by Alan Glynn
‘OK, look,’ I said, ‘thank you very much. I’m really glad I bumped into you.’
She smiled. ‘Are you going to be OK?’
I nodded.
‘You sure?’
‘Yeah, I’m fine. Absolutely. Thanks.’
She patted me on the shoulder and said, ‘OK, so long, Eddie.’
A second later she was walking away from me across the lobby, her little doctor’s bag swinging by her side. Then – enveloped suddenly into the crowd – she was gone.
*
I turned to face the huge window behind where I was standing and saw myself reflected in its bronze-tinted glass, people and cars outside on Forty-eighth Street passing right through me as though I were a ghost. In addition to everything else, I now found myself in the inappropriate position of being disappointed that Van Loon’s daughter apparently refused to see me as anything other than a genial associate of her father’s – and a pedantic, panic-stricken, overweight one at that. I left the building, made my way over to Fifth Avenue and started walking downtown. Despite these grim thoughts, I somehow managed to keep things under control. Then, as I was crossing Forty-second Street, something else occurred to me, and I shoved my hand out, on impulse, to hail a cab.
Twenty minutes later I was taking another elevator, this time up to the fourth floor of Lafayette Trading on Broad Street. This had been the scene of earlier triumphs – days of excitement and success – and I figured now there was no longer anything to stop me from trying to re-create that. I didn’t have the advantage of being full-thrust on MDT, OK, but neither did I care any more. My confidence had taken a bruising, and I just wanted to see how well I could do on my own.
There was a mixed reaction when I walked into the room. Some people, including Jay Zollo, went out of their way to ignore me. Others couldn’t help smiling and doffing their baseball caps in my direction. Even though I hadn’t been there for a while and didn’t have any positions open, my account was still active. I was told my ‘usual’ spot was taken, but that others were available and I could start trading immediately if I wanted to.
As I took my place at one of the terminals and got ready, I could feel a curiosity growing in the room about what I intended to do. There was a definite buzz now, with some people looking over my shoulder, and others keeping a close eye on things from the opposite side of the ‘pit’. It was a lot of pressure to be under and when I found that I wasn’t quite sure how to proceed, I had to admit to myself that perhaps I’d been a little hasty in coming here. But it was too late to pull out.
I spent a while studying the screen, and gradually it all came back to me. It wasn’t such a complicated process – but what was complicated, of course, was choosing the right stocks. I hadn’t been following the markets of late and didn’t really know where to look. My previous strategy of short-selling, which had been heavily dependent on research, wasn’t much use to me either, so I decided to play it safe on my first day back – I decided to go with the prevailing wisdom and buy tech stocks. I bought shares in Lir Systems, a risk-management services company, in KeyGate Technologies, an Internet security outfit, and in various dot-coms, Boojum, Wotlarks!, @Ease, Dromio, PorkBarrel.com, eTranz, WorkNet.
Once I started I couldn’t stop, and thanks to a combination of recklessness and fear, I ended up emptying my bank account, spending everything I had in the space of a couple of hours. Matters weren’t helped by the artificial, game-like nature of electronic trading, nor by the dangerous sense I increasingly had that the money involved wasn’t real. Naturally, this storm of activity attracted a lot of attention in the room, and even though my ‘strategy’ was about as unoriginal and mainstream as you could get, the rate and scale of my trading obviously gave it a curious shape – a colour, a character – of its own. Before long, as a result, people started following my lead, watching my every move, channelling ‘tips’ and ‘information’ out from my workstation. There was an urgency about the whole thing – no one wanted to get left behind – and I soon had the impression that lots of the traders around me were borrowing heavily or renegotiating leverage on their deposits.
The dizzying Net stocks boom still had the power, apparently, to disorient and whipsaw anyone who dared to get near it – and this included me, because although I’d landed here today on the back of my reputation, of my previous performance, I was now beginning to realize that this time around not only did I not know what I was doing, I didn’t know how to stop …
Eventually, however, the pressure became too much for me. It kick-started another panic attack, and left me no choice but to just grab the envelope and go – without even closing out my positions. This caused some degree of consternation in the room, but I think most of the Lafayette traders had come to expect the unexpected from me and I managed to get away without too much hassle. A good number of the stocks I’d bought had already gone up by tiny margins, so no one was worried or nervous – they were just unhappy at letting what they saw as an übertrader escape from their midst. On my way down in the elevator, my heart started palpitating again and when I got out on to the street I felt really horrible. I walked down Broad Street to the South Ferry Terminal and then over to Battery Park, where I sat on a bench, undid my tie and gazed out at Staten Island.
I remained there for about half an hour, taking deep breaths and fielding dark, unsettling thoughts. I wanted to be at home, on my couch, but I didn’t want to go through what was required to get there, which was negotiate the streets again, and the people, and the traffic. But after another while I just stood up and started walking. I went over to State Street and managed to get a taxi at once. I slumped into the back seat, clutching the envelope, and as the cab inched its way forward through the traffic, up past Bowling Green on to Broadway, and then past Beaver Street and Exchange Place and Wall Street itself, I had a fleeting impression that something quite odd was happening. It was difficult to put my finger on what it was exactly, but there was a very jittery atmosphere in the streets. People were stopping and talking, some whispering conspiratorially, others shouting across cars, or from the steps of buildings, or into cellphones – and in that curious way people have when some dire public event has taken place, like an assassination or an upset in the World Series. Then there was a break in the traffic and we surged forward out of the financial district, leaving behind whatever it was I’d picked up on. Soon we were crossing Canal Street and then a few moments later turning right on to Houston, where it was business as usual.
