Fortune Follows the Fearless

By Hunter Hammond

Scarred by a troubled childhood, and angry at the vicissitudes
of fate, Marshall Martin, a young New York portfolio
manager, decides to win fame and fortune by bringing down
his employer, the largest hedge fund in the world. Relying
on a fabricated insider-trading plot involving his boss, he
succeeds in his goal, only to find that his actions have a host
of unintended consequences on him and those around him.
Plagued by guilt and fear, he begins to find a degree of solace
in his idealized love for the former fiance of his best friend
at work. However, it is only when he realizes her own dark
secrets and flaws, that he is able to embark upon a true path to
redemption, and perhaps, ultimately, happiness.
Set in New York, San Francisco, Silicon Valley, and Monaco,
Fortune Follows The Fearless is an unflinching examination of
one mans attempt to come to terms with his own mediocrity
and mortality, in a world of money and ruthless ambition. It is
Hunter Hammonds first novel.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Oct 20, 2010
• ISBN: 9781465323590

Book preview

Fortune Follows

The Fearless

Hunter Hammond

Copyright © 2010 by Hunter Hammond.

ll rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in

any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,

recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without

permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

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Contents

PART ONE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

PART TWO

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

PART THREE

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

PART ONE

WAR

CHAPTER 1

It was on a miserable night in February that the idea of bringing down DZR Capital first occurred to Marshall Martin. As with most acts of dubious morality—crimes, if you will—the psychological preconditions had been in place for some time. And as in most cases, the motives were as confused as the emergence of a feasible strategy was serendipitous.

Marshall was already in a foul mood. The journey uptown to his colleague Jeff’s apartment only made it worse. The taxi reeked of stale curry and heavy body odor. He breathed through his mouth, trying to avert a wave of nausea that was building in his stomach. Despite the cold outside, he was sweating as if in a steam room. Repeated attempts to get the driver to turn down the heat yielded no answer. The rotund man behind the wheel—Shailendra Kapoor according to his license—was shouting something incomprehensible into a Bluetooth headset. It could have been Hindi, English, or something in between. Despite listening for almost a minute, the only thing he could really be sure of from the tone of the conversation was that the man was talking to his wife.

Marshall thought about smashing on the screen, or kicking it in. Maybe he would cause a crash. That would teach the driver a lesson—he would lose his license at the very least. He felt a inexplicable hatred developing against this little man who had seemed so unobjectionable just a few minutes earlier. With great effort he restrained himself, and slid his window down a couple of inches. He sucked hard at the fresh stream of air, resigned to the thick, stinging grains of sleet that came with it, and the cloying, tearing sound the wheel rubber made against the slushy road.

He had been drinking heavily since Thursday evening, with intermittent periods of sobriety that ended with the same agitation and nausea. He knew that the only solution for now was to keep going—that he would need at least a couple more than he had started with yesterday just to feel balanced. Tomorrow he could go cold turkey in preparation for another week at work, probably making it without a drink through Tuesday or Wednesday. That had pretty much become his standard mode of functioning over the last decade, though it had undoubtedly got worse over the last year.

He knew that it was unhealthy, but he was convinced he wasn’t an alcoholic, at least not yet. Alcoholics were like his mother. They drank all day and they hid their drinking. He only drank at night and he nearly always had company. Alcoholics couldn’t work and they kept bizarre hours. He kept a regular schedule and worked hard—for all the good it had done him.

Thoughts of his mother and father always waited for him on the Upper East Side, day or night. They waited for him on street corners, where women babbled around groups of massed strollers. They waited for him in store windows, where girl mannequins sported pink seersucker dresses, and the boys blue summer shorts. They waited for him under canopies, where old ladies with dogs would be escorted by their middle-aged children into black limousines, the doors held open proudly by porters with white gloves.

As the taxi passed St. James’ Church, where he had been christened, he saw the usual handful of bums prostrate on the steps, and found a strange comfort in their perennial deprivations. It guaranteed him continuity with his childhood past, and made his own disappointments seem more manageable—if only for a few moments. How he wished his mother hadn’t torn him away to London after his father’s death, to go live with that art dealer he hated so much!

