Stockhouse continues to feature excerpts from Thom Calandra's novel, the story of a newsletter writer, peripatetic financiers and a global chase for capital during the market "melt up."

The following is the third of four excerpts from Calandra’s novel “Pablo by Numbers.” To read the first excerpt click here

To read the second excerpt click here

By Thom Calandra

Copyright © 2007, Thom Calandra

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY AUTHOR

After Picasso had earned eternal fame, the artist found he could scrawl drawings, using a pencil, strokes of lipstick on a tablecloth, or charcoal across a torn paper bag, in return for meals ... and other favors.

I called him Manny, Man D., M-Dee, Manny D. and my all-time favorite, although never to his face: Butch-boy, but the crowd he grew up with almost always called him Rumpus. That's because of his first profession: a butcher in some Toronto suburb, via a childhood spent on a Greek island, Chios I think it was, with German grand-parents. Don't ask the genealogy. Rumpus as far as nicknames go fit Drinkwater, but not solely because of his lard thick ass or the fact he grew up on some peninsula of a Canadian cul de sac street, which I'm told in French, loosely translated, means bum, or rump, in a bag. Manny was streetwise for sure. Twenty years after chopping meat for a living and Butch-boy (or BB to some of his crowd) still could cull and dissect a piece of meat by its cut, country of origin, grass or grain fed, how fresh it was or wasn't. Yeh, and most important for this M.D.: just how prime the fatty tissue was and how that fat worked miracles of taste on the tongue, foremost among them his slab of ridged and vesseled tongue. Man-Dee even claimed he could tell how often some poor pig or calf had gotten up off its rump for a romp in the pen, and how it had been slaughtered, simply by fingering the beast's skin around its, well, around its rump.

Manny he was no ass. This Drinkwater was a real charcuterie of chat and in his own book, one cool chat. "Jolly as all hell ain't he?" Papa usually snorgled when the old man was seated next to someone, someone let's say effusive, trying to enjoy that morning muffin in the serenity that befits coffee hour at the bakery. Our Papa, who summed up character and spirit more or less spot on, hadn't even met Mr. D, yet my one-man marching band and former dad-in-law knew all he needed to know just hearing a few words about this Drinkwater gent. "Fluent in French and Greek and what, a little German? Where'd he pick up a name like Drinkwater, the gishTAP-oh?" Papa wondered over yet another perfect muffin on yet another perfect morning in his perfect, perfect for him and lots like him, his overachieving suburban county.

See, if anyone I knew qualified as a modern-day, over-reaching Jeremy Diddler, a flat-out vamping chord of riotous noise, it was Manny the Rumpus. Hell was he entertaining. "Look at my hands," he'd say and waggle 'em, and how could you not admire the mano of the man -- they were smooth and plump, each and every finger a rubied merguez sausage link. "Look at 'em. The left hand, you're born, and the right one, here, you're dead, Rob. Everything in between these hands, Robber man, is risk."

Manny was butch all right, with a boisterous sense for what was taut and what was slack. Rumpus ruled at the dinner table. He knew the tales that held the attention of his warp-speed/warped-seed crowd just long enough for the final cut, the slice of the story that almost always ended with gold, or silver, or platinum, and he told those tales loudly, for everyone within a 10-table radius to hear. M-Dee butchered plenty of meat in his time, but even when he was under the gun, I never saw him botch a proper story. For this upper-case Rump knew how to turn metal into paper, the paper that had those neat little CUSIP numbers on it, the certificates that were more valuable than a bar of bullion. For spinning that magic, the fabled ex-butcher was a living-day Rumpelstiltskin. Only he didn't want or need your first born for spinning precious metals into stock scrip. Oh no. He wanted you to spread the word, his word. That's how this butcher, he of the belly built like a World's Fair globe, the beautiful, bronzed bald head, the hooked nose that rated as a spherical sculpture of genius, pure sphere, purely gnomic in its way, that's how this butch-boy got rich. Mr. Drinkwater could take your word to his bank.

