Goodbye to all that...

I got a chance to look up my ol' pal from Chicago today. I moseyed down Maipú toward the center of the business district to the offices of Slats G. Johnson, a fellow South-sider, just to check-in and wish him well for the new year.

When I greeted his receptionist, she advised me that Slats was now ensconced on the floor above ...the top floor of the one of many non-descript office buildings that line the streets of "The City." I made my way back to the elevator and when the doors opened again, I was impressed at his well-decorated new digs. "Come on in, Shank! Sit down! How ya like the joint?" I told him it was pretty; it really was. "Relax. I got the whole floor to myself. Nobody else around. Just like Bernie Madoff! Ha!"

It really did look like nobody other than Slats ever entered the plush new space. And I was glad that he mentioned Madoff; I know people here in Buenos Aires that have lost fortunes this year since September and I wanted to hear that Slats was OK. He straightened up a few things and we made our way down and around the corner to the last smoking-area in the neighborhood: the Grand Tortoni for a little nosh and some cold brews.

"How'sss da cowsss?" Slats has never thought all that much about my capital intensive choice to ranch here in the Argentine ...but he never failed to show interest ...if not amazement ... in the operation. I told him I wasn't getting rich but I felt good about it. But I let him know right away that I had been worried about him and whatever it was he was up to nowadays. Everytime I read about the crash, I wondered if he might have had some exposure.

"Nah. I'm not exactly rich ...and I sure as hell ain't idle rich, you know! It's a little tougher now but, you know me, I don't exactly trust a lot of people with my dough. So I'm OK."

Since he mentioned it first, I brought up Bernard Madoff again. My old buddy moves in some interesting circles and, once I was relieved that he was fine, I wondered if he knew anything about Bernard L. Madoff Investment Securities LLC and how the greatest ponzi scheme since Mr. Ponzi had happened.

"Nah, I ain't got anything on that ..but it don't surprise me." It seemed to surprise the rest of the world, I thought. Everyone was wondering how it got started, how it continued, how it was kept so secret, where the money went ...and how it got so enormous. So I pressed him on how he could take in stride a $50 billion rip-off.

"Hey, whadda I know. But I'll tell you somethin', I bet he went broke 20 years ago." That impressed me. Everything I'd read pointed to Madoff being part of the crash that everyone had been experiencing this year. I'd never heard anyone theorize that the scam had been going on for decades.

"Well... figure. 20 years ago or so, he could have made the decision to come clean with the awful truth. But after thinking about it, he HAD to notice that he was the only one who really knew. Making a big announcement was gonna cause a lot of pain and heartbreak ...and he was gonna go down the tubes to boot! Think about it, he's sittin' there at his desk realizing that most of these people don't really want anything to do with the money... except to get an envelope every quarter sayin' that everything's fine. Lots of decimals and percentages and a bottom line that says that they made 2 points more than everybody else they knew!

"That kinda shit can go on forever.

"He still had people that wanted in on the action. For awhile, he probably felt guilty. After a while, he only let people in that were never even gonna live long enough to spend it... let alone ask for it back! He made 'em beg to get in! And to a lot of people he just no.

"Maybe he thought someday he'd make it all back ...and could go legit again. He probably treaded water for a few years. But after a while, he was probably just in deeper. When it got bad again, he went to Europe then Asia. Maybe he thought that those guys would pay for the losses of his ol' buddies on the golf course and their families.

"It remindes me of an ol' buddy a mine. After Korea he started workin' as a truck driver, a lot of guys did. Well, it wasn't too long before even I started to get jealous! He was workin' for a big outfit, he had the union cloutin' for him, after about 10 years he had some real seniority and could pick the best work. He got connected; he was on the inside of an up and comin' thing."

This was a classic Slats observation getting started, I thought.

"Once he got up the board, he could pick and choose his work. He ended up runnin' from Chicago to Kansas City about three times a week. Strictly gravy. Good money. Yeah, he was sleepin' on the road most of the week ...but what did he care? The company was payin' for it! He had plenty of time off and plenty of money to spend.

"Well he got himself married to cute little girl in Effingham once they finished I-70. Everything was peaches and cream for a few years. But you gotta remember that he was spendin' a lot of time in KC; there was a waitress or secretary there that really took a shine to him ...and he ended up marrying her too!

"I got together with him about that time and he told me that it really wasn't all that much trouble. He had his layover in KC anyway ...and the ol' lady in Effingham never noticed the diff!

