The Last Trade

by James Conway

  Then, finally: What about South Africa? What about the person who is right now executing the big short on American new media stocks out of Johannesburg? Within seconds he has the name of the firm and the broker, who, it turns out, is not a he.

  He’s looking up information on Sawa Luhabe at Rosehall in Johannesburg when his computer screen blinks on and off. On the upper left corner of his screen a green box appears that contains the subject header “MALWARE ALERT!” Beneath the heading is the list of a New York–based Internet provider address and another IP address that originates in Germany. Berlin. He stares at the address, thinking of Weiss’s second text and, of course, Siren Securities.

  Berlin. 12.42-6

  Maybe whoever tracked Weiss is tracking him.

  He unplugs the flash drive and stands. Spooked, he walks to the window and looks out onto the mid-morning traffic of 23rd Street. There’s not enough hard data. Not enough of anything to form the roughest analytical model, to construct the simplest narrative. For instance, the Gaussian copula he used to call the sub-prime crisis predicted the price correlations (or copulations) between collateralized debt variables. When X happens (a loan defaults), there’s a Y chance that Z will happen (more default, and banks and economies collapse). In this case he only knows that Weiss’s death and these strange trades are the X. When and if Z happens, and how catastrophic an event it may be, is unknown.

  One more peek through the curtain. Autumnal morning light knifes down 23rd from the east. A man chases the crosstown bus that’s stopped just short of the corner at Eighth. The bus pulls away a second before the man reaches it. Havens watches him jog in pursuit, pounding his fist on the bus door until it stops at a red light ten feet away. The man is still pounding when Havens looks away.

  Holding off from calling Miranda these past few hours has been one of the hardest things he’s ever done, but he doesn’t want to overwhelm her or electronically implicate her. Not having anyone else to call doesn’t help. This is what happens when you give up every aspect of your life to live a job that has suddenly become intent on killing you. He knew it was going to eventually kill him one way or another, but his versions usually included things such as a Black Monday coronary or a stress-related aneurism, some stranger in a downtown EMS truck applying the paddles.

  Not this.

  He paces. He runs numbers in his head, spitballs theories—most of which feature Salvado behind some grand comic-book-villain scheme—but nothing makes sense. Maybe what Miranda used to say is true. He can construct a rational model for everything except reality. Every few minutes he checks his watch. At 10 A.M. he turns on the small television on his dresser. The news. He pays careful attention to the headline stories and the type crawl on New York 1 to see if there is anything about the murder of Danny Weiss, the fugitive Andrew Havens, or some impending financial disaster.

  Nothing.

  He goes back to the laptop, eschews the flash drive, and clicks on the photo of the board in Weiss’s apartment. He stares at the numbers, but his eyes keep tracking back on the words:

  The gods may love a man, but they can’t help him

  when cold death comes . . .

  On a hunch, he decides to run some numbers based on an obscure financial indicator he’s never taken seriously. The Hindenburg Omen is a technical analysis pattern that is said to portend a major stock market crash. It’s named after the crash of the German zeppelin on May 6, 1937. The rationale is that, under “normal conditions,” a substantial number of stocks on the NYSE set new annual highs or annual lows, but not both at the same time. When there is a simultaneous presence of significantly above average new highs and lows, according to the Hindenburg Omen, a substantial to catastrophic market decline is likely to follow. Havens’s problem with the construct is that it is at best an imperfect model and at worst the ammunition of quacks. He finds the criteria to be too random in nature and feels that with such an enormous data bank and numerous variables, any number of correlations can be found, and few really have predictive significance.

  As much as he likes to discredit the Hindenburg Omen, he sits up and pays increased attention with the first result: On September 30 there were 91 and 82 fifty-two-week highs and lows on the NYSE. This would qualify as significantly more than the norm. He looks for an explanation in the news of the day—for instance a poor earnings report from Apple, a natural disaster, or geopolitical turmoil. Nothing. He moves on and within a minute is stopped in his tracks again. Last week, on October 12, there were 83 highs and 93 lows. Same deal: on the surface, no logical or numerical rhyme or reason. However, when he lays The Rising’s holdings against the highs and lows of both days, he sees that a disproportionate number—more than half of its portfolio—experienced highs and lows. He cracks his knuckles, then runs his hands over his face.

