A Night Back In London

Daddy had wanted a ‘strategic’ review so I had to jet over to London with Steve my IT guy. Steve wasn’t necessary for the review but I couldn’t imagine a night in London without him as he knew all the best bars, which was impressive considering he was a northern guy.

As soon as we landed I phoned Tanya, our London lawyer, and suggested a night out in the City. I’d missed the ‘champagne bars’ and the understated way the London bankers celebrated finishing a hard day at the office – they may have made or lost millions but you never knew – they all had a good time. No boasting or over-the top gestures – just discreet ordering of bottles of Bolli.

Steve and I managed to reach the City about 6.30pm, which was perfect timing and met Tanya and her para-legal guy, Carl, at a bar not far from St Paul’s. A few gin and tonics (and cigarettes), a quick catch-up on what was happening in London and we were ready to hit the City bars where the champagne would be flowing.

I’d met Carl quite a few times and was very impressed. Para-legals, despite the name, do not combine parachuting with legal work but work in legal departments during their gap-year from university (maybe the name comes from the fact that they ‘parachute’ into legal departments on a short term basis) but I could already see that Carl would be a great addition to any legal department. He was quiet but determined. He was already aware of negotiating positions and the little scams we used to outflank clients and wasn’t too worried about some of the ‘dodgier’ tactics we used to gain the upper hand. He was a good guy.

Once we hit the Bow Wine Vaults and the Bolli was ordered, we settled down to discussing what was next for Daddy. Was he doing anything I should know about? Was he doing anything illegal? And was he seeing any women I knew?

As Tanya and Steve discussed the unlikely, and boring subject of new IT systems for the legal department, Carl and had a chat about his degree and where he hoped to end up in the City.

During this discussion I happened to mention that I was so jealous that he could wear mainly casual clothes to work whilst I had to settle for formal suits, bespoke shirts and silk ties. Perversely, Carl said he couldn’t wait to afford the sort of clothes I wore and as the alcohol was kicking in we stupidly decided to swap clothes.

Without another word, Carl and started stripping off and despite a full bar, nobody seemed to notice that at one stage both Carl and I stood in our underpants whilst we began to dress in each other’s clothes. A few minutes later, I stood at the bar in Chinos, checked shirt and casual, linen jacket whilst, unfortunately, Carl looked decidedly handsome in my Hugo Boss suit, tailored Pink Bros shirt and silk Hermes tie.

Tanya and Steve looked at the ‘cross-dressing’ escapade with some humour but within seconds the atmosphere changed as a guy almost somersaulted across the bar floor with a decidedly angry, Carl in hot pursuit. As the guy rose from the floor, reeling from whatever had knocked him down in the first place, Carl landed another two ‘knockout’ blows on his chin.

To say that Tanya, Steve and myself were amazed was an understatement. Amazingly, very few people in the bar seemed to notice – they continued to drink their Bolli and chat away as if nothing had happened. The next thing I noticed was Steve helping the rather groggy chap to his feet and taking him to the bar where he propped him up and bought him a drink.

Thinking quite selfishly, in case any blood started flowing and my Boss suit was ruined, I quickly changed clothes with Carl and started on the Bolli again.

A minute or so later, Steve was chasing the guy at the bar and all hell broke loose. The bar quickly emptied this time and the barman headed for the further recesses of his domain whilst Steve threatened to flatten the guy who seemed to be upsetting everybody within arms length.

This time I was the peacemaker and dragged the, by now punch drunk miscreant off to the other end of the bar whilst Steve and Carl regained their composure.

I bought the guy a drink (GT I think) and told him to settle down and stop causing trouble and noticed that Tanya and Carl had decided to leave. I figured it wouldn’t be good for their careers if two City lawyers were arrested for GBH or whatever the police, if they ever turned up, would charge us with.

Then I realised what had caused the problem. The guy I was standing with started throwing peanuts at Steve. This apparently, was what had caused the initial rumpus and despite a good thumping and several pieces of advice, he continued doing it.

Steve was a blur as he ran down the side of the bar and threw the guy against the wood lined wall. He drew his fist back and was just about to flatten the guy when I grabbed it. I told Steve that he should go to the other end of the bar and I would talk to this pain in the ass and try and get him to leave.

It appears the guy was Dutch and was working in London. I tried to get him to drink some water and call a cab which might have proved difficult as the bar was down a pedestrian alley, quite a distance from Cheapside.

I thought I was finally getting through to him when he suddenly decided he wanted another fist in the face and started heading for Steve again, calling him a ‘fat bastard’.