He was brought back to the present by the sound of the meter printing his receipt, something that always seemed to happen in New York around ten seconds before arrival at one’s destination. It was as if taxi drivers believed that this incongruous gesture of momentary goodwill proved they deserved a large tip, irrespective of any complaints one might have about the rest of the journey. Marshall refused to submit to what he saw as this thinly veiled passive aggression. He gave the driver an extra nickel.

Fortunately for him, the presence of doormen at Jeff’s building meant that the driver’s options were limited to a carefully rehearsed stare of malevolence.

#

912 Fifth Avenue was an imposing pre-war structure. Designed by Candela and Carpenter in the 1930s, it stood as a testament to wealthy New Yorkers’ inveterate taste for understated elegance on the outside of their buildings, and lavish ostentation on the inside.

In European cities the opposite was so often true, thought Marshall. Perhaps the great residences of London, Paris and Rome were built in a time where class divisions made such external displays of inequality more palatable, or at least unremarkable? Or perhaps architecture had simply moved on, and more utilitarian design—driven by modern amenities like plumbing, central heating and air-conditioning—made certain grandiose embellishments impractical?

Either way, he knew that there had always been as much money in each of these fortresses along Fifth as there ever had been in the palaces of the old world. Some of it had once been his family’s, before his father squandered it and then killed himself. Now some of it was Jeff’s. Far more still belonged to men like their boss, Dan Rubinstein, founder of DZR Capital, the largest hedge fund in the world.

Mr. Green has been expecting you, Mr. Martin, said a porter with a thick Irish accent. Thomas will show you up to the sixth floor, first door on your left.

Marshall strode down the long marble hallway to an open elevator, leaving a trail of slush behind him as he unwound his scarf and opened his overcoat. A tall, handsome young man with lacquered black hair, in his late twenties or early thirties—not far off his age anyway—nodded at him respectfully, slid the door and cage shut, and turned the handle. As the elevator made its way up to Jeff’s, Marshall caught tessellated glimpses of them both in the brass of the cage, and wondered whether he too might one day be consigned to such a menial job.

Jeff was waiting for him as the elevators opened, still in sweatpants and a t-shirt.

Come on in, man. You’re fifteen minutes early. Don’t you know you’re supposed to be fashionably late to dinner these days?

I was intending to be late, but my taxi driver had other ideas. He almost killed me. I should have taken his badge number and reported him. The bastard stank as well.

That’s the happy Marshall I know and love. Relax, man. Go help yourself to a drink in the pantry. I’m going to take a quick shower. Sophie’s in the kitchen if you want company.

Marshall stepped into the entry foyer. He knew the apartment fairly well by now. Ahead, the two main entertaining rooms-a spacious living room and a slightly smaller dining room to its the right—fronted Fifth. To his immediate left was a doorway to a narrow corridor that led on one end to the kitchen in the back, and on the other, via a small pantry, to the living room. To his right a matching door opened into another corridor, which ran to the private rooms in the rear of the apartment. Marshall had only been back there to use the bathroom, but had seen a wood-paneled study, a guest bathroom, an immaculately furnished master bedroom, a commodious dressing room, and an adjoining master bathroom resplendent in white marble and gilt.

Taken as a whole it was the perfect apartment for a man aspiring to fit in to established New York society, and preparing to get married. It wasn’t huge, even large, by Fifth Avenue standards—at two thousand square feet it can’t have been half of the apartment Marshall had grown up in till the age of ten, just a few blocks uptown from here. But for a man in his thirties with a fiancée (even one from as much money as Sophie Masters), it was a symbol of having arrived. And it still had just enough minimalism, modern art, and lack of carpet to be considered on the threshold of cool.

Marshall tingled with envy.

He threw his coat and scarf over an antique chair in the foyer, and skulked into the living room.