  He stands. On TV a gray cartoon cloud wobbles over the Northeast. Men in black masks hurl stones at unseen targets in Greece. A Cardinal pumps his fist as he rounds third on a play-off home run trot. Then the numbers. Yesterday’s numbers, last night’s numbers, job numbers, revealed over images of hectic Japanese traders, a North Atlantic oil platform, the six Corinthian columns of the New York Stock Exchange building topped by the triangular pedimental sculpture by John Quincy Adams titled Integrity Protecting the Works of Man. As if any of it matters. The building, so substantial and massive, as if to give the impression that no single thing can bring it down, except of course the on-screen numbers that are ghosted over it.

  He looks back at his computer. Personal, human fear prevents him from wanting to look further, but the addictive pull of the numbers compels him to. He types and waits. The screen blinks and there it is. For the third time in the last thirty days he discovers a Hindenburg Omen, 74 highs and 102 lows. That third time was close of market yesterday.

  Havens tries to come up with an explanation or model to dispel the facts in front of him. The most encouraging thing to note, he tells himself, is that not every Hindenburg Omen portends a full-blown crash. Seventy-seven percent of the time, a market dip of 5 percent occurs within thirty days of confirmed signals. Forty-one percent of the time a panic sell-off occurs. Almost one quarter of the time there’s a full-blown market crash. Havens mines deeper into the data looking for instances of not one but three confirmed signal days within a month, but he can’t. In the history of the NYSE, it’s never happened.

  Again he tries to take solace in the fact that not every Hindenburg Omen portends a crash. But then again, every major stock market crash of the past seventy-five years has been preceded by a confirmed Hindenburg Omen. Next he wonders, but doesn’t bother to search, how many major crashes were preceded by the murders of brokers around the world.

  He looks out his window and glimpses a section of the old Chelsea Hotel sign mounted on the building’s exterior. Danny Weiss’s ghost is spinning “Smash It Up” by the Damned on his player. It’s been said that the ghosts of past residents such as Eugene O’Neill, Thomas Wolfe, Sid Vicious, and the poet Dylan Thomas have all been seen at the Chelsea. So why not Weiss? He certainly deserves it, Havens thinks. After bingeing downtown at the White Horse, Thomas staggered back here and collapsed, perhaps in this very room, before finally going gently into that good night: a coma. Four days later he died at St. Vincent’s on 11th Street. Perhaps, Havens thinks, he and Miranda were drawn to the Chelsea because as much as it’s associated with creativity, it’s associated with death. And perhaps that’s why he often came here alone after Erin’s death, after the divorce, to think about the ghosts of his past. Erin was never a resident of the Chelsea Hotel, but he’s done the math, and she may very well have been conceived here. He’s thinking fondly of the ghosts of friends, celebrities, and loved ones when he looks back down at the street and sees Laslow’s bald head get out of a taxi in front of the hotel and disappear under the awning and into the lobby.

  4

  Berlin
r />   Do you mind if I ask where you are staying?”

  “Hmm. Good question.” Sobieski pulls a scrap of paper out of the front flap of her carry-on. They’ve just come out of customs at the Berlin Brandenburg Airport and are heading out to the street, toward the ground transportation area in the pavilion in front of Terminal A. She doesn’t know the name of her hotel, but if the agency booked it, she’s sure it’s nothing special. “Downtown,” she tells Marco Nello. “Near the gate.”

  Nello smiles. “Perfect. I’m staying at the Ritz. Any chance you’re also at the . . .”