This time it was me who snapped. Where the strength came from I have no idea but I picked ‘Dutchy’ up by his lapels and literally slammed him down horizontally on the bar top. I’d completely lost it. I remember

thinking I’m going to sort this prat out once and for all and grabbed whatever came to hand to hit him with. I knew we were at the food end of the bar and I reckoned there would be some plastic bottles of mayonnaise to hand but what I picked up and started to aim at his head was a glass bottle of Extra Virgin Olive Oil. As it came into view, I decided that Extra Virgin Olive Oil was just too good to waste on this piece of Dutch crap so put it down and reached blindly for the next bottle which thankfully was plastic – Tomato Sauce!

I was ever so tempted to let him have it but then I thought about the mess, my Boss suit and the fact that the place would look like an abattoir if I’d burst the bottle open, so I put it down, let the guy fall off the bar and went back to the other end where Steve was calmly drinking his Bolli.

‘Steve, it’s been about 30 minutes since we started hitting this guy, the barman must’ve called the police by now, I think we’d better move on’, I said.

‘Not before I finish my champers’, was the reply.

Who The **** Is Nigel Smarther-Blair ?

We’d had a call. A strange call. It was from California – we could see the incoming number. They said they had an interesting and potentially lucrative business proposition to put to me and they wanted to meet as soon as possible. I said I’d fly down and meet them and they’d said Monday would do which was only two days away. Flights were arranged and they said we’d be met at the airport. They also asked me to keep the meeting with them quiet.

After the weekend, Steve and I got on the flight to San Fran and sure enough there was guy waiting to meet us just outside ‘Arrivals’ – the ‘meet and greet’ card held by their driver at the airport said ‘VeezaCard’ which was strange considering they said the project was top secret! We were whisked off in a stretch limo to a Mexican restaurant some place just outside San Francisco where the rest of the Veezcard team were already downing frozen Margaritas. I stupidly allowed one of them to choose my food, not being a connoisseur of Mexican cuisine and was ‘treated’ to chicken and chocolate sauce which was absolutely disgusting. Why do Mexicans combine their main course with dessert!

We chatted a bit during the meal, introductions and the like and then we went a few blocks to a bar where Bruce Springsteen used to play when he was first starting out, not that I was impressed with that, and then the wine started to flow. Californian of course.

It appeared that he Veezacard guys had been monitoring our business and had been informed by somebody that our software was ‘state of the art’ and they wanted to buy it so their treasury operation could use it in the investment division. The conversation, at a very high level, continued well in to the night, however despite my increasingly inebriated state, I knew there was a bigger fish to catch. Rather than sell them the software, why didn’t we manage their funds – apparently there was a spare $100 million to invest!

At about 2am, I felt duty bound to pay the bill at ‘Bruce Springsteen’s’ bar but when I went to sign the check, making sure I had my Veezacard prominently on display, I didn’t have a pen and the barman couldn’t find his. The girl at the bar who I had been talking to didn’t have one either so I was forced to ask Paul, my Veezacard opposite number if he had one, which he did. I noticed it was quite a nice roller-ball with the Veezacard logo and ‘Project Trident’ engraved on it.

Once I’d signed the voucher, I turned back to Jemimah who had taken quite a shine to me – I think! I said

that unfortunately I had an important meeting early the next morning and reluctantly said my goodbyes and she handed me her business card. She seemed disappointed. From what I could see it looked like she worked for an up-market fragrance house. It was all very tempting but I hadn’t even been to our hotel in San Francisco. Anyway, I was too drunk, she was too beautiful and that was the way it was left.

The next morning we had to meet Veezacard in a conference suite in a hotel which my office had booked. My head was still spinning (I’d only had about 3 hours sleep) and it was absolutely lashing down with rain. The cab only took about 10 minutes to travel the ten or so blocks and as Steve paid the fare, I ducked out of the cab and ran into the hotel.

Once inside, orange juice and smoked salmon and cream cheese bagels were the order of the day before the meeting started. I wanted to make sure we wanted for nothing so I dashed down to reception to give them my card and to tell them that we needed the best possible service. But then as I went to get my card, I realised that my wallet, which I knew I had put in my suit inside pocket when leaving my hotel, had disappeared. Bugger!

When I got back to the conference room, I made my excuses and started phoning round my banks and credit card companies to cancel my cards. Steve was the software man in any case and he’d probably take till lunchtime giving Veezacard an overview of the system capabilities. It was all a bit of a show of course, we had no intentions of selling them the software but giving them the key attributes of the system and some, but not all of the algorithms, would be the sprat to catch the mackerel.

I couldn’t taste the lunch of lobster, deep fried crab pieces and salad, for thinking of the creep who would probably be spending his (or her) way round San Fran with my cards. But in the afternoon session, I put my personal problems to the back of my mind and sprung the surprise on the Veezacard guys – no sale of the software but we’ll manage your funds for you.

