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clients how to establish patterns of volatility through carefully planned and timed management actions—completely legitimate business practice. Believe me, he knew exactly how to avoid attracting undue attention from the SEC. He also stayed off the radar screens of aggressive plaintiff’s lawyers eager to file shareholder lawsuits.”
    “If it worked so well, why were there abuses?”
    “Clients like Michael Garvey, Chairman and CEO of AikoChem. You read the file. He didn’t have the patience to keep the cycle going through legitimate business practices …”
    Wilson interrupted, “So he resorted to leaking insider information shortly after his brokers and trading buddies had already acted on it.”
    “That’s the way it is with all of these clients. They pushed things a little too far. Even with Fielder & Company’s thorough screening methods, your father couldn’t stop them.”
    Before he could ask about Fielder & Company’s screening methods, Wilson noticed his mother and Rachel getting up from their seats.
    “I’ll be right back,” he said to Daniel, who was sitting in the window seat. Wilson stood up, joining his mother and Rachel as they walked through two sets of doors into the ICU cabin.
    By the time Wilson returned to his seat after having checked on his father, the lights along the southern shore of Lake Ontario were becoming more visible. The MD-90 was an hour and a half out of Boston. Wilson picked up where he and Daniel had left off.
    “What were my father’s methods for screening out potential abusers?”
    “Extensive background checks, comprehensive interviews, occasional surveillance, the usual. Except for a handful of abusers, his system worked for many years. It was only recently that more clients began crossing the line.”
    “Why?”
    “The appetites and hubris of some clients became excessive over time. That’s usually when they started crossing the line. Of course, Fielder & Company had already shown them how to skirt the system by managing market regulators, preempting lawsuits or getting cases dismissed, and a few other tricks of the securities and exchange trade,” Daniel said, dryly.
    “How do you manipulate market regulators or preempt lawsuits?”
    “You hire the best white-collar criminal defense attorneys in the country—most of whom are former directors or branch chiefs from the Enforcement Division of the Securities and Exchange Commission. They know how to get an investigation sidetracked and killed. Preempting lawsuits can be accomplished in a number of ways, but the simplest way is to pay a plaintiff’s lawyer to file early, become lead counsel, and then drop the case. Problems arise when clients begin using such measures as a rule, not an exception.”
    “Let’s go back to Garvey,” Wilson said, opening one of the files. “What was his excuse for crossing the line?”
    “Expensive art, lavish estates, a four-hundred-foot yacht, and beautiful women depleted his wealth. After Fielder & Company terminated its relationship with him, he began implementing a combination of bribes, price-fixing, and a new version of stock pooling to keep a ninety-day cycle of volatility going. He was successful for more than eighteen months. Like clockwork, AikoChem’s stock climbed to over twenty dollars and then slowly dropped to below ten dollars every ninety days or so. Trading volume stayed at over two million shares per day for more than a year. But rumors began to circulate that AikoChem’s pattern of volatility was being illegally induced. The institutional investors and professional traders who’d been playing the cycle pulled out. AikoChem’s stock plummeted to four dollars a share and trading volume dropped below 25,000 shares a day. By that time, Garvey had already cashed out and was humbly acknowledging to the business press that it was time for him to step down as CEO.”
    “So he got away with it?”
    “That’s right. Great lawyering, savvy lobbying, and lots of