Bill Reynolds - Life Real Loud - John Lefebvre, Neteller and the Revolution in Online Gambling

They’re also good friends of Bruce, and know John. They’ve known John for a long time. John has really changed, says Peggy. He’s not the same person. Oh yeah, says Paul, I don’t see John so much these days, so I really do notice it. I say to them, well, I don’t know, I’ve known John, a little bit anyway, for quite a while, and he seems to be the same guy to me, give or take, so what’s a for-instance?

Peggy: “He’ll pour a perfectly good wine down the drain because it’s not a $500 bottle” and “Bruce is not like that at all. He’s exactly the same.”

Paul: “Bruce now has more money than John.”

Bill: “Well, stands to reason if you give away most of your money.”

Paul: “Bruce has grown his money”—whereas John shrank his.

They seem judgmental about the way John has chosen to live his life. I suggest that if a guy wants to rent the most expensive studio and hire the best musicians, he ought to be able to do that. They have no problem with that. Could be the wastefulness they don’t approve of — and the showboating. Reminds me of the story my friend Grant told me about John ordering a drink after the bar had closed, just before a One Yellow Rabbit theater show in Calgary was about to start. John threw the guy a fifty-dollar tip. Grant thought that was tacky, even if John was a major donor to the company.

Peggy and Paul like Bruce because, even though he’s rich, he acts low-key and “real,” whereas they think John must feel a need to flaunt his wealth and, dare I say, have an entourage. I’m guessing they think it’s reckless and unseemly. Peggy is a nurse (with an MBA) and was a sessional instructor at U of C for three years, teaching third-year commerce students about building businesses and relationships and teamwork. She said she loved it, working from home mostly, and thought her insights were valuable, but it was a mandatory class so, naturally, most of her students hated it.

I reunite with Paul and Peggy for dinner at the Costa Paraiso open restaurant. There is a roof over our heads but no walls, just pillars. We are surrounded by ocean and verdant flora as the sun’s orange glow fades into the horizon. They tell me they think of themselves as blue-collar workers. They talk about how for some reason they seem to know an inordinate number of people who are exceptionally well off, who have had a streak of luck, or who have been at the right place at the right time, sold high just before the market dumped, etc. I say to them a couple of times, well, you’re here in paradise aren’t you, so things can’t be so bad. They agree, but, still, I guess there is wistfulness about their means in relation to these others. They feel like they’ve missed out somehow.

I’m not sure about that. Their kids seem to be doing well and they’re down here roaming around without an itinerary for two weeks, using Bob’s hideaway as a base. Things can’t be all bad. Peggy says Bob and his wife Lesley were struggling, like anyone else, before Neteller came along. They also say Bob didn’t make out nearly as well as John, Steve, Bruce, and Vic. That may be true, but my response is, hey, I’d like to have their problems.

Paul and Peggy tell me Bruce is the hardest-working guy they’ve ever known. He’d worked twenty-two-hour days two or three days in a row at Nesbitt Burns when he had to. He had always been hard-working and would have made a good living without Neteller. But Neteller was the thing that made him truly rich. Paul says he knows how much Bruce invested initially, but it’s not his place to tell me. I said, well, how about giving me a ballpark number? He wouldn’t take the bait. Then, a little while later, he started talking theoretically about how, say, if you invested a few thou of your money and all of a sudden this thing you didn’t think could possibly fly — just another one of Johnny’s pipe dreams, just helping out a buddy (again) — earned back millions and still more millions, and you’d been pounding away in business for years making good dough but nothing like this, well, life was ironic, right? Maybe just a bit of a joke?

Paul says he’s known Bruce forever, and one thing he knows about Bruce is how private he is. He just goes about his business. He won’t talk to anyone. Once your name is in the paper then it’s over — that’s the way Bruce thinks. Then people come after you and want to talk to you. “Bruce,” he says, “likes to keep under the radar.”

Bruce’s “under the radar” attitude extends to his common-law marriage to Deb Cullen, John’s cousin and Peggy’s best friend, or almost her best friend. Why did he leave her after all those years, I ask them? Who knows, they say? He’s not telling anyone, not even his old pal Paul. Now he’s in Nelson, BC, with a woman named Lisa, whom Peggy says looks exactly like Deb Cullen did twenty years ago. John has his type; Bruce has his type; maybe we all have our types.

Bruce comes back to Chestermere during the year. Deb Cullen has since built her own house there. For a while Bruce stayed in the trailer at his man-made waterskiing course. It’s a professional course. He had a buddy build it. About twenty feet wide, don’t know how long. You have to know how to ski. There are little loop turns at each end. Paul says it’s a big deal. From an airplane you can see them dotting the landscape in Texas, for instance — really popular. They don’t cost that much to build. Bruce had his built quite a long time ago, before the bonanza. He bought the strip of land but didn’t actually develop the course until some time later.

Steve Glavine told me I need to meet a guy named Travis Shipman while I am in CR. He might connect a few more Neteller dots for me. I get a chance to chat with him on Saturday morning at breakfast. Sometimes Travis crashes at a place next door to the hotel. He’s a big guy, friendly, with a pronounced Southern drawl. He says “totally” a lot. His neck is thick, his head bald; he wears his black sunglasses on his dome when he’s in the shade. Travis talks to everyone, including the pair of attractive, deeply tanned women who’ve been boogie-boarding in the bay just off back lawn of Costa Paraiso. They really like him, his soft speech and smooth patter. Travis loves Jon Krakauer’s writing, especially Where Men Win Glory , about NFL football star turned Afghan war friendly-fire casualty Pat Tillman. Travis went to the same school as Tillman and, he thinks, may have played football with him in college. Travis himself played in the 1994 Rose Bowl.

On Wednesday nights, Travis helps out at the restaurant and also fills in for other staff members. He says he’ll come off the bench whenever they need him. After football, he spent ten years in L.A., met a lot of great people, and loved the life there. It wasn’t until he got away from it that he understood the madness of the city. He probably meant more than the traffic jams.

Three years ago, Travis sailed for three months as Steve Glavine’s first mate. He didn’t know anything about sailing, but he said to Steve, you holler and I’ll be there. He learned the ropes but also says Steve’s setup was so sophisticated it almost ran itself. They sailed Doris (Steve’s mom’s name) from one Virgin Island to the next, for example — a few hours’ sailing, stop and visit friends, and that’s about it. They once sailed for thirty hours straight to meet Bob and Lesley and their kids in St. Lucia, but that was unusual, Travis says, being out on the open water for that long.

Travis’s roommate in college was Dave Graham, who cofounded Arizona Bay with Jeff Natland. That’s how Bob heard about Costa Paraiso, through Dave. They went and saw the property. Bob was convinced it was a good investment and told Steve about it, who bought in sight unseen. That was five years ago. Steve did many of the upgrades himself.