Initially I thought they were going to leave as Paul signalled to his guys to go outside but they just wanted a couple of minutes to discuss this ‘excocet’ as he called it.

When they were outside, Steve asked me if I’d noticed anything about Paul and his team. ‘Nope – regular guys’, I said. ‘Every one of them is gay’, he said. ‘Every single one of them – all ten of them’.

When Paul and his team re-entered the room, I watched them with renewed interest. And there they were – all the discreet and some not so discreet signs that they were gay. The touching of each other’s arms when talking to each other. The hands on the hips when trying to make a point. Steve was right – 100% correct. How come I hadn’t noticed? As far as I was concerned it didn’t matter one jot, just as long as they bought my plan.

Paul said that this new approach would need to be discussed with the Treasury guys and called the meeting to a halt but not before he reinforced the message that the project was absolutely top-secret. Their newish President wasn’t a fan of doing anything outside the company and if word got out either about buying the software or managing some of their funds, Paul would be for the high-jump. I reassured him and we called the meeting to a halt.

I couldn’t wait to get back to the hotel. I just wanted to crash out for several hours.

I downed a large G&T from the mini-bar and lay on the bed, fully clothed. What seemed like hours later but was actually only about 30 minutes from when I lay down, I was awoken from my slumbers by my room phone ringing. I could hear the screaming voice before the earpiece even touched my ear. ‘What the fuck have you been doing?’ I recognised Paul’s slightly camp voice. ‘What are you on about Paul?, I asked. ‘I’ve just been summoned to a meeting with the President and his first words were, ‘who the fuck is Nigel Smarther-Blair and why do the FBI want to speak to him and what the fuck is Project Trident?

Eventually, I managed to convince Paul that I had no idea what he was on about. I’d never spoken to his President, I had no idea what Project Trident was and why did the FBI want to speak to me? I said we’d better meet later that night.

Paul gave me the number the FBI had left and after calling it and having been told to get down to their office, I dashed downstairs, jumped into a waiting cab and a couple of blocks later, I entered a rather grubby building. I explained at a sort of reception that I was to meet a Sergeant Joel Schmitt and a few seconds later, a huge guy came out of a door and grabbed my hand and shook it.

‘Is this yours?’ he asked holding up my black leather Cambridge wallet.

To cut a long story short, my wallet must’ve fallen from my pocket when I left the cab that morning. Amazingly, of all the people who could have picked it up, Sergeant Joel Schmitt of the FBI had spotted it lying in the rain and so started a rather clever, but short sequence of events.

There was nothing in the wallet to say where I was staying and nothing which allowed Schmitt to trace me to my office as I kept my business cards in a separate holder. But there was a business card from a Jemimah Parker – the girl at the bar the previous evening. Schmitt had phoned her and she’d said she had no idea where I was staying but she had a pen which I'd left in the bar and said that I worked for Veezacard and I was on the Trident project! Schmitt had then phoned Veezacard and when the telephonist heard the letters ‘FBI’, she had put him through to the President whereupon Schmitt explained that he needed to trace one of their employees, a Nigel Smarther-Blair! The President had then called Paul into his office and laid into him big time.

Later that evening I explained the whole story to Paul who I anticipated would be fuming. Over a bottle or three of Californian Chardonnay we resolved our differences. I apologised for dropping him in it with his President, albeit unknowingly, and Paul announced that when he’d explained what Project Trident was, his President was quite enthusiastic about an external company managing some of their funds and wanted the project to proceed as fast as possible. It was music to my ears – and all because of a borrowed roller-ball pen and a girl’s business card!

The Girls of Madison Avenue - Shelagh

Samantha had moved on. The London office had terminated her employment but had arranged for her to fly back to the UK first class with Virgin – ironic or what? We never heard from her again.

I have to admit that going back to my apartment at night and being on my own was quite dispiriting. I really missed Samantha but within a few weeks of being celibate I’d decided to make some changes to my life. I sub-leased the apartment and moved back into the duplex at the Chambers. I took up jogging and used the various trails through Central Park to get rid of some of the flab which had gathered around my middle and which had affected my performance, as Samantha had commented on a couple of times.

The girls in Madison had obviously known that Samantha was ‘numero uno’ and had kept their distance, not daring to come near me or even smile in my direction but now she’d gone, it was like a man-hunt. It was all so terribly obvious that I had to laugh but it didn’t stop me taking advantage of it all.

The first was Shelagh, who despite her Irish name was from Boston. She was some sort of admin clerk. She had a fabulous body, a bit on the short side but terrific legs and long blonde, semi-curly hair. Had Shelagh been another 4 inches taller she would have been stunning.