A delicate, melodious, whistle from the kitchen dissipated his irritability. It was the most flawless aria in all of opera. But it wasn’t the music, it was rather the thought of the lips from which it was issuing that held him captivated. Sophie. He walked into the pantry and helped himself to a large Johnny Walker Black from the bar, followed quickly by another. He already felt a lot better. He tiptoed down the corridor towards the kitchen. About half way down he had created enough of an angle to see her at the counter.

#

As always, from every angle, Sophie looked perfect to Marshall. She was standing at ninety degrees to him, facing the refrigerator on the far side of the kitchen. In front of her lay a pile of carrots, a chopping board, and a pot of water. Leaning over ever so slightly, she peeled the carrots in long deliberate strokes, her slender white fingers turning each one deftly, almost lovingly, and dropping it naked into the water with a splash. Marshall felt his blood flow quicker, as if by her presence alone she was filtering its viscous gloom.

Her blond hair fell easily to her shoulders, a spotlight above the counter accentuating its rich shades. It seemed both thick and thin, soft and yet full-bodied, straight and yet lively—the hair of an heiress, but also of an athlete, of someone whose beauty came naturally, not from hard work. From the side, her body had even more shape than he remembered it having from the front. Wearing a short, one-shoulder, pink and orange jersey dress—that even he could tell bore the stylistic hallmarks of Pucci—he marveled at the elegance of her five-nine frame: at the fullness of her chest and the tightness of her waist; at the curve of her hips, the firmness of her buttocks, and the tone of her thigh and calf muscles; at the fragility of her ankles, and the daintiness of her toes, nestled together in a pair of white high-heeled sandals.

But above all from this angle and distance it was her alabaster skin that arrested him. He remembered an artist once telling him that the secret to skin tone was in layering the paint. If that was the case, it would have taken even a master like Da Vinci years to have gotten Sophie’s right. Its base was white, but as he looked closer he perceived all the myriad shades of red, yellow, and blue that would be needed to replicate the natural healthiness of its tone. It seemed to be gently bathed in evening sunlight from within. He also knew that the closer he got the more he would begin to sense its sweet fragrance, an allure so magnetic that only a few weeks before, riding behind her in an elevator on some drunken night out, he had awkwardly touched her neck with his nose.

As he stood there, she suddenly turned, knife forward, and for a second the air hung still and tight.

You scared me, Marshall, she said with a frown. What are you doing creeping up on me like that?

He didn’t move, transfixed for a second by the visceral intensity of her scrutiny.

Slowly her face began to relax, and she smiled broadly. Marshall did too, but for different reasons. She smiled in relief. He smiled as he had done when seeing the Birth of Venus for the first time: for the sheer delight that something that beautiful could exist in the world.

He still said nothing. He just stared.

To his eye, the symmetry of her face was exquisite. At rest, her high forehead was framed, as if algebraically, by the blond of her eyebrows and hair. Her pale blue eyes lay equidistant from her slightly pointed ears, and from the straight run of her nose, which ended in a tip that seemed to suggest an impish glee in its own refinement. Beneath it the soft hollow of her upper lip led seductively to a mouth of delicate proportions, lips neither too thick nor thin, width neither too broad nor narrow.

Her chin had the tiniest of dimples at its point. And when she smiled her whole face went from angles to curves, as if welcoming you in—her eyebrows arching, her convex mouth revealing a broad stretch of white teeth, and two faint dimples appearing in her round cheeks to match the one on her chin. Her eyes sparkled with points of light that resembles bubbles surfacing from a deep stone pool.

She was perfect. And she wasn’t his.

Are you going to say something, or just stand there as enigmatically as ever? Sophie asked.

How are you, countess? Still sad in love, but faithful to the last?

What are you talking about, Marshall?

Where are the lovely moments of sweetness and pleasure?

Ok, you’re now starting to freak me out. Are you drunk?

Unfortunately, not yet, he replied. "I was commenting on your whistling. Do you even know what you were whistling? Dove Sono from The Marriage of Figaro. I didn’t know you liked Mozart."

