The Original

Cashing In

“Welcome to Cowl Watchers, your podcast for all things super-heroic and villain, and oh man is it a big year for money on both sides.”

“That’s pretty darn right, Patty. The Trio Terrible have had three major heists go without a hitch this year, and its only September! Their raid on Caesars Palace will likely go down in legend, having cleaned out the cash room and disappeared before the Golden Guards could react to the attack, and people still don’t know how they stole an entire Super Yacht in the middle of a major trade show. They even managed to evade the guardians after the bank hit in Baltimore early last month.

“Impressive as that is, Mike, I’m still not sure they’ve made, or stolen in their case, as much bank as some of our Heroes. The new kid on the Guardian block, Vanguard Red, is rumored to have scored a multi-million-dollar contract with Virgin, with his recent appearance in Virgin Cruise Line’s advertising backing that up. I’m pretty sure that puts him close to their success rate, and he doesn’t have to hide from the police!”

A half hour later, the front desk called up then sent up the bank representative, who turned out to be a man in a tailored suit, himself accompanied by two assistants who carried paperwork and briefcases. He spoke with a distinct Swiss accent. "Guten Morgen Lady Summers. I am Noah Oblisk, and I am your account manager for UBS. These are my assistants William St Caer, and Michelle Donavan. " He said, offering a hand to shake.

A pleasure to meet you, Mr. Oblisk.” Solaris said, shaking his hand. “Thank you for taking time to see me today. I hope it was not too much trouble, I had tea and coffee prepared for your comfort.”

"That's very much appreciated. We contracted a teleporter to bring me in from Switzerland, as your account is a bit complicated. Normally, Michelle and William will be your primary contacts, but we wanted to have someone senior here for our first meeting with you, Michelle was setting up a laptop and secondary screen for Solaris to see, and William was arranging various packets. The two Americans watching noted that the envelopes did not seem to be made of anything as simple as paper.

“Please let me know if there is anything I can get for you. I know this is after hours for you. After seventy years I’m sure things have been at least somewhat tangled.”

"Oh, I made sure to have a light dinner before leaving. Teleportation makes me a bit queasy." He chuckled. "And fortunately, by the time you had disappeared we'd started developing some processes due to, well, ironically certain German disappearances." His tone was ironic.

"Starting with your business interests. Those are going to take a bit longer to untangle, but not to any detriment to you. We entered into contracts, regarding your preferred stocks, allowing others to leverage your votes for specific periods of time, choosing those we thought would be responsible with the vote, and contractual requirement that no vote be used that would cause you to lose stock percentages. Those contracts are renewed currently on a bi-yearly basis, so most will end in fifteen months. For the most part, this has worked well though a few investments have failed in the spanning time.

“That is fine with me, I would prefer to have factors that know what they are doing instead of simply leaving the stock fallow, though I will want to audit them and make sure our priorities align so I know which contracts to certainly end. I’ll admit I’m not sure what companies I’m involved in at this point save for my shoes, I heard they’ve withstood the test of time.

"Of course, though that is a privately owned company attached to your estate. If you look on the screen this will list your current portfolio of both preferred and simple stocks, and these are the voting records for all the concerned individuals involved.” The stock information appeared on the computer screen, while he slid one of the parchment envelopes to her to peruse later. Seeing her nod, the screen changed. “These are the outlines of certain sales. We did take the initiative, with your American accounting firm's joint approval, to dispose of assets we felt were either doing you a disservice or were likely to become economically harmful to you. We feel our track record was very good."

“That makes sense and looking over the bottom lines you're displaying I can’t realistically complain. I’m sure there were errors here and there but over so many years there would be, and I know Louie would be cautious. He was never a man to let money not work to earn itself.”

"While Mr. Lou Carenza and his son have both passed, I believe the third generation of Louie has taken over A grand-daughter Louise. I rarely speak to them directly, instead of one of their staff who are usually subject matter experts on the topic at hand. I know they have your personal finances reasonably well in line with our input of course. Approximately fifty percent of your personal wealth is currently invested in conservative, but guaranteed for growth, investment instruments outlined in this packet. Those are mutual funds or stable government or corporate bond investments. Twenty five percent is in a more aggressive portfolio in the investment market, managed directly by Scottish American in a more aggressive stance. You did occasionally get hit, everyone did in the seventies, tech bubble, and so-called Great Recession, but mostly they have done very well by you.”

“A shame Louie has passed. He was brilliant back in the day, he had to be with the crowd he ran with. I can only imagine how terrifying his organization must be now. I’ll have to visit his granddaughter when things are settled.” She looked over at Penny. “Louie was referred to me by a respectable, made man after we did some work against the Black Hand. The Mafia did so dislike them.”

"Made man? You have a mob accountant? Okay, see, now that's old school cool." Marcus commented. Penny just shook her head and chuckled.

