Copyright McAllen Investments 2007 - 2012 All Rights Reserved
The early morning office chatter was all about one stock, EFCC. And for those lucky enough or smart enough to own it, the conversations were short, jubilant, and all about money. Enferon Corp, trading on the NASDAQ under the ticker symbol EFCC, was about to make some investors and traders a lot of money. The stock market would officially open at 9:30 a.m. eastern time, less than thirty minutes away. EFCC stock was already trading in the premarket at $34.60 per share, up $21 per share from yesterday’s close. For a stock whose price had hovered in the low-teens for years, the final ticker crossing the screen at four o’clock yesterday showed the last uneventful trade at $13.84, this was news, big news.
Calvin Boeker, president of Boeker Financial Services and boss to the excited financial advisors scurrying around the office, had anticipated that something was about to happen with Enferon and had sent a memo just thirteen days earlier alerting the staff to encourage their clients to purchase shares of EFCC.
Now, celebrations were underway. Coffee mugs bumped together in celebratory ‘cheers’ and high-fives were exchanged as advisors cheered, “One hundred percent return!” Some of the staff were already planning an after-work get together. This usually meant that Johnny’s Pub a couple of blocks down the street would also reap some monetary benefits from this deal when the celebration relocated there. Lots of alcohol would be consumed, an obvious requirement to properly feel the true effects of making a big chunk of money overnight.
Calvin Boeker, president of Boeker Financial Services and boss to the excited financial advisors scurrying around the office, had anticipated that something was about to happen with Enferon and had sent a memo just thirteen days earlier alerting the staff to encourage their clients to purchase shares of EFCC.
Now, celebrations were underway. Coffee mugs bumped together in celebratory ‘cheers’ and high-fives were exchanged as advisors cheered, “One hundred percent return!” Some of the staff were already planning an after-work get together. This usually meant that Johnny’s Pub a couple of blocks down the street would also reap some monetary benefits from this deal when the celebration relocated there. Lots of alcohol would be consumed, an obvious requirement to properly feel the true effects of making a big chunk of money overnight.
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The Inside Trader
Darin, Rochelle, and Henry had led the early charge through the office exclaiming their sheer brilliance for advising their clients to risk money on this stock, and were now on the phones with those clients spreading the good news. Less than two weeks ago, they had sold some of their best investors on the idea to buy shares of EFCC, and now those same investors would be getting their piece of the money pie. People with money know people with money, and people with money talk about money, a lot. This is the kind of thing investors will tell their friends about. Advisors can brag about this for years, and all the bragging and telling means more clients. Darin, Rochelle, and Henry were like any other advisor, they knew more clients meant more money.
Mitch and Marie had stepped out for a few minutes to celebrate in the grandest of styles. The one or two clients they had would just have to wait to hear about their good fortune. Besides, it was early, their clients might be sleeping in, and of course, any excuse will do when there are more pressing things that require immediate attention. Nothing makes a celebration better than some really hot sex, and the janitorial closet down the hall was the closest thing to privacy. It was highly suspected that Mitch and Marie had also purchased some shares of EFCC in their personal trading accounts. If this was true, then there was even more reason to celebrate.
Carter Jackson, “C.J.” to friends and enemies alike, was known for his sarcasm and dry humor. He had been trading and investing longer than most of the other staff, and he hated the term ‘Financial Advisor’ almost as much as he hated suits. He never wore them. If someone wanted to affix a title to him, he preferred ‘Stockbroker,’ but he actually saw himself as just a ‘Trader.’ Wearing a sport coat was as dressed up as he wanted to be, and as a Trader, that was good enough. He traded in stocks and options daily in his personal trading account and dealt with clients only when he had to. The clients might be long-term investors; he was not.
He tried to avoid the festivities of the morning. He stayed in his office, leaving the door open to be sociable, and smiled and carried on a bit with whoever dropped in. He had contacted a few of his clients and made small investments for them in EFCC. But for the most part, he wasn’t too concerned about all the money the rest of his clients missed out on. The transactions made for a few clients were just to keep Mr. Boeker from complaining.
C.J. had graduated from Baylor University eight years ago, undecided what he really wanted to do as a career. He had accepted the BA degree with a low B average with no hesitation. He always figured if he decided to specialize in something he’d have to go back to school for that degree anyway, so a business degree would do for now. But his college sweetheart just happened to be Calvin Boeker’s daughter. Cherrie Boeker was a busy brunette who was involved in every sorority and committee that would welcome her, anything to occupy her time and had little to do with education. She was a socialite at heart. When C.J. and Cherrie married shortly after graduation, all sorts of pressure was heavily applied by Boeker and his daughter. C.J. caved, his career was decided, and the rest was history.
C.J.’s office was situated to the side of the receptionist’s desk. Unlike most brokers and advisors, he had no sales literature in his office. The book shelves had a few pictures and memorabilia to take up the space, but nothing related to investing. His desk was always clean. The computer was all he needed to place trades, so that’s all there was besides a telephone and a pencil holder. If his door was open, he could see who came in as they were warmly welcomed with a smile and ample cleavage. Darla had been the greeter, girl-Friday, and the desire of the male populace around the office for almost a year.
In a large open area on the other side of Darla’s desk, a cubicle farm flourished. Financial advisors each had their own partially private four-by-four cell to make calls, plan their presentations, and strategize on how to separate the unsuspecting public from their hard-earned cash. If a serious investor, a ‘suspect’ as C.J. called them, arrived for the usual sales pitch, Darla would usher them into the conference room just down the hall from C.J.’s office. She would use her considerable charms to make them comfortable, offer them a beverage, and pleasantly prepare them for what was about to happen. Make no mistake; all efforts would be made to convince every visitor to buy something. And it was up to the advisor to sell some stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or annuities whether the suspect needed them or not.
Having emerged from the ecstasy of the janitorial closet, Mitch stopped by C.J.’s office to gloat. While there was no official office policy that prohibited such things, C.J. frequently joked with Mitch about the office romance between him and Marie, referring to the couple as M&M. Like the popular candies, one plain, one with nuts. Stroking the front of his shirt to smooth the worrisome post-sex wrinkles and general dishevelment, Mitch said, “Hey C.J., I’ve got two very happy clients.”
“You mean besides the other half of M&M?”
“I mean my EFCC clients.”
“That’s great! Are they going to take the money and run?” C.J. asked, smiling as he looked up from his computer.
“Don’t know yet. But I got some myself, and yes, I’m taking the money!”
Mitch was too anxious to stay and visit; still looking a little ruffled from his celebration, he muttered something incoherent as he headed back to his cube.
Darin was the typical salesman. A sharp dresser, clean cut, upbeat, a good communicator, and could nab new clients by cold-calling, something just about everyone hated to do. Cold-calling is an art that most advisors would never perfect, but Darin was good at it. In the three years he had been an advisor, he had built a small clientele by bugging the bejesus out of unsuspecting folks who happened to answer their phone at the wrong time. But Darin valued C.J.’s advice when it came to what stocks to buy, when to buy them, and when to sell and take the money. So after participating in the excitement for a bit, it was no surprise when he arrived in C.J.’s office. He sat down as if he planned to stay a while and asked, “What do you think?”
“About what?” C.J. asked, half-heartedly joking.
They exchanged a knowing laugh and Darin said he was thinking of selling EFCC for his clients and wanted to know if that would be a good idea. He was afraid to sell too early if there might be a chance the stock price would move higher.
“I think selling it today and taking the profit would be wise,” C.J. said with no hesitation.
“No chance of it going higher?”
“I seriously doubt it. Think about it, Darin. Seeing a stock price double overnight doesn’t happen very often. And the chances of owning it when does happen are rare.”
“So…” Darin said, thinking out loud, “You say sell, huh?”
“Sooner the better.” He was hoping Darin wouldn’t ask, but knew he would.
“So, how many clients do you have in EFCC?”
“Just a few, and I’ve already sold their shares.” C.J.’s response was as non-committal as he could muster.
This revelation made Darin a little anxious, feeling an urgent need to sell out as well. He glanced at his watch, realized the market had been open for nearly an hour, and the conversation ended rather quickly.
C.J. knew it was just a matter of time before the boss appeared from his office to make a grand entrance and receive the customary accolades from a group of underlings who would all be astounded by his brilliance in recommending EFCC. And just like in the past, he would act slightly humble and downplay the event as if it were just another great stock selection. He wasn’t very good at it, but Boeker tried to portray an image that he did that sort of thing all the time. C.J. tried to avoid him as much as possible, but tolerated the old man to keep peace in the family. He heard the commotion and knew the cheering, back-patting, and brown-nosing had begun. He found some papers on his desk that were in dire need of straightening and re-stacking. He pulled up a chart on the computer of some company he couldn’t care less about, and acted as though he might be on the verge of making a trade that would reap millions.
It didn’t take long for Boeker to finish soaking up the glory and make his way past the cube farm. He entered with a big grin and stood behind the chairs in front of C.J.’s desk, gripping the back of one. He very pointedly asked, “How many clients do you have with EFCC?”
The way the question was worded, it was apparent the old goat was expecting an exact number, something C.J. was hesitant to give. He would have preferred to speak in general terms, like, ‘a handful’ or ‘a few.’ But he knew the old man would find out anyway and would be disappointed, so he might as well get it over with.
“Three,” C.J. acknowledged with a hint of embarrassment.
He knew this would have to be explained, so he continued with his prepared lie. “I was waiting for it to advance a little to make sure it might be a good buy. I wasn’t expecting the overnight jump in price. Guess it just caught me off guard.”
“How many shares?” Boeker asked, still searching for numbers.
“Three thousand total.”
C.J. could see the wheels turning as the old man did the mental math, calculating his percentage. But surprisingly, Boeker seemed content and left as quickly as he had arrived. That was too easy. There could only be one explanation for that response, C.J. thought. The old man had obviously loaded up on the stock in his personal account. Thus, making the percentage he would get from the advisors just a drop in the bucket anyway.
Boeker had been a stock broker for nearly thirty years and loved the smell of money. C.J. had learned early on that his boss would tell a potential client anything remotely believable in order to get their business. If the poor suspect wavered slightly with indecision, or asked if the investment was safe, Boeker’s standard line was, “Hell, yes, it’s safe! I own it myself!” That was seldom the case and most often a blatant lie, but it usually worked. And Boeker expected the same strong-arm tactics from all his advisors. He wanted them to sell, and sell a lot. When joining the company, every advisor had signed a company contract that gave Boeker a percentage of every commission they earned. If they left the company for any reason, including death, the contract specifically stated that all clients stayed with the company. Of course the individual client had the liberty to change brokerage firms if they decided to, but Boeker knew most would not.