  She shakes her head. She’s hesitant to tell this attractive man with whom she’s had the most pleasant conversation in a long, long time that she is most likely staying in a budget hotel.

  “Doesn’t matter,” he says. “I’m sure it’s close enough that we can still share a taxi.”

  She checks her phone. There are four messages in her queue. Three from Michaud. Surely they can wait another half hour, but something—fear, embarrassment, or a self-destructive allegiance to her job—forces her to peek.

  Nasseem Al Mar is dead. Call.

  Johannesburg has gone missing.

  Don’t do a thing until we speak.

  The fourth text is from an unknown number, but when she opens it, the identity of the sender is clear.

  We eagerly await your next invaluable recommendation.

  Enjoy Berlin. -C.

  Cheung. She turns back to Marcus Nello. “Listen, I’d love to share a cab, but”—she holds up her phone and shrugs—“I’ve got to deal with some work stuff, like now.”

  “I can wait.”

  “Well, that’s considerate, but . . . my boss, he’s always on.”

  “Nothing wrong with that.” Nello is still smiling, but there’s a trace of disappointment in his eyes.

  He thinks that I’m messing with his head, Sobieski tells herself. When in fact I’m only messing with mine. “I don’t mean to be rude.”

  “Sure, no,” Nello responds. “Some things can’t wait.” He holds out his hand, and they execute the handshake of business acquaintances, not of a man and a woman about to share, at the very least, a taxi. “It was a pleasure, Cara Sobieski.”

  “Enjoy Berlin.”

  “Oh,” he says. “I will. I love it here. Well . . .” He half waves and turns to walk toward the taxi stand.

  Way to go, loser, Sobieski tells herself as she watches him leave. Then, after four steps Nello stops, turns, and heads back toward her.

  “I don’t mean to be too forward,” he says, reaching into his pocket. “But I like you. And unless I’m mistaken . . .”

  “No, not at . . . I—”

  He interrupts, “Good. Here’s my card, with my mobile on it. I’m here through Friday. Once you settle in and catch up, if you have time, and feel like taking a break, I’d love to meet for a cup of tea, a drink, dinner, or part two of our mile-high book club discussion.”

  * * *

  She tries to calibrate the time zone differences, but then decides she doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter with Michaud, a man who always seems to be half-asleep, but whom she’s never caught in the act of sleeping.

  “Since you left three messages, all while I was thirty thousand feet in the air. Do I need to call you back three times?”

  “You know,” Michaud answers, “with recent technological advances, it is entirely possible to maintain phone and e-mail contact with those near and dear to you even while flying halfway around the world.”

  She watches Nello disappear into the back of a taxi. “What’s possible and what’s necessary are two entirely different propositions.”

  “Somebody sounds cranky.”

  She puts Nello’s card into her pocket. Now that his taxi is out of sight, she starts to approach the stand. “I am cranky. I just had the nicest conversation with a man who, believe it or not, wasn’t a cop, a crook, or a finance guy.”

  “And now you’re en route to his Berlin bachelor pad for a night of debauchery?”

  “No,” she says. “Now he’s gone. Now I’m en route to what is likely to be based on our travel guidelines the German equivalent of a no-tell motel.” She gets inside a cab and hands the driver the slip of paper on which is her hotel’s name and address. Covering her mouthpiece, thinking this may be her only opportunity for tourism in Berlin, she tells the driver, “Please, take the scenic route.” Then she removes her hand from the mouthpiece and says to Michaud, “So our man in Dubai.”

  “Bullet in the head. Dumped in the trunk of an abandoned car outside the city.”

  She’s tempted to ask how Michaud discovered this, but knows better. She’s taken to believing that somehow, half-drunk in that empty room in Hong Kong, Michaud knows everything, and only tells the world a fraction of it. “Any news on our friend in Johannesburg?”

  “Well,” he replies, “if she’s dead, no one has found her yet. She left work at lunchtime and never went back. There was an execution-style shooting at a car that looked like hers near her home this afternoon, but the car managed to drive away.”

