Joe Burke's Last Stand Part 6

When the audit report was finally released, it verified only the original a.s.say results, a year old, and made no mention of the extraction yields. The company made bland a.s.surances about ongoing efforts to improve the extraction technique, but there were no hard numbers and they were running out of development capital.

Trading in SPM was suspended. When it resumed, the stock cratered to below $3 in seconds. Joe waited for a bounce, clamped his jaw, and sold out at $3.25, just below the high of the day. Over the next few months, the price dropped to a nickel and the company went bankrupt.

Joe was in shock. He had lost $17,160 plus commissions, half his savings. As he thought it over, he realized the mistakes he'd made.

He'd broken the primary law of diversity. You should never have all your eggs in one basket. Secondly, he had wavered between the att.i.tudes of the trader and the long term investor, ignoring the safeguards of each approach. If you are trading, you must wait for good entry points and you must exit immediately if the price moves against you. Gains more than compensate for losses, if the losses are strictly limited.

Furthermore, Victor Sperandeo had cautioned never to give back more than half your profits--they are too hard to come by. At one point Joe had been $32,000 ahead. It hurt to remember.

If you are a long term investor, on the other hand, you must know that the company is sound. Joe failed to follow through on his investigation of the CEO. He had been too cheap to go to the annual shareholder's meeting where he would not have found the qualities he looked for in management.

He had been neither trader nor investor. He had been a loser. Not only that, he had spent months staring into his monitor, living on the Internet, reading the Wall St. Journal every day and Barrons every weekend, and dreaming about how he would invest $450,000. He asked himself how he could have been so stupid, so inept.

He went to a Korean bar. Gorgeous women paraded continuously past his table. When he tired of sitting with one, the next slid in against him and put her hand on his leg. "Buy me drink? You want pu-pu's?" The music was loud, hypnotic, non-stop. They danced. They accepted MasterCard. Joe staggered home with further losses.

He was in deepest day-after shambles when the phone rang.

"Ugh, hlo?"

"Hi, Joe."

"Max! How ya doin', buddy?"

"Fine. I'm at the airport."

"Great! Come on over, or are you just flying through?"

"I thought I'd stay a couple of days. Kate told me you were here."

Half an hour later, there he was. "Max, you look terrific . . . growing up, man, getting stronger."

"Thanks, you don't look so great," Max said.

"Nah, long night, never mind. A walk, rice and eggs, it will all be history." Max put his pack down in a corner. "That's not the lightest looking pack."

"It has everything I own in it. Carried it all over New Zealand."

"Yeah? Both islands? What do they call them?"

"North and South," Max said, smiling.

"Right, right. Always wanted to go there, supposed to be a great place."

"The Kiwi's, man . . . awesome!" Max was short with wide shoulders and large dark brown eyes. He had filled out since his school days, but he had the same earnest expression. Max had gotten through the University of Vermont, studying this and that, anthropology mostly, but he'd gone walkabout instead of buckling down to graduate school. Joe had been glad at the time, and now he could see why: Max was calmer, more sure of himself after a couple of years of knocking around.

"Let's go get some breakfast."

"Lunch," Max said.

At the coffee shop on King Street, Joe asked, "Remember that week we spent on Kauai? That was a good time."

"Yeah, the Na Pali coast," Max said.

"Some place," Joe said. "The whole d.a.m.n island should be a world park."

"I remember that story you told us about the leper who wouldn't go to the colony."

"Koolau," Joe said. "He defeated the British Navy. They couldn't get him. He warned them, too. One sick guy with a rifle against marines and cannon--he killed, what? . . . three of them before they gave up? He wasn't doing anything, just he and his lover in the valley."

"Yeah," Max said.

"One of the great love stories," Joe said. "Made for Hollywood. She stayed with him until he died and never caught leprosy. A few years later, she climbed back over the pali and started all over again, lived a long life. If I were a drinking man, I'd propose a toast to her--and all women like her."

"Women," Max said, just like a grown up, holding out his coffee mug.

They clinked mugs.

"So, what next?" Joe asked.

"I've been thinking . . . look at this." Max reached into his pocket and pulled out a little wooden box, deep red with a dramatic black grain. He removed a rubber band, placed the box on the table, and lifted off the top. The box was rectangular with an oval center; a thin piece of stone lay in the oval, tawny and flaked. "It's an arrowhead.

Found it in Vermont." Joe put the arrowhead in his palm and looked at the indentations near the base and at the rounded but definite point.

The slight weight of it shocked him. Whoever made it had felt the same weight; it had been in his or her palm as well.

"I carried it around in my wallet, and then when I was in New Zealand I made the box out of Kauri wood."

"Beautiful wood," Joe said. "The oval is perfect for the arrowhead."

Max nodded. "I'm going to make things," he said. "That's what I want to do. Furniture, maybe."

"Good idea!" Joe put the arrowhead back in its box.

"I'm going to stop and see Kate when I get to the mainland," Max said.

"Check out her new boyfriend, Jackson. He's into working with his hands. Nice guy." Joe had an idea. "Look, Max, why don't you take the truck?"

"Truck?"

"My truck. It's at Kate's, at Kate's mechanic's. I'm not using it. I don't know how long I'm going to be here on the island." Max was starting to look excited. "It's registered and the insurance is good for another six or seven months. Here." Joe found the registration in his wallet and gave it to him. "Just take this. That way all you have to do is put gas in it and go. When it expires, I'll send you a bill of sale. Or you can mail it to me and I'll sign it over to you. It's got a bed in the back, too."

"Really?"

"Sure. Keep the tools. Just leave my clothes at Kate's." Max sat back and considered. He stretched his arm forward and slowly slid the arrowhead across the table.

"Swap," he said.

"Oh, Max, I can't."

Max shook his head. "That's the deal."

"Well . . . O.K." Joe put the top on the box, wrapped the rubber band around it, and put it in his pocket. They walked to Waikiki and hung out for another day before Max caught a plane to Seattle.