The Search for the Dice Man. Luke Rhinehart

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СКАЧАТЬ presence from my life. Sitting here today I can say with some confidence that that he’s not an important factor in my life.’

      ‘Mmmmmm,’ said Dr Bickers’ voice from off to one side. It was his third major contribution to the day’s session. Agreement? Question? Larry was so used to rambling on he barely paused to wonder.

      ‘I suppose some sons might have succumbed to the temptation to follow in their father’s footsteps,’ he went on. ‘But not me. I’ve gone the opposite way. And hey, look, I’m rich, successful, well adjusted – except for these recent nightmares about being caught naked, too many calls and going bankrupt – and in five months I’ll be marrying Honoria! A beautiful woman who shares all my interests and – so I really can’t complain, despite my recent losses and having a father who betrayed and deserted me and will always stand as a symbol of irresponsibility.’

      ‘Mmmmmmm,’ said Dr Bickers firmly.

      Larry stood up and began to pace.

      ‘… A man who stands for all that’s perverse in human nature, a man who was willing to destroy everything to pursue his harebrained theory, a theory that defies all that is sacred, dignified, restrained and decent in life, a man who was mad, besotted with sick sexual salaciousness, a slave to inconsistency, a man who couldn’t bother to bring up a son, a poor helpless child who worshipped him, but who this madman tempted into adoration and then abandoned for fifteen years, fifteen terrible, hateful monstrous abandoned years that I had to live through until this moment when I am … uh … at last … at last … uh … cured.’

      White-faced, breathing heavily and with fists clenched, Larry stopped pacing and turned to face Dr Bickers.

      Dr Bickers, his chin lowered toward his chest, glanced up over his rimless glasses.

      ‘Mmmmmm,’ he suggested.

6

      ‘Hubie’s Tavern’ was the local hangout for futures traders, and I headed there automatically after fleeing my unsatisfactory session with Bickers. Bond traders had a more elegant hangout (their ‘drinking establishment’) a few blocks down; stock brokers had a half dozen local pubs they indulged in; the clerks had their watering hole; presumably, the custodians had theirs too.

      Since Hubie’s was home to two or three dozen young men (futures traders were mostly young men – there being no such thing as an old futures trader), all of whom considered themselves brilliant and daring, the tavern was considered lively and trendy. Actually it was noisy, crowded, smelly, dark and undistinguished, but since none of us ever looked at anything or anyone except each other and the occasional beautiful woman who made an appearance (a professional in every sense of the word), we thought it was terrific.

      When I arrived I was immediately hailed by Brad Burner from a corner table and unthinkingly traipsed over. I didn’t usually join the daily after-hours parade to Hubie’s and had forgotten that I’d be forced to talk to people. Only as I was lowering myself into a chair did I notice that the other people in the booth were Jeff and Vic Lissome.

      ‘We know it’s been a bad day when Larry’s driven to drink,’ commented Brad, who was Vice President in charge of all trading and thus my only superior other than Mr Battle himself. Brad was a big, bluff man, good-looking in a rugged sort of way, who nevertheless wore clothes even more elegantly tailored than those of Mr Battle.

      I slid in beside him.

      ‘Not a bad day at all,’ I said. ‘Just couldn’t resist seeing more of you guys.’

      ‘I think he’s forgetting about his two visitors today,’ said Vic, who as usual was himself quite far along the path of forgetfulness. ‘You guys must be in even worse shape than I thought.’

      ‘We didn’t do bad,’ said Jeff. ‘Especially compared to last week.’ Jeff had an innocence that often meant that no secret and no loss was ever long kept from the curious public at Hubie’s – or anywhere else Jeff went.

      ‘What’s this about visitors?’ asked Brad. ‘We getting some new clients?’

      ‘Yeah, tell us, Larry,’ said Vic. ‘How many shares of the BB&P Fund did the FBI order?’

      ‘FBI!?’ echoed Brad. Both he and Jeff looked at me in astonishment.

      ‘Yeah,’ I said casually. ‘They’re investigating the largest case of insider trading in history and have reason to believe Jeff’s involved.’

      Jeff went so pale and looked so terrified that all three of us burst out into raucous laughter.

      ‘So what was it all about?’ Brad asked after we had all quieted down, although Jeff was as pale as before.

      cThey wanted to find someone I knew once,’ I answered as casualty as I could. ‘I couldn’t help them. It had nothing to do with finances.’

      ‘Are you sure!?’ asked Jeff, as if his life depended on it.

      ‘I’m sure. And if we are involved in massive insider trading I sure as hell wish it would show up more on the bottom line.’

      ‘Yeah,’ said Brad, grinning broadly. ‘Another few months like you’ve been having and we’ll have to get Vic back in there, right, Vic?’

      ‘He can have the fuckin’ job,’ said Vic, snorting into his now empty glass. ‘It’s all a fuckin’ fake anyhow.’

      ‘True,’ said Brad, still grinning at me. ‘But some of us are better at faking it than others.’

7

      I spent the weekend, as I often had during the summer, at the Battle mansion on a hill overlooking the Hudson River in upstate New York. The place was originally built by the financier Jay Gould as an early-twentieth-century rural retreat. The fact that it had thirty rooms and resembled an eighteenth-century English manor house didn’t seem to faze either Mr Gould or Mr Battle, both of whom looked upon the estate as roughing it. After all, trees could be seen, grass, wild animals (rabbits and an occasional deer) and even mountains – the distant Catskills looming across the river in the distance. The fact that they usually viewed these wonders past the heads of the household help waiting on them hand and foot didn’t interfere at all with their sense of roughing it.

      The mansion was ornate, the grounds gracious, the view of the Hudson River and distant mountains spectacular, and Mr Battle pointed all this out to every new guest and then never noticed any of it again. But someday, I hoped, if I could just stay on the straight and narrow path of upward mobility, it would all be mine!

      But as I drove up the winding drive that Saturday morning in a cab from the train station I knew that chance was always trying to upset the applecart of my personal life with the same arbitrary interventions that ruined some of my most scientific trades. Accidental meetings, absurd attractions, arbitrary diseases, suddenly exposed secrets – life had a horrible tendency to undermine the orderly man with sudden chaos. The unexpected appearance of the FBI and my having to confess my father’s existence to Mr Battle was a tiny tremor of warning that accident, like death and taxes, was always with us.

      Now as the cab slowed to a halt opposite СКАЧАТЬ