Ayers guided Peter away with a hand on his elbow. As Peter stepped out, the older man said, “Good luck.”
The office door clicked shut before Peter could respond. He closed his mouth and stumbled across the firm’s main floor, shocked a bombshell hadn’t exploded at the last second and shattered this amazing karma. Before exiting, he glanced toward the corner of the room where he had first seen Kate Ayers. She held a phone to her ear, but mouthed the words to Peter, “Goodbye, see you at seven.”
Peter nodded and drifted down the hallway. At the elevator, he punched the air with his fist in a subdued celebration. What a turnabout, he thought. Seventy-five plus bonus. Going to a hundred if I make it.
“I’ll make it all right,” he swore. “For that kind of money, I’ll learn everything. Do what I’m told. Do whatever it takes.”
Once Peter stepped outdoors, the sun penetrated his clothes and warmed his flesh. The air smelled sweet. The traffic rang vibrant. He now understood what it felt like to be at the center of a universe with all matter revolving around you. It felt exhilarating.
CHAPTER FIVE
BULLY’S RESTAURANT HAS A LOUD BAR AND DECENT STEAKS. At night, it is always crowded, attracting off-track bettors who migrate in as a clique to drink and distort their successes. The place is perpetually nighttime dark, smells of dripping fat, has crisscrossing wood beams, and yet it managed to feel intimate in the half-wall booth where Peter and Kate shared fifteen years of stories.
After several minutes of catch-up, they got around to ordering a bottle of Cabernet. Once the wine arrived, Peter said, “You look great. I can’t believe you’ve grown up into . . . well, into this . . .” He spread his arms, palms upturned in the gesture of a man offering up something special.
“Little ol’ me?” she asked, flapping her eyelids in mock Southern Belle style. “You mean this beautiful, alluring, sexy diva?” Kate smiled, then laughed. The combination represented a pattern both genuine and frequent.
“My thoughts exactly.” Peter put his hand over hers and rubbed. The gesture reminded him of the last time he had seen his mother alive. As they stood in the shadows of the building that morning, he had taken her hand and circled the back with his thumb in an attempt to calm her. In a reflex, Peter abruptly withdrew his hand from Kate’s.
“Did I do something?” she asked.
He exhaled deeply and regretted the sudden melancholy, but his emotions had just caromed around a place he found difficult to escape. Peter wondered if his mother had seen Kate at any time over the years. And did Kate suspect her father and his mother had once been intimate?
“Did you . . .” He wanted to ask, but if she didn’t know about the affair, wouldn’t it be better to keep it buried?
She reached across and covered his hand. Her flesh felt comforting.
“Did you ever see my mom, these last few years? Since our families stopped being social friends, I mean.” He stared, vainly searching for clues.
“A couple of times at the office. I meant to say something—how sorry I was, but I didn’t know how you’d react.” The wet sheen over Kate’s eyes built into droplets that she wiped away. “Father says he worshiped your parents. And even though your father broke off their friendship those last few years, Father never stopped admiring him.”
“Jason’s been a good friend.”
They worked their way through the painful conversation and by the time dinner arrived, they were back to sharing happier thoughts. Later, just after Kate paid the check, Peter said, “I’ll repay you for dinner once I get my first paycheck.”
“Not so fast,” Kate said. “I don’t want your money. What I want is for you to reciprocate. You can buy me dinner next time.”
“Sounds good. I’ll call.”
She wagged her head. “When a guy says he’ll call, it’s a blow-off. I’m not letting you off so easily. Your paydays are the fifteenth and the last day of each month. Next Tuesday you are once again solvent.”
“You know what day I get paid?”
“I told you: Father and Morgan have a relationship that goes way back. Our firm has a department that handles payroll for many of our clients, including Stenman Partners. We do most of their paperwork, banking, even some client billing. When I heard you got the job, I peeked at some of their records. Don’t tell anybody, but I know Father’s computer password and user name. If they found out, they’d change the entire system. Supposedly impenetrable.”
“Then how did you tap into the thing?”
“I was doing some work at home, over a weekend. Father was having a hard time—I think it was the weekend your mother . . . well, it hit him hard and he’d been drinking. He left his laptop on and I remembered his password: Hannah-anne-kate. Your mother’s, my mother’s, and my names, all pasted together. I also have a semi-photographic memory and recalled his ten-digit username.” Her mouth pleasantly stretched. “Okay, so I don’t have a photographic memory. I’m nosy, and I wrote the letters and numbers down. So today, I gave it a try. Bingo-bango. I had Stenman Partners’ payroll records staring at me.”
“That’s a lot of trouble, but at least I can alert my landlord he’ll be getting paid soon. With that settled, how’s Friday of next week for dinner?”
“It’s a date.”
“On another topic,” Peter said, “maybe you can tell me something about Morgan Stenman.”
Kate nodded. “She’s gruff, but she’s been like a kind aunt to me.”
“Can you tell me anything about her partnership? I know nothing, yet I’m about to dive in and swim amongst the sharks, so to speak.”
“Some, though I’m far from an expert on stocks and bonds.”
Stenman Partners managed, she said, a hedge fund that made leveraged bets on everything: stocks, bonds, currencies, and commodities. They went long all of these instruments—which meant they owned the asset. They also could short each asset category—which she explained was a transaction that allowed the fund to make money when the asset value went down, rather than up. “Shorting has something to do with borrowing stock, selling it, then buying it back later at a lower price. Don’t ask me how it all fits together, because I still don’t get it.”
“That makes two of us,” Peter said.
Kate next detailed some of Stenman’s overseas interests. “They’re aggressive, moving quickly as they acquire information from their global network. And the partnership is phenomenally successful. They have money flowing into and out of developed countries in addition to Eastern Europe and dozens of underdeveloped markets. Morgan is considered one of the most astute traders in the world.”
“I noticed she speaks with a slight accent—maybe Slavic.”
“You have a good ear. In the early nineteen-forties, according to my father—and I guess he ought to know—she escaped Poland. Her family was Jewish and she was rescued, but not her parents. The Nazis captured them and they disappeared.”
Peter became enthralled by Morgan’s tale. She had no money when she arrived in the U.S. With a few poor relatives working in the navy yards in San Diego, she eventually made her way through U. C. Berkeley, then nurtured family contacts from Eastern Europe who had prospered after the war.
“She began investing money for some of them,” Kate said. “Over time, her track record attracted international attention. The rest is history. Morgan and her staff get paid one percent of assets under management, plus twenty percent of profits.”
“How much money does she manage?” Peter asked.