When C.J. acquired a broker’s license and joined the company shortly after the wedding, his new father-in-law gave him a handful of clients. In a family story that would live in infamy, C.J. had been reminded of this grand gesture many times at family gatherings through the years. Some family members acted as if Boeker should be nominated for some type of sainthood in light of the fact he so willingly assisted his new son-in-law just getting started in the business. Every time the subject was revisited, C.J. reluctantly kept his thoughts to himself to keep peace in the family and quietly acted as if he had great appreciation.
But in reality, he knew exactly what Boeker had done. The old man had gone through his clients’ files and picked out the ones with little money, thrown in the small investors who were doing a monthly investment deposit of maybe a couple hundred dollars, and one problem client who could never be satisfied. Her name was Mrs. Horace Wilken. C.J. had bought some EFCC for her, so maybe she would be happy for once in her miserable life. By handing the poor and disgruntled over to C.J., Boeker had appeared to be a thoughtful and generous man when in fact that was the farthest thing from the truth.
Boeker had moved the company to a new 17-story office building in the north Dallas area of Richardson a few years ago. It was a nice modern design inside and out, all glass, with covered parking on the lower level. Boeker Financial Services occupied a large section of connecting offices on the southwest side of the fourth floor. His personal office was large, and located on the opposite end from C.J.’s. This way, Darla would have to lead Boeker’s clients past the cube farm to get to his office. He wanted everyone to be overly impressed by his small army of advisors wheeling and dealing and obviously making truck-loads of money.
$$$
With his computer screen turned facing him for privacy, C.J. had been watching the EFCC stock trade all morning. What he didn’t tell Boeker was he had loaded up on it in his personal trading account. Two days after receiving Boeker’s memo, he had gone all-in, buying 15,000 shares of EFCC at $13.85 per share, just over $207,000 worth of stock. It opened this morning for trading at $34.40, up $20.84 per share from yesterday’s close. It dropped initially to $33.96 and then made it as high as $35.15. When it appeared the high had been reached, he sold his shares at $35.10 for a profit of $318,000. He watched the price fluctuate a little and then falter. When it fell below $35, he immediately entered another trade, a short-sale of 20,000 shares, to make money as the price fell.
Short-selling is a trading strategy most investors don’t understand and many traders are afraid to try. But C.J. loved to sell short. It’s a simple technique of borrowing shares of stock from the brokerage house’s inventory, selling them as if they were your own and then waiting for the stock’s price to decline. The trader then buys the same number of shares back at the lower price to return the borrowed shares to the brokerage house, and makes a nice profit for selling them high and then buying them back low. It’s all done electronically, and his trade was confirmed in less than sixty seconds. This was one of C.J.’s favorite strategies. He had made good money using it in the past, and if the price of EFCC dropped as he expected over the next few weeks, he would buy back the borrowed shares at a low price and make about as much money during the decline as he did in the overnight advance.
$$$
He had enjoyed about as much of the office celebration as he could stand. A brow-beating from Boeker had been expected for only placing three clients with EFCC, but he had escaped unscathed. Now with the confirmations that his trades were complete, it was time for some fresh air. Lunch with Cherrie had been planned, and he needed some alone time to prepare. He refilled his coffee cup and told Darla he would be back shortly. She tossed out her usual suggestive grin, and said, “OK,” as she revealed some leg from below her glass-top desk. Something he usually tried to ignore on most days, but today wasn’t one of those days.
It was mid-July in Dallas and the temperature had been hovering just above 100 degrees for the past two weeks. But it was still bearable most mornings in the low-nineties until becoming a scorcher by mid-afternoon. On the east side of the office building was a little shaded area with a park bench and two ashtrays for the smokers to congregate and get their much-needed nicotine rush. The place seemed to attract a crowd about mid-morning, but then be pretty desolate until lunch time. Although inhaling a few grams of poison from a Camel non-filtered might relieve some tension and stress, he just wanted to be alone. He needed time to think.
He and Cherrie had been married seven years. Cherrie’s career had always been working for her father. She didn’t possess any licenses or certificates, but she showed up at the office for a couple of hours every week and handled the advertising. Her position commanded a small salary from the old man, more of a gift actually, but it was consumed at the malls by the latest fashion. She had never held any other job, and up until now, she’d always seemed content with the way things had always been. But something had changed, and C.J. really had no idea what it was.
He suspected they might be experiencing what he’d heard of as ‘The seven year itch.’ From the little he knew about such things, the seven-year mark was a period of adjustment for married couples, when careers are pretty much decided and life has become monotonous and mundane. He’d read about how people start searching for the excitement they once had, fear they are now missing, and worry that life is passing them by. The early years of their marriage had been good, at least as far as C.J. could tell. Both of them had been happy, sex a couple of times a week, out to eat every day or so, and a vacation or two in the summer.
But here he sat today, trying to figure out what changed. About six months ago he noticed an obvious distance. The casual touches as you pass each other no longer happened. The occasional kiss for no reason at all was gone. More time was being allocated to her friends, and she was always on the phone with one of them planning the next day’s exciting events. Their sex life had suffered as well, tapering off to once a week, then maybe once every two weeks, and now, well… it might be once a month, and only then if he initiated it. He was convinced there would be no sex at all if he didn’t make the first move, and when he did, it was different. He knew that sex was not everything. But for a thirty-year-old guy with the testosterone level of a healthy teenager, sex ranked pretty darned high on the to-do list.
He longed for those days when things were great. When they were fresh out of college, and seemed to not be able to get enough of each other. He thought of M&M. Although they weren’t married, there was a spark there that even outsiders could see. He longed for the passion, where there is no question about being desired or desirable. He longed for that feeling you get when you know without doubt that your partner wants you, and wants you now! His coffee was getting cold and he realized he hadn’t touched it, and didn’t even care.
Fortunately, no smokers were currently feeding their habit and he had the area and the bench to himself. He hoped he and Cherrie could talk at lunch today. Maybe they could devise a plan of some kind to re-ignite the relationship, put some spark back in it. Schedule some time together, anything would be better than nothing. And that’s what they seemed to have right now. He could feel it. They had nothing on an intimate level, just a status of being really good roommates. They were pleasant and jovial, but the relationship had deteriorated to the point it was hanging by a thread. And that thread was frayed; he knew it. He tried to remember the last time he and Cherrie had been intimate, when it had felt real. The more he thought about it the more he knew, for a couple who used to be happy and passionate, something was dreadfully wrong.
He thought if ‘The seven year itch’ was the disease, then what was the cure? Surely there’s some over-the-counter miracle medicine specifically designed to combat the effects of a disease that was sneaky enough to lie dormant for seven long years just waiting for a perfect time to attack with a vengeance.
But if there was such a drug, he’d never heard about it.
His train of thought was broken when a smoker appeared, smiling and commenting on the weather while clouds of carbon monoxide sent smoke-signals from his mouth with every word. C.J. watched the blue smoke dissipate in the air and tried to avoid eye contact to discourage the meaningless drivel, but the guy took another long drag that formed a red-hot cherry on the tip of his cigarette a half-inch long, and seemed persistent on chit-chat.
“How hot is it supposed to be today?” he asked, followed by a stream of smoke billowing out both nostrils.
C.J. hated to appear rude, but he needed to work and he needed to figure out what the hell was wrong with his marriage. At the moment, he couldn’t seem to concentrate on either one.
He doused the parched grass with his cold coffee. “I don’t know, but looks like another hot one.” And with a fake smile said, “I’ve got to get back to work.”
Mitch and Marie had stepped out for a few minutes to celebrate in the grandest of styles. The one or two clients they had would just have to wait to hear about their good fortune. Besides, it was early, their clients might be sleeping in, and of course, any excuse will do when there are more pressing things that require immediate attention. Nothing makes a celebration better than some really hot sex, and the janitorial closet down the hall was the closest thing to privacy. It was highly suspected that Mitch and Marie had also purchased some shares of EFCC in their personal trading accounts. If this was true, then there was even more reason to celebrate.
Carter Jackson, “C.J.” to friends and enemies alike, was known for his sarcasm and dry humor. He had been trading and investing longer than most of the other staff, and he hated the term ‘Financial Advisor’ almost as much as he hated suits. He never wore them. If someone wanted to affix a title to him, he preferred ‘Stockbroker,’ but he actually saw himself as just a ‘Trader.’ Wearing a sport coat was as dressed up as he wanted to be, and as a Trader, that was good enough. He traded in stocks and options daily in his personal trading account and dealt with clients only when he had to. The clients might be long-term investors; he was not.
He tried to avoid the festivities of the morning. He stayed in his office, leaving the door open to be sociable, and smiled and carried on a bit with whoever dropped in. He had contacted a few of his clients and made small investments for them in EFCC. But for the most part, he wasn’t too concerned about all the money the rest of his clients missed out on. The transactions made for a few clients were just to keep Mr. Boeker from complaining.
C.J. had graduated from Baylor University eight years ago, undecided what he really wanted to do as a career. He had accepted the BA degree with a low B average with no hesitation. He always figured if he decided to specialize in something he’d have to go back to school for that degree anyway, so a business degree would do for now. But his college sweetheart just happened to be Calvin Boeker’s daughter. Cherrie Boeker was a busy brunette who was involved in every sorority and committee that would welcome her, anything to occupy her time and had little to do with education. She was a socialite at heart. When C.J. and Cherrie married shortly after graduation, all sorts of pressure was heavily applied by Boeker and his daughter. C.J. caved, his career was decided, and the rest was history.
C.J.’s office was situated to the side of the receptionist’s desk. Unlike most brokers and advisors, he had no sales literature in his office. The book shelves had a few pictures and memorabilia to take up the space, but nothing related to investing. His desk was always clean. The computer was all he needed to place trades, so that’s all there was besides a telephone and a pencil holder. If his door was open, he could see who came in as they were warmly welcomed with a smile and ample cleavage. Darla had been the greeter, girl-Friday, and the desire of the male populace around the office for almost a year.
In a large open area on the other side of Darla’s desk, a cubicle farm flourished. Financial advisors each had their own partially private four-by-four cell to make calls, plan their presentations, and strategize on how to separate the unsuspecting public from their hard-earned cash. If a serious investor, a ‘suspect’ as C.J. called them, arrived for the usual sales pitch, Darla would usher them into the conference room just down the hall from C.J.’s office. She would use her considerable charms to make them comfortable, offer them a beverage, and pleasantly prepare them for what was about to happen. Make no mistake; all efforts would be made to convince every visitor to buy something. And it was up to the advisor to sell some stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or annuities whether the suspect needed them or not.