A couple of lunches was all it took. She literally dragged me back to the Chambers, told me she was a virgin and begged me to get on with it. I was stunned by her revelation given how forward she was but I did my best to help start her sexual education and boy, when she started, she didn’t stop – ever!

She was the original Martini girl – anytime, anyplace, anywhere! Public, private – it made no difference to Shelagh. One of her favourite tricks was to drop a fork in a restaurant and not reappear for 10 minutes by which time I was choking on my food. In the three years she, sorry, we, continued with her education, she built up an encyclopaedic knowledge of Manhattan restaurants which had either discreet dining booths, or long table cloths, or both! I wouldn’t go as far as saying that Shelagh was a nymphomaniac but she certainly erased any memory of Samantha and indeed made her look like Mother Teresa by comparison!

The problem was that she was engaged to be married but whilst the engagement continued, so did her ‘education’ but she’d made it quite clear that once married, that would be it, but in the meantime she’d continue studying!

The last time I saw her was two days before her wedding. I was sitting in Madison flicking through the Wall Street Journal before heading off to see a client for a breakfast meeting when the phone rang – it was 8am. I recognised the voice immediately despite the fact that Shelagh had resigned two months previously to get ready to move to Boston with her new husband.

There was no small talk. ‘My wedding dress fitter is arriving at my apartment in precisely 90 minutes. If you can get here in under an hour, you can give me my wedding present’. The phone was heading for the cradle before she finished her sentence and I was heading for the door where a Town Car was waiting to take me to my client’s offices. A quick call to the client cancelling our meeting and the car was heading off to Queens. Luckily I knew where Shelagh lived having dropped her home and steamed up the lifts on quite a few occasions and even more fortuitous, all the traffic was heading the other way. My driver made it in 50 minutes and we even stopped for champagne and flowers. He got a $50 tip and was told to wait.

I entered her apartment where she was wearing the most amazing French lingerie set and had the most amazing sex of my life. When I left later that morning, that was that – I never saw or heard from Shelagh again.

Then there was Cheryl …….

Easy Come – Easy Go

A couple of months after the Sparks episode where Samantha had managed to upset a crowd of supposedly Mafiosa who were having a nice, quiet dinner until she started shouting about ‘fucking yanks’, word was sent through Pelinni that we would not be welcome in Sparks – ever again. I wasn’t too worried about the ban from Sparks – Harry’s, just off Wall Street does a better steak and its 82 Margaux is also a mite cheaper but it was Richard Pelinni who was worrying me. How come the hoodlums were using him as their mouthpiece and, looking back, I was desperately trying to remember how we had recruited him. I resolved to try and find out about his background but that was for another day.

Today we were going to make some money. I’d been given a tip about Google coming to the market. Not it’s listing – everybody knew the day they’d start trading. I’d actually been given information about HermesDirect, a company in New Jersey used by the SEC to run part of the ‘Dutch Auction’ which was the process by which Google shares would be allocated. It was all relatively simple – get over to the Harborside Centre in New Jersey on several Friday nights and get Samantha to ‘befriend’ one of the guys in Hermes. This was months before the float and long before anybody even knew that Hermes Direct would be used as part of Google’s auction process. Nobody smelled a thing – apart from Samantha!

Everybody knew the Google share price would rocket and to maximise our potential profits we needed to maximise our shareholding right from the start. I spoke to Daddy and he authorised an extra $5 million to be transferred into our trading account which, I have to say took a bit of persuading but eventually he agreed. It was a great move and one which put me in Daddy’s good books for quite a few years.

The 19^th August 2004 will remain with me forever. On that seminal day, as we electronically posted our bids for Google stock, exactly 50 cents over the mid-price of the current bids and as relayed to Samantha by Blackberry by her HermesDirect toy-boy ‘lover’, who just happened to be one of the authorised auctioneers, we were allocated block after block of Google stock. At the end of the day we managed to get our hands on 59,000 Google shares at an average price of $85 each. We used every last cent of Daddy’s $5m.

Two months later we sold the Google stock for just over $40 million. A 700% return in two months!! A fucking triumph. Well it was a triumph until Richard Pelinni came into my office the following Monday morning and tendered his resignation. I was about to give him a $250k bonus for the Google scam but I could replace him and save myself some money so we shook hands and that was that. Or I thought it was. As he moved towards my office door, he turned and informed me that ‘the guys in Sparks would be visiting in a few days and wanted to pick up their $2m’. Without going into details, he said that Samantha’s behaviour that night had caused a bit of a stir and had drawn us to the attention of some ‘undesirables’. The fact that Pelinni knew these guys, was also a complication and did not help as you might think it would. The little turd had started feeding the ‘Sparks’ guys information about our operations and in particular, our coup with Google. They wanted 5% of our profit. There was no point in asking what the alternative was.

