Flash Crash

by Denison Hatch

  “I don’t know anything about the goddamn robbery. I’m a trader, not a criminal,” Tyler said. Tyler jerked back without warning. Rearing up with his arms still securely attached to the sides of the van, he gazed around as best he could. All Tyler could identify were a bunch of masked men. “Did the quant do this?” Tyler screamed and then asked, “Are you in here, David?” Obviously no one responded to him. “Are you going to kill me? I have alot of money! I’ll pay you whatever you want—whatever you need to get me out of here. Everyone has a price.”

  “Nah, you don’t got what we’re looking for. You gamble. You may have a rich life, but if I were a betting man, I’d presume that you don’t have shit,” Vlad guessed.

  Without waiting for Tyler to respond, he shot Tyler with the taser again. The electricity racked through Tyler’s body relentlessly. Tyler puked. The vomit ran down his body to the floor of the van.

  David’s hands tightened as he dug his fingernails into an armrest with each electrical shock. It had all felt so logical when Vlad had pitched the idea to him, but observing the intimate details of his boss’s torture was starting to make David feel unsure about his choices.

  “You scheduled David into the server room on Monday morning,” Vlad continued.

  Tyler glared at Vlad. “I don’t know who the fuck you are, but you’re in deep here, doing this.”

  “Says the drowning man.”

  “No. What’s happening around us . . . It’s like the world itself. There’s too much going on to get your arms around it. You won’t be able to understand it even if you try. The walls are falling down. Dust to dust. You get it, man? Anything can go down—even Montgomery. This is bigger than me and much bigger than the quant,” Tyler warned.

  “Then what’s it about?”

  “Same thing it always is—money, power, debt—whatever. Bullshit,” Tyler said.

  “Give me the details!” Vlad screamed.

  Having processed Tyler’s outburst, David stuffed all of his tentative, peaceful thoughts of resolution into the deepest part of his mind. Tyler did know something. Vlad had been right. David leaned forward and gripped the handcuffs holding Tyler. He pulled as hard as he could, twisting Tyler’s wrist even farther against the side of the seat. Tyler retched with pain. Vlad held the taser up, his finger slowly and precariously applying trigger pressure again.

  “I don’t have anything. I don’t know anything about the crash!” Tyler said.

  Vlad shot Tyler again. The pure agony of sickening electrical current coursed through Stanton’s body.

  “Stop!” Tyler screamed out, his decibels rising to the point where David glanced out of the windows to make sure no one had heard. But the van was in motion, speedily ripping through the rain. Tyler would have no savior. David turned back to him and witnessed a final shift. Just like a clam under heat, Tyler began to open up.

  “I . . . It . . . It’s . . . I didn’t cause this crash. I knew nothing about it,” Tyler said.

  “That’s all you have? If this is the way you’ve chosen to save your life, you picked a piss-poor way to do it,” Vlad said.

  “I did a favor. That’s all.”

  “What favor?”

  “I want proof that you’ll let me go,” Tyler demanded.

  “I don’t negotiate with bankers,” Vlad replied. He prepared the taser again, but this time he jammed it into Tyler’s mouth.

  Terrified, Tyler began to emote a muffled scream. “Waahaitt! Waiihhitt. Okay . . . How—”

  Vlad pulled the taser out of Tyler’s mouth. “What’d you say?” Vlad asked.

  “Howard. Howard. I did it for Howard,” Tyler said.

  Hearing this, David couldn’t help it. He lunged at Tyler in anger and frustration. Vlad pushed him back.

  Tyler became emotional as he bared his soul. “I gamble and he knew the size of my side book in Vegas. It was bad. That’s the truth. My debt service with the bookies is more than my mortgage. Anyway, Howard knew. Stephanie didn’t. I needed to fix the problem. He told me he has a hedge fund client. They’re called Tsunami. They wanted to run a trading program off our servers directly. He told me he’d settle me up at bonus time—hit me with two or three mil—if I cleared the algorithm through compliance. I thought it was just slightly illegal, you know? A front-running bot or something like that, where it reads the volume of orders coming through our system and places its own orders ahead of the rest. The type of thing we do and we just look the other way for a few days. Mix it in with all the trades together and regulators can never tell. But, I mean, I couldn’t . . . couldn’t tell the police about all that. They’d ask questions and I mean, the computers . . . We run all sorts of dark shit—shit that who knows if it’s legal. Our own lawyers don’t. I wasn’t going to go down that road, dude.”