Having emerged from the ecstasy of the janitorial closet, Mitch stopped by C.J.’s office to gloat. While there was no official office policy that prohibited such things, C.J. frequently joked with Mitch about the office romance between him and Marie, referring to the couple as M&M. Like the popular candies, one plain, one with nuts. Stroking the front of his shirt to smooth the worrisome post-sex wrinkles and general dishevelment, Mitch said, “Hey C.J., I’ve got two very happy clients.”
“You mean besides the other half of M&M?”
“I mean my EFCC clients.”
“That’s great! Are they going to take the money and run?” C.J. asked, smiling as he looked up from his computer.
“Don’t know yet. But I got some myself, and yes, I’m taking the money!”
Mitch was too anxious to stay and visit; still looking a little ruffled from his celebration, he muttered something incoherent as he headed back to his cube.
Darin was the typical salesman. A sharp dresser, clean cut, upbeat, a good communicator, and could nab new clients by cold-calling, something just about everyone hated to do. Cold-calling is an art that most advisors would never perfect, but Darin was good at it. In the three years he had been an advisor, he had built a small clientele by bugging the bejesus out of unsuspecting folks who happened to answer their phone at the wrong time. But Darin valued C.J.’s advice when it came to what stocks to buy, when to buy them, and when to sell and take the money. So after participating in the excitement for a bit, it was no surprise when he arrived in C.J.’s office. He sat down as if he planned to stay a while and asked, “What do you think?”
“About what?” C.J. asked, half-heartedly joking.
They exchanged a knowing laugh and Darin said he was thinking of selling EFCC for his clients and wanted to know if that would be a good idea. He was afraid to sell too early if there might be a chance the stock price would move higher.
“I think selling it today and taking the profit would be wise,” C.J. said with no hesitation.
“No chance of it going higher?”
“I seriously doubt it. Think about it, Darin. Seeing a stock price double overnight doesn’t happen very often. And the chances of owning it when does happen are rare.”
“So…” Darin said, thinking out loud, “You say sell, huh?”
“Sooner the better.” He was hoping Darin wouldn’t ask, but knew he would.
“So, how many clients do you have in EFCC?”
“Just a few, and I’ve already sold their shares.” C.J.’s response was as non-committal as he could muster.
This revelation made Darin a little anxious, feeling an urgent need to sell out as well. He glanced at his watch, realized the market had been open for nearly an hour, and the conversation ended rather quickly.
C.J. knew it was just a matter of time before the boss appeared from his office to make a grand entrance and receive the customary accolades from a group of underlings who would all be astounded by his brilliance in recommending EFCC. And just like in the past, he would act slightly humble and downplay the event as if it were just another great stock selection. He wasn’t very good at it, but Boeker tried to portray an image that he did that sort of thing all the time. C.J. tried to avoid him as much as possible, but tolerated the old man to keep peace in the family. He heard the commotion and knew the cheering, back-patting, and brown-nosing had begun. He found some papers on his desk that were in dire need of straightening and re-stacking. He pulled up a chart on the computer of some company he couldn’t care less about, and acted as though he might be on the verge of making a trade that would reap millions.
It didn’t take long for Boeker to finish soaking up the glory and make his way past the cube farm. He entered with a big grin and stood behind the chairs in front of C.J.’s desk, gripping the back of one. He very pointedly asked, “How many clients do you have with EFCC?”
The way the question was worded, it was apparent the old goat was expecting an exact number, something C.J. was hesitant to give. He would have preferred to speak in general terms, like, ‘a handful’ or ‘a few.’ But he knew the old man would find out anyway and would be disappointed, so he might as well get it over with.
“Three,” C.J. acknowledged with a hint of embarrassment.
He knew this would have to be explained, so he continued with his prepared lie. “I was waiting for it to advance a little to make sure it might be a good buy. I wasn’t expecting the overnight jump in price. Guess it just caught me off guard.”
“How many shares?” Boeker asked, still searching for numbers.
“Three thousand total.”
C.J. could see the wheels turning as the old man did the mental math, calculating his percentage. But surprisingly, Boeker seemed content and left as quickly as he had arrived. That was too easy. There could only be one explanation for that response, C.J. thought. The old man had obviously loaded up on the stock in his personal account. Thus, making the percentage he would get from the advisors just a drop in the bucket anyway.
Boeker had been a stock broker for nearly thirty years and loved the smell of money. C.J. had learned early on that his boss would tell a potential client anything remotely believable in order to get their business. If the poor suspect wavered slightly with indecision, or asked if the investment was safe, Boeker’s standard line was, “Hell, yes, it’s safe! I own it myself!” That was seldom the case and most often a blatant lie, but it usually worked. And Boeker expected the same strong-arm tactics from all his advisors. He wanted them to sell, and sell a lot. When joining the company, every advisor had signed a company contract that gave Boeker a percentage of every commission they earned. If they left the company for any reason, including death, the contract specifically stated that all clients stayed with the company. Of course the individual client had the liberty to change brokerage firms if they decided to, but Boeker knew most would not.
When C.J. acquired a broker’s license and joined the company shortly after the wedding, his new father-in-law gave him a handful of clients. In a family story that would live in infamy, C.J. had been reminded of this grand gesture many times at family gatherings through the years. Some family members acted as if Boeker should be nominated for some type of sainthood in light of the fact he so willingly assisted his new son-in-law just getting started in the business. Every time the subject was revisited, C.J. reluctantly kept his thoughts to himself to keep peace in the family and quietly acted as if he had great appreciation.
But in reality, he knew exactly what Boeker had done. The old man had gone through his clients’ files and picked out the ones with little money, thrown in the small investors who were doing a monthly investment deposit of maybe a couple hundred dollars, and one problem client who could never be satisfied. Her name was Mrs. Horace Wilken. C.J. had bought some EFCC for her, so maybe she would be happy for once in her miserable life. By handing the poor and disgruntled over to C.J., Boeker had appeared to be a thoughtful and generous man when in fact that was the farthest thing from the truth.
Boeker had moved the company to a new 17-story office building in the north Dallas area of Richardson a few years ago. It was a nice modern design inside and out, all glass, with covered parking on the lower level. Boeker Financial Services occupied a large section of connecting offices on the southwest side of the fourth floor. His personal office was large, and located on the opposite end from C.J.’s. This way, Darla would have to lead Boeker’s clients past the cube farm to get to his office. He wanted everyone to be overly impressed by his small army of advisors wheeling and dealing and obviously making truck-loads of money.
$$$
With his computer screen turned facing him for privacy, C.J. had been watching the EFCC stock trade all morning. What he didn’t tell Boeker was he had loaded up on it in his personal trading account. Two days after receiving Boeker’s memo, he had gone all-in, buying 15,000 shares of EFCC at $13.85 per share, just over $207,000 worth of stock. It opened this morning for trading at $34.40, up $20.84 per share from yesterday’s close. It dropped initially to $33.96 and then made it as high as $35.15. When it appeared the high had been reached, he sold his shares at $35.10 for a profit of $318,000. He watched the price fluctuate a little and then falter. When it fell below $35, he immediately entered another trade, a short-sale of 20,000 shares, to make money as the price fell.
Short-selling is a trading strategy most investors don’t understand and many traders are afraid to try. But C.J. loved to sell short. It’s a simple technique of borrowing shares of stock from the brokerage house’s inventory, selling them as if they were your own and then waiting for the stock’s price to decline. The trader then buys the same number of shares back at the lower price to return the borrowed shares to the brokerage house, and makes a nice profit for selling them high and then buying them back low. It’s all done electronically, and his trade was confirmed in less than sixty seconds. This was one of C.J.’s favorite strategies. He had made good money using it in the past, and if the price of EFCC dropped as he expected over the next few weeks, he would buy back the borrowed shares at a low price and make about as much money during the decline as he did in the overnight advance.
$$$
He had enjoyed about as much of the office celebration as he could stand. A brow-beating from Boeker had been expected for only placing three clients with EFCC, but he had escaped unscathed. Now with the confirmations that his trades were complete, it was time for some fresh air. Lunch with Cherrie had been planned, and he needed some alone time to prepare. He refilled his coffee cup and told Darla he would be back shortly. She tossed out her usual suggestive grin, and said, “OK,” as she revealed some leg from below her glass-top desk. Something he usually tried to ignore on most days, but today wasn’t one of those days.
It was mid-July in Dallas and the temperature had been hovering just above 100 degrees for the past two weeks. But it was still bearable most mornings in the low-nineties until becoming a scorcher by mid-afternoon. On the east side of the office building was a little shaded area with a park bench and two ashtrays for the smokers to congregate and get their much-needed nicotine rush. The place seemed to attract a crowd about mid-morning, but then be pretty desolate until lunch time. Although inhaling a few grams of poison from a Camel non-filtered might relieve some tension and stress, he just wanted to be alone. He needed time to think.
He and Cherrie had been married seven years. Cherrie’s career had always been working for her father. She didn’t possess any licenses or certificates, but she showed up at the office for a couple of hours every week and handled the advertising. Her position commanded a small salary from the old man, more of a gift actually, but it was consumed at the malls by the latest fashion. She had never held any other job, and up until now, she’d always seemed content with the way things had always been. But something had changed, and C.J. really had no idea what it was.
He suspected they might be experiencing what he’d heard of as ‘The seven year itch.’ From the little he knew about such things, the seven-year mark was a period of adjustment for married couples, when careers are pretty much decided and life has become monotonous and mundane. He’d read about how people start searching for the excitement they once had, fear they are now missing, and worry that life is passing them by. The early years of their marriage had been good, at least as far as C.J. could tell. Both of them had been happy, sex a couple of times a week, out to eat every day or so, and a vacation or two in the summer.
But here he sat today, trying to figure out what changed. About six months ago he noticed an obvious distance. The casual touches as you pass each other no longer happened. The occasional kiss for no reason at all was gone. More time was being allocated to her friends, and she was always on the phone with one of them planning the next day’s exciting events. Their sex life had suffered as well, tapering off to once a week, then maybe once every two weeks, and now, well… it might be once a month, and only then if he initiated it. He was convinced there would be no sex at all if he didn’t make the first move, and when he did, it was different. He knew that sex was not everything. But for a thirty-year-old guy with the testosterone level of a healthy teenager, sex ranked pretty darned high on the to-do list.