That night as Samantha tried yet another position and complained loudly that I ‘didn’t seem up to it’, I let my mind wander to the fact that if she hadn’t had such a big mouth, we wouldn’t be paying out $2m the following week. Ok, she was great in the sack and normally took my mind off everything, but the Mafia, (I assumed that’s who they were) asking for $2m was enough to nullify anything she did to my body. I just lay there wondering why they didn’t use their ‘contacts’ to get their hands on 50,000 Google shares and do what we did but I suppose there was little excitement in that. I also suspected that they wanted us to refuse to pay so they could have some fun, especially with Samantha! All because of a fucking undercooked steak!

I spoke to Daddy and he said we should pay. After all, we’d made $35m profit. $2m was peanuts he said but there was a condition – ‘get rid of that fucking woman’ was his edict.

The following Monday I said goodbye to $2m, and Samantha. I always hated losing money and handing the suitcase over to the guy who arrived at reception looking like a badly shaved gorilla was one of the lowest points in my career. Losing Samantha didn’t come easily either. In a strange way she was probably worth more than the $2m I had just handed over.

That night as she moved her stuff out of my apartment which overlooked Central Park and was just round the corner from the Chambers, I felt a twinge of misplaced sympathy for her. She’d been brilliant in setting up the US operation with me. She’d found Chambers and this apartment and she’d been a huge diversion for me after hours but after one last kiss, she smiled, took her envelope containing $250k and left her key on the hall chest of drawers before closing the door quietly.

The Night Sparks Flew

Daddy didn’t rate the Limos situation as a particular problem. He reckoned it was all a bit of a ‘storm in a teacup’ and felt, like he always does, that a ‘bit of dosh’ would fix things, but he would, wouldn’t he, being three thousand miles away! Eventually we’d paid Limos on Line 6 months worth of fees just to get out of the contract which was probably worth it having seen their faces when the shredded document was emptied onto the table in Privilege. Tanya, our lawyer in London however, wasn’t quite so forgiving and implemented a whole new raft of administrative procedures to ensure we never again fell into the same sort of trap. But then again, she was three thousand miles away. What we got up to and she didn’t know about wouldn’t hurt her!

The fund we’d built up had been doing ok. Daddy was pleased. As long as our numbers beat the median of the other fund managers, we could hold our heads up with our clients and charge even more for our ‘services’ the following year.

Keeping well away from the Street was a great idea of Daddy’s. Madison Avenue was much less frenetic and fewer questions were asked, which was the plan all along but our Friday night sojourns up to the ‘centre of the universe’ kept us appraised of what was going down. Who was doing what and to whom. Names of the big investors whom we would tap up the following week.Who was making the money and, more importantly, who was being investigated.

The delightful Samantha, who had returned from London reinvigorated, was also keeping me well occupied. Her range of skills in the bedroom never failed to surprise me and made me wonder if she’d had another occupation before becoming a respectable PA. I have to say that she also worked miracles when we hosted our clients to some of those little events they expect and which we organise occasionally to thank them for their custom……and our ridiculous charges! She took over the whole balcony of Metrazur in Grand Central one night which apparently had never been done before. The clients were most impressed and one or two of them, after a few too many glasses of Cristal, felt they were entitled to sample the delights of her stunning body as well as the delicious canapés she’d organised. The fact that I was none too fussed about this ‘attention’ had started the problems with Samantha a few months back. As far as I was concerned, they were clients, and good ones to boot. If one of them had wanted to bend her over the balustrade in Metrazur and give her a good seeing to, that was just fine by me. Just as long as he kept his money in the fund.

A few weeks later, on one of the few Friday nights when we didn’t go en-masse to Harry’s Bar which is a short stroll from Wall Street, we ended up at another steak restaurant, probably more famous than Harry’s – Sparks in Midtown. I didn’t know it at the time, but Sparks was where John Gotti, the infamous Mafia gangster had ordered the execution of two fellow Mafia members (Paul Castellano and Thomas Bilotti) and, according to ‘Mr Fixit’, Richard Pelinni, the Mafia still held court in the farther recesses of the restaurant. How did he know? It bothered me.

I still remember walking into Sparks (pictured). Lots of round tables populated by older guys, sitting, talking with their heads down. Waiters, all men, rushing around in their black dress jackets, making sure no table wanted for anything. I didn’t think anything of it until Pelinni told us of the supposed Mafia connections and then there was a different feel to the place. I’m sure I felt a few glances cast in our direction, but that could have been Samantha, who, as usual on a Friday, wore one of her most alluring outfits. Normally, she dressed like this to attract the Wall Street guys (and get information from them) but now I was slightly concerned about the attention she was attracting.