  “That was the flash program?” Vlad asked.

  “I guess so. At the time, I didn’t know it would be David. Howard told me that morning—on Monday. I approved David’s install on the server. That’s all.”

  “For three million dollars.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you didn’t think to ask any questions?” Vlad asked.

  “No one asks Howard questions. That’s sacrilege. God’s never wrong,” Tyler said.

  “So what’s Tsunami?”

  “I don’t fucking know.”

  “Who runs it?” Vlad changed his line of questioning.

  “I have no idea. They’re Howard’s client. Not mine. I only did one other thing for them, so I know they’re in shipping.”

  “Shipping?”

  Tyler nodded and explained. “Tsunami owns a couple hundred shipping containers. A couple months ago, I was told to turn those containers into off-balance sheet assets. So we sold them through a bunch of shells to a controlling entity.”

  “Why would you do that?” Vlad asked, becoming more and more confused by the second.

  “Sometimes companies do it when they’re losing money and want to hide it or slow the burn.” Tyler shrugged. “Sell them to someone else, even if it’s really yourself. Report the cash on your balance sheet as income. It’s shady, not illegal.”

  “So you hid the containers from the company’s balance sheet?” Vlad asked.

  “I was just doing Howard a favor.”

  “Then where the hell are they?” Vlad inquired.

  “All over the world—on boats, ports . . . It’s a real business—a commodity thing. They just rent them out. Look, I can get you the exact locations. There’s a spreadsheet on my Berry,” Tyler said.

  Vlad thought for a moment. “I only have two more charges.”

  “I’m telling you the truth. That’s all I got, dude. I don’t know you. I don’t know what you’re going to do with this. You could ruin me now, and if you don’t, then a hundred other people might. I wish I could take it all back. I can’t.” Tyler began to weep in front of them.

  Vlad gazed at him, disgusted. But it finally did seem as if Tyler had been telling the truth. Vlad grabbed Tyler’s Blackberry and handed it to David. “Let’s get him the fuck out of here,” Vlad said. Then he pulled Tyler close to him. “Hey. Maybe you don’t want to call the police. You call, and you’ll have to tell them what you told me. And then they’ll know what you told me, ya?”

  “I know. I’m kicked.” Tyler’s eyes cast down to the floor.

  The van stopped, and the men threw Tyler out forcefully. He landed in a puddle of water, completely soaked and ruined.

  FIFTEEN

  JAKE’S BIKE WHEEL SPUN a stream of wet grime up the back of his coat as he sailed down Canal, in the heart of Chinatown, on Wednesday afternoon. The dirt didn’t faze him. His mind was focused on the case at hand. He’d spent the last three hours scouting every electronics store and open-air mart he could locate in the district. He had sauntered in like a customer, never flashed his badge, and yet still emerged empty-handed. No one sold the jammer he was looking for, and they’d all been vociferous in their denials. That meant something. This part of
town wasn’t afraid to do illegal business right on the streets. If he couldn’t find it, it might not exist.

  Jake knew Chinatown well. The first time Jake ran away from home, he’d taken the train from upstate into Penn Station and had walked all the way to Chinatown. The sights, sounds, and smells hadn’t changed one iota. At the time, he’d been exceptionally mad at his father and didn’t think he would ever go back. The strength of emotion in the searing permanence of memory was amazing. This one remained crystal clear in his mind, all these years later. He had been fifteen years old at the time. Jake had walked right into a store a few blocks away from where he was currently standing and had ordered his first piece of fake identification. The guys behind the counter hadn’t been much older than him and hadn’t glanced at him twice. They had asked Jake to choose a state and had given him a form to fill out with whatever information suited him, including his birthdate. Jake had taken that ID, still hot from the laminator, and had walked into a local bar. He’d gotten shitcanned by himself. It was the first time he’d drunk in his life—his first time being drunk—and he hated it just as much as he thought he would. He slept in an alleyway and went home the next morning. A week later, his dad sent him to boarding school.

