unquenchable need for cash.
It was into this market that Gavallan jumped headfirst in the fall of 1996. He didn’t know much about initial public offerings, but that didn’t matter. Nor did a lack of pedigree or track record. Jett Gavallan had something none of his rival investment bankers did. Something his business school profs would have labeled a “unique point of differentiation.”
During the Gulf War, he had flown twenty-six missions at the controls of an F-117 Nighthawk, the angular black jet known to the world as the Stealth bomber. And there was nothing that a gaggle of laboratory-bred “techies” liked hearing better than what it was like to man the controls of the world’s most technologically sophisticated aircraft and drop a laser-guided smart bomb smack on the top of a pack of kaftan-clad, Uncle Sam–jeering camel jockeys. Forget Quake. Forget Doom. Forget Tomb Raider. Here was the real McCoy. A first-person shooter with blood on his hands. And they would be proud to have him battle the wizards of Wall Street to secure funding on their behalf.
For two years, Gavallan traveled between the towns of San Mateo, Menlo Park, and Palo Alto. His first clients were small ones, rinky-dink start-ups happy to raise ten million dollars on the Pacific Stock Exchange. Computer jocks with dirty fingernails who worked in their pajamas. He did eight IPOs the first year. Twenty the second. In time his reputation grew, and with it the quality of his clients and his company’s revenues. Black Jet’s annual gross rose in a vertiginous spiral. Sixty million dollars, one hundred forty, four hundred. Amazingly, the firm managed to break a billion before the bubble broke and things went to hell.
Since then he’d been fighting to keep his head above water. The company was still making money, just not enough. He was sized for growth, not stasis. Euphemisms like “ramping up,” “burn rate,” and “top-heavy” and their connotations of boom and bust weren’t solely the preserve of Silicon Valley.
He could imagine the earnings review later that morning. Retail brokering was coming back nicely, but nothing like it had been. IPO activity was only just recovering. M&A was off 20 percent the last two years. Only trading was making money, landing on the right side of the latest big leg up. As each managing director reported his or her results, their eyes would creep toward Gavallan. He knew the downcast glances, the uncomfortable silences, the nervous laughter by rote, each person wondering when the ax would fall, and whose head it would be thumping into the wicker basket. God, he hated being the executioner.
“We’re not running a charity,” Byrnes had said during their last meeting.
Gavallan was all too aware of the fact. Three times in the last year he’d dipped into his savings to fund increases in Black Jet’s capital. He’d liquidated his portfolio of stocks, sold off a large chunk of real estate in Montana he’d been planning to build on for his retirement, and cashed out of a promising hedge fund. This morning, he would take the final plunge—a second mortgage on his home. After that . . . An old adage about tapping a dry well came to mind.
Arriving at the Embarcadero, he was pleasantly surprised to find an empty space in front of the building. He parked hastily, telling himself that the space was an omen of good things to follow. Entering his attorney’s office, Gavallan laughed at his desperation. He knew there was no such thing as good luck. Just good timing.
Special Agent Roy DiGenovese, on temporary assignment to the San Francisco field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, double-parked the silver Ford Taurus a safe distance shy of Gavallan. Keeping the engine running, he rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. A glance in the side-view mirror confirmed that DiGenovese was Sicilian in looks as well as name. His hair was black, his eyes the color of midnight wine, his beard pushing up
It was into this market that Gavallan jumped headfirst in the fall of 1996. He didn’t know much about initial public offerings, but that didn’t matter. Nor did a lack of pedigree or track record. Jett Gavallan had something none of his rival investment bankers did. Something his business school profs would have labeled a “unique point of differentiation.”
During the Gulf War, he had flown twenty-six missions at the controls of an F-117 Nighthawk, the angular black jet known to the world as the Stealth bomber. And there was nothing that a gaggle of laboratory-bred “techies” liked hearing better than what it was like to man the controls of the world’s most technologically sophisticated aircraft and drop a laser-guided smart bomb smack on the top of a pack of kaftan-clad, Uncle Sam–jeering camel jockeys. Forget Quake. Forget Doom. Forget Tomb Raider. Here was the real McCoy. A first-person shooter with blood on his hands. And they would be proud to have him battle the wizards of Wall Street to secure funding on their behalf.
For two years, Gavallan traveled between the towns of San Mateo, Menlo Park, and Palo Alto. His first clients were small ones, rinky-dink start-ups happy to raise ten million dollars on the Pacific Stock Exchange. Computer jocks with dirty fingernails who worked in their pajamas. He did eight IPOs the first year. Twenty the second. In time his reputation grew, and with it the quality of his clients and his company’s revenues. Black Jet’s annual gross rose in a vertiginous spiral. Sixty million dollars, one hundred forty, four hundred. Amazingly, the firm managed to break a billion before the bubble broke and things went to hell.
Since then he’d been fighting to keep his head above water. The company was still making money, just not enough. He was sized for growth, not stasis. Euphemisms like “ramping up,” “burn rate,” and “top-heavy” and their connotations of boom and bust weren’t solely the preserve of Silicon Valley.
He could imagine the earnings review later that morning. Retail brokering was coming back nicely, but nothing like it had been. IPO activity was only just recovering. M&A was off 20 percent the last two years. Only trading was making money, landing on the right side of the latest big leg up. As each managing director reported his or her results, their eyes would creep toward Gavallan. He knew the downcast glances, the uncomfortable silences, the nervous laughter by rote, each person wondering when the ax would fall, and whose head it would be thumping into the wicker basket. God, he hated being the executioner.
“We’re not running a charity,” Byrnes had said during their last meeting.
Gavallan was all too aware of the fact. Three times in the last year he’d dipped into his savings to fund increases in Black Jet’s capital. He’d liquidated his portfolio of stocks, sold off a large chunk of real estate in Montana he’d been planning to build on for his retirement, and cashed out of a promising hedge fund. This morning, he would take the final plunge—a second mortgage on his home. After that . . . An old adage about tapping a dry well came to mind.
Arriving at the Embarcadero, he was pleasantly surprised to find an empty space in front of the building. He parked hastily, telling himself that the space was an omen of good things to follow. Entering his attorney’s office, Gavallan laughed at his desperation. He knew there was no such thing as good luck. Just good timing.
Special Agent Roy DiGenovese, on temporary assignment to the San Francisco field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, double-parked the silver Ford Taurus a safe distance shy of Gavallan. Keeping the engine running, he rolled down the window and lit a cigarette. A glance in the side-view mirror confirmed that DiGenovese was Sicilian in looks as well as name. His hair was black, his eyes the color of midnight wine, his beard pushing up
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