Chapter 17 Postscript

Jeff Rosenberg’s body was discovered when his cleaning lady came in at seven the next morning. There was a single gunshot wound in his temple, the gun was still in his hand.

The discovery came too late for reports of his death to make the morning papers, but several of the local TV and radio stations picked up the story. By nine thirty, just after the market opened, every member of his “club” had heard the news. The reaction was mixed, because Jeff’s club had created a considerable wealth for these members, if not for their clients and customers. Most who heard the news were relieved that the thing was now over, at least for them.

It just seemed that the market lost its fire that day, March 16th 2000. First it was the small caps, unloaded it was said by the mutual funds. The dot coms plummeted, and along with them went market sentiment. By the closing bell the index was off 7%, and by the end of the month, a quarter of the value of the entire market had been trimmed, a staggering three hundred billion dollars. Even the mighty Dow succumbed to the pressure, and sluggishly followed the downward spiral. A year later, struggling to climb from a low of less than forty percent of the highs of a year before, the NASDAQ may have turned the corner, or maybe not.

 

Jose hated funerals, he had caused to many himself, but this one he had to observe. Frankie the last of his most trusted friends, other that is than his wife Greta, had died of a stroke. Well that was the official reason, but all who knew Frankie knew that he died the day his second son was shot, and it took his body all this time to accept the inevitable. The public side of the event was a big service held in that large cathedral on 2^nd Avenue. Jose did not attend, as he avoided being seen in public with his friend, as he had for many years. He went afterward to Frankie’s palatial home in New Jersey, to where there was the real funeral, when those closest to the grieving family gave them support.

During the evening, Jose drew JoJo aside, “You are the man now, and you know that. You must take charge immediately; there is no time for delay. A power vacuum is like an aphrodisiac to the troublemakers of the world, and will cause great problems in the future. Already we have problems with those damn Russians, and the Koreans, not strong here in the east yet, are always looking for an opportunity. So the last thing you need is unrest in your own ranks. If you do have any trouble, give Alex a call, he is becoming almost as good at his job as his father was, and that was the best.” He gave JoJo a hug, and turned away. Only someone very near would have detected a slight glisten below his left eye, and even if they had no one would not have dared to suggest it might be a tear.  He turned to the woman standing a few paces behind him, “Come Greta, we must go, we are expected in Miami in the morning.”

 

The next morning prompt at eleven, Gus and Lourdes Delatores  welcomed Mayor Franeles aboard their yacht on the Miami Intracoastal. “I thank you for hosting this reception,” the mayor said in his speech later, “the funds raised at this event will help may Nicaraguan families who have settled here get closer to their own American dream, as you did before them.” Gus smiled as he raised his glass to acknowledge the accolade.

 

The Drug Enforcement committee in the house was into its third week of hearings into to perceived failures of interdiction efforts, and the witness today was the new deputy director of the FBI, Fred Hanson. Hanson had been promoted largely due to the success his New York team had in breaking up a number of key Mafia drug dealing cells based on information received from  captured Colombian Cartel Hit man, Scarface Bonita. Bonita himself had been deported back to Columbia after giving up enough information to “set back the Cosa Nostra’s ability to import and distribute drugs in the North East for years to come,” the report had said.

“No,” Hanson said, “I cannot explain why Bonita was unable to give us any information about his Columbian employers, but he was so accurate in his information about the Cosa Nostra cells, that when he said he did not have any thing to say about the Columbians we had to believe him. In any event we had insufficient evidence of any serious crime to convict him, so deportation was our best option. You can’t convict a man on his reputation you know.” He knew he was preaching to the converted.

 

Meanwhile on the senate side of the capitol, the economic affairs committee was into its thirty seventh week of hearings into the reasons for the bursting of the stock market bubble.  Here the newly appointed head of the New York office of the SEC enforcement division, Charleston Phelps was testifying. “It seems that at least a dozen mutual fund managers were manipulating the price of certain stocks. They chose stocks with a limited public base and traded them repeatedly between their own funds increasing the prices by a few pennies on each trade. Many of the Dot Coms fit this description. They managed it such that there was never really a gain or loss for them because they always retained the stocks in a group fund and the only money transfers were internal. The key thing was that the value of their fund units increased steadily. Once a stock had shown enough of an increase to attract public attention and sustain its price, then and only then would they liquidate carefully and slowly, and turn their paper profits into real profits. We cannot prove a conspiracy, there were no inter group operations, and intra group trading is a daily fact of life. It could be argued that perhaps all the fund managers are smarter than we are and they could see what the others were doing and we did not. There may have been a conspiracy, but the man who was suspected of heading up the plan committed suicide on the very night we had interviewed him. This would have been great circumstantial proof of his guilt were it not for the fact that his daughter died of an overdose that same evening. All of us involved in this great multi agency investigation believed no jury would not have considered that this death may have been the reason for his suicide.

“The thing is, all these funds have only one aim, that is to show a quarter over quarter increase in unit value. It seems they don't care who they hurt in the process. So much of the money in the market goes through these funds that they make up a staggering percentage of the total. We all believe that as the market moves, so do the mutual funds, but here at least it seems the reverse was true.” 

 

In the mountains of Guatemala, just across the border from Belize, the line of children moved slowly forward. Each child held out his battered aluminum plate and the woman behind the table placed a bun, a few lettuce like leaves, and a slice of meat cut from the wild pig roast that lay protected from the flies by a mesh cloth. The woman was tall and blonde, unusual for this part of the world, and though she wore no make up, very beautiful. Perhaps the fact that she was well over six months pregnant contributed to the glow of contentment on her face, or perhaps it was just the obvious love she had for these children. “Eat your lunch now,” she said in Spanish, “afterwards you can play for a while before returning to class.”  There was just a touch of accent to her words, perhaps in keeping with her complexion.

This was not an official school, more of a sort of daycare for children that should have been in school, but for whom there was no school close enough for them to attend. The “schoolhouse” was a circular structure of poles supporting a roof thatched with palm leaves. No wall at all, but then there was also no furniture to get wet if it rained, and it never got cold enough for a breeze to be unwelcome. The nearest town was nearly thirty miles away, and this village would not have rated a name were it not for the impressive and said to be significant Mayan ruins that were hidden in the forest just over the hill.

Having studied in the morning, the children spent the afternoon chipping and scraping at various local stones and woods producing amazingly expert carvings of animals, fishes, demons or gods, all of which were added to the display along the wall closest to the track that passed as the main street of the village. Their efforts were well rewarded when at mid afternoon an old but well maintained bus clattered to a halt, not bothering to move off the track, and a group of about a dozen tourists swarmed over the display.

This was a good day because each tourist chose at least two carvings to buy as souvenirs, and the take was well over two hundred dollars. That would mean a hundred dollars would contribute to reducing the schools operating deficit, and the children would each have a share of the other hundred to take home to their families.

As the tour group re-embarked, the driver gave the woman a gentle hug and a kiss, “See you in an hour or so, I only have two hotel drop-offs tonight.” The young man was quite slight, but the driver’s uniform he was dressed in gave him an air of authority. On his pocket was sewn a hand embroidered label, “Vanessa’s Eco Tours”, and in front of his drivers seat was a shiny wooden plaque with the words, “Your Driver, Jeremy.”  If you looked really closely you could see that the small letters in the right corner that would normally have held the sign makers signature actually read “co-owner”.