The Day Trader

by Stephen Frey

  I stare at Snyder for several moments before answering, rage building inside me. “Does the insurance company actually think for one minute that I might have killed my wife?” I ask, my jaw tight. “Is that what this is all about?”

  “Settle down, Mr. McKnight,” Snyder advises, his manner turning tough for the first time.

  “I didn’t kill my wife.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  I take a deep breath. “I don’t really understand what you’re after, Snyder. The facts are that my wife is dead and she had a valid policy with Great Western. She was murdered. The police have confirmed that. She didn’t commit suicide. Great Western can’t wriggle out of their obligation on that technicality. So no matter what lies the insurance company might try to invent, they owe me the money.”

  “Actually that’s not true,” Snyder says, smiling the same smug smile Harry gave me when he realized I had been snagged by a state trooper as we tore over that bridge doing ninety.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There are laws in Washington, D.C., and Virginia called slayer statutes. Slayer statutes prevent anyone who has caused bodily harm to another individual from benefiting monetarily. So a person can’t collect the proceeds of a life insurance policy if they were directly responsible for the death of the insured.”

  I blink several times. The sun is really bright today. “I didn’t kill Melanie. I’ve told the police that several times.”

  “How many times?” he asks, pulling a small notepad from his pocket.

  “Several,” I repeat tersely.

  “Reggie Dorsey is the lead detective on this case, right?” Snyder asks.

  “Yes. Do you know Reggie?”

  Snyder smiles as he opens the notepad. “Reggie and I go way back. He’s a good man. He’ll find your wife’s killer, Mr. McKnight. I’m sure of that.”

  “Have you spoken to him?”

  “Yes, we’re in contact.” Snyder flips back several pages, checks something, then looks up at me. “Where were you the night your wife was killed?”

  “At home.”

  “Did you go anywhere after work?”

  “No.”

  “You went straight home?”

  “Yes, well … well, no, not exactly straight home.”

  “What do you mean, not exactly straight home?” he asks.

  “It was a terrible day at work so I went for a drive.”

  “A drive?”

  “Yes, a drive. Is that all right with you?”

  “Sure it is.” Snyder pulls a pen from his shirt pocket and starts scribbling. “Where did you drive?”

  “Out to the country. Out to Winchester.”

  “Why Winchester?”

  “Why not?” I ask angrily.

  “There’s no reason to be defensive, Mr. McKnight.”

  “I’m not being defensive. I just don’t appreciate these questions.”

  “Uh-huh,” he agrees, not really listening to me. “Winchester is about seventy miles west of the city. Over the mountains, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  Snyder flips a couple of pages farther back and studies his notes for a moment before beginning again. “It says here that you were fired from your job the same day your wife was murdered. Is that why you took the drive? To cool down after being fired?”

  “Fired? I wasn’t fired. I quit.”

  “That’s not what a man named Russell Lake told me. I believe he’s your ex-boss,” Snyder says. “Mr. Lake said you physically assaulted him and he was forced to terminate you on the spot.”

  “He’s lying! I resigned—”

  “He also informed me that your wife had asked you for a divorce the night before, and that you were understandably disturbed about that. He said that you told him you”—Snyder looks at the pad again— “ ‘weren’t doing well.’ Is that true? Is that what you said?”

  I stare at Snyder for several moments without responding. Russell Lake is taking revenge for not getting a cut of the Unicom profits.

  “A man named Frank Taylor also informed me that your wife had asked for a divorce the evening before you were fired,” Snyder continues. “He was your wife’s boss.”

  A burst of red flashes before my eyes at the sound of Taylor’s name. “All right! Yes, Melanie said she was going to leave me that night! But we would have worked things out.”

  “You must have been very upset,” he says, showing no reaction to my outburst.

  “Of course I was.”

  “At the time of her murder, was your wife having an affair with a man named Vincent Carlucci?”

