JackPot

By John Bendall

In this thrilling tale of greed and revenge, Preston "Press" James has everything a successful investment banker needs: the Ivy League degree, the sharp wardrobe, good looks, and a picture-perfect wife, Claire. His partner, Whitford Horsley, is jealous over what he sees as Press's unfair advantages, and his ego drives him to demolish the only tw

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Aug 17, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638377337

John Bendall

John Bendall. A background in economic history, political science and marketing and is now an independent researcher living in Greenwich. John has a long-standing love of the Royal Observatory and National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, including the Caird Library. He is a member of the Society for Nautical Research and Nantucket Historical Association, which have both provided interesting material, as has the National Archives in West London. This book was inspired by American author Dava Sobel's renowned 'Longitude', covering Harrison's timepieces in revolutionising maritime navigation. John has researched a fascinating follow-up story of Larcum Kendall and the K2 timekeeper. John is also a director of an English language school in Canterbury and a document management services company. His supportive wife, Jane, worked at the NMM for many years and is founder of the Flamsteed Astronomy Society. Mike Dryland. Mike retired from a career in industry in 2001 and has since been spending time as a voluntary curatorial assistant at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, where he specialises in tours and talks about the Harrison marine timekeepers (sea clocks) and the history of the Observatory. He studied physics and has a long-time interest in astronomy, horology and naval history. Mike contributed two chapters and the appendix for this book, and helped generally with navigation and horology issues.

Book preview

Chapter 1

P

reston James, Inmate Number 3192741, serving five years for a number of financial crimes, wasn’t allowed to play cards with these guys. Or any guys.

It was 9:44 p.m. at the Sussex II Virginia State Prison, Waverly, VA, which meant that the lights would dim in one minute. The block floor was littered with round tables with guys playing cards. They were rushing the last hand to get it in before the bell went off and the lights dimmed. In one minute when the lights did dim, the prisoners would walk to their cells, and at 9:50 p.m., five minutes later, the cell doors would automatically close and lock. Then at 10:00 p.m., the cell lights would dim, and at 10:30 p.m., they would go out completely. This half hour gave the trustees a chance to clean the floor, watch the last half hour of SportsCenter and hang by the locked cells if they still needed to talk to the general population. Being a trustee was something you earned, on a rotating basis. Preston James, Press, had earned it several times. He had traded the term, a month long, for other considerations. More time at the computer at the end of the block. Stamps, aka Leonard, with whom Press had traded this last shift, was on the second tier of the cell block, a story above the first tier and serviced by a lifted hallway that reminded Press of a motel but that also served as a track for people to walk. Press had walked that track, twenty-five times per mile, thousands of times.

Press watched the last rushed hand. His gift for numbers and his awkward candor got him banned from the game's years ago. He did not count cards on purpose to cheat, but he couldn’t help but count them.

The lights dimmed, and the guys stood up, grabbing the slips of paper that they used as chips and making their way toward their cells. Press followed, running his hands through his blond straight hair, still cut banker style but a little longer than collar length. As he got to his cell on the first floor, he stood at the door, which was covered by the second-floor hallway/track. A passionate student of architecture, he often thought about this design flaw. Less light, but in these circumstances more importantly, less visibility. Another day done, check.

He was taking a step forward when a blow came to the back of his left knee. It doubled, and Press wobbled down to the knee, not really feeling any pain but very startled. He lifted his head and started to turn to his left when a booted foot landed hard and fast in the center if his left kidney.

Fire. Stars. Where did the air go?

Then the same blow, from someone different, to the other kidney. He grunted with what little air remained in his lungs, then he inhaled so he could scream for help. Halfway through, a giant forearm crossed his mouth like a gag, and another, coming from the opposite direction, crossed his eyes. Blinded, gagging, and writhing now, Press began to feel the blows. A boot to the right side of his head lit up the dark like the end of a lit fuse.