  Jake’s experience and intuition told him that the shop owners he had just quizzed, at stores with names like “FONG ELECTRONICS, LTD.” and “SUN COMPUTER IMPORT-EXPORT,” were not lying to him at all. If they had possessed devices he was looking for, they would have let him know and made a buck. Jake concluded that he was either barking up the wrong tree, or he wasn’t in the right grove.

  But he had another idea. He ran the bike down Canal and turned south on Mott, glancing up at the lit decorations strung across the city street. Jake pulled up to a small restaurant called Palace. A lone middle-aged Chinese man with wraparound sunglasses from the eighties leaned against the door and stared at him. Jake parked the motorcycle and hopped off. Recognizing him, the man nodded imperceptibly and held open the door.

  “Won’t have a problem with the bike, right Guo?” Jake asked.

  “As long as you don’t have a problem with us,” Guo replied.

  “Just here for a meal and a little chitchat with Sunny.”

  “Both are here, twenty-four seven,” Guo said. He began cackling at his own joke as Jake entered the restaurant.

  Jake walked through the center of the dimly lit Palace Restaurant, illuminated by the ghostly blue of two large fish tanks that framed each side of the room. A pack of piranhas followed Jake as he paced past. The killer fish resembled a screensaver, or a nightmare, but this was neither. It was real life, and the piranhas were one of Palace’s signatures. A thick layer of smoke hung in the air like Beijing smog. Environmental restrictions weren’t on the forefront of Palace’s proprietor’s mind.

  Nor was health. Sunny weighed five hundred pounds and held court inside his restaurant all day long. Although he was gargantuan in size, it never brought him down. His disposition was cheery and he always had a huge smile on his face. That’s why he was named Sunny. He was also happy because he was rich, and he was rich as shit because he had controlled the majority of Chinatown’s Triad sects for the last twenty years. Jake approached, and Sunny looked up from a laptop on his desk.

  “Mr. New York,” Sunny bellowed through the mostly empty restaurant. “What did I do?” Sunny held up his hands in a mock surrender.

  “Got an egg roll for an old friend?” Jake asked.

  “My friends give when they take. But I still got an egg roll for you,” Sunny said as he raised his finger and gestured for one of the petite waitresses standing invisibly in the dark shadows of the restaurant. Sunny rattled out an order in Chinese. She nodded and disappeared again. “It’s been a year, Mr. New York. What do you think I do now?” Sunny asked.

  “Nothing. I got a case, though—and questions,” Jake said as he took a seat. “Who sells phone jammers in your hood?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Don’t play,” Jake retorted.

  “Is this about the robbery?”

  “If you want it to be. What do you know?” Jake said.

  “I watch news too—your bossman there talking—Marks.”

  “I wish he’d shut up,” Jake replied.

  “Jammers are illegal, Mr. New York.”

  “Oh, so now you do know what I’m talking about?”

  “I remember,” Sunny said as he shrugged.

  “Well, yeah. They are illegal. And you run a completely legal business, Sunny?”

  “I’m telling you. It’s truth. You know me. I’m not a sophisticate. Jammers? That spy shit. I like dupin. Mess with your mind for a couple hours. That’s all. There’s a million normals in city that wanna buy the white. That’s as far as we go. Well, not me. I don’t touch it, and I don’t sell it.”

  “You can quit it. I’m not here for you,” Jake said.

  “Just saying. No one wants to buy a jammer, and if they do, there’s a half chance they a nerd and a half chance they a Fed and I don’t play fifty-fifty games—never. Need to have way more luck on my side, Mr. New York.”

  “You sure?”

  “I tell you straight. That’s not my business. DVD with Ryan Gosling on it? Sure. Beside that? No technology.”

  “Then whose business is it?”

  Sunny laughed. “So those robbers used jammers? To do what?”

  “I’m asking the questions—not answering,” Jake said.

  “Don’t forget the generosity of your boy Sunny. Maybe two years till you come back next time?” Sunny grunted.

