The Moneychangers

"That’s nonsense!" Margot seemed shocked. "You can say that now because you’ve been unusual and lucky." "There was no luck," Edwina said. "I’ve worked." "No luck?" "Well, not much."

Margot argued. "There has to have been luck involved because you’re a woman. For as long as anybody can remember, banking’s been an exclusive men’s club yet without the slightest reason." "Hasn’t experience been a reason?" Alex asked.

"No. Experience is a smokescreen, blown up by men, to keep women out. There’s nothing masculine about banking. All it requires is brains which women have, sometimes more abundantly than men. And everything else is either on paper, in the head, or in talk, so the only physical labor is hoisting money in and out of armored cars, which women guards could undoubtedly do, too."

"I won’t dispute any of that," Edwina said. "except you’re out of date. The male exclusivity has already been broken by people like me and is being penetrated more and more. Who needs women’s libbers? I don’t."

"You haven’t penetrated all that far," Margot shot back. "Otherwise you’d be in the Headquarters Tower already, and not just talking about it, as we are tonight." Lewis D’Orsey chortled. "Touche, my dear."

"Others in banking need women’s lib," Margot concluded, "and will for a long time." Alex leaned back as always, enjoying an argument when Margot was involved. "Whatever else might be said about our dinners together," he observed, "they’re never dull."

Lewis nodded agreement. "Let me say as the one who started all this I’m glad about your intentions for Edwina."

"All right," his wife said firmly, "and I thank you too, Alex. But that’s enough. Let’s leave it there." They did.

Margot told them about a legal class action she had brought against a department store which had been systematically cheating charge-account customers. The printed totals on monthly bills, Margot explained, were always a few dollars larger than they should have been. If anyone complained, the difference was explained away as an error, but hardly anyone did. "When people see a machine printed total they assume it has to be right. What they forget, or don’t know, is that machines can be programmed to include an error. In this case, one was." Margot added that the store had, profited by tens of thousands of dollars, as she intended to prove in court.

"We don’t program errors at the bank," Edwina said, "but they happen, machines or not. It’s why I urge people to check their statements."

In her department store investigation, Margot told the others, she had been helped by a private detective named Vernon Jax. He had been diligent and resourceful. She was strong in her praise of him.

"I know of him," Lewis D’Orsey said. "He’s done investigation work for the SEC something I put them on to once. A good man."

As they left the dining room, Lewis said to Alex, "Let’s get liberated. How about joining me for a cigar and cognac? We’ll go to my study. Edwina doesn’t like cigar smoke."

Excusing themselves, the men went one floor down the D’Orseys’ penthouse occupied two levels to Lewis’s sanctum sanctorum. Inside, Alex looked around curiously.

The room was spacious, with bookcases on two sides and, on another, racks for magazines and newspapers. The shelves and racks were overflowing. There were three desks, one with an electric typewriter, and all with papers, books, and files piled high. "When one desk becomes impossible to work at," Lewis explained, "I simply move to the next."

An open door revealed what, in daytime, was a secretary’s office and file room. Stepping inside, Lewis returned with two brandy goblets and a bottle of Courvoisier from which he poured.

"I’ve often wondered," Alex mused, "about the background of a successful financial newsletter."

"I can only speak personally for mine, which is regarded by competent judges as the best there is." Lewis gave Alex a cognac, then motioned to an open box of cigars. "Help yourself they’re Macanudos, none better. Also tax deductible." "How do you manage that?"

Lewis chuckled. "Take a look at the band around each cigar. At trifling cost I have the original bands removed and a special one put on which reads The D’Orsey Newsletter. That’s advertising a business expense, so every time I smoke a cigar I’ve the satisfaction of knowing it’s on Uncle Sam."

Without comment, Alex took a cigar which he sniffed appreciatively. He had long since ceased to make moral judgments about tax loopholes. Congress made them the law of the land, and who could blame an individual for using them?

"Answering your question," Lewis said, "I make no secret of the purpose of The D’Orsey Newsletter." He lit Alex’s cigar, then his own, and inhaled luxuriously. "It’s to help the elite get richer or at worst, keep what they have." "So I’ve noticed."

Such newsletter, as Alex was aware, contained moneymaking advice securities to buy or sell, currencies to switch into or out of, commodities to deal in, foreign stock markets to favor or avoid, tax loopholes for the wealthy and freewheeling, how to deal through Swiss accounts, political background likely to affect money, impending disasters which those with inside knowledge could turn to profit. The list was always long, the tone of the newsletter authoritative and absolute. There was seldom any hedging.

"Unfortunately," Lewis added, "there are lots of phonies and charlatans in the financial newsletter business, which do the serious, honest letters harm. Some so-called newsletters are skims of newspapers, and therefore valueIess; others tout stocks and take payoffs from brokers and promoters, though in the end that kind of chicanery shows. There are maybe half a dozen worthwhile newsletters, with mine at the apex."

In anyone else, Alex thought, the continual ego-thumping would be offensive. Somehow, with Lewis, it wasn’t, perhaps because he had the track record to sustain it. And as to Lewis’s extreme right-wing politics, Alex found he could screen them out, leaving a clear financial distillate like tea passed through a strainer. "I believe you’re one of my subscribers," Lewis said. "Yes through the bank."

"Here’s a copy of my new issue. Take it, even though you’ll get yours in the mail on Monday."

‘Thank you." Alex accepted the pale blue lithographed sheet four quarto-size pages when folded, and unimpressive in appearance. The original had been closely typewritten, then photographed and reduced. But what the newsletter lacked in visual style, it made up in monetary value. It was Lewis’s boast that those who followed his advice could increase whatever capital they had by a quarter to a half in any given year, and in some years double or triple it.

"What’s your secret?" Alex said. "How is it you’re so often right?"

"I’ve a mind like a computer with thirty years of input." Lewis puffed at his cigar, then tapped his forehead with a bony finger. "Every morsel of financial knowledge that I’ve ever learned is stored in there. I also can relate one item to another, and, the future to the past. In addition I’ve something a computer hasn’t instinctive genius." "Why bother with a newsletter then? Why not just make a fortune for yourself!"

"No satisfaction in it. No competition. Besides," Lewis grinned, "I’m not doing badly." "As I recall, your subscription rate

…"

"Is three hundred dollars a year for the newsletter. Two thousand dollars an hour for personal consultations."

"I’ve sometimes wondered how many subscribers you have." "So do others. It’s a secret I guard carefully." "Sorry. I didn’t mean to pry." "No reason not to. In your place, I’d be curious."

Tonight, Alex thought, Lewis seemed more relaxed than at any time before.

"Maybe I’ll share that secret with you," Lewis said "Any man likes to boast a little. I’ve more than five thousand newsletter subscribers."

Alex did mental arithmetic and whistled softly. It meant an annual income of more than a million and a half dollars.

"As well as that," Lewis confided, "I publish a book each year and do about twenty consultations every month. The fees and book royalties cover all my costs, so the newsletter is entirely profit."

"That’s amazing!" And yet, Alex reflected, perhaps it really wasn’t. Anyone who heeded Lewis’s counsel could recoup their outlay hundreds of times over. Besides which, both the newsletter subscription and consultation fee were tax deductible.