This, according to the statements, was the happy couple’s present net worth.
Susan nodded. “Their contract with Markowitz allowed me to call the bank to confirm the numbers. By the way, they’ve parked it all in 180 day T-Bills, set to roll over automatically.”
I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes and took a deep breath; though at that moment, I’ll have to admit I was less concerned about the specifics of what my accountant had found than in how I could explain an oversight of this magnitude to my client and keep even a shred of my professional reputation.
“How in the world did they make it?” I finally asked.
“Let’s just say that Warren Buffett is a rank amateur by comparison.”
I motioned for her to hand me her notes. As it turned out, the Brysons had bought $10,000 worth of Wal-Mart stock in December 1973, which had grown to $2.5 million by the time they finally sold in June 1990.
“That’s a good start,” I said. “What did they do next?”
Susan laughed.
“Not being content with winning the lottery, our brilliant physicists went out and plunked it all on a single number on the IPO roulette wheel.”
“What did they buy, Microsoft?”
“Even better: Cisco. Our intrepid investors took their Wal-Mart profits and bought 80,000 shares of Cisco in August of 1990 — not long after the IPO. Between then and the new millennium, the stock split almost every year. They ended up with roughly 11.5 million shares, which they sold in February 2000 — right at the top, mind you — for an average of $120 per share. You do the math.”
I did. Even after capital gains taxes, the Brysons were billionaires.
“But their house is still mortgaged!” I said.
She nodded. “They took out a standard 30 year fixed at 5 1/4 percent when they bought the place ten years ago. I had a lawyer run by the courthouse yesterday to look at the documents. It’s all standard stuff. They even took advantage of the down payment assistance program the university offers so promising faculty can afford to live near campus.”
“Did they refinance?”
“No.”
“And their cars?”
“State registration data still list the same ones they owned when you conducted the first background check — an Explorer and a Camry.”
Markowitz would at least get a laugh out of that. Bonus time in Greenwich kept Lamborghini dealers in fine fettle. Any of his traders driving a Camry would have been either laughed out of the building or dismissed as a hopeless eccentric.
“A billion dollars, huh?”
“Afraid so. If it’s any consolation, you weren’t the only one to miss it. A billion got you on the
At the moment, that was small comfort.
“What about their taxes? Could you get hold of their returns?”
She smiled as she opened her briefcase and extracted the documents. She slid them across the desk.
“Paid in full,” she said.
I made a note to speak to my contact at the IRS, whose reliability suddenly fell into serious doubt.
“Are they amended returns?”
“No, as best I can tell, these are originals.”
I thanked her and then poured myself a fresh cup of coffee, though I was sorely tempted to go for something stronger.
I supposed it was possible. Despite the popular images on celebrity TV, the truly wealthy people of my personal acquaintance took pains to avoid ostentatious display. Even Sam Walton, with all his billions, drove an old pickup truck — though I suspected that after a while, this became part of a carefully crafted PR campaign.
And the question remained: why? Why would a couple of billionaires seek investor money when they could have just as easily set up shop on their own?
***
What the television dramas don’t show — for obvious reasons — is the unbearable monotony that constitutes much of an investigator’s lot.
The Brysons’ contract obligated them to send quarterly financial statements to their benefactor, along with copies of the invoices for all major equipment purchases. Sorting through these was the clear first step.
My staff and I spent the next week examining purchase orders, matching the requisitions with legitimate vendors, and confirming shipments with FedEx and UPS — mind-numbing tedium, to be sure, but it had to be done.
We even visited suppliers to verify that the prices the Brysons had paid reflected economic reality and didn’t involve hidden kickbacks between the lab and their confederates at the equipment dealers — an all too common scam.
The net result of our endless hours of toil: if the Brysons had been cheating their patron, we didn’t have the slightest idea how.
***
What was even more bizarre was our realization, as we waded through spreadsheets and sifted through endless piles of paper, that the intrepid physicists had poured millions of their own stock market winnings into the project.
When we added it all up, their own contributions had matched, or even slightly exceeded, what Markowitz himself had invested, and all of this had occurred within the previous nine months.
I gave my office a few well-earned days off as I considered what to do. We had found no other trading accounts, so it didn’t appear that the Brysons had set up their own hedge fund — though my client would surely point out that we hadn’t found their billion dollars the first time around, either.
One more issue nagged me as well. I flipped open the folder and re-read their bios.
So, when they bought their first Wal-Mart shares, he was chasing girls at the local burger stand, while she was a happy fifth grader playing hopscotch in a small town 1,500 miles away. Compounding the mystery, we had found no family fortunes on either side. Henry’s father worked as an electrician; hers ran a drug store. Both mothers stayed home.
None of this made any sense.
I put off calling Markowitz as long as I could, but eventually I had no choice but to pick up the phone.
Over the course of my years in the Army, I had learned that I was usually better off just admitting that I didn’t know something rather than trying to BS my way through, so I just laid out the facts as we had found them.
Markowitz appreciated the candor. Though he still suspected that we had botched the initial background investigation, he admitted that he found the lack of overt fraud as puzzling as I did.
We concluded that our logical next step was to go to Boston and confront Juliet directly — though he added a catch.
“I’m sending Ray with you,” he said.
I had met his son once. The boy — actually a young man in his late twenties — seemed bright enough, and unlike so many of his wealthy peers, his vices didn’t extend to the white powder and club-hopping. Instead, the kid spent his family’s fortune on his obsession with adventure sports.
“I’m not sure what he could do,” I said. “What does he know about any of this?”
Markowitz, to his credit, restrained himself from snide comment; and I had the sense to realize that this was a battle I couldn’t win. He wanted another set of eyes — completely reliable eyes — and I was in no position to refuse.
