by Stephen Frey
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I call lots of girls that. So what? What’s her real name?”
“Anna.”
Vincent shrugs again as the elevator slows down. “She looks more like a Kitten to me than an Anna.” He laughs as the door opens. “She thinks you’re cute by the way.”
“Shut up.” I put my hand to my face as we cross the marble-floored lobby. The entrance to the Grand is off to the right, and I don’t want to run into the two guys who threw me out last week.
“No, I’m serious,” he says, trying hard to convince me as we push through the front door and hit the intense heat and humidity of the July afternoon. “She likes that little dimple on your chin. She thinks you’re a hunk. She said you have rugged good looks.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Vincent finds it amusing to jerk my chain about how a woman we’ve just been around thinks I’m attractive. But he’s been doing that for years, and I don’t fall for it anymore. Not as much as I used to anyway.
“How’s that guy Frank Taylor?” he asks, jerking a thumb back over his shoulder at the Grand. “The one you almost killed in the bar. Has he come back for more?”
“No.” The morning after the fight Vincent called me to get details on what had happened. I told him a little bit, but not everything.
“Who did you tell me he was again?”
I glance up. There are ominous clouds building in the sky off to the west. “That lawyer Melanie worked for.”
“Oh, right.”
We jog across the street in front of my office building, then head down a long stairway into a quiet park, thunder rumbling in the distance.
“So why did you pop him?” Vincent asks as we walk slowly beside a small pond. “You never did tell me that.”
“He broke down and admitted to Melanie that I was trying to retain him.”
Vincent gives me an odd look. “Huh?”
“Nothing.” Like I said, sometimes you have to keep things simple for Vincent.
“No, no, I get it. Ha, ha. Very funny. Now tell me the truth.”
“It’s not important.”
“Come on, this is Vincent. Like we’ve always said. I tell you everything, you tell me—”
“He said he was having an affair with Melanie,” I interrupt. I really don’t want to listen to Vincent go on and on about no secrets, and I’m already pissed off about Teletekk. God, that was a stupid investment to make. “He bragged about it right there in the bar.”
Vincent stops dead in his tracks. “An affair?” he asks, grabbing my arm and pulling me to a stop too. “You’re kidding. Really?”
I nod curtly.
“Do you believe the guy?”
I take a deep breath. “Yes.”
Vincent seems stunned, as if this news hits him almost as hard as it did me. But, as difficult as this is for me to admit, his show of concern could all be part of an Oscar-winning performance. Melanie was always fascinated with Vincent—and he with her.
“I’m sorry, Augustus.”
“I appreciate that.”
“I’m shocked Melanie would do something like that. Absolutely shocked.”
“I guess you never really know anybody,” I say quietly.
“Did you know about the affair before she was murdered?”
“I suspected.”
“Did you ever confront her about it?”
“I confronted her about having an affair with someone. I wasn’t sure who it was at the time.” My pulse is suddenly racing. I’ve wanted to say this to Vincent for a long time. “I know this sounds crazy, but at one point I actually thought it might have been you.”
He gazes at me steadily for several moments, expressionless, then finally bites his lower lip. “You can’t be serious, pal. I would never—”
“She always liked you, Vincent. She fantasized about you even while we were in high school.”
“I don’t believe that.”
“Believe it. She liked thinking you found her attractive.”
“You’re making this up.”
“You thought she was beautiful. You always said so.”
“Sure, and she was. But I didn’t mean anything by it. I didn’t think you’d be offended. I thought you’d like hearing that your wife was attractive.”
“It excited Melanie to think that you looked at her in that way.”
Vincent holds up his hands. “I don’t want to hear this, Augustus.”
“Remember last September when we went away for that long weekend in the Shenandoah Mountains? You rented that cabin in the woods and invited Mel and me along. You brought your flavor of the month. What was her name?”
“I don’t remember,” Vincent mutters. He wants no part of this conversation.
“I think her name was Beth.”
“Whatever.”
“You and Mel got up early Sunday morning and went for a walk in the woods together. You were both gone for a few hours, and Beth was convinced that you were going for it out there. She swore there was a blanket missing from one of the bedroom closets. Maybe she was a little paranoid, but it got me thinking, I have to admit. I told Beth over and over that you two were just good friends, but …”
“Nothing happened,” Vincent says flatly as my voice trails off. “We talked and that was all.” Vincent kicks at a pebble on the sidewalk. “It’s been a tough few weeks for you, Augustus, and I think the stress has finally caught up with you. Despite what this Taylor guy claims he and Melanie did, she loved you very much.”
“Melanie was an incredibly sexual woman, Vincent.”
“You’ve told me that before.”
“I haven’t told you half of it.”
Vincent looks up. He doesn’t say anything, but I can see in his expression that he wants to hear more. He’s unable to restrain his curiosity.
