• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

back-office workers, and secretaries in his unit. He was Lehman Brothers at its best. Yet

now he is all but forgotten, nearly erased from the public record by a culture of ruthless

avarice.

Part One

THE PONDEROSA BOYS

Character is destiny.

--Heraclitus

Chapter 1

A Long, Hot Summer

I just remember the nights. George would come in from the office at what seemed like 4

A.M. every single night. I don't know how he got through those months. I don't know

how any of them did. It was crazy.

--Nancy Dorn Walker

By nightfall on Saturday, June 7, 2008, the Manhattan streets were still radiating heat, an

unwelcome harbinger of a long, stifling summer. At the Skylight Studio, a sprawling

private event space in SoHo, George Herbert Walker, a 39-year-old second cousin of then

President George Walker Bush, and at the time head of Lehman's Investment

Management division, was celebrating his marriage to Nancy Dorn, 31, a pretty blonde

hedge fund analyst from Texas. The couple--who had exchanged their vows at New

York's City Hall a few weeks earlier and had already celebrated with family down in

Texas--ate Southern food, danced to the overwrought musical stylings of a suitably ironic

wedding singer, and drank margaritas with 400 of their friends. It was, however, a

celebration tempered by the first signs that Lehman Brothers was about to come crashing

down.

The newlyweds had planned for their party to be casual and low-key--cushions on the

floor and a buffet. Dorn wore a strapless Missoni dress that was asymmetrical and calf

length. Walker--tall, bespectacled, a "cuddly bear," some friends said--rather typically

and charmingly cannot recall what he wore that night.

The last thing the couple wanted was to be perceived as grandiose. In fact, Walker had

instructed their friend, party planner Bronson van Wyck, "Just make sure we don't make

it into Page Six," the gossip page of the New York Post. The public outrage over the $3

million extravaganza hosted by Blackstone Group CEO Stephen A. Schwarzman for his

60th birthday on February 13, 2007, was still echoing throughout New York City. The

star-studded, 500-guest event held at the Park Avenue Armory, featuring performances

by Rod Stewart (who was paid $1 million) and Patti LaBelle (who sang "Happy

Birthday"), had been an ill-timed disaster of self -congratulation: Blackstone's stock had

fallen steadily ever after and was then teetering at $18 per share, nearly half of its value a

year earlier. And now, all of Wall Street was suddenly standing on the edge of a

precipice, and everyone--especially those in attendance at the Walkers' party--were

acutely aware of it. "We wanted people to come and go when they wanted to, and not

force them to sit down for a formal dinner," Dorn said. The band--a Neil Diamond cover

band, Super Diamond--was chosen by Walker in order to keep the mood light.

Just months earlier, on March 17, Bear Stearns had imploded, and was scooped up by

JPMorgan Chase, which paid $2 per share (that was eventually elevated to $10 per share

with the aid of a $29 billion government nonrecourse loan); the rescue operation had

stunned the financial market. Worried eyes were now staring at the next domino in Wall

Street's Big Five: Lehman Brothers. Walker had moved to the bank only two years before

from the larger, more capitalized (and therefore safer) Goldman Sachs.

Since March, most of Lehman's senior management had been working nights and

weekends, furiously trying to shore up their balance sheets. That weekend, many of the

guests at the Walkers' "second wedding" had come directly from the Lehman offices on

745 Seventh Avenue at 50th Street. Most, like David Goldfarb, Lehman's global head of

Strategic Partnerships, Principal Investing, and Risk, had met their wives at the office and

had simply grabbed their jackets from the backs of their chairs before heading hurriedly,

their minds elsewhere, out the door. Even Walker hadn't been home much