He longed for those days when things were great. When they were fresh out of college, and seemed to not be able to get enough of each other. He thought of M&M. Although they weren’t married, there was a spark there that even outsiders could see. He longed for the passion, where there is no question about being desired or desirable. He longed for that feeling you get when you know without doubt that your partner wants you, and wants you now! His coffee was getting cold and he realized he hadn’t touched it, and didn’t even care.
Fortunately, no smokers were currently feeding their habit and he had the area and the bench to himself. He hoped he and Cherrie could talk at lunch today. Maybe they could devise a plan of some kind to re-ignite the relationship, put some spark back in it. Schedule some time together, anything would be better than nothing. And that’s what they seemed to have right now. He could feel it. They had nothing on an intimate level, just a status of being really good roommates. They were pleasant and jovial, but the relationship had deteriorated to the point it was hanging by a thread. And that thread was frayed; he knew it. He tried to remember the last time he and Cherrie had been intimate, when it had felt real. The more he thought about it the more he knew, for a couple who used to be happy and passionate, something was dreadfully wrong.
He thought if ‘The seven year itch’ was the disease, then what was the cure? Surely there’s some over-the-counter miracle medicine specifically designed to combat the effects of a disease that was sneaky enough to lie dormant for seven long years just waiting for a perfect time to attack with a vengeance.
But if there was such a drug, he’d never heard about it.
His train of thought was broken when a smoker appeared, smiling and commenting on the weather while clouds of carbon monoxide sent smoke-signals from his mouth with every word. C.J. watched the blue smoke dissipate in the air and tried to avoid eye contact to discourage the meaningless drivel, but the guy took another long drag that formed a red-hot cherry on the tip of his cigarette a half-inch long, and seemed persistent on chit-chat.
“How hot is it supposed to be today?” he asked, followed by a stream of smoke billowing out both nostrils.
C.J. hated to appear rude, but he needed to work and he needed to figure out what the hell was wrong with his marriage. At the moment, he couldn’t seem to concentrate on either one.
He doused the parched grass with his cold coffee. “I don’t know, but looks like another hot one.” And with a fake smile said, “I’ve got to get back to work.”
Fred McAllen
The OFFICIAL WEBSITE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
Smiling at Darla, C.J. walked straight to his office and closed the door. That was another thing he liked about his office being close to the front door. He could come and go hardly noticed, and didn’t have to waste time visiting with any of the advisors who seemed to never be busy when he was. Darla had left a note on his desk: “Cherrie called, she can’t do lunch, will call you later.” It was a little disappointing, but not completely surprising. That had been happening a lot lately. He’d never figured out if the lunch cancellations were due to his choice of restaurants, or her choice of lunch partners. But her cancellation made lunch with Cherrie a moot point, so he turned his focus to work.
The whole EFCC situation might have been great for a few clients, but C.J. wasn’t worried about the clients. Most of them probably couldn’t spell the word stock, and Mrs. Wilken would always find an excuse to complain. What worried him was his personal trading account. For the past seven years, he had strived to live off the portion of his commissions that Boeker didn’t get and the money he made from trading. Over the last few years, trading had provided more and more of the income. But any and all extra money always stayed in his trading account, where he made short-term trades quite often, and the profits had accumulated. The account had grown to a value of just over $200,000, most of which had been used to purchase shares of EFCC. He feared that was a major problem.
Enferon was a small technology company that made a semi-popular little gadget that eliminated interference on wireless devices. It was installed in wireless components as part of the hardware, so Enferon’s sales were mainly restricted to manufacturers. The company went public in 1999 just in time to feel the full effects of the stock prices collapsing when the internet bubble burst. After watching their stock price fall to the mid-single digits, it had recovered to around $14 per share, and had been there ever since. There had been no rumors about a takeover or sale of the company, the stock price had certainly not shown any signs of moving higher, and would normally trade either up or down by only a few cents each day. There were no large price swings in either direction, and it was pretty much one of those investments that would put the normal investor to sleep just waiting on it to make a move.
The sudden news that the company would be bought for a price of $30 per share came as a shock, and sent the price through the roof overnight. Although today’s event had come as a pleasant surprise to the advisors who made a few brownie-points with their clients, C.J. had worries.
Unlike every other advisor, C.J. kept all office memos. The file in his desk contained every office memo he’d received for the past two years, and maybe longer. He vividly remembered a similar incident just a couple of months ago, with a different company, but pretty much the same result.
As he flipped through the stack, he found the memo from Boeker:
“I feel ADRC stock is undervalued at its current price and recommend offering this stock to your clients at the earliest convenience.”
Signed/ Calvin Boeker
C.J. reclined in his chair in deep thought. “What are the odds?” he kept thinking silently… What are the odds that any broker, or anyone for that matter, could pick two companies to invest in just days before a huge price advance? Logically, he knew the odds of any person picking a huge winner like Microsoft, Oracle, or Wal-Mart back when they were start-up companies would be slim and none. Only a small fraction of less than one-percent of the penny-stock investors would ever be lucky enough to pick a big winner like those. But that is dealing with penny stocks. This is different. He knew the odds were astronomical that a person would be able to pick a huge winner just one time in their lifetime. So the odds would be incalculable to do that two times in less than 90 days.
The memo was dated April 2, 2011. Not that he had forgotten - who could forget making a bundle in that one trade? But he pulled up a chart of the company stock price anyway. ADRC had been trading in the $17 range for months before the news hit about a takeover. The news claimed Lansing Capital Partners had made a tender offer to purchase ADRC for $28 per share. Of course the offer also contained lots of legal-speak in the small print, all in the area of contingencies, thus giving the purchaser the right to withdraw the offer if certain stipulations were not met. From memory, C.J. recalled Lansing’s bid had been withdrawn a month or so later. Of course, the stock price fell immediately.
He wondered if the same thing would happen with EFCC? Would the offer to acquire be withdrawn later? C.J. suspected this would be the case. At least this suspicion gave him confidence that his last trade to ‘short-sell’ the stock was a good trade and a potential money maker. That is, if a ‘good trade’ was possible at this point.
The more he thought about it - the more questions, and anxieties, he had. If it was a virtual impossibility for Boeker to pick a stock like this once in his lifetime, then how could he possibly do it, and do it twice? And, were these the only two? If the old fart was doing something illegal, there would eventually be an investigation; there would be no way around it. Any investigation would come from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and possibly even the FBI. Every profitable transaction even remotely connected to a stock like this would be investigated. Even the ones placed for the clients. The clients themselves might be investigated just in case any of them had prior knowledge and placed a trade based on insider information.
Insider trading was a serious offense. The government would look under every rock and leave no stone unturned. Accounts would be frozen. Trades canceled. If any wrongdoing was found there would be fines, possibly prison sentences. The thought of that caused a cold sweat to form on C.J.’s neck and his face to feel flush. Just the thought of being some Neanderthal’s bitch behind bars was enough to scare him senseless.
C.J. thought surely Boeker would never be that greedy or that stupid. OK, well… yes, he would be that greedy any day of the week, no doubt about it. But surely he wouldn’t be that stupid. But what could be the connection?
His brain was operating at blazing speed. He kept running through every possible scenario. He was certain Boeker didn’t know any officers of these companies, and the officers would be the only ones at the company with that kind of information days or weeks in advance. It would be very unlikely that a secretary or grunt would be privy to something like that until after the fact, about the time they realized their job might be in jeopardy. The officers and board members would be the only ones with advance knowledge. In the event Boeker had a board member crony from one of the companies through the country club, it might be possible that person was a board member for more than one company, but highly unlikely. It was even more unlikely for someone to be a board member for four different companies.
C.J. needed answers. He needed privacy. There was no way to pilfer through this file of memos, research each recommendation to see if there were others, and do it without getting caught and raising all kinds of suspicion. At any given moment, Darla or any of the advisors could barge in. They would recognize the memos in a heartbeat and start asking questions; questions he couldn’t answer. He threw the memo file in his briefcase, grabbed his laptop off the floor from behind his desk, and looked at his PDA to see if he had any appointments. There was only one. It was at four o’clock, but he had purposely made no reference about who the appointment was with. He told Darla he would be out for awhile; maybe the rest of the day, he wasn’t sure.
His four o’clock appointment was with a marriage counselor. He had never been to a counselor before, but the way things had been with Cherrie, he had decided to try anything. But that was hours away. Right now he needed a place to work and lots of privacy. Somewhere with little chance of running into anyone he knew.
The library was the first thought. There would be Wi-Fi so he could get on the internet, and plenty of privacy with a table to spread out and sort papers. Within a few minutes, but what seemed like an hour, C.J. found a table on the fourth floor of the Eugene McDermott Library on the University of Texas at Dallas campus with an electrical plug close by. He hated the damned laptop; hated the touch pad, hated the flat keyboard, hated the outdated processing speed. But at this moment, it was all he had. He pulled out an old-school legal pad and separated the memos, placing them in chronological order. He logged onto the internet and began with the oldest one, dated June 10, 2008. He pulled up a stock chart for the company referred to in the memo and scrolled back to June 2008 to see what the stock price had done at that time. Nothing. The price hovered within a few cents for more than six months following the date of the memo.
This was going to take awhile. He knew it, and his stomach was growling, but he had to check every single one. The odds were simply too great that Boeker could be lucky enough to pick two stocks that were huge winners in a 90-day span. If there were more, there would be no such odds. It would be impossible. That would be the equivalent of winning the Texas Two-Step Lottery on Monday and Thursday of the same week.
As the afternoon progressed, more memos went back in the file. One by one, C.J. checked the stock’s price chart against every date of every memo. Nothing matched or looked suspicious until he finally reached January 8, 2011. Six months ago, Boeker had recommended RCH stock. It was trading at $15.25 at the time, but less than three weeks later it jumped $9 overnight to $24.65. Over the following two months, it traded back down to the $15 to $16 range. It was not a $21 move like EFCC, but certainly significant enough to make some big money, especially if you knew in advance. Advance knowledge would allow someone to mortgage the farm, use the wife and kids as collateral, and go all-in on one trade. The math was easy, and C.J. was doing it in his head. A half-million bucks would have allowed Joe Farmer to buy approximately 30,000 shares at $15 per share, then sell them three weeks later at $24 for a $9-per-share profit. A $270,000 net return on investment would buy one hell of a new implement.
