Doubled Down: A Novel of Wall Street in the 1970S

By Gary B. Helms

Doubled Down is the story of the first investment strategist in 1970s Wall Street. There are anti-war and women’s lib demonstrations on every corner, there are long lines at every gas station, and stocks are plummeting. May Day is coming, when the commissions that the brokerages live on will be slashed.

Nevertheless, Garvey’s quest is to achieve financial independence playing at the big table that is Wall Street. In addition to the dismal background, he must deal with his two natural adversaries: the consultants, who insinuate themselves between him and his clients, and the “quants,” who want to automate his function.

He’s trying to save his marriage while resisting the newly liberated females who abound and to dodge the hit man on his tail. He just might pull it off.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Apr 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781532074233

Gary B. Helms

Gary Helms managed a major mutual fund in the 1970’s, ran Research for the legendary Loeb, Rhoades in the 80’s, and managed the University of Chicago’s endowment in the 90’s. A widowed father of three adults, he lives if Vero Beach and the Utah mountains.

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Copyright © 2019 Gary B. Helms.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Certain characters in this work are historical figures, and certain events portrayed did take place. However, this is a work of fiction. All of the other characters, names, and events as well as all places, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

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ISBN: 978-1-5320-7422-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-5320-7423-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019905056

iUniverse rev. date: 06/18/2019

Contents

Dedication

Preface

Chapter 1 The City That Never Sleeps

Chapter 2 The Big Table

Chapter 3 The Straight and Narrow

Chapter 4 Storm Clouds Gather

Chapter 5 The City of Lost Angels

Chapter 6 What Happens In Vegas

Chapter 7 The Line That is Dotted

Chapter 8 Green Water Over The Bow

Chapter 9 Herding Cats

Chapter 10 Smelling The Roses

Chapter 11 Taking A Bite

Chapter 12 The Man With The Iron Ass

Chapter 13 I’m Good At What I Do

Chapter 14 The Silver Streak

Chapter 15 Trouble In River City

Chapter 16 Crawfish Pie, File Gumbo

Chapter 17 A Trend Reversal

Chapter 18 Band On The Run

Chapter 19 The Sting

Chapter 20 Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

Chapter 21 Put Up Or Shut Up

Chapter 22 Money Honey

About the Author

Dedication

DOUBLED DOWN is dedicated to the professional money manager. He has to know more about the economy than economists, more about each industry than analysts that follow only one, and more about chart patterns than full-time technicians.

No matter how well he does in absolute performance, he must also best his competitors, who tend to be the smartest and hardest working people on the planet.

To succeed in this quest will require the highest level of brains, nerve and luck, and it is thus almost irrational to attempt it.

There is absolutely nothing that he would rather do.

Preface

It is the early 1970’s as we investigate the further career of Garvey Hatch, newly arrived on Wall Street from the leafy suburbs of Kansas City. He could hardly have arrived at a worse time.

The economy is reeling from that most pernicious of all conditions: a combination of inflation and stagnation. All commodities are being bid up, especially energy, the one touching the lives of all citizens. There will be gas lines, brownouts, higher prices for all petroleum-based products. There seems no hope that the monopolists in the Middle East will ever ease their grip on the American consumer.

Washington is a mess, and will reel from a President resigning in disgrace, to a temporary custodian largely considered ineffectual, to a seemingly well-meaning incompetent.

Socially, the anti-war, anti-establishment protests from the 60’s are still evident, punctuated with the incessant beat of disco music.

The stock market itself reflects these negatives, and suffers two major bear trends with only desultory rallies in between.

Garvey is hardly unprepared. A self-described country boy, he nonetheless has an MBA from Harvard, and has produced a credible record as a ‘gunslinger’ in managing an aggressive growth mutual fund. Because he violated some technical regulatory strictures in the market, and committed some more serious abrogations of his wedding vows, he found that a major change was necessary.

In addition to the weakness in the macro environment, the Street is facing a major drop in commission rates, the first in over a hundred years, and nobody knows how serious it will be to an industry largely viewed as bloated and poorly managed.

Nor is Garvey’s new role well defined. He will be among the first full time strategists on the Street. His goal will be to take his firm’s research and insights, combine it with his own perspective, and provide a viable market approach to institutional clients. As a former money manager himself, he will hopefully be able to advise other portfolio managers on credible ways to enhance their performance.

It is not clear what form that advice will take. Garvey will have to figure that out, along with how to strengthen his marriage, and to make enough money to finance his urgently sought early retirement.

In spite of it all, he is, he believes, ready to play at the big table.

Shut up and deal.

CHAPTER I

The City That Never Sleeps

I Really Like Yo’ Peaches, Gonna Shake Yo’ Tree, the Clovers, 1954

If Garvey Hatch got caught screwing around, his life as he knew it was over, and Garvey really liked his life as it was.

While getting caught was still unlikely, the odds had just gone up substantially.

The reason for his dilemma was someone he saw almost every day, and she checked off all of the boxes: not classically beautiful but seriously exotic, a mixed race lovely with the golden bronze skin once called high yellow. She had an attitude and a little smile that suggested she had a couple of secrets that nobody else knew, and he was pretty sure that she did. Most importantly, she was somebody else’s secretary, and lived in a different state than Garvey’s wife and three children.