The Chinese Police training manual, entitled Practices of City Administration Enforcement, explained in detail how to beat a person without leaving bruises, marks, or blood. Press knew this because he had read it two weeks earlier, before lending it to Rosco. Maybe lending was the wrong word.

One of the first lessons was to continue beating your subject so they could not inhale. If you can’t inhale you can’t exhale, and if you can’t exhale you can’t make noise. Press started counting the kicks to his ribs, always with the counting. Four, five, in a fast constant rhythm that would let him breath in. Already the corners were turning black.

Then his right arm was pulled back until he heard what sounded like someone pulling the drumstick off a turkey. His shoulder gave way, and he threw up. More air lost, more shininess around what little he could see, solid things starting to move. Then a hard kick in the middle of his back drilled him face first halfway into his cell floor. Then all the weight pressed down upon him and his left leg torqued at a forty-five-degree angle. The same tearing sound came but with a louder pop. Somebody had to have heard that. Tears starting.

His right leg kicked up a little, aiming at nothing. A big crash to the back of his head. Maybe a book. Despite all intentions, blood dripped out of his mouth.

Kicks, more kicks all over his body. He couldn’t lift his right arm anymore, but he tried with his left to block something, anything. Then arms underneath his pits, lifting him and propping him against a wall.

Punches fell like his head was a snare drum. His hair was bloody now, and a small canyon opened on his cheekbone. The face bleeds most. Blood mixed with drool and tasted like a steel potato chip.

Two men holding him up, and more punches, until his dead weight was too much. Then a parade of kicks again.

He lay on the floor as the men backed out, breathing heavy but wordless. He was sick, writhing, and blacking out.

At 9:50 p.m., the cell door started to shut. It caught his twisted foot and therefore wouldn’t close, which sent a signal to the watchtower on the second floor. Only then did help come.

At 10:45 p.m., Press, using his right arm because it still worked a little, zipped himself into a body bag, finishing with a paperclip that he had bent to fit the loop in the zipper. In the black, he finally passed out so that consciousness and unconsciousness were the same color.

Chapter 2

Five years earlier

T

he firm of James, Horsley and Partners is located in the Sun Trust Center, the second tallest building in Richmond, VA, which makes it it the second tallest building in Virginia almost by default. Clad in granite, the building was finished in 1983, over budget.

Preston James, the CEO of James, Horsley and Partners would never have let that happen. At forty-four years old, James started his firm at Sun Trust in 1999. The year was all odd numbers, which James did not like at all, but none of them were prime numbers, which James used to compensate. He started the firm on his own, after two stints, one at Lazard where he started and left in the same year after a disagreement with a senior partner about what, in his mind, was simple math. James wound up being right, which wound up making him wrong. He was quickly picked up—quickly meaning the next day—by Goldman Sachs. It wasn’t his own proactivity that made the switch happen so fast; it was his recruiter, Angela, who had been calling him every week, every Thursday to be exact, at 4:04 p.m., four minutes after the market closed. This scheduling had been at his request, in large part because James knew with an unreasonable certainty what was going to happen the next day in almost any market, and that meant that on Thursday he knew what was going to happen on Friday, which then meant that he knew on Thursday how the week was going to close. With all that being predetermined, James could talk about himself and his career with less distraction. He had called Angela right after the meeting with HR at Lazard, but only because he misinterpreted the meeting. Nuance and human interface were not James's strongest suits; as good as he was with numbers and math and analysis, he was almost that bad with people.

His people skills explained the partnership that he started with Whitford Randall Horsley III. Horsley was equally educated, but that is where the similarities stopped. The product of the Horsley's Virginia heritage, it was Whit's great grandfather who had conspiratorially persuaded Littleton Waller Tazewell to run, and win, the Virginia Governorship from 1834 to 1836. While Governor, Tazewell was too preoccupied to pay attention to his plantations, which the Horsleys bought while he served. The Horsleys prospered while Tazewell's wife grew ill. Tazewell died a widower and left a scarce roster of relatives. The Horsleys, not busying themselves with the duties of the governorship, had more time to procreate, and by the time Whit was born, the family had established itself in law, finance, and the regeneration of the family name. Whit was the middle of three children, and once during a particularly stressful deal, James had googled middle child to give himself a better understanding of Horsley's ego. James spent the afternoon nodding at the monitor, while Horsley, in the office next door, spent that afternoon on the phone with his father, complaining.

