Chapter 1: Money makes the pussy wet
Iliki means cardamom in the Swahili language. The name was chosen by her mother. Her father certainly would never have thought of it. Her father is a rich American. He made his money by managing money. How do you manage money? Everyone who has money can save their money or spend their money and those who work, earn their money. The arcane skill of money management is helping people make more money with their money. For the most part, only rich people have a money manager. The super-rich, have multiple money managers. David was one of those people.
Iliki's father, David, was able to tell the future. In previous times, that skill was called a fortune-teller or a soothsayer. An oracle was a priest or priestess acting as a medium through whom advice or prophecy was sought from the Gods in classical antiquity. Think the Matrix. The oracle was able to tell Neo if he was the "one". David has the uncanny ability to tell the future of financial markets. He knows which company or industry will do well in the future and which will not. He has made a lot of money. So much that kings, princes, companies and countries pay for his advice.
Making money on advice is chump change so he does not charge for that. He gets paid when Kings, Princes, companies and countries invest their money with his firm. He makes 2% off of all assets he manages, plus 20% of the gain on an annual basis. For example, in January of 2008, he was managing $11.6 billion. The funds he managed grew to $20.532 billion. A gain of $8.932 billion. So, he made 2% of the total, or slightly more than $410 million, plus 20% of the gain or about $1.786 billion, for a total of $2.196 billion that year alone! No wonder Kings, Princes, companies and countries wanted to invest with him. Plus, the fact that he made a huge profit for his investors in a year that the S&P 500 was down 38.94%, made him a superstar.
David's wife had died after a long bout with cancer. They met in Los Angeles. He was in business school at USC, and she was a grad student in computer science at UCLA. When they met, she told him she was a cancer survivor already, at 25. How difficult that must have been for her, David thought. They married and succeeded very well in the Reagan economy. He started investing her inheritance in tech stocks, among others, and made a killing! She helped develop the very first protocols that allowed computers to communicate quickly. That highly successful project made millions for her and David. She was in and out of the hospital most of the time, with many rounds of chemotherapy. She wanted to give up often but had been blessed with two fine sons. On top of that, they adopted the children of a friend who had also died of cancer at a very young age. Those four children drove her to remain in therapy.
David was a "red-blooded" American male, with a much higher than average sex drive. As his business grew in profit and fame, he acquired many high profile celebrity clients including Academy award winning actresses. On numerous occasions, he was tempted to have a tryst with one of them. Sure, he had offers. It would have been very easy. He was average-looking. However, when you are a billionaire, the women don't care that you are not in great physical shape or are losing your hair. He also acquired clients who were professional athletes and other high-profile tycoons.
On more than one occasion, he was socializing with one of them and the subject came up of his wife's illness. As crass as it sounds, boys will be boys. "David why keep it all bottled up?" they would ask him. Numerous waitresses or bartenders would be the subjects of his friends' carnal suggestions. "David, live a little," they would say. "That brunette is fuckin' hot. No one would blame you for getting your dick wet. A mouth or a pussy will do you good." Still, he never once got involved with anyone else. He fantasized constantly. But he had sons. What kind of example would he set if he cheated on their mother? Their sick mother! He could not live with himself. Instead, he ran for hours at a time on the beaches in Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades and Venice.
In November of 1999, Bella died. By that time, he had been featured three times in the Wall Street Journal, regularly in the Los Angeles Times and was ranked consistently among the top hedge fund managers in the country. Among his clients were Arab Sheiks, Princes, Kings and a few sovereign wealth funds and nineteen people in the Forbes 400. He was famous and in great demand. After all, he did predict the Internet crash by shorting the NASDAQ (and other technology issues) and the real estate crash by shorting the CDO market, making his clients millions of dollars.
One of his smaller clients was French Polynesia. While Tahiti is an overseas collective of France, the island had acquired some independence in its financial affairs. David's fund managed about $30 million of the island's long term investment funds. When he accepted Tahiti as a client, he waived the usual minimum investment of $10 million. They could only put up about $9 million with East-West Advisory. David did so because he hoped that having a relationship with Tahiti would enable him to make quick trips, if one considers eight hours in the air a quick trip. He wanted to take Bella on secret getaways and purchased a G5 so he could do so. Unfortunately, Bella was always too sick, or one of the kids had something important, or other business intervened and he never took his wife on the romantic getaway to Tahiti that he dreamed of.
Still, David was a celebrity on the island. He made business trips there twice per year to review their accounts and refresh his relationship with the leaders and bureaucrats who managed the island's finances. Whenever he was there the red carpet was rolled out. While he only wanted to stay long enough to solidify the account, he was always invited to remain for feasts and entertainment. That brings us to his trip to Tahiti where the story begins.
The trip had been a major success. The account was renewed. Why not? The fund had enjoyed an average return, net of fees, of 18.8%. When he met with the Governor General and his team of financial managers, he was seated in a beautiful room overlooking the azure sea. As difficult as it was to concentrate due to the sweet flowers, the cool air and the dancing sea, another distraction, more powerful and painful than the surroundings, appeared.
One of the clerical assistants arrived with reports. He was stunned. If he had been talking he would have stammered incoherently. She wore a double breasted, ivory suit, perfectly tailored to her body. Long legs, killer smile, slit partially up her left knee. He always tried to be nonchalant around women who inwardly drove him crazy, but he was taking a mental picture and concentrating in order to burn her figure, her hair and her smile into his mind. While he had a well-developed intellect and could control himself under most circumstances, he just kept staring, with his mouth embarrassingly open.