That memo was placed separately; his work continued. Another red flag waved in late February in a memo dated February 20, 2011, recommending ABRX. The chart showed a quick price advance of roughly $7 per share 16 trading days after the memo. Again, it was news related, and it was overnight. The stock closed one day at $21.36 and opened the next morning at $28.25.
After nearly two more hours of work, made more grueling by lack of food, C.J. found nothing more. But what he had found was certainly enough to trigger his sense of smell, and this smelled like bullshit. Four times in six months, from January to the current memo in July, Boeker had recommended four big winners. The biggest bull on Wall Street couldn’t generate that much fertilizer in two lifetimes. This was insider trading, and there would never be a way to convince a prosecutor otherwise. C.J. inwardly cringed just thinking about the trades he had placed on the last two recommendations. He now knew it was not a coincidence. Boeker was not that lucky; the old man was getting information from someone, somewhere, and more than likely making some huge sums of money.
He thought, now what?
The four memos that were front-running stock advances were placed separately in a pocket in his briefcase. By now he had the stock symbols, their prices, and the dates memorized. Confronting the old man would be a lost cause. It’s not like he would ever fess-up and admit to felonious activity. He would lie about it, blame others, claim he was lucky, and all sorts of crazy notions. C.J. noticed the clock at the bottom of the computer screen, it was nearly three o’clock. He leaned back in his chair and let his mind wander.
Of all the possibilities he could think of, none of them were good, and his problem was the same. He had traded those stocks twice from his personal trading account. He had also placed trades for a few clients based on the recommendations, but that was not likely a problem. The clients had no knowledge; he didn’t either until now. But based on appearance, that would be hard for him to prove. He was the son-in-law, had opportunity, worked for the family business, and money is always a motive. He would swing from the gallows, especially since he had traded large numbers of shares personally in the last two trades.
He thought about what he would tell an investigator. Nothing would work. What? Tell the investigator or a prosecutor that he had no knowledge but still risked every last cent of his money going all-in on companies about which he was clueless? Right. Like any investigator would ever buy that line!
The options were limited. Nothing seemed to be advantageous to him in any way whatsoever. If he went to the authorities, he would more than likely have to forfeit all monies. Even if they gave him immunity, they wouldn’t let him keep the money. They’d say it was ill-gotten gains. He would then be broke, out of a job, probably lose his securities license, and would have to find another career. Then he would have to somehow try to survive, put food on the table, and pay the bills while being destitute and looking for work.
If he kept quiet, he would further incriminate himself. Even if he never placed another trade associated with a recommendation from the old man, in any investigation he would be a prime suspect, too. His trades would guarantee that, and those trades were now permanent records that could be accessed by the authorities at any time. It would be virtually impossible to ever prove he had no knowledge. Proving a negative is impossible, and the preponderance of evidence would certainly not be in his favor.
With his brain flashing like lightning, C.J. decided there was one thing he must do. Find the source. If for no other reason than to satisfy his curiosity, the source of the apparent leaked information must be found. Finding the source could possibly open the door for another option. He could go directly to the source, threaten to notify the authorities, and demand the leaking of information stop. Then just maybe the thing would blow over. No one would be the wiser, and he could keep his money, avoid fines, and steer clear of showering with hairy men behind bars. It was not a great plan by any means - a long shot at best - but at 3:30 p.m. sitting alone for four hours in a library with his stomach alternately growling and knotting, that was the best he could come up with.
Gathering up his briefcase and hateful laptop and heading for the door, C.J. now wished he hadn’t made the appointment with the counselor. But he had already canceled one appointment and rescheduled another. To cancel again would make it appear he didn’t really care about his marriage. With everything going on in his brain right now, he wasn’t sure if he cared or not, but talking to a neutral third party might not be so bad. At the moment, he wished he could talk to the counselor about the nightmare he’d just uncovered, but figured a legal counselor’s opinion might be needed there and she wouldn’t be qualified.
He had made the appointment thinking his marriage was in trouble, but going to the authorities with incriminating evidence against his father-in-law would probably end it. Suddenly another cold sweat dampened his collar as this thought seeped through his brain. If he confronted the old man, the accusation would create hard feelings. The old man would vehemently deny any wrongdoing, family tension would explode, and he would probably lose his job and his wife. Like the old saying, “Blood is thicker than water,” Cherrie would side with her parents any day of the week.
“Crap,” he said. Out loud. To no one in particular.
He quickly decided he should try to not think about work for an hour, get this appointment over with, bare his soul to a total stranger, and then find a nice high cliff suitable for a fiery end. This thought actually brought a smile to his face, but he wasn’t sure if he was laughing at himself for being in such a horrible position or cherishing the idea of suicide. He almost smiled again when he realized there are no cliffs in Dallas, at least none he knew about. He might have to jump off something really high like Reunion Tower. Yeah, that might work. Just make sure it’s high enough to do the job and avoid being a paraplegic for the rest of his miserable life.
He mumbled under his breath, “On second thought, maybe the counselor visit is a good idea…”
Smiling at Darla, C.J. walked straight to his office and closed the door. That was another thing he liked about his office being close to the front door. He could come and go hardly noticed, and didn’t have to waste time visiting with any of the advisors who seemed to never be busy when he was. Darla had left a note on his desk: “Cherrie called, she can’t do lunch, will call you later.” It was a little disappointing, but not completely surprising. That had been happening a lot lately. He’d never figured out if the lunch cancellations were due to his choice of restaurants, or her choice of lunch partners. But her cancellation made lunch with Cherrie a moot point, so he turned his focus to work.
The whole EFCC situation might have been great for a few clients, but C.J. wasn’t worried about the clients. Most of them probably couldn’t spell the word stock, and Mrs. Wilken would always find an excuse to complain. What worried him was his personal trading account. For the past seven years, he had strived to live off the portion of his commissions that Boeker didn’t get and the money he made from trading. Over the last few years, trading had provided more and more of the income. But any and all extra money always stayed in his trading account, where he made short-term trades quite often, and the profits had accumulated. The account had grown to a value of just over $200,000, most of which had been used to purchase shares of EFCC. He feared that was a major problem.
Enferon was a small technology company that made a semi-popular little gadget that eliminated interference on wireless devices. It was installed in wireless components as part of the hardware, so Enferon’s sales were mainly restricted to manufacturers. The company went public in 1999 just in time to feel the full effects of the stock prices collapsing when the internet bubble burst. After watching their stock price fall to the mid-single digits, it had recovered to around $14 per share, and had been there ever since. There had been no rumors about a takeover or sale of the company, the stock price had certainly not shown any signs of moving higher, and would normally trade either up or down by only a few cents each day. There were no large price swings in either direction, and it was pretty much one of those investments that would put the normal investor to sleep just waiting on it to make a move.
The sudden news that the company would be bought for a price of $30 per share came as a shock, and sent the price through the roof overnight. Although today’s event had come as a pleasant surprise to the advisors who made a few brownie-points with their clients, C.J. had worries.
Unlike every other advisor, C.J. kept all office memos. The file in his desk contained every office memo he’d received for the past two years, and maybe longer. He vividly remembered a similar incident just a couple of months ago, with a different company, but pretty much the same result.
As he flipped through the stack, he found the memo from Boeker:
“I feel ADRC stock is undervalued at its current price and recommend offering this stock to your clients at the earliest convenience.”
Signed/ Calvin Boeker
C.J. reclined in his chair in deep thought. “What are the odds?” he kept thinking silently… What are the odds that any broker, or anyone for that matter, could pick two companies to invest in just days before a huge price advance? Logically, he knew the odds of any person picking a huge winner like Microsoft, Oracle, or Wal-Mart back when they were start-up companies would be slim and none. Only a small fraction of less than one-percent of the penny-stock investors would ever be lucky enough to pick a big winner like those. But that is dealing with penny stocks. This is different. He knew the odds were astronomical that a person would be able to pick a huge winner just one time in their lifetime. So the odds would be incalculable to do that two times in less than 90 days.
The memo was dated April 2, 2011. Not that he had forgotten - who could forget making a bundle in that one trade? But he pulled up a chart of the company stock price anyway. ADRC had been trading in the $17 range for months before the news hit about a takeover. The news claimed Lansing Capital Partners had made a tender offer to purchase ADRC for $28 per share. Of course the offer also contained lots of legal-speak in the small print, all in the area of contingencies, thus giving the purchaser the right to withdraw the offer if certain stipulations were not met. From memory, C.J. recalled Lansing’s bid had been withdrawn a month or so later. Of course, the stock price fell immediately.
He wondered if the same thing would happen with EFCC? Would the offer to acquire be withdrawn later? C.J. suspected this would be the case. At least this suspicion gave him confidence that his last trade to ‘short-sell’ the stock was a good trade and a potential money maker. That is, if a ‘good trade’ was possible at this point.
The more he thought about it - the more questions, and anxieties, he had. If it was a virtual impossibility for Boeker to pick a stock like this once in his lifetime, then how could he possibly do it, and do it twice? And, were these the only two? If the old fart was doing something illegal, there would eventually be an investigation; there would be no way around it. Any investigation would come from the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and possibly even the FBI. Every profitable transaction even remotely connected to a stock like this would be investigated. Even the ones placed for the clients. The clients themselves might be investigated just in case any of them had prior knowledge and placed a trade based on insider information.
Insider trading was a serious offense. The government would look under every rock and leave no stone unturned. Accounts would be frozen. Trades canceled. If any wrongdoing was found there would be fines, possibly prison sentences. The thought of that caused a cold sweat to form on C.J.’s neck and his face to feel flush. Just the thought of being some Neanderthal’s bitch behind bars was enough to scare him senseless.
C.J. thought surely Boeker would never be that greedy or that stupid. OK, well… yes, he would be that greedy any day of the week, no doubt about it. But surely he wouldn’t be that stupid. But what could be the connection?
His brain was operating at blazing speed. He kept running through every possible scenario. He was certain Boeker didn’t know any officers of these companies, and the officers would be the only ones at the company with that kind of information days or weeks in advance. It would be very unlikely that a secretary or grunt would be privy to something like that until after the fact, about the time they realized their job might be in jeopardy. The officers and board members would be the only ones with advance knowledge. In the event Boeker had a board member crony from one of the companies through the country club, it might be possible that person was a board member for more than one company, but highly unlikely. It was even more unlikely for someone to be a board member for four different companies.