  My eyes snap to Snyder’s. “No! Who in the hell told you that?”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Snyder says with a wave of his hand.

  “It does to me.”

  “Forget it. Now, did you stop anywhere while you were on this drive to Winchester?” Snyder continues. “Can anyone confirm your whereabouts that night? If someone could, that would be really helpful. Otherwise, while I may believe that you were tooling around the countryside working off steam, the executives at Great Western may not. They tend to be pretty skeptical about these things.”

  “I wanted to be alone. That was the whole point.”

  “Right. Alone.”

  For several moments we stare at each other, then he slowly closes his notepad and nods. “Thank you for your time, Mr. McKnight. I’ll be in touch.”

  “Snyder!” I call as he walks away.

  “What?”

  “If Great Western doesn’t pay the life insurance proceeds to me, who gets it?”

  “The secondary beneficiary,” he says, opening his pad once more and glancing at it. “That would be Frank Taylor.”

  CHAPTER 17

  I’m not a self-centered man. I care deeply about the feelings of others, so I try very hard never to be arrogant. But the few times in my life I have been, when I’ve made the mistake of getting even the slightest bit cocky, it seems like I’ve been punished for it right away.

  I remember tackling the other team’s quarterback near the end of a rainy game in high school, and after I’d picked myself up off the soggy turf, I raised my arms in celebration and did one of those victory dances over him, screaming and pounding my chest. I even ran my hand across my throat with the slash sign to show that the game was over because we were so far ahead. We were crushing those poor bastards. On the next play I got hit so hard by one of the opposing linemen on a crack-back block, I had to be carried off the field on a stretcher. Or so I was told. I didn’t remember the hit. I didn’t even remember my name for two days.

  Now it’s happened again. This morning I sped away from a state trooper at a hundred miles an hour, bought a flashy sports car, and thought I was a big shot while I negotiated with Vincent on my new cell phone about my fee to manage his investors’ money. Then thirty seconds later, boom, I’m confronted by Scott Snyder, who’s going to do everything he can to keep me from getting the million dollars out of Melanie’s insurance policy. He didn’t say that, but I could see it in his eyes.

  It isn’t as if Snyder has a good reason for wanting to keep me from getting the money either. We’d never even met before this morning. In fact, I bet if Snyder got to know Taylor at all, he’d want me to have the cash because he’d realize that Taylor is one of the most contemptible human beings on earth. So the only explanation for what happened in the parking lot must be that some greater power sent Snyder to cut me back down to size as I was congratulating myself on how far and I’d come so fast. It’s just like what happened on the football field with the crack-back block. If there is anything that might turn me to religion, it’s that pattern of arrogance and setback. Maybe someday I’ll learn.

  After my run-in with Snyder, picking up the BMW turns into a chore. I try to concentrate as Harry sits with me for an hour and takes me through the car’s options, explaining every detail about my new machine. But my excitement of a few hours ago is gone, replaced by an eerie sense of dread. I can’t focus on what he�
�s saying because I’m wondering what I’ll do if the insurance company denies my claim and gives the money to Taylor. I’m wondering how Reggie would interpret that outcome too.

  And I’m trying to figure out why Taylor is the second beneficiary on Melanie’s policy. I vaguely remember Melanie saying something about her mother being second the night she was filling out the applications last spring. But I wasn’t listening very hard because I thought the whole damn thing was so ridiculous. Melanie had to actually place the application down directly in front of me, put a pen in my hand, and force me to sign my name on the bottom line that night.

  From the dealership I drive my new car directly to Bedford. There are several more companies I want to analyze so that when I get the ten million dollars from Vincent’s investors, I’ll be ready to go. More important, I’m finding myself drawn back to the scene of yesterday’s events, though I’m not sure why. Perhaps it’s because once the police were certain I was unharmed, they ushered me right out of the conference room and didn’t give me a chance to really reflect on what had happened. I have to see the spot where Slammer pulled the gun on me, the spot where Daniel fell, what’s left of the window Slammer crashed through, and I have to look down those nine stories from the conference room to the hard pavement below.