"I guess that wasn't enough, though. He was a good lookin' sonofabitch, I'll give ya that. Had a reputation for hard work and was always on the job. And the small-town girls lookin' for somebody other than Billy-Bob just kept comin' out of the woodwork. They'd beg him. He told me that he resisted all that he could.

"Years later, it wasn't just KC and Effingham ...it was Indianapolis, St. Louis and Chicago too! What da who da mudder! The guy's gotta be crazy! How you gonna juggle all that? He tol' me that they dint mind, they dint know, they were all happy! They knew that they'd married a guy that they'd see for a while every month or so. The bills kept bein' paid. The people at the church all loved him. He was a hell of lot more respectable than some of those yahoo shade-tree mechanics that they coulda ended up marrying."

I was shocked. I was speechless. How could Slats compare an, addmittedly, impressive case of bigamy with Madoff? Wondering if he'd gone around the bend on this analogy, I pressed him on how these two things came together.

"Come on! You can see it. These broads all across the mid-west didn't much care if my buddy was for real... they just loved that he was somethin' special and better than every other housewife in town had! Sure, there was no day-to-day-to-day with that kinda husband ...but you never had to worry. They had them a real catch. The bank statements all looked good, he showed up on a regular basis... maybe apologizin' that binness had prevented him from attending on some important occasion ...but when it mattered and how it mattered, he always came through.

"He tol' me. He loved them. He wanted to protect them, to make 'em happy. He said he wanted to shield them from the real world outside. Once you do a couple two tree, the others probably come easier. He said he was gonna make it all right in the end. He stopped marrying every doe-eyed sweet-thing that made a pass at him at some godawful truck-stop... but the guy just wanted to be loved, I guess. He never could really stop. All the new ones just made him feel better about himself and what he'd done, is all I can think.

"I gotta wonder ...what's the difference from the investors and the foundations and even the middlemen that didn't much care about all the secrecy, all the freakin' impossibility of the returns, all the simply trusting that ol' Bernie would come through with another great statement in the mail that told everybody that they'd beaten the spread ...even if only by a point or three."

I started to catch on. That kind of situation could go on forever, maybe. Apparently, no one would complain and (with a lot of work on the scammer's part!) everyone would feel very good about the arrangement.

Wondering if Slats' old Korean War buddy had made off any better than Madoff, I asked him how his friend was doing.

"Ah! You'll never believe this. After all those years, his first wife dropped dead. Kinda unexpected. He took care of the details, like always ...but everybody in town wanted to see him and all the family and everything. He was a little late for his next stop, if you know what I mean!

"He told me that she was the proudest woman in town. She went to her grave wit' the full knowledge that she had the best husband in that little burg. But... the newspapers printed an obituary ...and an old schoolchum noticed the name and emailed the wife in Chicago wonderin' if she should pay some condolences. The other wife started to wonder, then she started to get pissed ...then she put two and two together and filed for divorce.

"Once that started, the wire services picked it up as a funny story. Ha! They dint know nothin'! Maddón! One by one the other three got wind and the whole thing went down in flames for my ol' pal."

Lots of different emotions started to well-up inside me about, not only Slats' old friend, but anybody that had gotten caught up in such a deception. I asked what sort of consequences truck-driving bigamist had to face.

"Well, it ain't murder, ya know. Missouri put him away for almost a year. The other jurisdictions coulda picked up on it... but, I don't know, they didn't. Whaddya got after somethin' like that? Some unhappy spouses? Nothin' new there. Some disappointed inheritances? Yeah, what's new? All in all, he was out early for good behavior. That didn't surprise me! That guy had been makin' more people happy on a regular basis better than anybody I ever heard of!"

Another great tale from Slats. Sometimes I don't know whether or not to believe him. But faced everyday with even stranger tales in the newspaper, I went along with his story like I'd been doing all the reports since September.

Pretty light sentence, I thought ...but I did have to wonder how you put a price on such a strange crime. What ever happened to him, I wondered aloud.

"I don't really know. I gotta a card from him from Wheeling a few years back. Night dispatcher at some little outfit. He remarried and sounded happy. But ya know, he always struck me as a happy guy."

Slats picked up the tab and we both lamented that the Tortoni's back door on Rivadavia had been long shut down.

We wished each other a happy new year and took off in different directions. As an afterthought, I called back to him, "Love to the missus!"

"Ha! Igualmente!"