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thought she was joking.
    “This is not a joke!” Stewart shouted. “Merrill Lynch is laying off ten thousand employees because of people like that idiot.” She slammed down the phone.
    Faneuil e-mailed a colleague: “I have never, ever been treated more rudely by a stranger on the telephone.”
    That Stewart could be rude, profane, impatient, self-centered, mercurial, and dictatorial was documented in best-selling books like Martha Inc . by Christopher Byron and Just Desserts by Jerry Oppenheimer. Nearly everyone working at Martha Stewart Omnimedia had witnessed, or been subjected to, one of her fits of anger. So far as anyone knew, she never apologized or acknowledged she might be wrong. As one longtime employee put it, “She has her ways of trying to make amends, but they do not include the words ‘I’m sorry.’ ”
    Over the years, she had left a trail of discarded and disaffected former friends, business associates, and employees. By the time she sold her ImClone shares, she had only a handful of people who could reliably be considered friends. These included the Waksals, Johnny Pigozzi, Mariana Pasternak, and Charles Simonyi, the wealthy former Microsoft executive she was widely reported to be dating. She was also close to Susan Magrino, her longtime public relations adviser; Sharon Patrick, the chief executive of Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia; and Sharkey, all of whom also had a business relationship with her.
    Still, there were many loyal and longtime employees, and thousands more who sent résumés and wanted to work for her. Stewart had made many people rich beyond their dreams.
    For a while Bacanovic had seemed on the brink of joining the charmed circle of people who were genuinely close to Stewart. But recently the relationship between Stewart and Bacanovic had become strained as technology stocks plunged and the September 11 attacks had sent the economy deeper into recession. One e-mail began:
    Peter: do nothing. The account is a mess, as is the pension account. I think we need to go over each and every item and evaluate the entire scenario. I think it’s time for me to give my money to a professional money manager who will watch it when I’m too busy and will take a bit more care about overall market conditions and political and economic problems. We have just watched the slide and done nothing, and I’m none too happy. I’ve made two or three horrendous mistakes and not sold when I was still far ahead. Please call me and I’ll work with you.
     
    Other Martha Stewart employees who were using Bacanovic because of the pension accounts were also starting to complain. Apart from his undeniable ability to attract and charm clients, it’s not at all clear that Bacanovic was a particularly good stock picker or financial planner. He was swept up in the technology and telecommunications mania of the late 1990s, and some of his favorite stocks, former clients recall, were AOL and Amazon.com , both hard hit in the crash, and Urbanfetch, which went bankrupt. One Stewart employee recalls asking Bacanovic what would happen in a downturn. “Don’t worry, I’m really good at managing a down market,” Bacanovic had replied. But he had only been a broker since 1992–and there hadn’t been any down markets since, until the tech bubble burst in 2000. Apart from a few tech favorites, Faneuil’s impression was that Bacanovic simply followed the recommendations of Merrill’s research department. But he had Faneuil buy expensive leather binders to dress up his clients’ account reviews.
    That year Stewart certainly had plenty of losses she could blame on Bacanovic. Among them were losses of $59,931 in Amazon, $77,200 in Digex, $113,490 in Lucent, and $65,000 in Sunbeam. All had once been market favorites; only Amazon survived.
    As the market continued to drop precipitously from its March 2000 peak, Faneuil knew Bacanovic was under mounting stress, especially from Stewart, his most important client by far. In