When I got home, I made straight for the couch and flopped down on to it. The taxi ride had been unbearable and once or twice I’d come close to having the driver stop and let me out. Lying on the couch wasn’t that much better, but at least I was in a familiar, controlled environment. For the next hour or so, I vacillated between thinking that the attack would pass, and thinking that … no, I was going to die – here, today, right now, on this fucking couch …
But when, eventually, I didn’t die, and had started to feel a bit less awful, I reached down from the side of the couch to pick up the remote control panel, which was lying on the floor. I zapped the main TV into action and surfed through the channels. It took me a few moments to focus, and to realize that something was going on. I went to CNNfn, then to CNBC, and then back again to CNNfn. I looked at the corner of the screen to check the time.
It was 2.35 p.m. and since about 1 p.m. – apparently – the markets had been in freefall. The Nasdaq had already dropped 319 points, the Dow Jones 185 points, and the S & P 93 points, with none of them showing any signs of halting, let alone bouncing back. Both CNNfn and CNBC were providing minute-by-minute coverage from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, as well as from their respective studios – the main thrust of the story being that the tech-stocks bubble appeared to be bursting in slo-mo before our very eyes …
I went over to my desk and switched on the computer. I was curiously calm, but when I saw the quotes, and saw how far the share prices had plunged, I began to feel dizz
y. I put my head in my hands and tried not to panic – and just about succeeded … probably by sparing a thought for all those traders down in Lafayette who as a consequence of following my leads would almost certainly have been wiped out as well. Though I was ready to bet that none of them had lost as much as I had, which was now more than likely somewhere in the region of a million dollars …
[ 21 ]
THE NEXT MORNING I WENT OUT to get the papers – as well as to do a provisions run to Gristede’s and the liquor store. The headlines ranged from things like OUCH! and NIGHTMARE ON QUEASY STREET to INVESTOR CAUTION AFTER MARKETS TUMBLE. The Nasdaq had rallied somewhat in the late p.m. – after a staggering lowest-point drop of 9 per cent – and was continuing to recover this morning. This was thanks to a few brokerage houses and mutual funds who’d seen the bottom coming and started buying on the dip. Some commentators were hysterical, talking about a repeat of Black Monday – or even of 1929 – but others took a more sanguine approach, saying that recent speculative excess in technology stocks had now been purged … or that what we had witnessed wasn’t so much a wide-spread correction as a cleansing action in the frothier parts of the Nasdaq. This was all very reassuring for the long-haul players, but not much consolation to the millions of small-time investors who’d bought on margin and then been annihilated by the big sell-off.
Poring over opinion pieces in the newspapers, however, wasn’t going to change anything. It wasn’t going to change the fact – for example – that my bank account had been cleaned out, or that I wouldn’t be able to trade any more at Lafayette.
Putting the newspapers aside, I looked at the bag of cash on the cluttered dining table and reminded myself, for the fiftieth time, that what was in that bag was the sum total of what I had left in the world – and that I owed it all to a Russian loanshark …
*
Gennady’s visit on Friday morning was going to be the next event of any significance in my life, but I certainly wasn’t looking forward to it. I spent the couple of days in between drinking and listening to music. At one point during this time – and more than half-way through a late-night bottle of Absolut – I got to thinking about Ginny Van Loon, and what a curious girl she was. I went online and searched through various newspaper and magazine archives for any references there might be to her. I found quite a lot of stuff, quotes from ‘Page Six’ and the ‘Styles’ section of the New York Times, clippings, profiles and even some photos – a sixteen-year-old Ginny out of her head at the River Club with Tony De Torrio, Ginny surrounded by models and fashion designers, Ginny with Nikki Sallis at a party in LA sipping from a bottle of Cristal. A recent piece in New York magazine repeated the story about her parents reining her in with threats of disinheritance, but the same piece also quoted friends saying that she had calmed down a lot anyway and was no longer ‘much fun to be around’. Ginny herself was quoted in an article as saying that she’d spent most of her teens wanting to be famous and now only wanted to be left alone. She’d done some acting and modelling, but had left all of that behind – fame was a disease, she’d said, and anyone who craved it was a moron. I read these articles over several times – and printed out the photos, which I stuck on my noticeboard.
Large chunks of time seemed to be drifting by now, during which I did nothing but idly surf the Net or sit on the couch and drink – becoming maudlin, confused, cranky.
*
When Gennady showed up on Friday morning, I was hungover. The mess in my apartment had gotten worse and I’m sure it didn’t smell too good either – though at the time that aspect of things wasn’t anything I was actually aware of. I was too miserable and sick to notice.