Manny Drinkwater was a full-force, run-on, God-forbid-you-take-a-breath-whilst-I'm-talking-to-you  ... ellipsis, I guess. I can't think of a better way to describe his fable-flopping. In his way, with that borderline Peter Jennings Canadian drawl that commanded simultaneous respect and disgust, this butcher, at table, could sing his way from the cod-packed potato croquettes (first course), into the oxtail soup (second), then aria his pitch straight through the pork-belly stew (third and main course) and pillow down at dessert, still yapping as his favorite dessert, a caramelized brioche smothered in sautéed bananas, was placed post flambeau onto our rented plates. They were always superb - Manny's meals. The botchulism, as it will do, came later.

M-Dee on a tear: "Robbie-hobby … this is the real thing … 33 grams a freaking ton, yes we're talking gold, what you think, Roberto? Silver, some copper, yep, and zinc for God's sake! It's there … in this … piece a shit … disseminated mineralization … everyone gave up for dead … for dead earth. Colombia. Scummy … little … place. Marca, that's what we call it. Marca Pola, she's our gal! Maybe 3 kilometers from that really big mine deal down there … Rillian Resources … rhymes with billion, heh heh. Rillian billion. Next flight rainy season or dry, Hobble. Ten points of that, it's mine. My gold mine. Marca Pola, remember the name. Ten percent. Hey Robbie-hobby, my boy, write it up for me, will ya? Be my Robber Baron, wood-ya?"

Translation: "My boy, if you put a good word in for this entirely speculative gold/silver/copper mining company I'm currently slobbering over in Latin America, by name of Marca Pola, perhaps mention that a group of grizzled Canadian engineers are working the same geography and mineralized zones with the same characteristics as an established and prospering mining operation named Rillian whose stock is already up X-teen percent to the tenth power, well, my boy, you know in your sweet little heart that Manny never forgets the power of your written words, now does he?"

His e-mails were almost as good. "I've been a traveling fiend, Robbie. Ghana, the Congo DRC, Middle East, Sardinia, Capri, Greece for my cuz's wedding, London, Zurich, Frankfurt, London, NYC, Toronto and now here in Vancouver on my way back to NY. ... Business is fantastic! We're in uncharted waters as far as natural resources go. I continue to fund Marca Pola, $7 million these past 6 months ... the shares have gone from pennies cents to close yesterday at 75 cents on 12 million shares. That's 12 million golden eggs, sweetheart."

Manuel Drinkwater's nose had a talent for sniffing out mark that was buried deep in mine shafts. "If I were a rich man," he seemed always to be humming, even between bites … well, the Greek Canadian son-of-a-gun with his luscious mango nose and (always matching) cashmere socks and scarves claimed to be swimming in resources. Like most raconteurs, what he deserved to be described as is a playboy, a roly-poly playful boy with barking-mad charisma. As a jet-setter, Manny proved to be successful in locating other resources, too, whether it was the impossibly rare 99-rated Bordeaux at a cafe in some caramel-colored suburb of Medellin, or the remaining two spots in a luxury jungle-buddy tent on a five-star Botswana safari ... or the Saint-Tropez-dripping blondes, almost always blondes, this butch-boy managed to bring to the table … or best of all, delicate thin-crust pizzas adorned with fennel sausage and creamy goat cheese no matter where we or his crowd were in the metro scheme of things, even in the deep of urban Africa, like when we ventured out of the hotel lobby, some colonial Hilton, one unusually cool evening in Nairobi, where Manny, referring to his oversized mobile phone's address book and digital map archive, led us down a slummy alley of stench and rot. Even the architecture was rank, I'm telling you. The outside of this pizza place looked like it was an abortion clinic. Manny was first in, as always, and in a second the chef, or the owner, or whatever he was, was out of the kitchen and hugging Manny, big belly to big belly, like a couple of pregnant rhinos. The chef was a dark-skinned Sicilian, 5 feet flat, if that, perfect for not having to stoop each time the jolly cook had to monitor a pizza crust in the oven. He ran a clean joint with, you know, the red-checkered table cloths and the big bottles of olives displayed like triumphal columns of a Siracusa temple along the walls and on the tables of his place. We could have been in Greenwich Village. The crust was as thin as could be, the edges puffy in spots and crisp in others, and the rest of the pizza, the sausage and the goat cheese and some African spice I never did quite place, was a pie to die for, not bad for Nairobi. That was all Manny, so Manny. When he got fat at table, digging deep into his crisply pressed khakis and pulling out notes like a flute player, well, everyone got fat.