Dinner went without a hitch. Well nearly! The steaks, which Sparks is famous for, were delicious and cooked to perfection, as you would expect, but for Samantha’s taste, a little too rare. Despite the waiter offering to replace it, Samantha, who had quaffed a few too many glasses of the 82 Margaux, decided that she should lecture the waiter on how ‘the Brits like their steaks cooked’. At one stage she screamed that ‘if she’d wanted raw meat she’d have gone to the fucking butchers’ and then added that ‘fucking yanks have no class’, which was, to me, hysterical given that nobody with any class would order a burnt steak! The waiter was a model of politeness despite the tirade coming from Samantha’s lips and offered to bring another steak but a guy at the adjoining table took exception to her comments and I noticed him whispering in Richard’s ear. Pelinni then whispered in my ear that we needed to leave – pronto. And so we left, without Samantha seeing her steak returned to the table. Outside, Richard said he had been left in no doubt that the underworld traditions of Sparks were alive and well, which might not be a description you could apply to our group if we carried on disturbing other diner’s meals.

As we waited for our limo to take us to the bar at Chambers which we still frequented, I thought it strange that if I’d taken out a gun and shot bullets into the ceiling at Sparks, it’s likely that nobody would have batted an eyelid. But, a rather drunk Samantha shouting about ‘fucking yanks’ managed to get us warned off by a guy who probably had seen, and more ominously, done it all before!

I didn’t know it then but that was the start of our problems in The Big Apple.

The Contract

I’d been wondering more and more about Patrick Pelinni’s position in our company. OK, he fixed things but sometimes I wondered how he’d managed to pull the rabbit from the proverbial hat when all seemed lost. An example was the Jim Levinski ‘Tomato Tsunami’ problem a few weeks previously when I was sure that Levinski would simply have written us off, no matter how illogical it might have been missing out on our projected annual return of 17%. Levinski, however had gobsmacked us by sending a gofer three days later with the requisite $2 million and nothing more had been said – at least from Levinski. Patrick however had mentioned it a few times and it had started to worry me.

We’d been in New York for just over six months and had a nice line of clients generating over $25 million for our first fund. People wanted a good return but also wanted us to keep things quiet. They never asked what we invested in and we never asked them where their money came from.

The six month marker meant we had to tell our clients what sort of progress we were making and a year-end projection for their money which shouldn’t have been a problem given we were already at 14% at the half-year mark.

We also had a number of supplier contracts to renew. We hadn’t known at the start how long we’d be in the Big Apple and we also didn’t know where our base might end up so we’d only signed short term deals with a range of suppliers. As Madison Avenue had proved to be the ideal spot, for a variety of reasons, and I was determined to extend our stay, it was now time to filter out the crap suppliers and negotiate new terms with the good ones.

One of the suppliers who had not lived up to their billing was the company who supplied our on-call limos which magically appeared at the entrance to the office whenever we needed them – apart from the increasing number of times when they didn’t and were late. When they did appear, the cars were ok but the drivers left a lot to be desired. On a number of occasions, I was sure the driver was listening into client conversations in the back and even when the partition widow had been raised at my request, I was certain that some sort of intercom device was allowing the driver to listen in, particularly when, on a couple of occasions, some strange stock-market movements were obvious just after we’d received a tip from a grateful client.

The problem with ‘Limos-on-Line’, was that they’d been recommended by Patrick and he was none too happy when I told him that this was the one suggestion he’d made which had turned out to be a turkey. No amount of persuasion on his part convinced me to change my mind – Limos-on-Line were toast, as they say.

I’d faxed the contract to our lawyer in London, Tanya, to establish our position, and to my astonishment she stated that we’d signed an open-ended contract - no time period and no clauses to prevent us being ripped off year after year as they had the right to raise prices at will.

Although I was concerned about this situation I was sure that (a) we could negotiate (pay?) our way out of the contract, and (b) as Patrick seemed to know the guys at Limos-on-Line, I was equally sure he would be able to ‘fix’ it as he normally did.

I called Frank Zupposi who was the guy at Limos who I used to get Samantha to call when we had a complaint and asked him to pop over and see me with the existing contract. A couple of days later, a gofer from Limos arrived and said Frank and his boss, a guy called Blanco, would meet me in the VIP area at a sleazy strip club called Privilege on W23rd street.

The gofer suggested that I took our version of the contract with us which made me wonder if Limos still had their copy. It was only six months old but I’d heard that Limos were having problems with the Mayor’s department. Maybe we had an advantage after all?