No, I love Mozart, she protested. I didn’t even realize I was whistling at all. That’s funny. Jeff took me to the Met on Wednesday, for our three-year-since-meeting anniversary, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head. I had to force him to go to be honest, but I think even he thought it was pretty good, though not quite Bon Jovi.

They both laughed out loud.

For a second Marshall dreamed that they were the ones that were engaged, that they were hosting the dinner party, that theirs was the wedding being planned for Nantucket in August. For a second he forgot that it was Jeff, not he, who had met Sophie, then only twenty two and fresh out of Princeton, at the Annual Frick Collection Benefit, and that it was he, not Jeff, who had been introduced to her some six months later at a bar near DZR, a meeting he had dwelt on ever since.

Another awkward pause ensued.

Almost as if she could see his thoughts, Sophie turned and reached for her engagement ring, which she placed whenever she did kitchen work on the erect tail of a small silver Westie made expressly for the purpose. As she slipped it on her finger under the kitchen spotlights, the flawless light from its countless facets—unleashed from eight carats of colorless Marquise-cut diamond—blinded Marshall accusatorily.

Can I do anything to help, Sophie? Marshall offered, as if in confession.

Finish the carrots and put them on to boil, she said without emotion. I’ll be in the dining room.

Jeff Green must have been a saint in a previous life to deserve all he has, Marshall thought tritely as he peeled the remaining carrots. How had he been so lucky, so successful? Wasn’t he himself more worthy?

After all, he came from an old military family of impeccable breeding. His great-great-great-great-grandfather led a corps of Union troops against Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg; his great-grandfather was in Eisenhower’s staff, and personally brought him the news of Germany’s unconditional surrender. Both had gone on to add wealth to their valor, and literary acclaim to that. Both had beautiful wives and prominent progeny.

When Marshall looked at himself he saw them look back. He was tall and strong, with neat brown hair parted at the side, neither too long nor short. His high forehead, green eyes, strong nose, and square jaw worked together to convey the rational calm and magnetic intensity that always seemed quintessential to born leaders of men. But what did that matter today? Family, a classical education, leadership. None of it counted for anything in a world dominated by money and greed.

Jeff was just a boring, plain American. He was a classic middle-class white-picket-fence, mom’s-apple-pie, boy-made-good kind of guy. His father was a doctor and his mother a teacher. Unlike Marshall, he had siblings: two brothers and one sister—all improbably close in age. Everyone in the family looked identical: that tall, blond-haired, blue-eyed, fresh, cornflake-box kind of look. A star quarterback at high school and Dartmouth, where he went on scholarship, he was handsome, loyal, outrageously successful, dedicated to helping others, Christian even.

Marshall conceded that Jeff would be the perfect man for ninety nine point nine nine percent of girls in America. But no one would ever convince Marshall he was right for Sophie. Sure, they would have beautiful children, be fabulously wealthy, be big hits in the Hamptons. But what would they talk about when they were alone? What would they dream about?

Marshall felt certain Sophie couldn’t be happy with Jeff. Every time he saw her (more frequently than ever since Jeff moved next to Marshall at DZR last year) he caught something in her that reminded him of himself. A sensitivity to the world around her that seemed at different times a burden or a joy. An interest in art and music, in literature and history—not to score points or win arguments, but simply to celebrate the enchanting complexity of human life and thought—hate and love, hope and fear, purpose and action, wrongdoing and redemption.

Marshall had to do something to redress the wrongs of fate, to win Sophie and the fame and fortune he felt were his by right.

Ok, we’re ready for you, called Jeff from the living room. Put the carrots down, or the Fraulein dies.

Marshall downed the rest of his tumbler.

"Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, he replied loudly as he stopped in the pantry to refill his whiskey. Brilliant movie."

He made his way into the living room. Sophie and Jeff were on a long plush sofa facing him, Jeff leaning over her threateningly, and she lying prostrate feigning terror.

You’re never going to go wrong with Harrison Ford, Jeff said proudly, removing a pointed finger from Sophie’s temple and affecting to reholster it.