  “Generosity?”

  “Yeah, skinny boy. You get fattened up.”

  Jake heard a rustling behind him and turned to see three waiters arriving at the table, each holding multiple platters overflowing with all manner of delectable Chinese food.

  “I said an egg roll, Sunny.”

  “I’m a giver, not a taker. Want a drink with that?”

  “Nah. I’m on the job,” Jake replied.

  “Eat up, Mr. New York. It’s your city. I just pay taxes,” said Sunny, having lost none of his ebullience throughout their interaction.

  ■

  Jake stepped out of Palace later in the evening. He noticed that Guo had helpfully moved his motorcycle out of the rain and onto the sidewalk. Guo didn’t have the key and the bike weighed close to a ton. He must have had help, but Jake didn’t see it. Such were the mysteries of Chinatown. Jake stared at Guo. “Still have the salon?” Jake inquired. He had one more idea.

  Guo nodded affirmatively.

  ■

  Inside Guo’s massage parlor, conveniently located just a few storefronts down from Sunny’s restaurant, Jake lay on the massage table in the dark. The room was barely illuminated by two small wall torches on each side of the room. It smelled fresh, like wild lavender in a country field. Chinese instrumental music wafted lightly through the central speaker system that connected to each room.

  Jake focused on nothing while a young woman worked his body much harder than a man at the uptown salons would dare. Jake kept his eyes closed mostly, until the lights slowly came on and the woman smiled at him from the door.

  “You’re all done, mister,” she said.

  “No happy ending?” Jake asked.

  “You’re a cop.”

  Jake chuckled. “Just kidding.”

  “You testing,” she replied.

  “Testing. Right,” he said. As she turned to leave, he stopped her. “Hey. Hold on.” Jake pulled himself off the massage bench, just managing to cover himself in the nick of time. He could tell he was scaring the girl, but he didn’t care. “Who sells all the electronics you can’t buy in the store?”

  “What?” she replied blankly.

  “If I wanted to buy an iPhone that was jailbroken and bring it back to China?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “You sure?” Jake asked. She didn’t reply and his attention was suddenly piqued. “Tell me. Cell phones, laptops, radios—st
uff like that. But not from a store. Who sells it?”

  “I just massage,” she replied.

  He stepped closer to her, towering over the little woman. “You massage. Right. And you do whatever—for men who aren’t cops, I mean. I don’t care. But you do. Because that’s how you make your money. Let me tell you how I make my money. I get bones by busting people like you—places like this. I could have fifty cops blow down the front door tomorrow if I’d like. But I don’t. ’Cause I respect you. Do you respect me? You tell me right now. Where can I find it? Illegal electronics. Where?” Jake was practically spitting into her face.

  “Illegal?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  The petrified woman wasn’t sure what to do. She opened the door behind her and slipped out. She turned and stared at Jake again. “No idea,” she said once. Her eyes flicked down the hallway towards Guo’s office. “No idea,” she said and again flicked her eyes towards Guo. Then she disappeared.

  Jake padded slowly down the hallway. He could see Guo in his office, laughing on his cell phone.

  “This your only business, Guo?” Jake inquired as he leaned against the office door.

  “Massages? Yes.”

  “I’m looking for cell phone jammers,” Jake said.

  “I’ll sell you this.” Guo pointed to a Casio boombox from the nineties on a shelf above his computer. He started cackling again. Everyone in Chinatown seemed to be lost within his or her own personal sphere of ironic mirth—the outside world be damned.

  “I’ve been containing myself here, Guo. I know one of you is lying to me. Sunny’s on everything that happens, and if he don’t, then the only reason for that is ’cause you do.”

  “I got nothing.”

  “Just prostitutes.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And drugs,” Jake said.

  Guo shrugged in a placid non-response affirmation.

  “God. You guys are a piece of work,” Jake said. Without warning, Jake gripped each side of Guo’s collar. Scrunching the fabric tightly with his fists, he pulled Guo out of his chair and pushed him against the glass mirror behind him. “Tell me where I can buy a fucking cell phone jammer down here! Now!”