  “No body, though.”

  “Not yet.”

  “The female trader?”

  “Yep.”

  “What else do we know about her?”

  “Single mom. Black. Quite bright. Overcame a ghetto childhood, won a series of scholarships and competitions, and got herself a nice job.”

  “Divorced?”

  “No. Her husband was murdered a few years ago. Collateral damage in a drive-by. Best as we can tell it’s not at all related to this, uh, incident, though her brother is something of a boy gangster.”

  “What’s her name?”

  “Sawa Luhabe. Left work every day to visit her mother and daughter in Alexandra township, which is pretty much a ghetto and where, for some reason, despite having a solid broker’s job, she still lived.”

  “Still lives.”

  “Right,” Michaud answers. “There’s a digital dossier on her for you to check out after you settle in.”

  She looks out the window as they drive along the River Spree. In the distance she sees the lights of the Fernsehturm tower. The Reichstag building. The dramatically illuminated and seemingly floating landmarks of Museumsinsel (Museum Island). “Anything else on the connection between Hong Kong, Dubai, and Johannesburg to this place?”

  “That’s what we’re hoping you can help with.”

  “I meant a connection between who’s making these trades and to what end?”

  “Right. We’re constructing models to see. To see if there’s a number or a logic pattern that links what has happened and what might happen next.”

  “You think they’re gaming the markets?”

  Michaud laughs.

  “I forgot,” she says. “You think everyone’s gaming the markets.”

  “It’s just that most do it more peaceably. Most are content to ruin lives for profit. Not end them.”

  “I was thinking,” Sobieski says. “If all three of these events revolved around U.S.-based securities, don’t they each, at some level, have to be attached to U.S.-based trading accounts?”

  “They do. And we’re looking, but with this sort of account I’m not sure it’ll lead to anything, because there’s a million ways around it. For instance, all a bad guy needs is an American address and Social Security number to open an account, and it’s almost impossible to police. Some underground players out of Russia and Israel have hundreds of accounts, and once you go after one of them, they just shut it down and move on to the next phony setup.”

  “Which, presumably,” Sobieski, says, “is what my lead here in Berlin has already done.”

  “If they’ve tracked that we’re tracking them, absolutely. But you never know. Maybe they’ve left us a bone in Be
rlin, or in the States, with one of those accounts. Before we can figure out where or when the next trade or the next killing is going to occur, we have to learn everything we can about the last one. Right?”

  “Yes, Boss.”

  “Landlords, neighbors. Everything.”

  “Right.”

  “And Sobi . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “No crazy risks. As soon as you sense the slightest danger, the slightest funky vibe, you pull back, ’kay?”

  “’kay.”

  “And that guy on the plane . . .”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “You were way too good for him. I bet he had a wedding ring in his pants pocket.”

  After she hangs up, she closes her eyes and tries to gather her thoughts. For a moment, thinking about the flight, and Nello—with whom she discussed her father, of all people—and the money she owes Cheung, and how she ended up in the back of a cab in Berlin, without love or family, she thinks she is going to cry. But she doesn’t. She reaches into her jacket and runs her fingers along Marco Nello’s business card but doesn’t pull it out, more for his sake than hers.

  “Would you like to see more sights, miss,” the driver says in broken English, “or would you like to go to your hotel?”

  Sobieski looks at her phone, then back out the window. “Tell me,” she finally responds, “can you recommend a nice casino here in the city?”

  5

  New York City

  Havens cracks open the lobby door and peeks out. He always takes the stairwell in the Chelsea because it is filled with art, some modern masterpieces given to the proprietors in exchange for rent. But this time he took it because of Laslow. His hastily packed leather duffel is slung over his shoulder. He pats his front pocket to ensure that Weiss’s flash drive is still there. He takes in the scene: the eclectic shapes and colors of the art, the full-time residents chatting, he imagines, about politics, art, coffee. Must be nice, he thinks.