Three days later, Mick, one of my commercial guys and myself were seated in the VIP area of Privilege desperately trying to keep our minds on the business to hand as girls cavorted all round us. Frank and Blanco wandered in as if they owned the place just as I ordered my second gin and tonic. Niceties were short and sweet. I told them their service was crap and they said that that was unfortunate but that we had an open-ended contract and not only that, they had the right to increase the prices as and when they liked and they’d decided to push them up by 50% for the next six months.

I laughed into my G&T and trying to be a true New Yorker, told them to go fuck themselves. Mick who had taken a back seat until now chipped in with a ‘yeah – go fuck yourselves.’

Face red with outrage, Frank stood up and was ready to storm out when I took out my mobile and dialled the office. ‘Lynn – bring over the Limos contract please’. I told her where we were. She’d been expecting my call and had hopefully done what I’d asked with the contract but the surprise in her voice was obvious. ‘You want me to bring it where?’

And so twenty minutes later, a rather sheepish Lynn appeared with a large jiffy-bag and handed it to me, trying to avert her eyes from what was happening on the stage behind her. I then asked Lynn to leave which she did, still trying to cover her eyes as she tried to find the red-curtained exit.

‘OK’, I said. ‘The full contract is in this envelope – and I guarantee that it’s the contract between our organisation and Limos-on-Line. If you guys can point out the clause where it has no time limit and where it says you can raise your prices, I’ll accept it, but, if you cannot point out the relevant clauses, we can forget it and we’ll take our business elsewhere. Agreed?’

Frank and Blanco looked at each other barely able to believe what I’d just said. They knew what had been in the contract despite having to destroy theirs when the Mayor’s Compliance Unit had visited them a few months previously. It was ‘in the bag’ as far as they were concerned.’ Agreed’, said Frank.

I slowly ripped off the top of the jiffy bag making sure all the grey fluffy material went over Blanco’s expensive blue suit but before presenting the contract, I lifted my G&T and finished it. Mick did likewise.

I pulled open the top of the envelope, turned it upside down and emptied the contract onto the table. It was shredded. Well done Lynn, she’d carried out my instructions to the letter.

Frank and Blanco looked at it in disbelief.

Mick and I got up. ‘Go fuck yourselves’, Mick said. ‘Yeah – go fuck yourselves’, I added and we headed for the door. If Mick was shaking as much as I was, it didn’t show.

Naked Came The Vintner

It had been another gruelling day on Madison. We’d checked the screens when the markets opened, made sure nothing was too far out of line, sent a few e-mails to clients whose money was due to be reinvested soon and then had headed off, en-masse to yet another of Patrick Pelinni’s ‘favourite restaurants for lunch, another cavernous dining room where yet again he was greeted as if he was royalty. I was beginning to have some suspicions about Patrick and his background, particularly when he said he knew the owners of the restaurant and then regaled us with stories about their union backgrounds and Mafia links. Still, he’d fixed a few things for us including the problem with Jim Levinski so nothing was ever said or done. He picked up his monthly pay check and didn’t cause any trouble. Why should I rock the boat?

Lunch passed uneventfully, probably because Samantha was back in the UK for a week or so, and we headed back to Madison for the afternoon shift. Nothing much happened to ruin a nice quiet day – not even a call from Daddy asking for his usual daily update.

It was one of those hot, humid New York days. Not so hot that you needed to be within five feet of an AC unit but too hot to wear a jacket. It was one of those days when we all headed to Bryant Park for early evening drinks when the bell tolled 7pm.

Bryant Park on those warm summer evenings is like a huge open-air party. Gorgeous girls are everywhere, champagne glasses clink incessantly and the smell from delicious plates of sweet-potato chips lingers in the air making you hungrier by the second.

Now, I think I’m quite ok to look at. Not a hunk perhaps – just ok (see my profile), but in a crowd of several hundred other, infuriatingly, better looking guys than you, I’d had to think of alternative ways of attracting the opposite sex. Name-dropping the Chambers didn’t mean much to them. Languidly smoking whilst holding a glass of Bolli sometimes did the trick when they approached you to ask for a cigarette or a light but then I didn’t really fancy them. I couldn’t stand the thought of kissing a smoker – God no!

And so over the first few weeks of summer nights in Bryant Park I’d worked out an almost foolproof method for getting the attention of the opposite sex. ‘Excuse me’, I’d say, ‘I bought these glasses of champagne for my friends but they seem to have disappeared. Would you like them – free of course’. They would accept and I’d walk off to be with the boys from the office. Within five minutes max the girls would have sidled over to our group and that was it. How could they possibly refuse a night of free champagne and sweet-potato chips of course? Oh, and anything else which was going!