C.J. needed answers. He needed privacy. There was no way to pilfer through this file of memos, research each recommendation to see if there were others, and do it without getting caught and raising all kinds of suspicion. At any given moment, Darla or any of the advisors could barge in. They would recognize the memos in a heartbeat and start asking questions; questions he couldn’t answer. He threw the memo file in his briefcase, grabbed his laptop off the floor from behind his desk, and looked at his PDA to see if he had any appointments. There was only one. It was at four o’clock, but he had purposely made no reference about who the appointment was with. He told Darla he would be out for awhile; maybe the rest of the day, he wasn’t sure.
His four o’clock appointment was with a marriage counselor. He had never been to a counselor before, but the way things had been with Cherrie, he had decided to try anything. But that was hours away. Right now he needed a place to work and lots of privacy. Somewhere with little chance of running into anyone he knew.
The library was the first thought. There would be Wi-Fi so he could get on the internet, and plenty of privacy with a table to spread out and sort papers. Within a few minutes, but what seemed like an hour, C.J. found a table on the fourth floor of the Eugene McDermott Library on the University of Texas at Dallas campus with an electrical plug close by. He hated the damned laptop; hated the touch pad, hated the flat keyboard, hated the outdated processing speed. But at this moment, it was all he had. He pulled out an old-school legal pad and separated the memos, placing them in chronological order. He logged onto the internet and began with the oldest one, dated June 10, 2008. He pulled up a stock chart for the company referred to in the memo and scrolled back to June 2008 to see what the stock price had done at that time. Nothing. The price hovered within a few cents for more than six months following the date of the memo.
This was going to take awhile. He knew it, and his stomach was growling, but he had to check every single one. The odds were simply too great that Boeker could be lucky enough to pick two stocks that were huge winners in a 90-day span. If there were more, there would be no such odds. It would be impossible. That would be the equivalent of winning the Texas Two-Step Lottery on Monday and Thursday of the same week.
As the afternoon progressed, more memos went back in the file. One by one, C.J. checked the stock’s price chart against every date of every memo. Nothing matched or looked suspicious until he finally reached January 8, 2011. Six months ago, Boeker had recommended RCH stock. It was trading at $15.25 at the time, but less than three weeks later it jumped $9 overnight to $24.65. Over the following two months, it traded back down to the $15 to $16 range. It was not a $21 move like EFCC, but certainly significant enough to make some big money, especially if you knew in advance. Advance knowledge would allow someone to mortgage the farm, use the wife and kids as collateral, and go all-in on one trade. The math was easy, and C.J. was doing it in his head. A half-million bucks would have allowed Joe Farmer to buy approximately 30,000 shares at $15 per share, then sell them three weeks later at $24 for a $9-per-share profit. A $270,000 net return on investment would buy one hell of a new implement.
That memo was placed separately; his work continued. Another red flag waved in late February in a memo dated February 20, 2011, recommending ABRX. The chart showed a quick price advance of roughly $7 per share 16 trading days after the memo. Again, it was news related, and it was overnight. The stock closed one day at $21.36 and opened the next morning at $28.25.
After nearly two more hours of work, made more grueling by lack of food, C.J. found nothing more. But what he had found was certainly enough to trigger his sense of smell, and this smelled like bullshit. Four times in six months, from January to the current memo in July, Boeker had recommended four big winners. The biggest bull on Wall Street couldn’t generate that much fertilizer in two lifetimes. This was insider trading, and there would never be a way to convince a prosecutor otherwise. C.J. inwardly cringed just thinking about the trades he had placed on the last two recommendations. He now knew it was not a coincidence. Boeker was not that lucky; the old man was getting information from someone, somewhere, and more than likely making some huge sums of money.
He thought, now what?
The four memos that were front-running stock advances were placed separately in a pocket in his briefcase. By now he had the stock symbols, their prices, and the dates memorized. Confronting the old man would be a lost cause. It’s not like he would ever fess-up and admit to felonious activity. He would lie about it, blame others, claim he was lucky, and all sorts of crazy notions. C.J. noticed the clock at the bottom of the computer screen, it was nearly three o’clock. He leaned back in his chair and let his mind wander.
Of all the possibilities he could think of, none of them were good, and his problem was the same. He had traded those stocks twice from his personal trading account. He had also placed trades for a few clients based on the recommendations, but that was not likely a problem. The clients had no knowledge; he didn’t either until now. But based on appearance, that would be hard for him to prove. He was the son-in-law, had opportunity, worked for the family business, and money is always a motive. He would swing from the gallows, especially since he had traded large numbers of shares personally in the last two trades.
He thought about what he would tell an investigator. Nothing would work. What? Tell the investigator or a prosecutor that he had no knowledge but still risked every last cent of his money going all-in on companies about which he was clueless? Right. Like any investigator would ever buy that line!
The options were limited. Nothing seemed to be advantageous to him in any way whatsoever. If he went to the authorities, he would more than likely have to forfeit all monies. Even if they gave him immunity, they wouldn’t let him keep the money. They’d say it was ill-gotten gains. He would then be broke, out of a job, probably lose his securities license, and would have to find another career. Then he would have to somehow try to survive, put food on the table, and pay the bills while being destitute and looking for work.
If he kept quiet, he would further incriminate himself. Even if he never placed another trade associated with a recommendation from the old man, in any investigation he would be a prime suspect, too. His trades would guarantee that, and those trades were now permanent records that could be accessed by the authorities at any time. It would be virtually impossible to ever prove he had no knowledge. Proving a negative is impossible, and the preponderance of evidence would certainly not be in his favor.
With his brain flashing like lightning, C.J. decided there was one thing he must do. Find the source. If for no other reason than to satisfy his curiosity, the source of the apparent leaked information must be found. Finding the source could possibly open the door for another option. He could go directly to the source, threaten to notify the authorities, and demand the leaking of information stop. Then just maybe the thing would blow over. No one would be the wiser, and he could keep his money, avoid fines, and steer clear of showering with hairy men behind bars. It was not a great plan by any means - a long shot at best - but at 3:30 p.m. sitting alone for four hours in a library with his stomach alternately growling and knotting, that was the best he could come up with.
Gathering up his briefcase and hateful laptop and heading for the door, C.J. now wished he hadn’t made the appointment with the counselor. But he had already canceled one appointment and rescheduled another. To cancel again would make it appear he didn’t really care about his marriage. With everything going on in his brain right now, he wasn’t sure if he cared or not, but talking to a neutral third party might not be so bad. At the moment, he wished he could talk to the counselor about the nightmare he’d just uncovered, but figured a legal counselor’s opinion might be needed there and she wouldn’t be qualified.
He had made the appointment thinking his marriage was in trouble, but going to the authorities with incriminating evidence against his father-in-law would probably end it. Suddenly another cold sweat dampened his collar as this thought seeped through his brain. If he confronted the old man, the accusation would create hard feelings. The old man would vehemently deny any wrongdoing, family tension would explode, and he would probably lose his job and his wife. Like the old saying, “Blood is thicker than water,” Cherrie would side with her parents any day of the week.
“Crap,” he said. Out loud. To no one in particular.
He quickly decided he should try to not think about work for an hour, get this appointment over with, bare his soul to a total stranger, and then find a nice high cliff suitable for a fiery end. This thought actually brought a smile to his face, but he wasn’t sure if he was laughing at himself for being in such a horrible position or cherishing the idea of suicide. He almost smiled again when he realized there are no cliffs in Dallas, at least none he knew about. He might have to jump off something really high like Reunion Tower. Yeah, that might work. Just make sure it’s high enough to do the job and avoid being a paraplegic for the rest of his miserable life.
He mumbled under his breath, “On second thought, maybe the counselor visit is a good idea…”
CHAPTER 3
C.J. had taken no great pains in finding a counselor. He had just made a quick search of the yellow pages under listings for ‘counseling,’ and picked the one closest to his office. He didn’t know if there would ever be more than one visit anyway, so he thought he might as well make it convenient for himself. The one-story office building was easy to find, parking was plentiful, and C.J. was not sure that was a good sign.
He remembered his dad saying, “It’s always better to eat at a busy restaurant.”
Of course the moral of that story was a business with no customers means there are no customers for a reason. And usually it’s because the quality of the goods is poor.
But for a guy who is facing fines out the wazzoo, loss of every red cent to his name, unemployment, and possible prison time, what goods could this poor marriage counselor provide that could possibly be worse?
The white letters on the door said, “Mandy McAfee - Professional Family Counselor.”
If the lettering on the door was correct, she was in fact a ‘professional,’ so maybe that was one step in the right direction. He pulled on the handle; the door was open, which was a good indication someone was there somewhere. The waiting room was empty, not a distressed human being in sight. He figured theft must not be a problem in this neighborhood; otherwise some hardened criminal could carry off a love-seat, two chairs, a lamp, a handful of old magazines, and never get caught. It might not be a bad haul if you liked Women’s Health, Cosmopolitan, Field and Stream, or Psychology Today.
There didn’t seem to be any bell to ring, button to push, or any special way to let someone know he was there, so he decided on the cushioned chair and the Field and Stream. Surely someone would magically appear sooner or later, maybe eventually to lock the door, if for no other reason. Surveying the surroundings after scanning the pictures of trout fishing on page 87, it appeared this was a two-room office. He was in the waiting room and the only other interior door must lead to the counseling room. He assumed that was where you were supposed to lie on the sofa and be healed. At least that’s how it’s done in the movies, and Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal’s Analyze This was the only counseling experience he had.
Suddenly, Mandy McAfee emerged from the counseling room followed by a distraught victim who had obviously been brought to tears by some sick and twisted revelation. As soon as the tearful woman made her way out the door, Mandy turned and smiled at C.J. with the warmest, most caring smile he had ever witnessed. There was no glamour shot of her in the yellow pages, just a single-line listing that included name, address, and phone number. He had imagined her to be some frumpy old woman waddling around who couldn’t find a man in the dark, with glasses precariously hanging on the tip of a long nose. He’d expected to see a crusty old biddy with exaggerated opinions on everything, maybe a Dr. Ruth look-a-like. He had expected anything but this. But no, Mandy McAfee wasn’t frumpy, crusty, or old. She was anything but.
Trying not to be obvious, he gave her the once-over with a quick look from head to toe as he was getting up to introduce himself. Her hand was soft, small, and warm. So warm in fact, he thought she must have been sitting on it for the past hour. Her smile was genuine, and from what he could tell, the rest of her was probably even better. Her soft powder blue dress was snug in all the right places and stopped right at her knees. And the portion of knee he could actually see certainly appeared to be perfect. In the split second since the initial introduction he had already deduced this was going to be a problem.
