Jennifer Sturman - The Jinx

© 2005

I benefited from the support of many friends and colleagues in writing this book.

Laura Langlie offered her usual mix of kind wisdom and unflappable calm while continuing to humor my theory of jinxing. Farrin Jacobs, Margaret Marbury and the team at Red Dress Ink expertly shepherded the manuscript to publication, improving it with every step in the process.

Friends Anne Coolidge, Michele Jaffe and Rulonna Neilson supplied invaluable encouragement and solidarity. Cameron Poetzscher provided a much-needed refresher course in corporate finance, and Holly Edmonds and Daniel Allen graciously assisted in reacquainting me with Boston and Cambridge.

My parents, Joseph and Judith Sturman, my brothers, Ted and Dan Sturman, and my sister-in-law, Lindsay Jewett Sturman, remain remarkably restrained in their discussions of the path my career has taken-in fact, they’ve even been enthusiastic. Finally, my nieces, Miss Edith (Edie) Michael Sturman and Miss Cecelia (Cece) Esther Sturman, kindly allowed me to borrow their names, although they’ve been far less forthcoming with their Pirate’s Booty.

Thank you.

A homeless man found the body.

It was New Year’s Day, and George Lawrence Fullerton IV was up early, rooting through a Dumpster in an alley near the Cambridge Common, searching for any item of value that could be exchanged for a nip of something to seal out the cold. He generally stuck to the tonier neighborhoods across the river in Boston for his treasure hunts-Beacon Hill, Back Bay-but he made a tradition of starting the new year in Harvard Square, close to the familiar red bricks and cupolas of his alma mater.

He poked through the trash using an elegant ebony walking stick. The stick had been an exceptional find, requiring only minor repairs to make it whole. He had reattached the handle with black electrical tape, a neat fix that was barely noticeable to the casual observer.

Skillfully, he swept the top layer of trash over to the side of the Dumpster, revealing a woman’s foot, shod in a red high-heeled sandal, protruding from a heavy-duty brown garbage bag. The lifeless flesh was so pale it looked blue. The toenails were painted gold, but the chipped polish needed touching up. Tacky, tacky, tacky, George remarked to himself. His nanny had always said that good grooming was a mark of good breeding. The garbage bag was nestled between a pizza box (empty) and the shell of an aged television set (worthless).

George stopped his digging to consider the foot. He was not shocked-years spent sorting through other people’s rubbish had schooled him well in the seedy ways of the world. He often thought that he could write a book about the things people discarded. A modern anthropologist. He imagined himself holding forth from a lectern, an audience of students entranced by his brilliance. And, of course, his dapper demeanor and flashing wit.

He used the tip of his walking stick to lift the edge of the bag and peer in for a better look at its contents. The bright winter sunshine illuminated a woman’s body, folded at the waist and clad in a small dress of one of those synthetic materials that George refused to have anywhere near his own skin. Her head was pushed against her knees, and George wondered at the dead woman’s flexibility. He couldn’t even touch his fingers to his toes when he did his morning calisthenics. Her platinum-blond hair gave way at the roots to a coarse brown, and the sliver of profile George could see was garish with makeup.

George cast an indignant look around him. No matter what he did, this body would be the cause of great inconvenience in the neighborhood, inevitably disrupting his routine as soon as the sanitation men came around. The police knew him and the handful of others who made their livings from the area’s refuse. He would be an obvious first step in their investigation. After all, the others had neither his degree of intellect nor his well-spoken manner.

The discovery of this body was likely to attract even greater attention than sordid events like homicide usually did. It was the seventh body of a prostitute to be found in a Dumpster in Cambridge in the past year. And there were rumors that the responsible party was connected to the Harvard community in some way. The bodies found previously had been strangled, as had this one judging by the bulging eyes and protruding tongue. He wondered if the forensic team would find the telltale crimson-and-white fibers from a striped wool Harvard scarf around the neck of this victim, as well.

George mulled over his options. In such situations, he generally thought it best to go on about his business and let the police come find him when they got around to it. But on a bitterly cold day like today, a trip to the police station to answer some questions might not be so unpleasant. Some warm coffee, maybe a couple of doughnuts (a plebian treat in which George occasionally indulged), some quasi-civilized conversation. Indeed, the police would be around eventually to see if he or any of the other local residents had seen anything of interest. He might as well make the most of the misfortune.

He straightened up, brushing off his coat (cashmere from Brooks Brothers-the lining was ripped and the elbows quite worn, but it had still merited rescue from the garbage of Beacon Hill). He adjusted his hat (a perfectly good deerstalker that he’d found in a trash bin the day after Halloween) to its customarily jaunty angle. With purposeful steps, he ventured forth to the nearest police precinct.

He did have a soft spot for doughnuts.

I live a very glamorous life. At least, that’s what you would think if you didn’t know any better.

You’ve probably seen my type before-striding briskly through airports with a cell phone clasped to my ear, settling into first class as the gateway doors shut. Power breakfasting at New York ’s finer hotels with men in expensive dark suits and silk ties. Or perhaps reading the Wall Street Journal in the back seat of a Lincoln Town Car, heading south on the FDR Drive toward Wall Street.

You may even have seen me on a recent cover of Fortune magazine, posed in a crisply tailored black Armani with several other Yuppie-types under the caption “Wall Street’s Next Generation: They’re Young, They’re Hungry, and They’re Women.”

My father had a copy of the cover blown up to poster-size and framed; it hangs on the wall of his office, incongruous next to his numerous academic degrees. The article also inspired a long-distance lecture from my grandmother titled “You don’t want to be one of those career girls, now, do you?” This was actually a welcome change from her usual repertoire, which includes such popular hits as “Have you met anyone nice?” “My dentist has the most handsome new associate,” and (my personal favorite) “I just want to go to a wedding before I die.”

I am an investment banker for the new millennium. Forget the movies you’ve seen-Michael Douglas with his hair slicked back in Wall Street or Sigourney Weaver in Working Girl. This is a kinder, gentler era. We talk to our clients about managing the transition to a global economy and relationship-driven banking. The partners at Winslow, Brown, the firm I’ve called home for the better part of a decade, espouse diversity and teamwork.

This doesn’t mean that it’s all fun and games. My life is far less glamorous than it appears. I have worked into the early morning hours on more nights, canceled more weekend plans and slept in more Holiday Inns in small industrial towns than I care to count-standard practice in the business of mergers and acquisitions. Entire months of my life have passed in a fog of caffeine, numbers, meetings and documents.