Mike Offit: Nothing Personal: A Novel of Wall Street

“Yeah. Don’t I recall Grandma saying something about being able to buy a mansion with all the dough Gramps blew on the horses?” Warren loved the way his dad used the language of the twenties and thirties.

“Nobody ever said you could beat a straight game. That’s probably why everyone’s trying to get the fix in all the time. And Pops never bet on anything.”

Warren laughed a little and thanked his father for the advice. His own grubstake had grown to almost $75,000, which, even after taxes, meant he had more than enough money to pay his living expenses and tuition. Money wouldn’t be a problem, at least until he figured out what he would actually do with an MBA.

“I always figured you’d be okay. Maybe I didn’t hand you a lot of money or a family business, but at least I didn’t beat you up over your lousy grades, kiddo. I remember someone telling me Albert Einstein flunked math.”

“Yeah, well, that wasn’t exactly right, Pop. He was a brilliant student. But your heart was in the right place. And besides, money would’ve just made me miserable. Look at all the rich kids we knew. And how will I ever get rich if I didn’t start out poor? Where’s the motivation?” In college, he’d had several friends who went on to run their family businesses. All of them complained about it, yet most of them also immediately sprouted huge egos and paychecks while everyone else was struggling just to pay the rent. His resident adviser at Brown had moaned and whined about the soul-deadening work at his family’s multibillion-dollar Midwestern real estate company, but three years later he had abandoned linguistics for a senior job with his dad, a giant penthouse on Lake Michigan, and a seat on the board at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Warren also got to see firsthand the problems of kids with lots of money but bad family lives. He spent his junior year at a private high school in Manhattan, and of the twenty-one boys, almost all from immense wealth and old families, four had committed suicide before graduation. His dad saw it too. A garment executive had built three tennis courts at his Long Island home so his son could practice on the same surfaces that the Grand Slam tournaments were played on. The boy’s total winnings as a professional wouldn’t have paid for the fences. Warren’s father, Ken, had tried unsuccessfully to get the boy interested in his family’s clothing business, but having been told all his life how great an athlete he was, and then realizing that he was not even average among the elite, the boy became a coke and heroin user and almost killed himself in a car accident on the European tour stop at Bordeaux. The boy’s father had shrewdly taken advantage of the trip to the French hospital as an opportunity to buy and ship home a few dozen cases of wines from the great château, and a new Porsche the boy crashed soon after his recovery, killing a Yale undergraduate.

“Yep, well, maybe you’re right there, kiddo,” Ken said, sharing the unspoken thought. “I guess I always had a master plan and just didn’t know it! Anyway, let me know how you’re doing. I’ve always heard economics is a regular joy.”

“You bet, Pop. Listen, all I know is you’ve got to suffer if you want to sing the blues.”

When Warren got to the Hertz counter at West Palm Beach airport, the only vehicle available was a white Lincoln Town Car.

“Excuse me, but are you certain you don’t have anything available in any size that is a bit less immediately ethnically identifiable?” Warren asked the girl who was struggling with the endless ID number on his New York license.

“What?” She seemed confused by his request.

Sometimes Warren wondered whom he thought he was amusing.

After a few minutes filling out the new computerized forms, and a brief shuttle-bus ride, he was winding his way up the coast toward Jupiter Island and Hobe Sound at the end of a warm, sunny day. Although he spoke about Hobe Sound as if he’d been there, Warren’s only knowledge of the place had come from oblique references in the gossip columns, and the occasional mention of it by the wealthy women whose horses he’d groomed as a kid in Millbrook and at the equestrian barns out in Bridgehampton. It was evidently the winter home to the old-money WASP establishment, much farther up the social food chain than Palm Beach.

With his map in one hand, he mentally followed Chas’s instructions until he found himself crossing a small bridge. Shortly thereafter, a police car appeared in his rearview mirror, and only a few moments later he was signaled to pull over with a brief blare of the siren.

The uniformed and armed man who emerged from the vehicle came up beside Warren’s window and tipped his hat. “Excuse me, sir, but I don’t recognize your car. Who are you visiting?” It wasn’t clear to Warren if this man was actually a police officer or simply a private security guard.

“Hi. My name is Warren Hament, from New York, and I’m visiting the Harpers.”

“Oh, yes. They’re up the road about a half mile on the right. The gray columns. Thank you, Mr. Hament.”

The man turned and walked back to his car, and Warren noticed as he drove on that he was followed and watched until he had pulled into the driveway. The short coral-gravel driveway opened to a circular car park that held an old Volkswagen Bug, an aging Mercedes sedan, and a Ford station wagon. The façade of the house was neoclassic, of cut limestone, surrounded by dense vegetation that made judging its dimensions impossible. As he rang the bell at the broad teak door, the security man was still watching from the road, waiting to see him greeted.

Galbreath Harper had founded the American branch of his family’s London and Edinburgh bank in 1935. What had been a small investment advisory grew into a major private bank and investment manager by the early 1950s. They were respected for their honest advisory work, and banking acumen. When he failed to have any sons and his daughter evinced no interest in the business, he sold the firm to a German bank for a reported $270 million. Since then, he had been an economic adviser to two presidents and had amassed one of the best collections of Pre-Raphaelite art in the world. He had donated a great deal of it to the Boston Athenaeum and made the seed contribution toward building a new wing, named for him, to house the works. Chas was proud of his background and did nothing to hide it. The Harper’s money came from an era when bankers actually helped build companies and create new and viable businesses. There was no doubt that he would work with his family’s fortune, although he might spend a few years learning about investments at a bank after graduation.

Like many of his generation who had succeeded after the Depression, “Gal” Harper built himself winter homes in Islesboro, Maine, and tiny Hobe Sound, Florida. His house, like all the other great structures along the beach, was referred to as a “cottage,” although it had nine bedrooms and was built of Indiana limestone in the style of a Roman villa. From the moderately scaled entry, a grand square foyer opened, its cream-marble floors worn smooth, but highly polished. Through a broad opening directly ahead was the parlor, or living room, decorated in bright yellow chintzes and a finely woven coir carpet, with fifteen-foot-high arched French doors that opened out to a panoramic view of the Atlantic Ocean. The furniture was oversize and comfortable looking, and every table held a small collection of objects. Warren was invited in to wait in the living room, where he was drawn to a group of tiny, albino sea creatures nestled at the base of an imposing Chinese vase that had been wired as a lamp. He gingerly lifted a minuscule crab, its shell as smooth as stone, and every feature crisp, reproduced in perfect detail.