Free The Prince of Risk by Christopher Reich Page B

you both her numbers, too.”
    Astor stepped away from the desk. The drawer remained open an inch. There was nothing he could do about it now. He crossed the room to the doorway and took the paper with Penelope Evans’s information. “Thank you, Dolores.”
    “No, thank you,” the secretary replied. “It would make your father happy to know that you cared.”
    “How did you—” Astor cut himself off. “Thanks again.”
    “How did you know?”
    November 1987. One month after Black Monday, the crash that had seen the Dow Jones Industrial Average lose more than 20 percent of its value in a single day, Bobby Astor sat at a table in the Grill Room of the Four Seasons at 52nd and Park. He had not left school surreptitiously this time. He had come by invitation. A lunch in the city between father and son. The head of school was happy to sign his day pass.
    “So you read my paper?” asked Bobby.
    “Of course I read it. So did all of my partners. We’re impressed. In fact, we’re more than that. Half of them want you to quit school and come to work for us right now.”
    Bobby smiled, his cheeks flushing with pride.
    Edward Astor leaned closer. “The other half want to know who you copied your work from.”
    The waiter arrived. Edward Astor ordered an old-fashioned. “And give the boy a beer. He thinks he’s an adult anyway.”
    The waiter nodded and left the table. The Four Seasons existed in a parallel universe where mortals’ laws held no sway.
    “I wrote it,” said Bobby.
    “Then tell me. How’d you know?”
    “Like I said in the paper. Prices were too high, given earnings. Not just that, they’d risen too fast. Not just in the States but everywhere. It was all in the numbers. Something had to give.”
    “Everyone reads the same numbers. Everyone knew P/Es were too high. Your timing was specific. ‘Sell everything now.’”
    “The market felt frothy. It just seemed like it was about to give.”
    “You’re fifteen,” Edward Astor said. “How do you know what frothy means?”
    “Things were out of kilter, that’s all.”
    “And this is how you spend your spare time? Studying the market?”
    “Pretty much. And playing poker.”
    “You’re still not answering my question. How did you know the crash was imminent?”
    Bobby looked into his lap, then lifted his chin and met his father’s gaze. “It’s like this, Dad. When I study the numbers and the charts, I get lost in all that data. It’s like I’m swimming in it. All that information becomes part of me. Like in Star Wars. The numbers create some kind of force and I can feel it.”
    “You can feel the force?”
    “Yeah, I can.” Bobby shrugged. “So how did I know the crash was going to happen soon? I just knew.”
    Anger flashed behind Edward Astor’s eyes. His mouth tightened and he rose in his seat. Bobby knew that intuition went against everything his father stood for as an investor. As quickly, his father sat down again. A look of understanding brightened his features. Before he could reply, a diminutive, curly-haired man slid into the booth next to him. The two men spoke quietly for a few minutes. As the man stood to leave, Edward Astor motioned toward Bobby. “Henry,” he said. “This is my son, Robert. Robert, meet Henry Kravis.”
    Bobby shook hands and smiled uncertainly.
    Edward Astor looked into his son’s eyes. “You’ll want to remember him, Henry. The boy’s a genius. One day he’s either going to be richer than any of us or broke and in the poorhouse.”
    Sloan Thomasson was waiting in the antechamber. “Leaving already?”
    “I’ve got what I needed,” said Astor. “Can you help me find my way out of here? I’ll never get back to the elevator. You’re right. It’s like a maze.”
    “No need to go back. There’s an express elevator that goes down to the ground floor. Normally it’s just for the CEO and his guests. If you don’t mind exiting on Broadway, we can take that.”
    “That would be fine,”