made an exacting but seemingly pedestrian task—seeing to it that the claws of restrictions on dividends, borrowings, and investments bit down hard and prevented the borrower from diverting cash from the sacrosanct goal of paying the insurance company’s interest and principal when due—become something akin to a medieval artisan’s carving Passion scenes into ivory. Thus Schmidt had looked on benevolently even when he thought Tim was, well, overdoing it just a little bit, with his mania for number 2 Eagle pencils, which he sharpened just so himself rather than deposit them into his out-basket as everyone else did to be sharpened in the mailroom and returned a few hours later, or the special onionskin paper he required for pasting revised language into drafts of documents. Or his peculiar little aphorisms. For instance, when reviewing the signature copy of a document in which he detected language that had been crossed out in the course of revising a prior draft: Never allow pentimenti to show in your finished work. Or apropos of a heavily marked-up draft, Haven’t we too much impasto here? Or after a conference with an inexperienced negotiator: This samurai isn’t ready to wield the long sword. All that stuff was amusing and displayed nicely Tim’s wide culture, but at times Schmidt feared that his protégé came across as something of a fop.
None of this detracted from his fondness for his young colleague or the gratitude he felt for his work, and when Tim became a partner in 1974, a year ahead of his classmates, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind, including Tim’s and Schmidt’s, that he owed the promotion to his own merit but the timing of it to Schmidt. That knowledge did nothing todiminish Schmidt’s dismay when Tim began, as he put it himself, to worship strange gods. In fact, in order to make sure that Schmidt got the point, he said, Ha! Ha! Ha! Adore not any strange god. The Lord his name is Jealous, He is a jealous God. Right Schmidtie? Ha! Ha! Ha! The point was that Tim had decided to move on. When in the last year of the Carter presidency the prime rate hit a stunning 21.5 percent, only fools would have borrowed long term at that rate from insurance companies, and only fools would have made cheaper money available long term to industrial borrowers. Schmidt’s insurance clients were stodgy but not stupid: they switched to making short- or medium-term loans to banks and raked in interest at rates they had never imagined could be obtained. Industrial companies were starved for cash, but it would not be long before Mike Milken and his merry band at Drexel Burnham rode to the rescue and invented junk bonds. Schmidt’s private placement practice never recovered from the blow, and eventually it withered. For the moment, however, there was only a slowdown sufficient to enable Tim (or was it foresight; would he have strayed even if there had been as much work to keep him busy as in the past?) to find a strange god in the person of Lew Brenner. Schmidt’s junior by a couple of years, Brenner found that his practice—oil and gas deals in North Africa and the Middle East—was booming. Very quickly it became evident, to Schmidt’s contained chagrin, that Tim was as valuable doing international transactions as he had been doing private placements in their heyday, that he got along just fine with Lew, and that Lew knew a good thing when it came his way. In fact, Schmidt had come to believe that bringing Tim into his orbit was part of one of Lew’s carefully laid plans. That man didn’t just happen todo this or that, which was Schmidt’s way. All of this hurt, and hurt badly, even though he had to admit to himself that Tim was always cheerfully ready to help in emergencies and with particularly irksome problems, so that when a couple of years later Dexter Wood announced that Tim would take over the Paris office—a move backed by Lew Brenner—Schmidt shrugged and let several days pass before congratulating
None of this detracted from his fondness for his young colleague or the gratitude he felt for his work, and when Tim became a partner in 1974, a year ahead of his classmates, there was no doubt in anyone’s mind, including Tim’s and Schmidt’s, that he owed the promotion to his own merit but the timing of it to Schmidt. That knowledge did nothing todiminish Schmidt’s dismay when Tim began, as he put it himself, to worship strange gods. In fact, in order to make sure that Schmidt got the point, he said, Ha! Ha! Ha! Adore not any strange god. The Lord his name is Jealous, He is a jealous God. Right Schmidtie? Ha! Ha! Ha! The point was that Tim had decided to move on. When in the last year of the Carter presidency the prime rate hit a stunning 21.5 percent, only fools would have borrowed long term at that rate from insurance companies, and only fools would have made cheaper money available long term to industrial borrowers. Schmidt’s insurance clients were stodgy but not stupid: they switched to making short- or medium-term loans to banks and raked in interest at rates they had never imagined could be obtained. Industrial companies were starved for cash, but it would not be long before Mike Milken and his merry band at Drexel Burnham rode to the rescue and invented junk bonds. Schmidt’s private placement practice never recovered from the blow, and eventually it withered. For the moment, however, there was only a slowdown sufficient to enable Tim (or was it foresight; would he have strayed even if there had been as much work to keep him busy as in the past?) to find a strange god in the person of Lew Brenner. Schmidt’s junior by a couple of years, Brenner found that his practice—oil and gas deals in North Africa and the Middle East—was booming. Very quickly it became evident, to Schmidt’s contained chagrin, that Tim was as valuable doing international transactions as he had been doing private placements in their heyday, that he got along just fine with Lew, and that Lew knew a good thing when it came his way. In fact, Schmidt had come to believe that bringing Tim into his orbit was part of one of Lew’s carefully laid plans. That man didn’t just happen todo this or that, which was Schmidt’s way. All of this hurt, and hurt badly, even though he had to admit to himself that Tim was always cheerfully ready to help in emergencies and with particularly irksome problems, so that when a couple of years later Dexter Wood announced that Tim would take over the Paris office—a move backed by Lew Brenner—Schmidt shrugged and let several days pass before congratulating
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