."
He flipped open a little leather case, displaying his credentials. "This is Agent Sparks from the Federal Trade Commission." Sparks displayed his own credentials. "Would you mind if we had a few words with you?"
"Not at all gentlemen," I said, suppressing my nervousness at the appearance of a couple of feds, "please sit down." I waved them to the chairs before my desk. "Can I have Darla bring you some coffee or tea? Maybe some bottled water?"
"No thank you," Talon answered for both of them. They took their seats and spent a moment just looking at me.