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had remained loyal. Walker was holding the ship steady. "We are going to be very boring

for a while," he said.

In 2009 Peregrine Moncreiffe was living in Jersey, Channel Islands, with his wife, the

artist Miranda Fox Pitt, and their six children. He was running a hedge fund. "I can't

believe this would have happened if Chris Pettit had still been at Lehman," he said.

Scott Freidheim moved to Chicago, where he works as an executive vice president for the

billionaire hedge fund manager Eddie Lampert, helping with his latest turnaround project,

the revamp of Sears Holdings, which owns the retail chains Sears and Kmart. Ironically,

just before Lehman's September earnings McDade and Fuld had planned to promote him.

They wanted to make a structural change so that the firm was run by subcommittees

comprised of executive committee members. There'd be one for risk, capital new

initiative investments, advancement, and so forth. Freidheim would have been in charge

of each one.

Tom Russo moved to the law firm of Patton Boggs. In 2009 he taught a course,

"Background to a Dream," at Columbia Business School on the lessons learned from

Lehman. In 2010 it was announced he'd be the new legal counsel for AIG.

David Goldfarb stayed at Lehman Brothers Holdings, working with the estate. He was

paid a low six-figure salary but hoped the estate would reward him for all the money he

had not taken out.

After staying on to ensure an orderly transition, Bart McDade and Alex Kirk quietly left

BarCap in November 2008. (Bob Diamond already had trusted lieutenants in Jerry del

Messier and Rich Ricci.) For them, it was time to start fresh and build businesses of their

own. The two formed River Birch, a private investment management company, in

September 2009. In December, it was announced that McDade was helping to launch a

cash equities arm for Evercore Partners, a private equity firm run by the former Lehman

partner (and former deputy Treasury secretary under Bill Clinton) Roger Altman.

(Evercore also hired Mark Burton, a former vice chairman at Lehman, in July 2009.)

Mike Gelband went to Fortress Financial Group, a private equity firm. John Cecil

founded a consultancy called Eagle Knolls; Jeremy Isaacs started his own business, JRJ

Ventures, with Roger Nagioff and Jesse Bhattal.

Ian Lowitt stayed at Barclays.

Mike Odrich joined the liquidators Alvarez & Marsal to build a private equity business

there.

Hank Paulson spent a year decompressing and writing his memoirs about the fall of 2008.

He also spent some time fishing with his younger brother Richard, who had worked as a

fixed income salesman (selling mortgages) at Lehman for over a decade and was "wiped

out" by the bankruptcy, according to Hank.

Richard told me that he feels Hank acted heroically under the circumstances. Over time

he hopes the story of Hank Paulson will be revised to what he believes it should be, and

that the criticism will be left behind. To cheer Hank up, Richard recommended his

brother read Masters and Commanders by the British historian Andrew Roberts, a book

that reconstructs strategic debates and conversations between Roosevelt, Churchill,

Marshall, and Lord Alanbrooke during World War II.

Tom Tucker and Steve Lessing talk often, and despite their different careers have

remained close. Lessing had bought Finnegan's as a memorial to his friends from the old

neighborhood. The picture of Fiver, put there by Chris Pettit, and Rusty Pettit, and Tom

Tucker back in the 1970s just before they joined Lehman, still hangs above the bar.

As for Chris Pettit--he 's never far from the minds of those who know the real Lehman

story. When I began my book, Tucker told me that he'd visited a psychic, Jim Fargiano,

on Long Island, who had put him in touch with his best friend. In a surreal experiment, I

called Fargiano, who is based on a dirt road in Quogue, and found myself unexpectedly

conducting an interview with Pettit's spirit.

Fargiano told me he could