“Please, call me Mandy.”
How could he possibly stay focused on his marriage? He was worried sick about his work-related nightmare, could practically hear prison bars clanging shut, and if that wasn’t enough, he was supposed to sit for an hour and look at this gorgeous creature and share his every intimate thought? That might very well be more impossible than Boeker being the world’s greatest market guru and picking a string of winning stocks.
Why couldn’t she have been an old battle-axe? This had all the makings of being almost torturous. How was he supposed to focus on anything related to marital issues while staring at Mandy McAfee?
His thoughts were interrupted when she asked, “Have you been to a counselor before?”
Of course this question was presented with a smile, showing perfect teeth as she sat down in the other cushioned chair with a clipboard.
“No… first time, ever.” C.J. stuttered.
“Do you have insurance?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to file a claim. Do you take cash?”
“Certainly. Cash is actually my preferred currency.”
Paying cash was at least one decision he’d made earlier, and now, thankfully, didn’t require any extra thought.
Mandy was filling out some basic information on a single sheet of paper which would likely be stuffed in a file somewhere and forgotten forever. But this gave him a little time to collect himself and refocus his attention away from Mandy’s perfect skin and the blonde hair shadowing her shoulders.
“How does this work?” he asked, doing his best to redirect at least some thought back to why he was there.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you just ask me ‘How does that make you feel?’ a lot?”
“Would that bother you?”
“Well… that’s what I see on TV, and I was just curious.”
“Do you believe everything you see on TV?” Mandy said with a grin.
C.J. smiled and fired back, “Do you always answer a question with a question?”
“Would you like for me to?”
C.J. laughed for the first time all day. “No, but you seem to be really good at it!”
“In my profession, I don’t learn anything by doing all the talking.”
“That’s understandable. Do they teach that in counseling or psychology classes? I mean, uh, the learning to ask questions thing.” It was taking awhile for a thought to actually make it to his mouth before being sidetracked to parts unknown.
“Not really, but I have a minor in Journalism.”
“Oh. That explains it,” he said, grinning stupidly. “So, hmm. You can not only uncover all the deep and dumb secrets, but you can cure them, and then write about them in articles and journals as well!” Another brilliant deduction, well thought out and expressed, he thought. She must be impressed by his humor. Yeah, right.
“We’ll see,” Mandy responded, smiling.
She completed her form after asking a few other irrelevant questions about age, marital status, job, and sex. She didn’t really ask the question about his sex, but he was hoping she would. He was desperately thinking of a sarcastic response. But instead, she just put a check-mark beside ‘male,’ apparently assuming the obvious. He wondered if she’d given him the once-over like he had given her, thinking, “I’m six feet tall, still have all of my brown hair, I’m fit, no pot belly, and I’m not missing any teeth… So, on a scale from one to ten, I’m probably a good, strong seven. Maybe seven and a half.”
But she was busy taking down information, didn’t act as though she noticed, so apparently giving him the once-over from head to toe wasn’t necessary to determine his sex.
She then directed him into the counseling room and closed the door. There were only two places to sit, a large chair and a sofa. Without any prompting he correctly assumed the sofa was for him, and asked mischievously, “Am I supposed to lie down?”
“Do you want to?”
With that, they laughed and the ice was officially broken. Mandy had proven she could verbally spare with anyone and would more than likely win. C.J. sat, waiting for her to initiate some real conversation, and she wasted no time.
“So, tell me about your problem.”
He began with college and presented the short version of everything since. Mandy listened intently as he talked about the marriage, the job, and ended his story with the marital issues of the past six months. He spared her the potential career disaster he had just uncovered, and at the moment, he secretly hoped it would never be known by anyone.
After his soul-baring ten-minute synopsis, she asked, “So how do you want things to be, and what do you want your relationship to be like?”
“I want my life back!” Deep down, he was thinking about not only his marital life, but his professional life as well.
“I’m sure I know the answer to this question, but I’ll ask it anyway. Have you tried to talk to your wife about these issues?”
“Yes. I have tried many times to talk about them. I scheduled lunch with her today in hopes of discussing them, but she canceled. I guess I am here to try to find ways to either communicate better with her, do things differently myself, and either way, get her attention.”
“Do you have kids?”
“Nope. Don’t even have pets.”
Mandy thought for a moment, then decided to attack the hard stuff.
“So, you’re a stockbroker?”
“Yes.”
“What is your work schedule like? Do you work all the time?”
“No, seven-thirty to four-thirty, Monday through Friday.”
“What hobbies or other interests do you have?”
C.J. decided to cut to the chase. “Look, I think I know where this line of questioning is headed. Here’s the deal. I don’t play golf. I don’t fish or hunt. I don’t go to the gym, although I probably should. I don’t go out drinking with buddies; as a matter of fact - I hardly ever drink at all. I am a very simple guy. I seldom do anything that takes me away from home, and the only thing I have done in recent memory that required any of my time at home was write a book.”
“So you are an author as well?”
“No, I said I wrote a book. I didn’t say I was an author,” he said smiling.
“Tell me about it.”
“Two years ago I wrote a book about trading in stocks and options. It’s on Amazon’s endangered species list, and I’m not sure they could find a copy if someone actually bought one.”
“So it was never a New York Times bestseller?” she joked with a smile.
She maneuvered a bit in the chair and crossed her legs as she contemplated what to inquire about next. The leg-crossing didn’t go unnoticed. C.J. had already guessed her to be about five foot seven with slightly tanned legs that seemed a mile long and were shapely as well. For a moment he completely forgot about Boeker, memos, EFCC trades, marriages, crimes, and inmates who would love to get their hands on a he-virgin like him. At the moment it was extremely difficult to think of anything except the legs staring at him from six feet away. But after the short mental lapse he garnered his thoughts and realized it was the testosterone talking. No sex at home for more than a month now had apparently affected his ability to think straight. He knew there would never be anything romantic in this relationship, it was professional. She was easy to talk to because that was her job, not because of any ill-conceived sexual interests or desires.
Mandy said, “What has been your wife’s response when you tried to talk about your issues?”
“Well… pretty much that I’m crazy for thinking there’s anything wrong, there are no problems, everything is fine, and then she changes the subject.”
“Obviously everything is not fine, or you wouldn’t be here, right?”
“I guess that’s why I’m here. If I’m crazy then you should be able to diagnose that, correct? After all, that is your field of expertise,” A sardonic grin pulled at the corner of his mouth.
With another of her warm smiles, she said, “I don’t really see any signs of insanity.”
“Well, you’ve known me for less than an hour, so maybe you should reserve judgment for awhile longer. Besides, I’ve always believed a person can’t be crazy if they know they are crazy.”
“That’s interesting,” she said smiling.
“Well,” C.J. continued, “it’s very simple really. For a person to know they’re crazy would require cognizant thought to recognize their mental state, and the actual ability to have cognizant thought proves they’re not crazy. So they must be sane.”
“Are you saying you are unsure of your sanity?”
“I’m saying I don’t think I’m crazy - so according to my theory, that might be a problem,” he said with a cunning smile.
Still smiling, she replied, “You seem to be a very mentally stable person.”
“We’ll see,” he quipped. “I’ve always heard there’s a fine line between sane and insane.”
He watched her every move, listened to every voice inflection, and studied her mannerisms. They talked about marital issues in general and the hour had passed in what felt like only a few minutes. He had never met anyone so easy to talk to. Somehow, he couldn’t believe that was taught in psychology or counseling classes by some boring, know-it-all professor who was absolutely clueless on everything. She truly had a gift; she was warm, personable, with a very trusting demeanor. Behind all the outward beauty, she was a very intelligent person.
Winding down the session, Mandy said, “C.J., I’ll tell you what I think. I think you should very pointedly tell your wife that there are in fact problems. Maybe she doesn’t see them. But tell her there are problems at least on your side of the relationship, and since the relationship is a partnership, your problems are hers as well. Force her to discuss it, all of it. Don’t let her avoid the issue by changing the subject or denying that problems exist. She may not respond as you expect, she may not respond the way you would like for her to, but it is up to you to make sure she understands that just because everything might be going great in her life, you are a part of that life. Don’t let her ignore it.”
“Wow,” C.J. said, smiling. “I didn’t think counselors talked that much.”
“Only when we have something to say,” Mandy replied, looking very confident.
After a moment of comfortable silence, it was time to go. She asked if he wanted to schedule another appointment, and C.J. decided quickly he wanted to come back at least one more time. He was unsure of his real reason for wanting a return visit, but he was almost certain it had very little to do with marital issues. He just liked being there, having someone to talk to. Right now, he could think of no one he’d rather talk to than Mandy. The appointment was set for the following week and they said their goodbyes.
He drove away feeling a little lighter. He had talked to someone, and that helped. He had never thought that saying it out loud to someone who was listening would make a difference in how a person actually felt. He wasn’t sure the advice Mandy gave would ever work, but he would think about that later. It was after five o’clock, Cherrie had a function of some sort till seven, and he would have some privacy at home to do some more research.
C.J. had taken no great pains in finding a counselor. He had just made a quick search of the yellow pages under listings for ‘counseling,’ and picked the one closest to his office. He didn’t know if there would ever be more than one visit anyway, so he thought he might as well make it convenient for himself. The one-story office building was easy to find, parking was plentiful, and C.J. was not sure that was a good sign.
He remembered his dad saying, “It’s always better to eat at a busy restaurant.”
Of course the moral of that story was a business with no customers means there are no customers for a reason. And usually it’s because the quality of the goods is poor.
But for a guy who is facing fines out the wazzoo, loss of every red cent to his name, unemployment, and possible prison time, what goods could this poor marriage counselor provide that could possibly be worse?
The white letters on the door said, “Mandy McAfee - Professional Family Counselor.”
If the lettering on the door was correct, she was in fact a ‘professional,’ so maybe that was one step in the right direction. He pulled on the handle; the door was open, which was a good indication someone was there somewhere. The waiting room was empty, not a distressed human being in sight. He figured theft must not be a problem in this neighborhood; otherwise some hardened criminal could carry off a love-seat, two chairs, a lamp, a handful of old magazines, and never get caught. It might not be a bad haul if you liked Women’s Health, Cosmopolitan, Field and Stream, or Psychology Today.