What is it with boys and their guns? exclaimed Sophie as she pulled herself up coquettishly.

Marshall and Jeff burst out laughing—Jeff at the successful execution of the parody, Marshall for different reasons entirely.

CHAPTER 2

The brief respite in Marshall’s gloom proved short-lived. Partly, it was the cresting effects of the fresh alcohol intake, and the realization that any imagined proximity to Sophie was a fantasy. But undoubtedly the main catalyst was the arrival of Tommy Lombardi and his wife, Tessa.

Tommy was everything Marshall disliked about the world, in one fat package. He had absolutely no idea how Jeff could stomach him, let alone stand him. Loud, brash, and uncouth, he only cared about two things in the world, himself and money. Fortunately for him, he had plenty of both to work with.

Brought up in Queens, he exuded Mafioso in everything he did, so much so in fact that it was certain he had no connections in the criminal underworld. He must have been more convincing during his interview at Greaves Grant, because somehow—despite what Jeff admitted (and he proudly affirmed) were abysmal grades at Dartmouth—he landed a much-prized position there in investment banking.

By the time Marshall met him some eight years later, he was already head of the industrials group and eighty pounds heavier than when he had played varsity lacrosse—an accomplishment he never ceased to berate people with, despite its obviously bathetic impact when measured against his current vast bulk. Marshall was always surprised when he successfully summitted a few stairs.

Tessa wasn’t much better. If anything she was tackier, dumber, and louder—a real achievement given her robust marital competition. Her only redeeming features were the result of blind luck and a little bit of surgery. Younger, slimmer, and more attractive—if big hair, and enormous fake breasts are your thing—she at least provided a distraction from having to look at Tommy’s pale, oily complexion on a night out. On one particularly dull occasion, Marshall remembered speculating whether she had inflated her bosom to stimulate Tommy’s libido, or in defense against his enormity—two air bags protecting her vital organs from his heaving thrusts.

They announced their presence with five peremptory rings of the doorbell. Accompanying them on the door step, almost invisible behind their combined girth, was the penultimate guest at the dinner party.

A somewhat fastidious English woman, somewhere in her mid-forties, of medium height and plain appearance, she introduced herself to them as Sarah Marks. Her husband Dominic—a tall, scrawny, scruffy man of similar age and demeanor—emerged from the elevator alone some minute or so later. He had apparently come to the intelligent realization that trying to fit five people in a ten person cab when two of them were Tommy and Tessa Lombardi could only end in discomfort and, more than likely, inappropriate close contact—something Marshall knew from experience the British were notoriously skittish about.

It emerged over the course of drinks that Dominic was the chief curator at the Frick, somewhat of a star in the art world, and had hired Sophie directly out of Princeton after reading her senior thesis on symbolism in early renaissance triptychs. Marshall grew irked by Dominic’s fawning adoration. He was not alone. Sarah, despite her placid general disposition, flashed a sharp glance their way when Dominic waxed lyrical about the incisive ingenuity of Sophie’s papers.

Fortunately, Marshall was soon able to steer things in a different direction, and he spent the rest of drinks taking perverse delight in trying to bring Tommy—who was obviously trying to stay outside of their purview by engaging Jeff in some expletive-filled tirade on basketball—into their purposefully highfalutin conversations.

The bait finally took. Moments before Sophie called everyone to the dining room, he had Tommy and Dominic engaged in direct conversation on Bellini, the former convinced they were discussing the qualities of a cocktail, the latter those of the renowned Venetian painter and sculptor whose painting, St. Francis in Ecstasy, was one of the Frick’s masterpieces.

Perhaps there was yet hope for the evening.

At dinner, everything progressed relatively unexceptionally until they started their main course—though the pace at which Tommy was motoring through glass after glass of wine had already given Marshall an uneasy sense of where things might head.

It wasn’t that Tommy had to be a jerk, it was just that it came so naturally.

