Man in the Middle

by Ken Morris

  Scanning for what? Protecting what?

  Peter took deep breaths of cool air and reached for his moonstone— his habitual anxiety-reducer—but did not withdraw the gem from his pocket. With all these guards, guns, and cameras, he didn’t want anyone wondering what he might be clutching. It seemed like a shoot-first, ask-questions-later kind of place.

  With his eyes, but without moving his head, Peter scanned the silhouetted horizon. Through the dim light, he made out the rough edges of the one hundred-foot bluffs overlooking the beaches tying together the coastal communities of La Jolla and Del Mar. From the look of the place, Stenman had elected to buffer her headquarters with at least two acres of undeveloped grounds, with every square inch sharing an ocean view. How much had this property cost? In the tens of millions, he guessed.

  Once he reached the front door, the guards glanced at Peter’s paperwork. He then signed in and was led to Security, where a nurse drew a vial of blood. “A drug test,” they said. A set of fingerprints followed. Efficient. Practiced. Everything performed in less than four minutes. These people knew their business.

  Minutes later, a Dr. Parker wired Peter’s fingertips and pasted electrodes across his chest and neck. He spoke in a monotone, explaining that he had a few questions. Wanted to talk about issues. Peter—like a good new employee—dumbly nodded as if he understood.

  The doctor’s appearance defined the word “bland.” He was man without affect, and almost too perfect a caricature of a psychiatrist. He wore wire-frames and had a large forehead and a pasty face, shaded by a well-cropped beard. The lace of gray at his temples looked painted on. When Parker began by asking questions about Peter’s family, school, grades, and social activities, Peter obliged with short, to-the-point answers.

  After ten or twelve minutes of mundane conversation, the lab-coated psychiatrist asked, “And your mother’s death: how did that happen?”

  Peter did a double-take at the sudden change in topic. He briefly tried to figure out what possible relevance his mother might have—unless it was some kind of Oedipal Complex test—but went ahead and volunteered the details provided by the police. He also mentioned some of his mother’s professional concerns.

  For several minutes, the shrink continued to press this line of questioning, so much so Peter thought the guy might be suffering from an obsession of his own. When Peter had had enough, he asked Dr. Parker about the relevance of the interest in his mother. The doctor at first looked taken aback, then nodded and answered: “We are a stressful working environment, and you have experienced a tragic loss. Our concern is for your mental health. If you prefer, though, you may refuse to answer.” The man’s expression, however, seemed at war with the conciliatory words. “Dealing with guilt,” he continued, “is often a difficult thing to do. Sometimes parting conversations with loved ones have great psychological significance. We tend to blame ourselves when a parent dies. At the end, did your mother share anything else?”

  Peter stared at his questioner. “Like what?”

  “Anything. Maybe something struck you as curious or out of character.” Dr. Parker made a notation in the spiral notebook perched on his lap. “You earlier said something about her concerns with the law firm’s clients.”

  Peter shook his head. “As I already told you, my mother didn’t like the fact that law firms defend certain kinds of people, but she didn’t go into specifics.”

  “I see,” the doctor said. “Now, I want you to close your eyes and visualize that morning. Are you certain she didn’t give any other clues as to why she was upset?”

  “Visualize?”

  “Yes. Mentally replay the morning.”

  “She said something about feeling tired all the time. I doubt you’ll find much psychological significance in that.”

  “If you give a psychiatrist enough time, he’ll find significance in anything.” The doctor smiled as if to say, See, I’m really a good guy, after all.

  A moment later, in what struck Peter as an abrupt move, Parker hit the intercom and announced to his secretary, “Mr. Neil and I are finished.”

  Instantly appearing and illuminating the room, a knee-knockingly beautiful blonde pranced in. She placed a hand on Peter’s shoulder and brimmed.

  “I hope you don’t mind walking, Mr. Neil,” she said. “It’s two flights, but then you look in good shape.” She sized him up. When she deposited him in front of a locked double door, she said, “My name is Katrina. If you need something . . . anything . . . I’m on extension twenty-two. Twenty-two— that’s also my age. Maybe that’ll help you remember.”