There didn’t seem to be any bell to ring, button to push, or any special way to let someone know he was there, so he decided on the cushioned chair and the Field and Stream. Surely someone would magically appear sooner or later, maybe eventually to lock the door, if for no other reason. Surveying the surroundings after scanning the pictures of trout fishing on page 87, it appeared this was a two-room office. He was in the waiting room and the only other interior door must lead to the counseling room. He assumed that was where you were supposed to lie on the sofa and be healed. At least that’s how it’s done in the movies, and Robert De Niro and Billy Crystal’s Analyze This was the only counseling experience he had.
Suddenly, Mandy McAfee emerged from the counseling room followed by a distraught victim who had obviously been brought to tears by some sick and twisted revelation. As soon as the tearful woman made her way out the door, Mandy turned and smiled at C.J. with the warmest, most caring smile he had ever witnessed. There was no glamour shot of her in the yellow pages, just a single-line listing that included name, address, and phone number. He had imagined her to be some frumpy old woman waddling around who couldn’t find a man in the dark, with glasses precariously hanging on the tip of a long nose. He’d expected to see a crusty old biddy with exaggerated opinions on everything, maybe a Dr. Ruth look-a-like. He had expected anything but this. But no, Mandy McAfee wasn’t frumpy, crusty, or old. She was anything but.
Trying not to be obvious, he gave her the once-over with a quick look from head to toe as he was getting up to introduce himself. Her hand was soft, small, and warm. So warm in fact, he thought she must have been sitting on it for the past hour. Her smile was genuine, and from what he could tell, the rest of her was probably even better. Her soft powder blue dress was snug in all the right places and stopped right at her knees. And the portion of knee he could actually see certainly appeared to be perfect. In the split second since the initial introduction he had already deduced this was going to be a problem.
“Please, call me Mandy.”
How could he possibly stay focused on his marriage? He was worried sick about his work-related nightmare, could practically hear prison bars clanging shut, and if that wasn’t enough, he was supposed to sit for an hour and look at this gorgeous creature and share his every intimate thought? That might very well be more impossible than Boeker being the world’s greatest market guru and picking a string of winning stocks.
Why couldn’t she have been an old battle-axe? This had all the makings of being almost torturous. How was he supposed to focus on anything related to marital issues while staring at Mandy McAfee?
His thoughts were interrupted when she asked, “Have you been to a counselor before?”
Of course this question was presented with a smile, showing perfect teeth as she sat down in the other cushioned chair with a clipboard.
“No… first time, ever.” C.J. stuttered.
“Do you have insurance?”
“Yes, but I don’t want to file a claim. Do you take cash?”
“Certainly. Cash is actually my preferred currency.”
Paying cash was at least one decision he’d made earlier, and now, thankfully, didn’t require any extra thought.
Mandy was filling out some basic information on a single sheet of paper which would likely be stuffed in a file somewhere and forgotten forever. But this gave him a little time to collect himself and refocus his attention away from Mandy’s perfect skin and the blonde hair shadowing her shoulders.
“How does this work?” he asked, doing his best to redirect at least some thought back to why he was there.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, do you just ask me ‘How does that make you feel?’ a lot?”
“Would that bother you?”
“Well… that’s what I see on TV, and I was just curious.”
“Do you believe everything you see on TV?” Mandy said with a grin.
C.J. smiled and fired back, “Do you always answer a question with a question?”
“Would you like for me to?”
C.J. laughed for the first time all day. “No, but you seem to be really good at it!”
“In my profession, I don’t learn anything by doing all the talking.”
“That’s understandable. Do they teach that in counseling or psychology classes? I mean, uh, the learning to ask questions thing.” It was taking awhile for a thought to actually make it to his mouth before being sidetracked to parts unknown.
“Not really, but I have a minor in Journalism.”
“Oh. That explains it,” he said, grinning stupidly. “So, hmm. You can not only uncover all the deep and dumb secrets, but you can cure them, and then write about them in articles and journals as well!” Another brilliant deduction, well thought out and expressed, he thought. She must be impressed by his humor. Yeah, right.
“We’ll see,” Mandy responded, smiling.
She completed her form after asking a few other irrelevant questions about age, marital status, job, and sex. She didn’t really ask the question about his sex, but he was hoping she would. He was desperately thinking of a sarcastic response. But instead, she just put a check-mark beside ‘male,’ apparently assuming the obvious. He wondered if she’d given him the once-over like he had given her, thinking, “I’m six feet tall, still have all of my brown hair, I’m fit, no pot belly, and I’m not missing any teeth… So, on a scale from one to ten, I’m probably a good, strong seven. Maybe seven and a half.”
But she was busy taking down information, didn’t act as though she noticed, so apparently giving him the once-over from head to toe wasn’t necessary to determine his sex.
She then directed him into the counseling room and closed the door. There were only two places to sit, a large chair and a sofa. Without any prompting he correctly assumed the sofa was for him, and asked mischievously, “Am I supposed to lie down?”
“Do you want to?”
With that, they laughed and the ice was officially broken. Mandy had proven she could verbally spare with anyone and would more than likely win. C.J. sat, waiting for her to initiate some real conversation, and she wasted no time.
“So, tell me about your problem.”
He began with college and presented the short version of everything since. Mandy listened intently as he talked about the marriage, the job, and ended his story with the marital issues of the past six months. He spared her the potential career disaster he had just uncovered, and at the moment, he secretly hoped it would never be known by anyone.
After his soul-baring ten-minute synopsis, she asked, “So how do you want things to be, and what do you want your relationship to be like?”
“I want my life back!” Deep down, he was thinking about not only his marital life, but his professional life as well.
“I’m sure I know the answer to this question, but I’ll ask it anyway. Have you tried to talk to your wife about these issues?”
“Yes. I have tried many times to talk about them. I scheduled lunch with her today in hopes of discussing them, but she canceled. I guess I am here to try to find ways to either communicate better with her, do things differently myself, and either way, get her attention.”
“Do you have kids?”
“Nope. Don’t even have pets.”
Mandy thought for a moment, then decided to attack the hard stuff.
“So, you’re a stockbroker?”
“Yes.”
“What is your work schedule like? Do you work all the time?”
“No, seven-thirty to four-thirty, Monday through Friday.”
“What hobbies or other interests do you have?”
C.J. decided to cut to the chase. “Look, I think I know where this line of questioning is headed. Here’s the deal. I don’t play golf. I don’t fish or hunt. I don’t go to the gym, although I probably should. I don’t go out drinking with buddies; as a matter of fact - I hardly ever drink at all. I am a very simple guy. I seldom do anything that takes me away from home, and the only thing I have done in recent memory that required any of my time at home was write a book.”
“So you are an author as well?”
“No, I said I wrote a book. I didn’t say I was an author,” he said smiling.
“Tell me about it.”
“Two years ago I wrote a book about trading in stocks and options. It’s on Amazon’s endangered species list, and I’m not sure they could find a copy if someone actually bought one.”
“So it was never a New York Times bestseller?” she joked with a smile.
She maneuvered a bit in the chair and crossed her legs as she contemplated what to inquire about next. The leg-crossing didn’t go unnoticed. C.J. had already guessed her to be about five foot seven with slightly tanned legs that seemed a mile long and were shapely as well. For a moment he completely forgot about Boeker, memos, EFCC trades, marriages, crimes, and inmates who would love to get their hands on a he-virgin like him. At the moment it was extremely difficult to think of anything except the legs staring at him from six feet away. But after the short mental lapse he garnered his thoughts and realized it was the testosterone talking. No sex at home for more than a month now had apparently affected his ability to think straight. He knew there would never be anything romantic in this relationship, it was professional. She was easy to talk to because that was her job, not because of any ill-conceived sexual interests or desires.
Mandy said, “What has been your wife’s response when you tried to talk about your issues?”
“Well… pretty much that I’m crazy for thinking there’s anything wrong, there are no problems, everything is fine, and then she changes the subject.”
“Obviously everything is not fine, or you wouldn’t be here, right?”
“I guess that’s why I’m here. If I’m crazy then you should be able to diagnose that, correct? After all, that is your field of expertise,” A sardonic grin pulled at the corner of his mouth.
With another of her warm smiles, she said, “I don’t really see any signs of insanity.”
“Well, you’ve known me for less than an hour, so maybe you should reserve judgment for awhile longer. Besides, I’ve always believed a person can’t be crazy if they know they are crazy.”
“That’s interesting,” she said smiling.
“Well,” C.J. continued, “it’s very simple really. For a person to know they’re crazy would require cognizant thought to recognize their mental state, and the actual ability to have cognizant thought proves they’re not crazy. So they must be sane.”
“Are you saying you are unsure of your sanity?”
“I’m saying I don’t think I’m crazy - so according to my theory, that might be a problem,” he said with a cunning smile.
Still smiling, she replied, “You seem to be a very mentally stable person.”
“We’ll see,” he quipped. “I’ve always heard there’s a fine line between sane and insane.”
He watched her every move, listened to every voice inflection, and studied her mannerisms. They talked about marital issues in general and the hour had passed in what felt like only a few minutes. He had never met anyone so easy to talk to. Somehow, he couldn’t believe that was taught in psychology or counseling classes by some boring, know-it-all professor who was absolutely clueless on everything. She truly had a gift; she was warm, personable, with a very trusting demeanor. Behind all the outward beauty, she was a very intelligent person.
Winding down the session, Mandy said, “C.J., I’ll tell you what I think. I think you should very pointedly tell your wife that there are in fact problems. Maybe she doesn’t see them. But tell her there are problems at least on your side of the relationship, and since the relationship is a partnership, your problems are hers as well. Force her to discuss it, all of it. Don’t let her avoid the issue by changing the subject or denying that problems exist. She may not respond as you expect, she may not respond the way you would like for her to, but it is up to you to make sure she understands that just because everything might be going great in her life, you are a part of that life. Don’t let her ignore it.”
“Wow,” C.J. said, smiling. “I didn’t think counselors talked that much.”
“Only when we have something to say,” Mandy replied, looking very confident.
After a moment of comfortable silence, it was time to go. She asked if he wanted to schedule another appointment, and C.J. decided quickly he wanted to come back at least one more time. He was unsure of his real reason for wanting a return visit, but he was almost certain it had very little to do with marital issues. He just liked being there, having someone to talk to. Right now, he could think of no one he’d rather talk to than Mandy. The appointment was set for the following week and they said their goodbyes.
He drove away feeling a little lighter. He had talked to someone, and that helped. He had never thought that saying it out loud to someone who was listening would make a difference in how a person actually felt. He wasn’t sure the advice Mandy gave would ever work, but he would think about that later. It was after five o’clock, Cherrie had a function of some sort till seven, and he would have some privacy at home to do some more research.
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