Doing this had never bothered him. He had never been the kind of guy with any time to dabble and meddle in stocks. Of course he knew people who lived that life—one of them, Tony Carew, was his best friend. Knowing Tony well, Van had always known better than to try to outhustle the IPO hustlers on Wall Street. Van didn’t mind putting his Mondiale holdings into a locked federal box. Van had confidently figured he would just leave his stock there, as a classic, sensible, long-term investor, until the big emergency was over, and Mondiale took him back.