He chose real estate. Flat broke, he began peddling houses shortly after leaving high school and within a year, he had amassed enough cash to start his own real estate firm. As he told the magazine, “My first employee was my sixteen-year-old brother, Mace. Like me, he was flunking high school, but when he dropped out, at least he had instant employment. Still, my parents couldn’t figure out where they went wrong. It was more like where they went right.”
Five years later, Guy Kaffey picked up from the Midwest and moved his operation to the Land of Opportunity, switching from residential to commercial real estate. At twenty-two, Guy had his first million in the bank. Three years later, he qualified as a multimillionaire. Forbes listed Kaffey as a first-time billionaire when he reached the advanced age of thirty.
At thirty-one, he met his wife, Jill Sultie, at the craps table in Vegas after asking the beautiful woman next to him to blow on his dice. That evening, he had walked away with a hundred grand in profit and asked if the beautiful woman would like to celebrate by joining him for dinner. Sparks flew that night. The affair was intense and four months later, they were married.
“It was kismet,” Kaffey told e-zine CorporationsUSA.com. “She was recently divorced and I wandered in at exactly the right time.”
At Guy’s request, Jill changed her name to Gilliam so they could be G and G, or as Guy used to say when introduced, “We’re two grand.”
Two children followed: Gil seven months after the wedding and Grant two years later. The family was portrayed as cohesive, although Gil and Grant both had called Guy a “taskmaster.”
The financial road to billions hadn’t always been steady. There were dips and ditches and sometimes even trenches and foxholes. CEO Guy Kaffey nearly went out of business fifteen years ago due to a downturn in the real estate market, mismanagement, and embezzlement charges leveled at the president of the company and second in command, Mace Kaffey.
Decker sat up. As he underlined the sentence, he immediately thought of Milfred Connors, the accused account executive who was caught embezzling by Neptune Brady. Was there a connection between Connors and Mace Kaffey?
It appeared that the brothers were involved in litigation that lasted several years, and neither Mace nor Grant thought it important enough to mention. Maybe that was because things eventually resolved. Mace remained in the business, but no longer sat on the board of directors. He was given a new title of executive VP of East Coast Operations, that sector eventually operated by Guy’s younger son, Grant. The rest of the summary dealt with the Greenridge Project, some analysts implying that it was Mace’s last shot to redeem himself with the company.
If that was the case, Mace seemed to be on shaky grounds. From the start, Greenridge was plagued with problems. The location demanded several dozen environmental impact reports that resulted in many changes of plans. Eventually the project found a design that was approved, but the delays and the added costs coupled with the downturn in the economy and funding deficits had swelled the original budget by a factor of five. There was a quote from the Journal of News and Business about the Greenridge Project: Isn’t it time that Guy Kaffey do what he should have done years ago? Pull the plug on his dead-weight brother, Mace? Filial loyalty is an admirable trait, but a company-even a privately owned company-cannot be run on sentiment.
If Mace went down with the Greenridge Project, what about Grant? Wasn’t he part of it as well? If there were problems, why would Mace be the goat and not Grant?
The last paragraph of the synopsis was “An Insider’s Look at Guy Kaffey” from PropertiesInc.com that was more about Guy the man than Guy the businessman. His friends spoke about Guy’s exuberance: his foes described him as a hothead. He was well known for his outbursts, and his moods could turn at a moment’s notice. Guy was described as bold and daring, but he was also detail oriented and meticulous.
Decker wondered how much of his outbursts had to do with his possible bipolar disorder. Did he sue his brother in a manic fit or was there just cause? Certainly it would seem that the charges were unjustified if Guy agreed to hire Mace back into the company.
Decker put Guy’s summary down and moved on to Mace. There wasn’t anything too illuminating in the summary. Mace was a high school dropout. He worked for his brother. He moved out to sunny Cal with his wife, Carol, to work with Guy in Kaffey Industries. He had a son named Sean. Everything seemed to be hunky-dory with Mace until the embezzlement charges were leveled against him.
This time Lee Wang got specific. Mace Kaffey was accused of stealing five million dollars. Decker couldn’t help it; he whistled out loud. There weren’t any specifics on how the embezzling was done except to say that Guy got wind of the discrepancy during a routine inventory check and one thing led to another until he was forced to confront his brother. Mace vehemently denied the charges and even offered to hire a private detective to find out who the real culprit was. But Guy had his own sources.
The battle of the brothers lasted several years and during that time, the company’s stock plummeted. The charges and countercharges seemed equally matched until Guy prevailed. A month later, the case was settled. Guy retained the title of CEO, Gil Kaffey moved into the president spot, Grant was named in charge of East Coast operations, and Mace was shipped to upstate New York with a VP after his name.
Decker was confused. If Mace really was guilty of such blatant embezzlement, why would Guy retain him? Did Milfred Connors frame Mace for his theft? Or just as likely, did he take the fall for Mace’s stealing? Perhaps the two of them schemed together. And what happened to the money? Was it ever at least partially recovered?
He wrote notes in the margin and moved on to the next generation-Gil, thirty-two; Grant, thirty; and Sean, twenty-eight. Grant was the only married man; his wife was named Brynn and there was one child-a toddler boy. Gil was gay; Sean was still unmarried. All three boys had graduated from Wharton at the University of Pennsylvania. Gil and Grant were immediately sucked into Kaffey Industries, but Sean struck out on his own. He had just graduated from Harvard Law and was doing case law and business law at a small university in the Northeast.
Definitely the smart one, Decker thought.
The last bio had to do with Gilliam Kaffey née Jill Sultie. She grew up as trailer trash. Somewhere along the way, she blossomed from a bony adolescent into a beautiful woman and got a job as a Las Vegas showgirl when she was just eighteen. A year later, she was sporting a rock on her finger courtesy of her first husband, Renault Anderson, and buying her mother, Erlene, her very first house with a foundation instead of wheels.
For a while, it seemed as if Jill had found the golden goose and she was living on twenty-four-karat omelets. Then life came crashing down, mainly due to Renault’s philandering. The divorce was said to be amicable. She met Guy during a low period of her life. They clicked instantly, and like they say in the movies, the rest is history.
Rubbing his eyes, Decker checked the wall clock and realized he had been reading for over an hour.
He got up and stretched, then peered through the glass walls of his office. He spotted Wang typing away on the computer and opened the door.
“Lee?” Wang looked up. “Do you have a moment?”
“Sure.”
Decker told him to come inside and have a seat. “I finished your synopses. The family history reads like a soap opera script.”
“Yeah, could you make up a name like Renault Anderson?”
“That’s one for the books. I have a couple of questions about Mace Kaffey. There are these allegations of embezzlement against him, and then all of a sudden, the lawsuit’s settled.”
“Yeah, weird, huh?”
“More than weird. There had to be a backstory. I’m wondering if the accusations were related to the embezzlement charges leveled against Milfred Connors.”