  I learned a lot about myself yesterday. I learned that I wouldn’t cower in fear when a gun was pointed at me, that I would act to save others even in the face of grave danger to myself, and that I could still feel compassion for a man who had threatened to kill me only moments before.

  Bedford’s lobby door is propped open by a two-by-four so I don’t need my swipe card to get inside. When I push through the swinging doors and walk onto the trading floor, I see that there’s a cleaning crew hard at work scrubbing the place where Daniel died. They’re using a big industrial carpet cleaner, and over the loud hum of the machine, I hear the banging of hammers and the whining of a circular saw coming from the conference room. The smell of sawdust hangs heavy in the air and the carpet is marked by dusty footprints. Michael Seaver is determined to be back up and running first thing Monday morning as if nothing happened, but all of this activity seems kind of disrespectful. Maybe Roger was right. Maybe Seaver should pay for what happened.

  From my cubicle I gaze at the dark stain that’s fading quickly as the crew works. One minute Daniel thought he had solved all of his problems. He had reconnected with his father and he was headed back to Georgetown. He was happy and relieved. The next minute Slammer pointed a gun at him and pulled the trigger. It was surreal watching Daniel tumble backward, grab his chest for a few horrible seconds, then go absolutely still.

  That was the part I remember most clearly. His frantic death struggle suddenly stopped as his heart and his brain quit working and he just didn’t move anymore. A life can end so quickly.

  One of the workers shoots me an odd look. Like I’m crazy or something. He probably can’t believe I’d want to be inside an office building on a beautiful summer Saturday afternoon. Especially an office where a hostage situation and a murder occurred little more than twenty-four hours ago. Maybe he’s right. Maybe I am crazy. But I needed closure. I needed to see all of this again right away.

  And I have some serious work to do. Vincent’s friends are going to expect the same kind of results with the ten million dollars they’re about to hand me as they got with their test-case three hundred thousand. The pressure will be immense, and there’s no way I’ll be able to return thirty-three percent in a few days with the ten million the way I did with the three hundred grand. But I’m confident I can do well.

  Some people might be satisfied with the money I’ve already made in the stock market and the proceeds from the insurance policy I’m still assuming I’ll ultimately collect. They wouldn’t want the stress of managing someone else’s money. They wouldn’t want the stress of those weeks or months when the portfolio doesn’t perform well—which there will inevitably be. But I’ve come to realize in the last few days that a million bucks isn’t exactly retire-to-Tahiti dough either.

  Don’t get me wrong. It’s a sizeable amount. But I’ll still have to work for a living because if I put that million in the bank, it would earn me only about fifty thousand dollars of interest a year—about four grand a month. After taxes, four grand a month would just about cover the rent on a nice apartment and my new car payment, but there wouldn’t be much left over.

  Besides, I’m not going to put that money in the bank. I’m going to day trade with it. I’m going to try to turn it into two million or three million, but you never know. The same thing that happened to Mary could happen to me, so I want to have other income.

  I grab a pad of paper off my desk. I want to understand my financial situation in detail and figure out what kind of trouble I’ll be in if the insurance money doesn’t come through.

  I made seventy-seven thousand dollars on my Unicom investment, thirty-five thousand on the Teletekk play, and I started with the ten grand my mother saved for me. That’s a hundred and twenty-two thousand dollars on the good side of the ledger, but I’ve had some major cash outflows as well. I gave Father Dale ten grand—not including the cash I found in Melanie’s dresser—put five thousand down as my deposit and first month’s rent at Bedford, repaid the five-thousand-dollar loan Vincent arranged for me, paid off the stack of bills on the kitchen table to the tune of another ten grand, and just stroked a twenty-thousand-dollar check to the BMW dealership—not to mention locking myself into a six-hundred-dollar payment for each of the next forty-eight months. So net-net I’m back down to seventy-seven thousand, which sounds okay, but I haven’t yet accounted for the fact that next April I’ll have to pay short-term capital gains taxes on the Unicom and Teletekk profits. That will put about another thirty-five thousand or so in the negative column, leaving me a real net of somewhere around forty thousand dollars.