As for the ladies, well, Mr. M.D. picked 'em in his own image, on the huggable side. I'd say size 10s and 12s. Some of them towered over the boy. Plus, like their candy man, Manny's lady friends had non-stop stories to tell … and quirks a mad hatter couldn't fabricate. Somehow, Manuel Drinkwater and his women were cut from the same crazy quilt: larger than their table of contents, in love with money and clothing and travel and most of all, quite at home at the head of the table, telling tales, passing the plates, chattering away, hardly ever coming up for a gulp of air. He had this affected way, when he was seated beside one of his leading ladies, of turning their palms up toward the sky and petting them there, stroking the "heart of the palm, Robbie" he told me once as an aside. That handiwork and zee du rigeur French pecks across the cheek were the only physical intimacies I ever noticed with Manny and his portfolio of palms. Oh sure, there were hugs at table, at airports, in hotel lobbies. But that was all. And like I said, these women all seemed mad as hatters to me. There was the countess from Florence who started each day with a six-pack of Oreo cookies, a doppio espresso and a triple-dose of the latest and greatest statin. There was the German marketing executive for Jaguar's Formula 1 racing team whose language was so filthy she got us booted from a beer hall in Berlin. There was the (all-in-one-package) Russian/Iranian/Saudi orphan who painted her toe-nails with platinum-based polish, fifty euros a toe, I kid thee not. There was one loudmouth lioness who claimed, and had photos to prove it, that she was Hillary's former personal assistant: she even told us with a purr and a wink that she was a closet Republican and heads-over-high-heels in love with the mayor of NYC. I liked most of Manny's ladies, even the loudmouth, and to come clean, sure, I liked Manny, too. Who wouldn't like this fellow, shaped like a swollen fire hydrant but dressed like a peacock and always making you feel, whoever you were, that you grew up with the guy, maybe even played kick-ball on the same cul de sac? "Ready, set, jet," he shouted in his ritual entrance to an airport, any airport, coming or going, though now I think of it, Danny was never coming, as in coming home. Every time he stepped on a plane he was on his way somewhere, but never home, home meaning the leased flats he had here and there, always tiny but well appointed spots in what I called prohibitive real estate, like Manny's walk-up in a dignified brownstone, just on the edge of London's Mayfair patch of Saudi bankers and cute Lebanese cheeks, if you know what I mean, these are the studios and flats, always stocked with fresh produce and that amber nectar of the vintage gods, our well rounded character slipped into when he needed two or three days of down time.

I have to think the scouring federales, when they extracted my hard drive from its laptop crotch, examining it for evidence, I have to think they were a little let down, knowing the kind of company I kept and not finding a single piece of cheek, no porn at all in the GIF files, sorry boys. Not that some of the images Manny and one or two others in the crowd used to send me via the wireless belonged in Fodder X's sacristy -- they didn't. But the girls, even the gold digger from NY whose number was written into all of the politicians' little PDAs, even her GIFs had that Victoria's scarlet red dotting her cubes and angling her triangle in perfect geometry. Stylistic math from our loud man. Just enough of the lay of the lamb, as he phrased it, just enough in a photo to get you thinking, Hey, what does this tub of Man have that I don't? And of course, the answer: Manny has it all, has the gift of gab with his gals and the gist of grab with his money crowd, has the wardrobe, the food, the vintages and, I know this sounds weird, most of all Monsieur Man carried around this sweaty aroma, he always seemed to be sweating lightly, droplets across back of neck/polka-dotting dimpled chin/filling moat above nose, between those J-P Belmondo eyes of his, has with him like a perfumed bag lady this scent of curry and lemons and crackling pizza dough baking at 600 degrees, and yes, cooking oil, any cloudy old kind of oil, but with mashed chick peas, a clove or two of garlic and some tahini sizzling on the burner. Not a bad smell.