Nonetheless, James knew that his skill set was only half of what he needed to move James Horsley to the top of the Virginia financial field. It took two things to make deals, James realized. Numbers that made sense and people to agree. After a few deals that did not work, James had a world view that began for him in elementary school reinforced. Things that jibed perfectly for James other people missed completely. The world for James was a series of puzzle pieces that looked like they were supposed to fit—but rarely did. It drove him to the point of scratching his forearms until they bled, and Horsley was the answer. Horsley could take a room of people who did not understand anything James was saying and get them to agree to a deal anyway.

Horsley, for his part, saw the same thing at Goldman, where James had spent one night tying together a deal that the balance of Horsley's team—MBAs, one and all—had spent the last eight days on. With a deadline looming, James presented Horsley with a single sheet of paper that today traded in triple figures.

Horsley moved in the day after James called from the Sun Trust Center, which to most would be a sign, but to James, who himself moved jobs on a day's notice, was standard. They spent absolutely no time feeling each other out. Instead they dove into the work and forged a friendship and a partnership based on achievement. They didn’t learn each other's tics at dinner; they learned them in the heat of battle. They didn’t even really learn to trust each other. Before they knew it, they had a string of successful transactions behind them that were constructed on each doing his part never crossing into each other's bailiwick. James's part, he knew to leave the puffery and courtside seats to Horsley. Horsley knew the converse and learned to never answer a question that he didn’t know the answer to. Instead, he could call James anytime, anywhere, and get the answer. James always answered on the fourth ring, no matter the time of day. Horsley spent so much time dining, joking, and befriending and then calling James with the one deal-making question that he knew to dial fifteen seconds before the question even came out. So, by the fourth ring, James would be on the phone, numbers in his head, ready.

For James, the fourth ring made all the sense in the world. One ring to see if he was going to answer, the second ring to see if he could anticipate what it was about, the third ring because it was both odd and prime, and then answer on the fourth. Easy.

That was the work that had led them to their own conference room this April, in Richmond. Sleeves were rolled up, ties were loosened, and the cold light of day was not just shining on Horsley's hangover from the night before; it was also poking into the corners of a deal that looked like it was falling apart.

Across from Horsley sat Michael Stern, the CEO of his own venture capital firm. On the other side of the long glass table, littered with porcelain coffee cups and Diet Coke cans, was Frederick Weber. Weber was a yacht designer, a solar yacht designer to be specific, who had designed and sold eleven beautiful yachts, one that had just made the first transoceanic voyage completely powered by the sun. Weber's company was a game changer. Eliminate fuel costs, eliminate virtually all the maintenance, and even the most free-spending yacht buyer would be compelled to take a look.

Except that Weber was also the worst salesman in the history of water. His creations were works of art, to be sold to people who appreciated them. Weber's fascination with his propulsion system, the only one of its kind in the world, was lost on customers who wanted more places on the boat for their flat tummy wives to sun bathe. Weber's pricing was based not on any market information, but instead on what he perceived as the value of his innovation. As such, he had priced himself right out of the market and placed himself squarely in the awkward space of having to explain why his boats, which burned no fuel and had no maintenance, and were supposed to save money, wound up costing two times what the same footage would cost his customers otherwise. His eleven sales had buried him in the red, and Stern's company had been interested, at the best of James, Horsley and Partners, in perhaps investing in and turning around Weber's company.

Until now. Stern, leaning in, ran his hand through his thinning gray hair, then over the ever present stubble on his chin. He pushed his glasses up his nose and turned toward Weber.