  And I almost forgot. I still owe the funeral home five thousand dollars for Melanie’s ceremony and cremation. Which really leaves me less than thirty grand. Jesus, a couple of bad days on the trading floor and I could be in trouble.

  To make certain I’ve figured everything accurately I reach inside my top right-hand desk drawer for my calculator. As the drawer glides open, my hand snaps back as if I’ve touched red-hot coals. Someone’s rifled through my desk. I quickly check the other three drawers and they’re in the same wrecked condition.

  I go back through each drawer, carefully taking inventory. The only thing missing seems to be the letter from Great Western Insurance Company confirming the amount of money they’ll pay me after finishing their investigation—the letter Anna delivered last Monday as I sat in the conference room. I had stashed it in my lower right-hand drawer along with some research material, where I thought it would be safe.

  I stand up and move deliberately into Roger’s cubicle. The guy has asked me several times about that insurance policy I told him I got from my mother. At first I didn’t think much of it. I figured he was asking because he was taking a friendly interest in me, not because he might have some other agenda. The same friendly interest I thought he was taking that night I helped him with his computer. But now I’m not so sure. Now I’m wondering if all of his questions have something to do with the lies he’s told me about going to the University of Maryland and working at the Department of Energy.

  I glance at the cleaning crew, worried that they might wonder why I’m going from cubicle to cubicle, but they aren’t interested in me at all. They just want to get finished and get out of here. I scan the trading floor, but other than the cleaners, I’m still the only one here.

  My letter from the insurance company isn’t in Roger’s desk. The drawers are mostly empty except for pencils, pens, and pads of paper.

  The cleaning crew finishes and begins wheeling the large machine down the aisle. When they’ve disappeared through the swinging doors, I glance into Mary’s cubicle. Mary asked me about the inheritance too. She tried to make light of it in the bar yesterday,
but I could tell she was interested. So I walk into her cubicle and scan her desktop, rummaging through papers and files and notebooks, but nothing catches my eye. Then I reach for the top right-hand drawer and pull, but it’s locked tight. I sit down in her chair and lean back, contemplating the drawer for a moment. Then I reach for it again and give it a savage yank. There’s a loud snap and I’m in.

  Stuffed inside the drawer is a pile of yellow tickets—Bedford buy and sell orders—and I grab a handful of them, place them on her desk, and begin to go through them. The third one is her Teletekk purchase, and as I glance at it, I’m puzzled. I scan it three times to make certain I’m reading the printed gibberish correctly, but I’ve read enough order tickets over the past two weeks to know how to decipher the code.

  Mary told me she had purchased one hundred thousand dollars’ worth of Teletekk stock, but this ticket is for only one thousand. I pick up the next ticket and the next, thinking maybe she bought a number of small-order lots to disguise what she was doing. But they’re all for purchases or sales of other stocks—not Teletekk—and they’re all for small amounts, two to three hundred dollars each. Not the big-buck trades a woman who supposedly inherited two million dollars from a real estate mogul ought to be executing.

  “What are you doing?”

  I spin around and there she is, standing behind me, her face twisted by rage. “Mary, I—”

  “What are you doing?” she demands again, louder this time.

  “I was just, just …” My voice trails off.

  “Tell me!”

  “Why are you here on Saturday?” I ask lamely, unable to come up with a response. Usually I’m quick with a comeback in these situations, but not this time.

  “You’re going through my desk!” she screams.

  “I don’t know what to tell you,” I say apologetically, rising up and taking a small step toward her, hoping she’ll move out of my way. But she doesn’t. “I’m sorry.”

  “What is with you? What do you have against me?”