A friend, Henry Melrose, is a detective. You might imagine someone who looks like Rockford, Spenser or some sleazy git. Melrose looks like a businessman. That’s because that was what he was for the better part of his career.
He worked at a firm that manages wealthy people’s money. He did quite well at it. Met lots of people who are more than a bit better off than the rest of us. He wasn’t in their stratosphere. But because he was smart, articulate and managed to make them even more somewhat filthy lucre (not all investors are on the up and up, to understate things by a massive amount, and you don’t need a precis of the Pandora Papers to know that), they would be part of one of his foursomes at the Oakland Fields Country Club or meet him in the bar for a martini after an outing. He was able to chum along with the best of them.
But Melrose had a problem in the office which led to a divorce. He spent too much time there. He would spend hour after hour at his Bloomberg terminal. The Tokyo market opens at 10 pm Eastern and the London market opens at 3:00 am Eastern, and while he wasn’t in his office from dawn to dusk, rinse and repeat, he spent more time there than he did at home.
So his wife left him.
That set him back on his heels. And set him back financially, as well.
Continue reading Sounds Like Something You Don’t Want to Hear