“When we were first together she wanted to make love all the time. She loved the power she had over me in bed, and when we weren’t she loved how she could manipulate me with promises of what she would do for me later. She would call me at work and whisper in detail what she was going to do with me that night. If we’d meet for lunch at a restaurant, she’d be wearing nothing under her coat. She’d grab my hand under the table and beg me to touch her. She told me once that she wanted me to see her naked in front of other men so I could see how much they wanted her, too.” I swallow hard. “One night when she was making love to me she told me she wanted me to watch her with someone else. She said she thought that would be so wild. I told her it was a wild fantasy all right. But I told her it would never happen. Not in my lifetime anyway.”
Vincent shakes his head and lets out a long breath. “God damn.”
“She was relentless, Vincent. I honestly believe that for Melanie the most intense pleasure came from her ability to control me, and not from the physical feeling itself. As time went by, she kept pushing the limits.”
“How?” he asks, his voice raspy.
“She understood how to tease me and how to prolong the feeling until I thought I couldn’t keep from letting go. Then, at the last second, she’d pull me back from the brink, then a few seconds later start all over again. It was incredible. It was like she was inside my body and could feel what I was feeling.” Thunder rumbles off to the west, definitely closer than it was a few minutes ago. The storm is moving in fast. “When I told her I wasn’t willing to watch her with someone else, that I wasn’t willing to push things any further than we already had, she pulled away. She never said anything, but it was never the same.”
“You could have been imagining things.”
“I wasn’t imagining anything.”
“You think she went looking for someone who would play along?” Vincent asks. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“Maybe.” I close my eyes and shake my head. “It drove me crazy to think she might be giving herself to someone else. Doing the things for another man that she did for me. I’d become physically addicted to her, Vincent, and I knew that if she worked her magic on an
other lover, the same thing could happen to him as easily as it happened to me.”
“Man, she really did a number on you,” he mumbles, looking down.
I stare at him, staying silent until he glances up from the sidewalk. “I was addicted to her, Vincent, but I didn’t kill her. You need to understand that.”
The thunder rumbles again, closer still. “I never said you did,” he replies, looking me in the eye. “I don’t believe you’re capable of that. You’re a decent man.”
For a few moments the only sound is the rustle of leaves as the wind swirls through the trees. “Why did you come by Bedford today?” I ask. “What did you want?”
Vincent checks the dark clouds rolling in, squinting against the breeze that’s growing stronger by the minute. He takes a deep breath, as if the conversation we just finished has drained him. “Remember I told you the other night I have friends who might want to invest with you?” he says, his voice subdued. “People who would pay you to manage a piece of their money and let you keep some of the upside if you scored big?”
“Sure, I remember.”
“I told them how successful you’ve been recently with your investing, and they were enthusiastic about partnering up. They may want to talk to you first, you know, meet face-to-face and do the sniff test before they give you some money. But I think there’s a good chance something could work out.”
We start heading back the way we came as a flash of lightning knifes through the sky. “How much would it be?” I ask.
“A little bit at the beginning. A few hundred thousand. But if you do well, there would be much more.”
“How much more?”
“Five million, maybe ten. Who knows? It’s a wealthy crew.”
Five to ten million. I could charge them one or two percent a year as a commission and earn a damn nice living on just that. “Who are these people?”
“I told you before,” he says, annoyed. “They’re friends of mine. You’ll meet them.”
The trees surrounding the park sway violently against a sudden gust. “Vincent, I’d really need to understand who these people are before I—”
“I have tickets to a Baltimore Orioles home game this Thursday night,” he says loudly as we climb back up the long stairway we came down only a few minutes ago. “Great box seats at Camden Yards. I’m going to be taking several of them to the game. Why don’t you join us? It would be a great opportunity for everyone to meet.”
“I don’t know.”
“Come on,” he urges as we reach the top step. “One of the people will be Jack Trainer. The guy you met last week at the Grand. He’s a good guy, right?”
A helluva good guy who gave me a stock tip that’s cost me over thirty-five hundred dollars—so far. Probably chump change for him, but still a meaningful amount to me. At least until the insurance money gets here.
“So will you come?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Well, think about this too,” he says, reaching into his pocket as we jog across the street in front of my building. He pulls out an envelope and shoves it in my hand just as the raindrops begin to fall. “There’s a check in there for three hundred thousand dollars, made out to you. This is the test case. Make that money hum, then we’ll really talk.”
Ten minutes later I’m walking back down the aisle toward my cubicle. I notice that Slammer is gone, apparently for the day, because his computer screen is dark and his briefcase is gone. Then I notice Mary standing up behind her desk, smiling at me, mouthing the words “thank you” over and over, hands to her heart. I enter my password, wondering what in the world she’s talking about. I dive quickly to my portfolio page and there I find the answer. While Vincent and I were out, Teletekk popped to $57 a share. That quickly, instead of being down thirty-five hundred on my position, I’m up thirty-five thousand. For the second time in two weeks I’ve earned more in a day than a lot of people do in a year. Suddenly I’m making money hand over fist, and it’s intoxicating.
Roger is staring at me. He’s been waiting patiently since this morning for me to teach him how to day trade, but suddenly there’s nothing I feel less like doing. I want a drink to celebrate—and to forget—but I’ve made a commitment and I won’t renege on it.