Frederick, he began like he was already at the end of his sentence, I think, and I speak for my partners here… He pointed his palm at the two associates he brought with him, who were anything but partners. That we have spent more than enough time on this. Your boats are beautiful, quiet, efficient. We understand all that, and we understand, too, how such an innovation, even one protected by the value of its intellectual property—

James, seated next to his partner, leaned into Horsley. The propulsion system has a patent; it is worth something even if the boat isn’t, James whispered. Horsley nodded.

…Can still lose money. You have a simple decision to make, Frederick, and we can’t spend any more time watching you make it. Either you want to sell boats for money, or you want to make art that is powered by the sun. Either way is fine, but our attention only extends to the first option.

Stern stopped, having laid down his final card. Horsley, who had little idea of the technical aspects of the deal, was savvy enough to know when enough was enough, and he saw the deal sinking, and with it, their fee. He turned toward James.

I dunno, James whispered. The table turned toward him. James had been in at least half a dozen meetings prior to this with Stern et al, and he had only spoken when he gave his sandwich order for take in.

I really don’t think you can see what I’ve— Frederick started.

I don’t know, James said again, louder. You guys are missing the boat.

The table stirred at the pun. James had no idea why.

The money isn’t in the yachts. The money is in the taxis.

Jesus Christ, Stern exclaimed. Now I know why your guy here doesn’t talk, Horsley.

Whoa, Horsley said with a palm in the air. Preston?

You are building the whole thing wrong. Here, look. Yacht customers don’t care about the money they spend on the yacht. In fact, the more the better, James said. Bragging rights. It is probably an insult to them to even talk about saving money on a boat like that. It's not the point.

"Then what is the point," Stern asked.

The point is, you need a place where saving money on boats matters. Municipalities. Water taxis. They spend a ton on fuel, they are in the shop all the time, and people don’t want to take them because they stink from exhaust. James flipped his laptop around and showed what looked like three paragraphs and the financials from an annual report. You lease the water taxis to municipalities. For this, he pointed at the screen. They get a cheaper monthly payment, new boats to sell higher priced tickets on, and tax considerations all over the place. He pointed at a different spot on the screen. This number, which is applicable if you can carry enough to finance all the leases, would let you build a boutique line of yachts. This way Frederick could design to his heart's content and you, Stern, could regain all of the interest on the financing. Frederick wins; Stern wins; we win." James stopped, looked at the room.

Everyone at the table stared at one another as the sun beat through the wall-sized windows. Below them, a horn honked, and they could hear the air conditioner whir. James shifted.

You can put this much up, right, Stern? James asked. Rather directly.

Stern stared. Whir.

Preston, Stern said finally. Those numbers are real?

James stared back. Like he didn’t understand the question. Because he didn’t.

Stern swallowed. We can, he declared. Would have done so earlier, if you had brought this whole thing up before.

James ignored the barb. Because he didn’t feel it. He was focused. And, Frederick, if you manufactured thirty-eight water taxis the first year for this… He pointed yet again at the screen. And you were then able to build your yacht line with this… He moved his finger. That's a good eighteen months, right?

Frederick nodded. Stern nodded. Horsley gawked at James, who was staring at his screen.

Ok, James said.

A half hour later, the room emptied. Thanks for the two lunches and a dinner, and the cruise that Horsley put together, pleasantries were exchanged, hands were shook, and paperwork was promised for the following morning.

As the room emptied, James stayed back to wrap up with Horsley.

If they get this together by end of week, we will be seventeen percent on top of our quarter, James started.

Fuck off, Horsley said back.

Chapter 3

H

orsley shoved open the door of the second conference room. James followed more out of curiosity than anything else. Not understanding faces and words sometimes constrained James's life in a lot of ways, but it had its upside. Not really caring when people were upset with him was part of the upside. He watched as Horsley went straight to the windor and threw a blue vase to the floor.

Horsley glared. Jesus Christ, Press. Jesus Effing Christ. Count them. Count the number of goddam dinners I’ve had with Stern in the last month and a half. Count the number of goddam times I had to interpret an email Weber wrote that had some goddam inventor bullshit in it. Count them, Press.