  “Thanks. I’ll remember,” Peter said. He watched her tight hips and narrow waist sashay down the stairway. She reminded him of ex-girlfriend Ellen Goodman.

  He turned and faced the last barrier, a heavy metal door, believing— hoping—he’d made it to the big-time. At least he was on a payroll and had survived the initial scrutiny. Building up his resolve, Peter stroked his moonstone and knocked. A click indicated the disengagement of a dead bolt. When he entered, the simultaneous cacophony of a half-dozen voices deluged his senses. Other than the blasphemies polluting the air, not a word of what he heard made any sense at all.

  Two hours after Peter first entered Stenman Partners’ building, the warm rays of dawn lanced through the trading room windows. He felt like an unarmed Don Quixote surrounded by fire-breathing dragons, knee deep in trash. It wasn’t exactly a bad mix of emotions that washed over him—more a jumbled mass of confused fascination. The room—his new workday home—was a pigsty of coffee cups, paper scraps, greasy brown bags, leftover fast food, and soda cans. The smell was a combination of a packed McDonald’s restaurant, burnt coffee, and sweat. Accompanying this stink was bedlam. Shuffled, scrunched, and torn paper coated every surface. Bodies popped up and down. A pen was flung against a computer screen. The place could have been a ward for the attention deficient.

  Three steps in, Peter halted in petrified fascination. A pyrotechnical voice echoed from a skull scaled to a body twice the size of the one it sat on. The face was a vast oval with Aryan eyes framed by a brow running in a single unbroken bush over the nose-bridge. In his late thirties, the man with flapping lips was at least six-four. He had out-of-kilter ears—tiny, like apricots—almost no more than holes in the side of his head. His looks— the sum of scary, mean, and downright weird—intimidated Peter more than his foghorned vulgarities. The man stood at the door of the only office on the floor and was clearly in charge of the other hyperactive traders. Peter realized this person had to be Howard Muller, his new boss.

  “Hit the damn bid, Numbnuts!” Muller yelled. “This is a no brainer— I could get a signpost to do your fucking job.”

  The trader, looking to be about Peter’s age, seemed unfazed by the bizarre man’s assault. Numbnuts had a day-old shadow and, like Peter, his scruffy brown hair was too long. He was physically average, with corneas that darted every which way. Numbnuts nodded as Muller slammed the office door. A moment later, Peter heard the young trader scream into his phone, “Hit the bid! I don’t give a rat’s ass about squeezing an extra nickel on the trade. Do it!”

  Peter stood, his spine rigid, grateful he had been far enough away that Muller’s angry spittle hadn’t doused his face. Peter’s reactions went unnoticed, however—he might as well have been part of the atmosphere since not one of the twenty or so bodies paid him an ounce of attention.

  The office area looked to be a four-thousand square-foot rectangle, running some sixty- by seventy-feet. Through the glass wall of a conference room, Peter saw what he assumed was sophisticated teleconferencing equipment and a fifteen-foot table. In a corner, there was a sink, refrigerator, built-in bar, and microwave. Interrupting this survey, from across the room, a tiny man with a beet-red face yelled, “Shut the fuck up you shit-for-brains!” He then slammed his phone against the desktop three times. When he finished, he pulled the shattered mouthpiece out of a plug, dropped it into his trashcan, and reached into a drawer for a re
placement. Once he’d plugged the new headset in, he punched a button and began speaking to someone else as if that outburst had not just occurred.

  Peter’s sight line next roamed down the tight rows of traders. Littering the desktops were computers and flat-paneled slaves packed with stock, commodity, currency, and worldwide market indices. Each piece of data flashed in real time, overwhelming Peter’s senses in the way that a planetarium awes those trying to make sense of the universe.

  Every individual, including assistants at smaller desks, had phone banks with at least thirty incoming lines, a dozen or more pulsating at any one time. The bodies sat elbow-to-elbow without so much as a divider between desks. But the intensity of the players precluded anyone from attending to anyone else’s affairs. No time to waste on office intrigue, he realized. This seemed like professional Mardi Gras, and, feeling his own pulse racing, Peter sensed an overwhelming desire to understand and belong.