“I’ll be over there in a minute, Roger,” I call as I enter a sell order on the entire Teletekk position. There’s no reason to be greedy. Thirty-five grand is plenty on this one.
I check quickly for news stories about Teletekk and sure enough there’s an announcement concerning the company’s decision to enter the satellite market with an incredible new product that’s just passed its beta tests. Jack Trainer was right on the money after all.
I pull out the envelope Vincent gave me a few minutes ago and glance at the amount on the check. Three hundred thousand dollars. I stash the envelope in my desk drawer. I’ll set up a special account for it tomorrow, separate from my funds.
Three hundred grand. And if I pass the test, there could be so much more. I smile to myself. I know exactly how I’m going to make this money hum.
CHAPTER 9
“Thanks for all the help, pal,” Roger says, checking his watch. “Hey, you know what, it’s after eight o’clock.” He cranes his long neck and scans the deserted trading floor. “This place is a ghost town. Everybody’s gone.” He slaps my back and laughs loudly. “But you didn’t have anything better to do tonight anyway, right?”
I’ve been sitting with Roger in his cubicle for the last three hours, showing him how to use his Trader One software. It should have taken less than an hour, but he kept pestering me with questions about “the game,” as he’s started to call day trading. As though suddenly he’s a player.
“No, nothing at all,” I answer sarcastically. “Besides, I like spending my evenings showing other people how to get rich.”
“Yeah, right.” Roger snickers, then grabs the computer mouse and begins pushing it around the pad, clicking rapidly as he races through the software menu. He’s like a little kid who’s just learned to ride a bike. An hour ago he was tentative, as if each time I told him to enter something into the computer, the whole place might blow up. Now he’s working the mouse like he’s known how to use this software for years.
“No, it’s true, Roger,” I say solemnly. “I just want to serve my fellow man.”
“I feel good,” he says, ignoring me. “Like I belong in the game now.”
“Don’t get cocky,” I warn. “Read any of the business magazines. The articles about trading always tell you that when you get cocky, you crash and burn.”
“Now that I know how to use this software,” he says eagerly, paying absolutely no attention to me at all, “I’m sitting fat. I wish tomorrow morning were here already. I’m gonna do great. I can feel it.”
I was afraid of this. Roger’s gotten a small taste of what technology can do for him and he’s feeling invincible. What he’s forgetting is that every other serious trader out there has all the same tools. The difference is that most of them have infinitely more experience than he does—which is what really matters. But Roger doesn’t get that. He’ll dive into the market tomorrow morning thinking he’ll make a million bucks his first day, and in a week or maybe a month he’ll have lost half his net worth. Just like Mary. It’s so predictable and so sad, but nothing I say will make a difference. For my words to have any effect he’ll have to experience that helpless feeling of watching his money vaporize in front of his eyes as a stock price ticks down and down.
“This software is really slick,” he continues. “I can get to tons of research, see all of the trading ranges, and analyze option prices to see if they’re in line with the stocks. It’s awesome. No wonder people around here do so well.”
Roger has no idea what it means for option prices to be in line with stocks. He’s heard me say it, that’s all. “Not everyone around here does that well.” Mary’s a perfect example, though she’s a lot better off tonight after taking my advice on Teletekk. I’m g
lad for her, even if she did make almost one hundred forty thousand dollars more than I did on the trade. She needed a break, and I’m glad I could help her. “Remember, Roger, people constantly exaggerate their wins, but rarely admit their losses. Be careful.”
“Ah, I’ll be fine. Give me some credit.”
“What about those stocks your neighbor recommended? How are they doing?”
Roger strokes his beard. He does that when he’s tense. “Not very well,” he concedes.
“And what are you going to buy now that you’re so all fired up about getting in here tomorrow morning at the crack of dawn?”
“Christ, who are you, my mother?”
“Nope. She has no idea how risky day trading is. If she did, she’d send you to your room.”
“Yeah, yeah.”
I stand up and roll my chair back into my cubicle, reminded by the thought of Roger’s bankrupt neighbor that I need to make the payment that’s been hanging over my head like a guillotine for a year: the five-thousand-dollar loan from Vincent’s friend I got when I was broke. I never told Melanie about what Vincent arranged because I didn’t want to scare her, but we had no choice. We were about to lose our house after bouncing three mortgage payments in a row.
I guess we had one choice. I guess I could have used the money my mother gave me to repay the loan. The cash I dug up in the backyard last December. And I would have if Vincent hadn’t come through. But that wouldn’t have been right. Mom wanted me to use that money for myself alone. Now I understand why she never liked Melanie. Somehow she anticipated her betrayal.
Vincent asked me about the loan this afternoon before saying good-bye in the lobby. I told him I’d repay it Thursday night when we go to the baseball game. I don’t think the guy who gave me the cash was a real loan shark. I doubt he would have shot me in the kneecaps or anything if I hadn’t made a payment, but I don’t know for sure. I never met him. Vincent seemed pretty relieved when I told him I’d be repaying the principal and an outrageous amount of interest. I can’t help but wonder if the incident in the parking garage with the silver Mercedes wasn’t somehow related to the loan.
