would shoot my honky ass full of holes.”
She smiled, displaying a set of white teeth worthy of a dental commercial on TV. “You’re right, they probably would.”
“I rest my case.”
“Then you need to come with me to an AA meeting, Eddie.”
He took one long, final look out at the harbor. “I can’t, Letitia, I’ve got to meet a guy at the Bull & Bear tonight.”
“Are you cooking up another one of those harebrained deals of yours?”
“A fella has to make a living any way he can.”
“Say hello to Ruthie for me, Eddie, I ain’t seen her since I stopped drinking.”
“I will.”
“She helped me get on the road to sobriety.”
“How did she do that?”
“One time at the bar I got totally wasted and passed out. I had the most horrible dream that I was dying and falling into darkness. It was Ruthie who took my hand in the dream and brought me back into the light. From then on, I always went to her for advice; she helped me to finally quit.”
“Ruthie is a smart lady.”
“My friends told me I could still go to the Bull & Bear as long as I stuck to ginger ale. But Ruthie put the kibosh on that, she kayoed it from the get-go.”
“I see.”
“Ruthie said I wasn’t the kind of recovering alcoholic who could hang in bars because I’d be a falling-down, shit-faced drunk again if I did.”
“I’d have given you the same advice, Letitia.”
She delved deep into him with her eyes. “You mean, Eddie, as one alcoholic talking to another alcoholic?”
“I’m a highly functional heavy drinker, Letitia, I can control myself in the vicinity of alcohol. That’s the critical difference between you and me.”
“You’re in denial, sugar, you’re a boozehound, the same as me.”
A loudspeaker erupted, announcing the arrival of a boat from Jersey City at Slip A.
“No more of your piss-poor excuses, Eddie, come with me to an AA meeting tonight.”
He shook his head. “I’m beyond the point of no return.”
“My sponsor says it’s never too late to get yourself straightened out.”
“I gotta go.”
“Tomorrow night then, Eddie, come to an AA meeting with me tomorrow night.”
He edged away. “We’ll see, Letitia, we’ll see.”
She watched him skedaddle on grasshopper legs down the long pier and then took out her cell phone.
*
Pump-and-Dump
Ethel Kramowitz, 39, brown-bagged her lunch as usual and sat at her desk eating the chicken sandwich on rye with mayonnaise and onion she had prepared earlier in her Brooklyn studio apartment. A short, plump woman with impossibly frizzy black hair, she had skin blemishes, huge hips, deep-set dark eyes, a crooked nose, thunder thighs, and a chest as flat as a pancake. In sharp contrast, all the women pictured in the pages of the Vogue magazine open on her lap were tall and slender with pouty lips, high cheekbones, straight hair, fair skin and wearing expensive bodysuits.
For the past three years Ethel had been saving her money so she could have plastic surgery to correct the damage that Mother Nature and Father Time had done to her body. The surgery she wanted – breast implants, liposuction, and a tummy tuck -- was elective so her medical insurance carrier refused to cover the $19,000 cost. She also wanted a Rhinoplasty procedure - a nose job - that would cost an additional $10,000 to reduce its size and correct a deviated septum. And she also wanted $12,000 in cosmetic dental surgery to improve her come-hither smile, a critical necessity if she was going to be able to pick up men.
After the surgery, she’d still be short in stature, however, her large new boobs, thinner body, and reworked features should help compensate. And for the first time she’d have cleavage, something her mother and grandmother never had. She wished they were still alive to see her miraculous transformation so they could eat their hearts out with envy.
Saving over $40,000 was almost impossible, however, when your salary only supported a standard of living barely above the poverty level. Since graduating from high school Ethel had toiled away in the Financial District in a series of clerical jobs that mostly involved filing and data-input.
While other girls received promotions and became executive assistants or entered training programs to become brokers and traders, Ethel had never been offered similar opportunities. She attributed this to her unattractiveness. Male bosses tended to equate good-looks and your cup size with intelligence and drive. No matter how hard she worked or how much unpaid overtime she put in, it hadn’t make up for her much-to-be-desired appearance.
Ethel wasn’t stupid, however, she was street-smart and understood more about what was going on at the investment firm where she worked than most people there. For example, she recognized a Pump-and-Dump scheme when she saw one. And she was aware that whistle-blowers could now collect substantial reward money from the SEC by reporting financial crimes. It was due to a new law passed by Congress to help clean up Wall Street; a novel twist on the many age-old State laws entitling bounty hunters to collect rewards for apprehending escaped fugitives.
She wasn’t a snitch by nature and didn’t have a moral problem with sharpies bending the law a bit to make a fast buck. After all, her great-uncle, Max Kramowitz, aka ‘Maxie the Enforcer’, had been an underboss for Meyer Lansky and Bugsy Siegel in the Jewish Mafia in the 1930s. Life is a contact sport and you needed to protect yourself at all times. Greedy suckers deserved a comeuppance when they poured cash into investments which promised outlandish returns with no risk. Caveat Emptor -- Let the Buyer Beware -- was a motto near and dear to her. If something looked too good to be true; it was a scam.
And Ethel also had no sympathy for people who put no money down and lied about their incomes in order to purchase expensive homes they couldn’t afford that were now in foreclosure. With a few exceptions, they were all guilty of fraud and got exactly what they deserved.
But she balked when the sharpies sought to fleece senior citizens out of their retirement savings; the dirty business her employer specialized in. To her, this was a vile crime, one for which there was no punishment too harsh.
Tonight she intended to discuss her whistle-blower plans with Ruthie at the Bull & Bear and decide on a course of action.
*
Bull & Bear Tavern
The Bull & Bear Tavern is nestled off Wall Street and behind The New York Stock Exchange in a blind cobblestone alley with no name. Strangely, its existence is not recorded in the official real estate records of the City of New York. That is because when the Great Fire of 1835 broke out in Hanover