  “Report to Howard Muller,” Stenman had said. After weaving through piles of crap and bodies in motion, Peter studied the nameplate mounted on the glass door: Howard Muller. Chief Investment Officer.

  Muller leaned into a speakerphone, his back to his door. Beyond where his new boss sat, Peter noticed a wall’s worth of Civil War memorabilia, locked in glass cabinets. Tattered Union and Confederate flags hung alongside unsheathed swords. The display also included muskets, pistols, war photos, belt buckles, and even a Confederate uniform with what looked like bullet holes and blood stains.

  When Peter opened the door, Muller sensed the intrusion and spun around.

  The CIO hit the hold button, cutting off an agitated voice in mid-sentence. He glared at Peter. “Nobody comes into my office unless I tell them to.”

  Muller sat behind the biggest mug of coffee—more like a German beer stein—Peter had ever seen. The aroma filled the air, an indication that this was a stiff brew. As if this guy needs artificial stimulation, Peter thought.

  “Sorry,” Peter began in a respectful-to-your-new-boss voice, “but I’m—”

  “I know who you are, Asswipe. Go sit with Numbnuts. He’s the one I yelled at when you came in. He’ll teach you what little he knows—that should take all of twenty seconds. Now, get out.”

  “Should—”

  “What word didn’t you understand? Out!”

  The words hit him like sucker punches and Peter sagged from the pounding. He dutifully backed up, afraid to turn his back, and not sure he still had a job. Once the office door shut, granting him some measure of safety, he worked his way back through the room.

  When Numbnuts turned, Peter said without thinking, “Hello. I’m Asswipe. The anger management dropout told me to come sit with you.”

  The trader’s intensity melted into an involuntary smile. He held out his hand. “For new meat, that’s damn funny,” he said. “Hope you last longer than the last four or five losers. I’m Stuart Grimes, a. k. a. Numbnuts. I’m jammed up my ass, so just watch. When the markets close, we’ll review things . . .”

  Stuart’s voice sounded adenoidal, as if he had a sinus condition. Abruptly, the trader must have caught something through his peripheral vision because he spun around, turning Peter off. He punched a flashing button labeled GSI with one hand and grabbed his phone with the other.

  “There. You happy?” he asked. “The stock’s ticking at three-quarters. If you hadn’t noticed, that’s last sale—a zero-plus tick—and the company can pay, so do it! Hit their damn bid before some other bright boy beats you to the punch.” Stuart paused. “Fine,” he added. “Eight cents a share, you greedy bastard. Put it up, on the hop.”

  Peter began to write: Last sale? Zero plus tick? Put it up? On the hop? Company can pay last sale? Ticking at three-quarters? GSI? Eight cents a share? Hit their bid? At this rate, he thought, I’ll only have a couple thousand questions before lunchtime. He hoped Stuart was patient and tolerant of ignorant people. A sense of humor wouldn’t hurt either, he decided.

  When Stuart grabbed a red-bordered ticket and slid it into a machine that thumped, Peter felt encouraged. He had figured out—on his own— that this was a timestamp. When Stuart wrote 1,200,000 STQ, then 66, Peter again deflated—he added more questions to his list.

  A moment later, 12.00000s STQ @ 66.75 scrolled right to left across one of the screens. Another phone light flashed, this one labeled PB. Stuart punched, lifted, and spoke: “That’s us. Thanks for marking-up Selection Tracking. I’ll send something your way, later.” He hung up.

  “I hope this job doesn’t require mind-reading,” Peter said below audibility.

  He added, PB, Selection Tracking, and send something your way to his list of terminology-related questions.

  Sitting back for the next few hours, Peter listened as much as he could, all the while studying thousands of numbers and symbols looking like energetic fireflies. As people continued to ignore him, the tidal wave of stimulus overload threatened to crush him. No wonder the last four or five employees had failed. He gripped his stone and thought of his father. His mother. His cat. Unemployment.

  A voice yelled, “The bid’s been raised! Get ready to sell. Nobody’s gonna pay a higher price than these flaming assholes—not for this piece-of-shit company.”

