The Search for the Dice Man. Luke Rhinehart

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СКАЧАТЬ few months I’d begun to lose money. So when my father began to intrude again into my life after a fifteen-year absence, it came at a time when I was in a vulnerable position – financially, socially and emotionally.

      My troubles began when I arrived back at the office after lunch. On a Friday afternoon in September, trading tended to be on the slow side, and this Friday was no exception. Jeff Cannister, a short, dynamic fireplug of a man who always greeted me with shades of nervousness ranging from nail-biting tension to total panic, announced that gold had gone down over a dollar and a half in the ninety minutes I’d been gone. Jeff always managed to report such market movements as if my personal absence had led to the fall in gold – or the fall in the yen, etc. – and that had I stayed in my office staring at my monitor I’d have held up the price and saved the firm money.

      With Jeff tailing along behind, I continued to stride through the mass of open cubicles at which brokers and traders sat in various states of controlled frenzy. I was aware of how incongruous the two of us were, my tall and lanky frame towering over the squat Jeff so that backbiters, as I knew, sometimes referred to us as ‘Mutt and Jeff’

      So gold had fallen slightly when I thought it was about to rise; at least it hadn’t fallen through the floor, as wheat had done the week before.

      ‘Any news to cause it?’ I asked Jeff.

      ‘Nothing I saw,’ said Jeff. Despite his thick solidity, Jeff was totally unfit for the traumas involved in making and losing large sums of money in short periods of time. Still, he was good at what we did and I was happy having him as an associate trader – until he burned out, got hooked on coke, discovered religion or ceased to sleep. Then he’d have to be pensioned off – at the age of twenty-nine, probably.

      ‘The grains are rallying now, especially beans,’ announced Jeff gloomily – as if all over the country corn and wheat and soybeans were bursting upwards in a personal effort to thwart Jeff and his firm.

      ‘Just maintain our stops and let me know if they get hit,’ I said, flinging my suit jacket over the back of a computer monitor and throwing myself into my swivel desk chair.

      As Jeff left I began examining my main monitor, which had quotes on all the stocks, bonds and futures I was actively trading. My phone line buzzed.

      ‘Yes?’ I said.

      ‘Hi, darling, I miss you,’ came the lovely voice of my fiancée. Honoria, who also happened to be the daughter of the head of the firm, Mr Battle. Oh, I was a winner in those days.

      ‘Hi, sweetheart,’ I said, leaning back in my chair and smiling.

      ‘Daddy’s house guests this week are two inscrutable Japanese bankers, one of them with a conspicuous interest in sex. When the tall one first met me he was masterful and flirtatious and eyeing all the more protuberant parts of my anatomy, but when he learned I was a VP at Salomon Brothers and engaged to you he lost interest and spent the day with an old issue of Playboy.’

      ‘Say,’ I interjected, ‘what are two Japanese bankers doing as Mr Battle’s guests, anyway?’

      ‘I asked Daddy that and he was strangely secretive. I think he may want them to invest in the firm.’

      ‘Not likely unless they actually buy him out. He’s not thinking of selling, is he!?’ I added with a brief flash of panic.

      ‘Of course not, dear. He’s grooming you to become head of the firm as soon as he retires at the age of ninety-nine.’

      I frowned at the thought of Mr Battle’s longevity. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I’d just as soon not see any more than I have to of your father and these Japanese this weekend. Maybe we can spend the day on my sailboat.’

      ‘No, no sailing, dear. When I want to be bored and seasick at the same time I’ll let you know.’

      ‘Oh, yeah, right.’ Honoria only liked water that was as flat and predictable as concrete.

      ‘However, we can take a walk down to the river. When are you coming?’

      ‘On the early train tomorrow morning. And I’m really looking forward to being with you this weekend.’

      ‘Me too, darling. Oh, oh, big call coming in, have to say bye-bye. I miss your cock.’

      And she hung up.

      Her abruptness was typical. She enjoyed wealth and style, but liked to mask her enjoyment by sudden small eccentric acts of rebellion which made her seem detached and cynical. She was really a sexually conservative woman, and her saying that she missed my cock was one of her tiny acts to épater les bourgeois. When we were actually making love she somehow rarely seemed to notice my cock.

      After I replaced the phone I let my gaze wander to the photograph of Honoria and myself on the bookshelf beyond my desk and complacently admired the handsome couple we made: me tall, dark and broodingly good-looking – a sort of gangly Richard Gere; she slender, blonde, nicely proportioned, exquisitely coiffed, flawlessly complected, and rich – an elegant Cybill Shepherd.

      From the first time I met her, about a year earlier, I loved being with her, loved exchanging Wall Street gossip and admiring each other’s trading coups, loved telling people we were going to get married, loved calculating our yearly income. A check of all the technical and fundamental indicators rated Honoria triple-A – a definite ‘buy’ I knew that I, a poor orphaned nobody, was lucky to be where I was, if only I didn’t blow it.

      Another incoming call.

      ‘Mr Potter on the line,’ said Miss Claybell, my secretary. ‘I believe he wants to talk to you about his investment in the BBP 21st Century Futures Fund.’

      ‘I’ll bet he does,’ I said. ‘Put him on.’

      The BBP 21st Century Futures Fund was my personal brainchild, a mass of money – currently about eighteen million dollars – which we invested in various futures markets. The fund was unique in that we guaranteed a return of at least 2 per cent, even if the fund’s value shrank and showed a loss. In effect, the company was promising to absorb any losses that the futures trading would show over a one-year period. This unique gimmick made the selling of a futures fund to conservative investors much easier. After all, how many investments – other than treasury bills and bonds – were guaranteed against loss? And the BBP Futures Fund promised it might return anywhere between 15 and 50 per cent per year. Since its inception two years earlier, money had come pouring into the fund, money from both speculators and more conservative investors like Mr Potter. And the fund’s value had increased about 32 per cent a year. I had every right to be proud. Except for the last three months.

      ‘Hello, Larry Rhinehart speaking,’ I said in my dynamo trader voice.

      ‘Ah, yes, Mr Rhinehart,’ said the gravelly voice of the filthy-rich Mr Potter. ‘Arthur Potter here. I see the net asset value of the fund fell for the third straight week.’

      That’s right, sir.’ I was tempted to say, ‘I purposely let it fall again so we could have a chat,’ but knew the irony would be either resented or lost.

      ‘Markets tend to go both up and down,’ I continued aloud, ‘and our BBP Fund is no exception.’

      ‘Since I put that million in eight weeks ago the value of the fund is down about 7 per cent,’ Mr Potter went on. ‘If the fund СКАЧАТЬ