From experience, he knew how to handle situations like this. He didn’t consider playing around a bit to be a problem, as long as he did the gentlemanly thing and saved his real love for his wife, which he had always done.

No woman was worth the risk, but this one was special. She had a white girls legs and a black girls ass, and spoke with a delightful Jamaican accent straight out of Montego Bay. If she ever attended a protest rally, he seriously doubted that she’d have a bra to burn. She seemed to appreciate Garvey’s tendency to kid everybody about everything.

She wore an abbreviated Afro, which of course made Garvey wonder if she was similarly coifed between those beautiful legs.

Her name was Biddy, which almost rhymes with titty, Garvey had noted, and he usually called her Biddy Rhymes.

The problem was that Garvey was on probation. Lil had caught him screwing the office girls back in Kansas City, and had vowed to take the kids and leave if it ever happened again. It was one of the reasons they had relocated to the Big Apple. New location, new lifestyle. Maybe.

A pretty good test came one Tuesday afternoon. The barber came by the office on Tuesdays to cut the partner’s hair. It was a nice little perk, paid for out of petty cash, and of course it kept the high priced talent at work instead of sneaking out to get shorn. Garvey was wearing his pretty long, but not nearly to the shoulders.

The barber had a portable chair, which he usually set up out on the edge of the trading floor. Garvey had finagled a move of the chair over by Biddy’s desk, claiming that she was typing a report for him.

When the barber stepped away to take a phone call, Garvey removed the apron from around his neck and said, You know, Biddy Rhymes, you are all I can think of day and night. Aren’t you about ready to let me take you out for a little romance?

Biddy sighed with what seemed genuine regret. I’m afraid I have a gentleman friend who thinks I’m his alone.

Of course that’s what he thinks. The question is what you want to do. Let’s have a drink after work at Harry’s. The place will be packed, so we can hide in plain sight.

Harry’s is a meat market, she said.

Then meet me in the bar at the Chelsea Hotel at 6:00. It’s two stops on the subway, and a two block walk. We can talk about you, and about us. He gave her a card with the hotel’s address.

I believe you just want island girl, Mr. Garvey, she said in her best Jamaican accent. I’ve got to decide if I want Wall Street cowboy. But I’ll let you know before I leave.

She gave him an almost imperceptible nod when she left at 4:45, and showed up at the Chelsea at 5:59.

They commandeered a banquette in the bar, and enjoyed an immediate connection. She seemed to anticipate his every move: if he reached for her hand, she had already moved it at least half way to him. When he put his arm around her shoulder, she had already melted into him. Garvey was bedazzled.

So tell me, Mr. Hatch, she said, when you are thinking about me all day every day, and all night every night, exactly what is it that you are thinking?

Mostly about those beautiful brown eyes, that gorgeous body, and those phenomenal lips that I’d really like to kiss, he said.

So kiss them then, she retorted, but didn’t quite have time to complete the sentence before he had complied.

He had already made a room reservation, of course. Luckily, they were alone in the elevator, and were still glued together when the door opened. Further foreplay would have been highly redundant once they reached the room.

She removed her clothes like she was unwrapping a present for him, which indeed she was.

As he eased himself into that phenomenal body, her eyes widened as if in surprise. It was one of the things he’d always remember about her: those dilated pupils looking up at him saying things that her lips never could.

Garvey started slowly and tenderly, but that didn’t last long.

Just as a bonus, she had uncommon flexibility, even age adjusted. The reverse cowgirl became one of Garvey’s favorite positions, and it was obvious that she agreed.

Later, when they were lying side by side, not touching for the first time all night, Garvey asked in a hoarse and clearly exhausted voice, So how serious is your relationship with this gentleman you mentioned?

I was just trying to discourage you, she said, removing a expertly wrapped joint from her abbreviated Afro. He wondered if it had been in there all along.

I don’t have time for a gentleman friend. I go to night school at NYU three nights a week, and do homework the other four. I want to manage money some day. I figure your white ass will be heading for New Jersey pretty quickly after round 2, and you won’t be taking up a lot of my time. She smiled that smile.

What a woman, Garvey thought. Not just the token island girl in a Wall Street firm, living with a Bob Marley type in Rastafarian dreadlocks. No, she was someone with true ambition and the willingness to pay the price.

You’re talking a friend with benefits kind of situation? He was mumbling, uncharacteristically.

Who knows, she said, but I thought the audition went pretty well, didn’t you?

You bet he did. Biddy Rhymes was a phenomenal woman, and not looking for involvement. He hoped it was a common trait in big city women, but would soon learn that it unfortunately was not.

The relationship wasn’t exclusive for either of them, but it worked pretty well for both. And the friendship would outlast the benefits, a rare thing in his world.

There’s no way he could have imagined it, but Biddy Rhymes would turn out to be the most critical person affecting his success in his new firm.

Oh, and the carpet did indeed match the drapes.

CHAPTER II

The Big Table

You can’t make big money playing at the little table. Old gamblers saying, 1955.

So it’s 1971, and Garvey’s the portfolio strategist, whatever that is, at a mid-sized, mid level brokerage on Wall Street. He works in the City, but lives with his family in