  Peter’s head whipped from face to face in an attempt to understand. Failing that, he pressed pen to paper, adding yet another item to his endless list of questions.

  After taking a gulp, Jason Ayers placed the decanter under the sink and made his way across his office. Two fingers of scotch glowed through a crystal tumbler pressed between his white knuckles. Leaving a message wasn’t the smartest move, but since he didn’t intend to spend the rest of the day—maybe the week—waiting, he had no other choice. He took a second sip and closed his eyes as the liquid scorched his throat and raced to his brain. His secretary’s intercom-voice cut through the air, snapping him to attention. He depressed the open speaker button.

  “Yes, Carolyn.”

  “Ms. Stenman returning your call.”

  Ayers’ hands shook. He put the glass down, flipped open a breath mint box, and grabbed and swallowed half the candies in it. With his breath flowing cold across his tongue, he opened the speaker attached to line two.

  “Morgan?”

  “What?”

  “How did Peter Neil do?”

  “I’m busy,” she said.

  “The polygraph? Did he pass the polygraph?”

  “You sound apprehensive.”

  “No, no. I only wanted to know what Peter said.”

  “Is there something I should know about Peter Neil?” Stenman asked, her words feeling to Ayers like poison-darts. “Perhaps concerning his mother?”

  The attorney regretted calling. What if Peter did know something about what Hannah had done? He sipped, and put the glass down, but didn’t let go. “I would have told you—that is, if I thought there was anything else taken from our offices by . . . .” He couldn’t finish.

  “If the polygraph were a problem, you would have known by now,” Stenman said.

  Ayers flopped down and sank into his chair. Thank God, not a problem. Change the subject, he thought.

  “I really called to discuss the new offshore bank accounts.”

  “A necessary change because of sloppy security at your law firm,” Morgan said coldly. “I want to hear that there will be no more Hannah Neils.”

  “No. No more such problems. I know you’re busy.”

  It took another minute to wrestle free of the stress-filled exchange, but once he did, Ayers breathed a deep sigh. Knowing Peter had no additional information came as an enormous relief. Now, with the issue settled, things might work out well for Peter. This was a perfect job for him and, if he thought seventy-five thousand a year was serious money, wait until he realized the boy sitting next to him made ten times that much—and that others were paid well over seven figures a year.

  “I really do want to help,” Ayers said to the walls. “And yes, Peter—” he whispered, feeling better t
han he had in weeks, “—maybe this is how I begin repaying your parents. Give you something they never had. Make you rich.”

  With a final tilt of the glass, Ayers finished his drink. Clutching the breathmints a second time, he tossed the rest of the box into his mouth. He then took the glass to the sink, rinsed it with soapy water, and replaced it on the shelf above the wet bar.

  All evidence of indiscretions gone, it was time to get back to work.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SHORTLY AFTER ONE P.M. ON THE WEST COAST—CORRESPONDING TO THE close of the U.S. markets—a second contingent of traders began to trickle in. During the overlapping shift, which lasted well into the afternoon, thirteen traders and at least that many support people reconciled positions and confirmed the hundreds of trades done during the morning and afternoon.

  Peter learned that traders tossed their completed trade-tickets into out-boxes. Every few minutes, runners—looking like ants hustling after spilled sugar—dashed up and down the rows and collected these tickets. The handfuls of trade-records then made their way down chutes to the first floor, where trade-processing took place. These back-office professionals immediately keyed the information into in-house computers. The traders therefore had computer access to positions with only a brief time lag. The first-floor back-office was also responsible for comparing trades with the hundreds of confirms flooding Stenman Partners’ offices every day from dozens of worldwide brokers. Reconciliation of a trade break, a fail-to-deliver, or a Don’t-Know-the-Trade became a life and death priority.

  Stuart Grimes, in a brief moment of peace, mentioned that these workers also arranged for share borrowing to facilitate short sales, monitored receipt of rebate income on short sales, negotiated margin interest rates, ADR fees, and a dozen other mumbo jumbo functions, none of which made any sense to Peter.