How’s your book doing, Marshall? he guffawed from the opposite side of the dining table, sending a dime-sized chunk of Sophie’s Coq Au Vin flying at Dominic as if to add explicitly to the implicit insult of their earlier conversation.

I didn’t know you could read, replied Marshall sharply.

Tessa laughed hysterically. Marshall was astounded she had got it. Sophie and Jeff looked down.

No, you know what I mean, Tommy persisted, apparently unfazed by the sarcasm. How’s your portfolio, your technology stocks? Are you making any money?

Sarah winced, evidently not yet completely inured to the mercenary obsessions of New York society.

I’d say strong . . . to quite strong, replied Marshall, in one final attempt.

You’ve got to strike while the iron’s hot, Jeff added in support. Meet the Parents. Great movie. Did you ever see it, Dominic?"

That’s not what Jeff tells me, interrupted Tommy before a bemused Dominic could answer an almost certain no. He says you aren’t putting up the numbers, your allocated capital is shrinking, and you could be out on your ass within six months.

Bullshit, Tommy. I never said anything like that.

Don’t bother, Jeff, Marshall replied. To be honest he’s right and you know it. If you hadn’t told him, someone else would have. The only thing uglier than my career right now looks at Tommy every morning in the mirror.

The weakness of his attempted riposte did a poor job of hiding his disgust at himself.

Silence followed, mostly because Tommy was fully engaged in chewing the chicken thigh he had just ripped apart with his teeth, trickles of juice running from the corners of his mouth. Dominic and Sarah played with their food in an identical manner, which was prescribed no doubt by a British textbook as a remedy for precisely this kind of situation. Jeff and Tessa looked at different corners of the room. Sophie said something about hoping spring would come early that year. No one took her cue.

Listen, said Tommy. You need to work out a way to get better information flow. You’re too prim and proper—that British education. As he spoke, he inflected the words with what must have been an attempt at a British accent, and winked moronically at Dominic.

You need to be closer to the action. Who’s doing what. Who’s buying who. Like I am. Hell I bet I make more money in the stock market each month than you do in a year. Come talk to me sometime. I’m sure we can turn your performance round. It won’t cost you much.

With that Tommy flashed him a greasy smile, and downed his glass while reaching for the nearest wine bottle with his other hand.

I’ll leave the handcuffs for you and Jeff, Marshall replied, including the latter for no other reason than to get him back. He supposed Jeff would never trade in dirty information.

Everything’s above board with me, said Tommy with a laugh. I swear on the bible. And I’m a catholic so that counts for something.

Anyway, how’s the dating scene, man, he continued, moving on to the next target. Getting any pussy? Bet you all the high school girls just love that old man stuff. To be fair, most of the best girls your age have already been snapped up. With that he bowed to Tessa and Sophie in turn, in mock chivalry.

It wasn’t clear if it was her exclusion from this compliment, or the lascivious mention of female genitalia at the dinner table, but Sarah, visibly paler than she had been earlier (which Marshall would have sworn impossible had he not seen it) got up and politely asked to use the restroom—or the loo as she called it, perhaps in a futile attempt to restore some modicum of etiquette to the proceedings.

Jeff, meanwhile, after several botched efforts, finally managed to tear Tommy away from Marshall by mentioning that there was an entire tray of cheese in the kitchen that someone needed to fetch

The gap in the conversation that afforded was quickly plugged by Sophie, who engaged the table as best she could on everyone’s plans for the summer. By the time Tommy returned, several slices already cut from most of the cheeses, the flow had moved on far enough that even he didn’t try to take it back to its earlier quagmire.

Marshall didn’t say much for the rest of dinner. Not that he said that much ever, but he was quiet even for him. Just looking at him you might have been lulled into supposing that the conversation bored him, that he was peacefully contemplating some bigger question deep in his mind, far away from the petty concerns of other humans. That was why so many people regarded him as arrogant, conceited, aloof.

But it was not detachment that afflicted him. Behind the placid demeanor, his mind was spiraling down into a chasm of anger, disgust, and frustration, made only worse by the supportive smiles that Sophie