But it was on one night when our luck was out that a few of us headed over to 48^th and 8^th to a restaurant one of the guys, Joe Zambroski, knew. Joe obviously had some Italian blood in him somewhere despite the Polish surname and his knowledge of Italian restaurants in NY was second only to Patrick’s. Heading north east, it took us about 20 minutes to walk the ten or so blocks to a small place tucked down west 48^th street.

Compared to our usual eating haunts, Masseria was a tiny place, maybe about 50 covers but it was a

pleasant change from the heaving restaurants we were used to. Steve, my IT guy ordered the best Barolo they could come up with and I took a glass and went outside for a cigarette. I wandered, glass in hand around a tiny garden situated in a space next to Masseria. It was a memorial garden to those firefighters who had lost their lives in 9/11 and it caused a rare moment of reflection in my otherwise, live-for-the-moment life.

As I was just standing there looking at the plaque with the names of the dead firefighters from that particular ‘ladder’ as they called the vehicle they were assigned to, and feeling bit wistful (God – it was becoming a habit!), Steve called out that the waiter was about to take our orders. I went inside, ordered, and the three of us had a terrific meal. About 10.30pm Joe decided that he would be the ‘family man’ and set off for his home in New Jersey, leaving Steve and I drinking Barolo and putting the financial world to rights. About 11.30pm Steve uttered his now familiar words, ‘another bottle Nigel?’

We’d almost finished that bottle and Steve had mentioned the possibility of calling it a night when the waiters started to re-arrange the tables and chairs in the restaurant, a strange flurry of activity so late in the day. Steve asked what was going on and was told that “America’s most famous porn actress was about to arrive.” She was launching her new wine range and had chosen the Masseria for her official launch party. Apparently, we learned later, it had all been arranged several weeks before despite the last-minute activity in the restaurant and hence the reason why the waiters hadn’t presented Steve and I with the bill – the normal way of getting rid of unwanted diners to close the place.

It all rang a bell. In a quiet moment earlier in the day when I’d been flicking through the New York Times, I’d noticed an article entitled, ‘Naked Came the Vintner’ which didn’t quite compute when I’d read the piece – porn actress and wine! Was the title of the article a play on words I’d wondered?

Back to the Masseria and I popped out for another cigarette just as a black stretch limo glided up to the sidewalk. A dozen people poured out of its doors and headed into the restaurant leaving the peak capped, huge, black driver desperately trying to park in a space only slightly longer than his vehicle.

He saw me standing there and motioned to me to assist him with his parking. ‘Another six inches’, I said. ‘Cheeky boy’, I heard from behind me followed by, ‘how did you know what I was saying this afternoon?’

I turned and came face to face with a blonde dressed in a sort of cowboy outfit, complete with fringed hat. She was also smoking a cigarette. ‘Nigel Smarther-Blair’, I said. ‘Savanna Samson’, she replied. A quick look told me she had a stunning body but the face looked as if it had seen life. We passed a few moments talking about London, New York and the weather and then she threw her cigarette into the gutter and went inside.

When I returned, Steve was finishing the last of the Barolo and when I mentioned that maybe we should go, as we had a presentation to make to some potential investors in about ten hours time, he replied that with ‘America’s best porn actress’ in the restaurant, he was going nowhere. ‘Another Barolo, Nigel?’ he asked. Another rhetorical question!

Steve and I started on our sixth bottle of that delicious but expensive red wine and watched with interest as Savannah (pictured above) took control of her table of guests telling people where to sit and telling the waiters to start uncorking some of the wine which had been carried in from the limo. There was no problem in working out who the boss was.

About twenty minutes later Miss Samson headed off to the toilets and on her way back to her table, I called her over and said in a slightly slurred voice that I’d been a fan of hers for ages. ‘You’re so kind’, she said as I took her hand and kissed it.

‘Careful’, Steve said. ‘You don’t know where that’s been. Savannah (we were now on first name terms) shot Steve a look which would have shrivelled a lesser man and returned her gaze to me.

‘I just love the idea behind your new wine’, I said. ‘I’ve always loved Italian wine’. ‘I can see that she said’, pointing at the Barolo, ‘but you’ve got to drink in moderation Nigel. I was thinking about it but you’d be no good to me tonight.’ And with that she swivelled on her amazing legs and headed back to her table.

My head went into a spin. Me and Savannah Samson. A winner of countless porn awards including the porn Oscar equivalent of ‘Best Group Scene’ and ‘Best All-Girl Scene’.

I was wistful for a second time that night when Steve interrupted my thoughts and true to form, said, ‘another bottle Nigel?’