When Gennady arrived at the doorway and stood looking in at the chaos, my worst fear – or one of them, at any rate – was realized. I knew straightaway that Gennady was on MDT. I could tell from the alert expression on his face and even from the way he was standing. I knew, too, that my suspicion would be confirmed as soon as he opened his mouth.
‘What’s your problem, Eddie?’ he said, with a mirthless laugh, ‘are you depressed or something? Maybe you need some medication.’ He sniffed and made a face. ‘Or maybe you just need to get an air-conditioning unit in this place.’
It was clear even from those few sentences that his spoken English had improved dramatically. His accent was still quite strong, but his grasp of structures – grammar and syntax – had obviously undergone some rapid transformative process. I wondered how many of the five pills he’d already taken.
‘Hello, Gennady.’
I went over to the dining table, sat down and extracted a wad of cash from the brown paper bag. I started counting $100 bills, sighing wearily every couple of seconds. Gennady came into the room and wandered about for a while, surveying the mess. He came to a stop right in front of me.
‘That’s not very safe, Eddie,’ he said, ‘keeping all your money in a fucking paper bag. Someone might come in and steal it.’
I sighed again and said, ‘I don’t like banks.’ I handed him up the twenty-two five. He took it and put it into the inside pocket of his jacket. He walked over to my desk, turned around and leaned back against it.
‘Now,’ he said, ‘I want to talk to you about something.’
Here it came. I felt a sinking feeling in my stomach. But I tried to play dumb.
‘You didn’t like the treatment,’ I said, and then added, ‘It was just a draft.’
‘Fuck that,’ he said, with a dismissive gesture of the hand, ‘I’m not talking about that. And anyway, don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about.’
‘What?’
‘Those pills I stole. Are you going to tell me you didn’t notice?’
‘What about them?’
‘What do you think? I want more.’
‘I don’t have any.’
He smiled, as though we were playing a game – which of course we were.
I shrugged my shoulders and said, ‘I don’t.’
He pushed himself up from the desk and walked over towards me. He stopped where he’d stopped before and slowly reached his hand back into the inside pocket of his jacket. I was scared, but didn’t flinch. He took out something which I couldn’t see properly. He looked at me, smiled again and then with rapid a motion of his hand released the blade of a long flick-knife. He placed the tip of the blade at the side of my neck and moved it up and down, scraping it gently against my skin. ‘I want some more,’ he said.
I swallowed. ‘Do I look like I have any more?’
He paused for a moment and stopped moving the knife, but didn’t withdraw it. I went on, ‘You’ve taken it, right? You know what it’s like, and what it does to you.’ I swallowed again, louder than before. ‘Look around you, does this strike you as the place of someone who’s taking the drug you took?’
‘Well, where did you get it from then?’
‘I don’t know, some guy I met in a—’
He jabbed the knife sharply against my neck and withdrew it quickly.
‘Ow!’
I put my hand up to the point where he’d jabbed me and rubbed it. There wasn’t any blood, but the jab had really hurt.
‘Don’t lie to me, Eddie, because – and make sure you understand this – if I don’t get what I want I’m going to kill you anyway …’ Then he set the point of the knife to just under my left eye, and pressed it in, gently but firmly. ‘And in stages.’
He continued pressing the knife, and when I could feel my eyeball starting to protrude, I whispered, ‘OK.’
He held the knife in place for a moment and then withdrew it.
‘I can get them,’ I said, ‘but it’ll take a few days. The guy who deals them is very … security conscious.’
Gennady clicked his tongue, as if to say go on.
‘I phone him, and he arranges a pick-up.’ I paused here and rubbed my left eye, but it was really to give me a moment to work out what I was going to say next. ‘If he catches a whiff of someone else getting involv
ed in this, by the way – someone he doesn’t know – that’s it, we’ll never hear from him again.’
Gennady nodded.
‘And another thing,’ I said, ‘they’re expensive.’
I could tell that he was excited at the prospect of scoring. I could also tell that despite his heavy-handed tactics he would go along with whatever I proposed, and would pay whatever I asked.
‘How much?’
‘Five hundred a pop …’
He whistled, almost with glee.
‘… which is why I’m out of them. Because we’re not talking dime bags here.’
He looked at me, and then pointed at the money on the table. ‘Use that. Get me … er …’ – he paused, and seemed to be doing some calculations in his head – ‘… get me fifty or sixty of them. For starters.’
If I did end up giving him any, they would have to come from my stash, so I said, ‘The most I can get in one go is ten.’
‘Fuck that—’
‘Gennady, I’ll talk to the guy, but he’s very paranoid. We’ve got to take this slowly.’
He turned around and walked over to the desk, and then back again.
‘OK, when?’
‘I should be able to get them by next Friday.’
‘Next fucking Friday? You said a few days.’
‘I leave him a message. It takes a few days for him to get back to me. Then another few days to set it up.’
Gennady held the knife out again and pointed it directly in my face. ‘If you fuck with me, Eddie, you’ll be sorry.’
Then he put the knife away and walked over to the door.
‘I’m going to phone you Tuesday.’
I nodded.
‘OK. Tuesday.’
Standing in the doorway, and as though it were an afterthought, he said, ‘So what is this shit anyway? What’s in it?’
