Colin Harrison - The Finder

He pulled his robe tight and shuffled into the kitchen. Connie was there with two plates of eggs. The house staff arrived at nine, so she usually made breakfast. He sat carefully. Connie had put cushions on every chair in the house for him. She knew his prostate hurt. They'd fought about him not going to the doctor. Drove her nuts. And maybe that was why he didn't do it. Forcing his old guy's death-smell decrepitude upon her, a kind of rich man's sicko dominance. I didn't used to be like this, Martz thought, poking his head out the open window and looking down. He could see the morning runners in Central Park, the maples leafing out in the late spring.

He pulled his head back in. "I want to give you some carefully considered advice," he announced grandly. God, did Connie look good. Five hundred sit-ups a day, yoga, tennis, swimming three times a week in the pool in the apartment house, free weights-all her old habits from her modeling days.

She bustled about happily. "I like your advice."

"I think, number one, that I am very lucky to have you around. This isn't about what's good for me. Number two, I think that you are probably wasting your life hanging around an old man like me who can't really fuck you decently anymore, who is crabby and achy and full of his own compacted, neurotic, self-important, and irresolvable bullshit. Okay? You are young enough that you could go find somebody and five years from now you could be feeding a couple of beautiful little children some breakfast, instead of an old man. This is the truth, lady. I'm turning into a rotting bag of meat, Connie, and somebody is going to have to wipe the drool and the shit off of me. Why should it be you? The answer is that it shouldn't. My advice is that you get a quick divorce, nothing contested, and start meeting guys. I'd give you enough money so that you didn't have to worry about anything. Hell, I'll double whatever is in the prenup that you made me sign, and you could actually have a decent life and not hang out with an old bum-admittedly quite rich-like me. Who isn't even charming anymore." He patted his place mat. "That's my morning speech. Now, where's my coffee?"

Connie silently set a cup down in front of him, along with a neat stack of the Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Asian Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, and the business sections of the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, Chicago Tribune, and Washington Post. He read them each day as a rich man, which was to say as if they were the sports pages. Across the city, no more than a few hundred men like him, all possessed of meaninglessly grand wealth and old enough to feel as he did, played the game against each other, against younger men, against technology, information, and the passing of days. They played it as long as they could, and then, if they were smart, they took their winnings at the right moment and retired to Normandy or Palm Beach or a ranch in Montana or someplace nothing much mattered anymore. If they stayed too long in the game, they got cut open, even wiped out. That insurance guy, what's his name, lost $600 million. Should have eased out, let the scandals fall on the shoulders of younger men.

And maybe Bill would do this. But not yet. He had to fix his little huge problem with the hedge fund. He had leveraged his flagship, Martz New Century Partners Fund, into a goddamn $352 million position on Good Pharma and needed to unwind the position before something bad happened. He no longer cared whether he made money; he just wanted out even, or at worst with just a haircut. Lose $20, $30 million, okay, he could live with that, make it up elsewhere. That kind of money could be hidden from the investors easily enough. But he was down $107 million in just over thirty days on the position, and against the prudent and obvious advice of his young, high-priced princelings, he had doubled the bet late, thinking the stock would bounce up, but it had only drifted down further. The kind of error an amateur made. Pure gambling. Now they were whispering about him, he knew it, talking behind his back, saying Big Bill is sucking on a land mine right now… Big Bill's lost his fastball… Something was wrong with Good Pharma and somebody knew what it was. And wasn't telling Bill Martz. Somebody like that slick fuckwad Tom Reilly. I'm too old to be worrying about being vulnerable to the fate of one small bullshit drug company, he told himself. Too old, too rich, and too smart. Or certainly one would think so, except that he'd taken an unnaturally large position in Good Pharma, expecting that it would give him a fat boost by year's end. All his researchers had reported it was on the verge, great stuff in the pipeline, synthetic skin, cartilage pills, things like that.

Connie put his eggs down. "I put in that dried red pepper we found in Mexico last winter."

"Hmm. Thank you, these look great."

She let her hand linger on his shoulder. "I like old rich bums, by the way, just to finish the conversation."

"What about young rich bums?"

"Not charming enough."

He ate with gusto. At least he hadn't lost his appetite. When he paused, he looked up and said, "Seriously, Connie. I say this all the time but I am serious."

She was waiting for him. "You say that all the time, too. I'm very happy, Bill."

"That's because you are wasting all your maternal energies on a sixty-nine-year old baby. I've had four children. I know how great they are. A few more years go by you can't have kids and I'm out there at the wheelchair showroom."

She smiled, but her eyes were wet. "Please, Billy, this does kind of hurt me when you say this."

"I'm sorry."

"It makes me happy to be with you. Maybe I'm not so wrapped up in the future like you are."

"Probably because you have a lot more of it."

She looked at him straight. "Yes, I do. But so?"

He went back to his eggs. It was an old conversation. Not an untrue conversation but unsolvable, almost comfortable in its familiarity.

"What's really bothering you, Bill?"

He tasted the coffee. Perfect. "Bothering me? I'm bothered by the fact that I've taken a huge bite out of Good Pharma, expecting it to be a takeover candidate. I thought it was cheap. No, not cheap, but reasonable. They have half a dozen drugs in the pipeline. Some will bomb but we think two are huge. But it's too early to get good information yet. We just have inklings. And the market is craving new products. You get the right new product, you get a new demand, okay? People want something that never existed before! I know the number-two guy, Tom Reilly. He's not the CEO but he's the guy who knows what's really going on. Real slick fuckwad, let me tell you. Good Pharma's stock is down thirty-seven percent in the last few weeks. I want to know why. I've asked, and nobody can tell me or will tell me."

"Why don't you ask this Tom Reilly?"

"I have."

"Well?"

"He's avoiding me. Hiding in the weeds."

"So?"

"I'm starting to make his life difficult. I had him followed to a Yankees game two nights ago and messed with his head. Sent him a little message from old Billy-boy."

"Has he called you?"

"No, he's scared. I expected him to call me after the game, but he didn't."

Connie frowned at him, pressing her breasts forward aggressively. "You need to kick some ass, sounds like."

"Think so?" It excited him to hear her say it.

"You're good at that, Bill."

"I can be."

"No, you listen to me," she told him. "Nobody fucks with Billy Martz, right? I've heard you say this to me a thousand times. You're tougher, you're smarter, and you're definitely meaner. You are a mean old bastard, Bill! Get that information out of him so that you can fix the problem. You hear me, Bill? Frankly I don't think you've really given it much effort yet."

He nodded. "I could turn up the heat."