"As for your liquid assets, you currently have," He opened a leather folder. "One account is with Bank Suisse; this is the largest obviously. That account, or rather those accounts for insurance reasons, have thirty-four million, American, in available funds. Your second block of accounts with the bank of England, are a fairly modest 753,000, but this is the maintained amount, with monies coming out to pay taxes, as well as the maintenance staff for your family’s land estate." he explained.

"Your third block is with the First Bank of Alaska, and stands at one million, and your most active account is with Axos Financial, out of Las Vegas, with fifteen million active. The Axos account is your primary American investment bank as well, with UBS handling auditing the account as well as your overseas investments, which are in turn audited by your personal firm."

"Total, liquid, you currently have around Fifty-two million dollars, with another one hundred and seventy-five million in investment assets. This ignores properties you own."

“That is excellent news, if I understand correctly that would have been around five million and change in my time. Inflation is scary. But at least I know I will not be standing in breadlines!”

“I believe the US uses food banks now.” The banker commented. "This does ignore your various safe deposit boxes which I have been advised are most likely filled with war bonds, jewelry, and possibly other liquid or easily mobile assets, though you could argue those might be more interesting as what they are, compared to possible intrinsic value." He chuckled. "Now, property. I am afraid in this case you have not weathered the years quite as well in this regard."

Solaris laughed. I'll go through them eventually. How odd land is usually one of the most stable investments.”

"And financially that has been the case. However, maintaining properties was determined to be counter to your financial health. Your home in Nevada was donated as a charitable contribution to the university and now is the home of a Sorority. The building your New York residence resided in was demolished in the seventies, as part of a larger investment building project. We negotiated your ownership in the building itself, which has added to your personal wealth, but you don’t currently have an apartment or office in the structure. You still own land in the Hamptons, but the house there was destroyed in a severe weather event and your accountant had it demolished. A complete rebuild would be necessary there. Your family estate in the United Kingdom is the most significant real estate you currently posses. I think I will let William speak to that."

"Yes. It's an honor to meet you, Lady Summers." The younger Englishman spoke for the first time. "I recently did a property assessment of your family home, or should I say homes. It is not in bad shape and a maintenance firm keeps up things such as roofing, plumbing, and the like. It is very outdated, doesn't currently have a functional kitchen, the windows are nearly a century old, and that's ignoring the electrical systems. We would estimate just doing minimal updates would take six months to a year."

Solaris nodded. “Is the village still solvent?”

"There's still a small but stable fishing industry, and a bit of a recreational boating industry. However, it is very much a sleepy English village. Parts of it are right out of Harry Potter." He joked absently. "I can present an initial renovation plan that won't require you to deal with cosmetic choices initially. "

“Yes, that would be helpful.”

"I will start working on that immediately." he agreed, making a note on his phone.

"Well, while William is distracted." Michelle said with an American accent, she opened another leather folder. "Here we have a UBS debit card, Credit Card, and check book for your immediate use.”

“Excellent, I was just speaking of purchasing a car while I was in New York.” She looked at the card. “So did these actually catch on? They were only just coming out when I was inconvenienced? I used cash or checks when I shopped.”

Penny spoke up. “It’s harder to find someplace that takes checks over cards these days.”

“We also have a packet from Axos that is tied to a “Sunlight Investment Corp.” which appears to be a Camien Islands based shell corporation which is how this room is being paid for. This packet has a card for you and a couple for assistants as bearer cards.”

“Ahh, of course. The off the book money. Louie was always so good to me. Seems to be flush as well. Penny, you are acting as my assistant right now so why don’t you take this one. It’ll save us time, I’m sure.” She held the card out to the lieutenant. “Thankfully he knew to pay the damned taxes for such things.”

"Um... what... hey... this is... a lot..." she held the card like it was made from radioactive waste "I'll go... order that... car... like a pizza."

“Oh pizza! We need to get pizza. Is Lombardi’s still around? We could do that for dinner!”

“Thank you, Rei-Chan.” The woman formerly known as Kitsune said, as she accepted the tablet computer, considering the pictures on the screen. After nearly a century of stalking foes in shadows, not to mention shifting into their forms to confuse or defeat their allies, she could pick details from all but the most unclear of photographs.

“It would seem Elizabeth-Sensei has appeared once more. I had wondered if I would live to see it.”

“The woman known as Solaris? She has been thought dead for some time.”

“If there is no body, never assume an ally nor an enemy dead. Especially a powerful one. I would think you’d remember that after your misfortune in Okinawa last year.” She raised an eyebrow, reaching out to trace a pale scar on the younger woman’s neck.

The woman pulled away, but didn’t scowl, bowing. “As you say, Grandmother.”

“Keep an eye on this situation, and see if we can hire anyone in the area to get us more information on Solaris and her activities. I’m sure it will be of value to us that we know.”