“You can count on them,” I said.
Farrell shrugged.
“Per diem’s scarce,” he said.
He was still holding the whiskey in both hands. He had yet to drink any.
“You hit one out, though, on Tripp,” he said. “He’s in hock. First time around we weren’t looking for it, and nobody volunteered. As far as we can find out this time, he has no cash, and his only assets are his home and automobile. He’s got no more credit. He’s a semester behind in tuition payments for each kid. His secretary hasn’t been paid in three months. She stays because she’s afraid to leave him alone.”
“What happened?” I said.
“We don’t know yet how he lost it, only that he did.”
“How about the family business?”
“He’s the family business. He managed the family stock portfolio. Apparently that’s all he did. It took him maybe a couple hours, and he’d stay there all day, pretending like he’s a regular businessman.”
“Secretary sure kept that to herself,” I said.
“She was protecting him. When we showed her we knew anyway, she was easy. Hell, it was like a relief for her; she couldn’t go on the rest of her life taking care of him for nothing.”
“What’s he say about this?”
“Denies everything absolutely,” Farrell said. “In the face of computer printouts and sworn statements. Says it’s preposterous.”
“He’s been denying a lot, I think.”
Farrell nodded and looked down at the whiskey still held undrunk in his two hands. He raised the glass with both hands and dropped his head and drank some, and when he looked up there were tears running down his face.
“Brian?” I said.
Farrell nodded.
“He died,” I said.
Farrell nodded again. He was struggling with his breathing.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
Farrell drank the rest of his drink and put the glass down on the edge of the desk and buried his face in his hands. I sat quietly with him and didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything to say.
chapter thirty-four
LEONARD BEALE HAD an office in Exchange Place, a huge black glass skyscraper that had been built behind the dwarfed faзade of the old Boston Stock Exchange on State Street. Keeping the faзade had been trumpeted by the developer as a concern for preservation. It resulted in a vast tax break for him.
“Loudon lost almost everything in October 1987, when the market took a header,” Beale said. “I wouldn’t, under normal circumstances, speak so frankly about a client’s situation. But Loudon…” Beale shook his head.
“He’s in trouble, isn’t he?” I said.
“Bad,” Beale said. “And it’s not just money.
“I didn’t know brokers said things like `it’s not just money.”‘
Beale grinned.
“Being a good broker is taking care of the whole client,” he said. “It’s a service business.” Beale was square- built and shiny with a clean bald head, and a good suit. He looked like he probably played a lot of handball.
“He lost his money in ‘87?” I said.
“Yeah. In truth, I didn’t help. I was one of a lot of people who couldn’t read the spin right. I didn’t think the market was going to dive. But mostly he lost it through inattention. He always insisted on managing the money himself. Gave him something to do, I suppose. Let him go to the office at nine in the morning, come home at five in the afternoon, have a cocktail, dine with the family. You know? Like Norman Rockwell. But he wasn’t much of a manager, and when the bottom fell out he was mostly on margin.”
“And had to come up with the cash,” I said.
“Yes.”
“Why was he on margin?” I said. “I thought the Tripp fortune was exhaustive.”
Beale shrugged and gazed out the window, across the Back Bay, toward the river. The sky was bright blue and patchy with white clouds. In the middle distance I could see Fenway Park, idiosyncratic, empty, and green.
“Are the Rockefellers on margin?” I said. “Harvard University?”
Beale’s gaze came slowly back to me. “None of them was married to Olivia,” he said.
“She spent that much?”
“Somebody did. More than the capital generated.”
“So he began to erode the capital,” I said.