What, Whit, what? You wanted me to not say anything? What? You wanted me to stand by and let you run this deal into a boutique line of boats that no one cares about, or do you want a piece of—I dunno… James paused. Numbers had to be exact. Maybe 300 million dollars of financing over the next two years? You’re pissed at that?

Horsley paused and turned away. His math skills grew exponentially when he was figuring compensation. This did not go unnoticed by James, who did the math for both of them generally.

Horsley was taller than James. Fit at forty-four, Horsley had a patrician's posture, a senator's hair (if the senator was well known for having great hair), forearms and hands that were a little more defined than most thanks to a now six year avocational obsession with squash. He was tailored for the sport, long, lean, and a great lateral mover. On the court and off. He was clean shaven, of course, and left his suit jacket on more often than most. He was a funny man. Not in a spontaneous or witty way, but he had a catalog of jokes that he never recycled. After spending twenty years under the same roof, James marveled at how Whit Horsley could tell one joke in the morning three times to three different people and never once trip himself up and repeat it again. His speech was littered with collegiate idioms, and he rarely shook hands with someone a second time without patting them on the shoulder. If politics paid better, or if there wasn’t a frat brother somewhere with a file on him thicker than a good sandwich, Whit Horsley would have been absolutely Manchurian. But politics was out for Whit, and so he had decided to put athleticism, affability, and a long history of almost flawless social performance to work for himself. Let someone else do the heavy lifting, he had said to himself when he joined James. I will lead the horses to the water.

He turned back. If you knew there as another option, he scolded, why would you keep it to yourself?

By contrast, Preston James—did not have the people skills. Equally attractive to Whit, as was noted by the receptionist to every one of her Instagram friends, James was a runner. Horsley had tried a few times to get him on a squash court, but James's OCD was a real problem there. The number of times you bounced the ball before you served it, the unpredictability of the ball when it bounced off the tin, winning a point and not getting a point for it all irritated James, who otherwise would have been pretty good. James was an inch and a half shorter than Horsley at six, two, but still taller than most. He was equally well dressed, too, with a few standards. Curtis braces that held up the pants on any one of his four suits, two gray and two blue, and Lobb shoes. With blond straight hair that was slicked back and parted to the side and a hairline that hadn’t yielded to either the years or the hours he kept, James was deceptively handsome. Richmond suffered the same fate as all big cities in states without a lot of big cities. It was essentially a small town spread out, and both James and Horsley were local celebrities for both their quick but substantive rise and their looks. It was an irresistible combination for some, both those who approached James learned very quickly that his looks were accidental and that his real focus was mathematical, financial, musical, and Clare, his wife.

James didn’t think before he answered Horsley's question about why he had kept it to himself. He rarely thought before he spoke. Speaking got in the way of thinking.

You never asked me.

Oh for fuck's sake. Seriously? I have to ask you now?

I was trying not to interfere, Whit. I was trying to give you a little room.

Horsley walked straight past him.

I never thought about needing room before, Press, but now that you offered, maybe I do.

Chapter 4

J

ames and Horsley went to their separate offices. On the twenty-fourth of twenty-six floors, they had spared no expense on décor. James in particular was a student of architecture. Symmetry, balance, engineering all drew him in. He got distracted in larger buildings doing the math, from square footage to construction costs. It always bothered James that he was unable to draw well, but the design of JH and Co.'s offices would never betray that.

Anorthosite is a stone most commonly found in Norway. Mostly gray with blue veins, anorthosite caught James's interest for two reasons. First, no one knows how it was made, and second, it is very common on the moon. Those were compelling enough factors for James, who took almost the entirety of the firm's commissions from a deal where he accidentally invested the firm's then-young fund into a property that would up yielding lithium, which he then leased out to a battery company—and imported anorthosite with it. Two floor-to-ceiling anorthosite pillars framed glass French doors at the entrance of their reception area. The receptionist desk and countertop were also carved from the stone, as well as an inlay in the reception floor.

And so on. That same level of precision and care