With the ladies and the money crowd, it was Mr. Drinkwater's gift of gab that turned his trick. His e-mails never did him justice. He was like an old rock act from the '70s, a Southside Johnny for instance; you just had to see him live, the studio work didn't translate, didn't come close. On the record machine, the video, the phone, you got Johnny and his Flukes -- a watered down Drinkwater. But live on the boardwalk, in the nightclub, you got the real thing, Johnny and his Jukes -- firewater straight up. I guess the only feel the federales got for what a gift gab can be when it came to Manny the doctor's caboose full of women, or so he boasted when it came to the opp-sex, and the feel for M.D.'s handle on money, and now I think of it, all the food and the waiters and the thimbelina Asian airline attendants and even, in a poisoned serpent sense, which was rare for the jolly round one, his venomous take on arch-enemy No. 1 in that Barcelona gazebo, the only brief listen the dot-gov guys got of Manny's exquisitely lubed motor-mouth, their only chance up there in that vacuum-pressed SF skyscraper for witnessing kinetically what this former butcher was all about, was a little sound file he sent me once via the wireless, an audio clip Man D. used for his mobile phone answering service. Had to be on my hard drive somewhere, so I figure the federales came across it if they were as thorough as I believed they were. "Hello hello. Is Manny. Manny. Mr M.D. I got a jumbo egg roll waiting for thee." I never knew what he really meant, I mean, what, Jackie Chan's egg roll? Or maybe a bank roll? With Man-Dee you never really knew, though gourmand that he was he said it was always/always/always about the food. So maybe he was cooking Chinese that day, who knows? Looking back now I guess I have to believe the food interpretation. The guy never once, in my sight-line anyway, came onto anyone, guy, gal or airline attendant, more than that gentle, gentle but wet, palm oil it was, Manny's little pet of a hand or his reaching up, as he was a short man, his huggy-pudge wrap of the forearm around your shoulders and neck. And with the European ladies, the peck patta peck of the cheek, three times, mostly for show, air kisses I called them. Never once did I see him shut down for the night accompanied by another, as in any other, woman or man. Sure he hunted alone, but what he came back with was meat (and fish) you could eat, like the time we were all in Honolulu on some layover to Melbourne, and he came back at midnight with two splintered pineapple crates stuffed with what was, for me and the usual crowd of money hangers-on in search of their next winning private placement of a diamond or nickel or gold mine, an exquisitely prepared Hawaiian Walu, dressed with zucchini, some kind of licorice, with foie gras swimming in a Bronx grape vinaigrette. Turns out the zillion-star hotel Manny went looking for in search of a great meal, this great meal, was shutting down for the night, so he who hunted alone, as was his custom in the prowl for superb sustenance, talked the chefs into preparing takeout for the crowd.

Always about the food, this man, and bringing it back to his litter, the hangers-on who genuflected and then knelt a) only when in the presence of a remarkable meal, and b) when they were so close, so very close to enormous sums of capital, usually in the form of a silk-zippered financier, that they were willing to lick the sweet and sour sauce off the money magician's egg roll, some figuratively and some I suppose, me not being one to peek under the covers, as I was a modest scribe when it came to personal matters, a Baltimore rowhouse boy who knew where to draw the line, draw the curtain, at this meteor shower trail of pop-star villas and centillion-star hotels, some of the hangers-on, desperate/always desperate for moola, licking the egg roll for real.

 Copyright © 2007, Thom Calandra

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED BY AUTHOR

“Pablo by Numbers” is a work of fiction. All characters in the novel are the work of the author’s imagination and bear no resemblance to people living or dead.

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