Man in the Middle (27 page)

“We’re both short Uhlander Pharmaceutical.”

“So?” Peter’s attention shot to his selective ticker. UHLN scrolled across his screen, trading up thirty cents on the day—no big deal. “Stock’s a dog, going lower—Chapter 11 bankruptcy was how you phrased it last week when we initiated our short. Remember that discussion, Stuey?”

“Yeah. I was wrong.”

“You had a guy on the inside who said they were out of cash, and unable to raise any more in the market. I checked last quarter’s 10Q, called the company—your guy was right.” Peter looked at his position: short four hundred thousand shares at sixteen bucks; stock currently at fourteen and change; long two thousand put contracts representing another two hundred thousand shares. All a bet that the stock would trade much lower.

Stuart continued in a whisper. “Give me a friggin’ break, dude. Things change. At least I stay on top of my positions—and yours, I might add— unlike mammoth skull over there.” He pointed a forefinger in Muller’s direction. “I’m told a pharmaceutical out of Switzerland is going to make a takeover bid at twenty-six. They don’t care if there’s no cash—they want the patents. Bid’s coming end of next week.”

“Shit,” was all Peter could manage. If true, he stood to lose over four million on the position, plus another four million on soon-to-be worthless puts.

“We gotta move,” Stuart said.

“You sure about your information, Stu?”

“Come on, Petey. I don’t bullshit my friends. Yeah, I’m sure. I got you into this one . . . but all’s well that ends well. We’ll cover and get long. End up making money.”

“I don’t know. Where’d you get the information?”

“Where you think? The Swiss buyer’s banker is a contact. Came right out of the bowels of Stratton Brothers’ Corporate Finance Department.”

“Christ, Almighty. We can’t sit around and do nothing.”

“We’ll split purchases and cover the short. Here,” Stuart said, handing Peter a buy-ticket. “I’ll get started after you fill in your ticket.”

Peter wrote the stock symbol, then coded the ticket with his trading account.

“After we’ve flattened the short, we’ll get long some calls through the offshore accounts—end up making some money on this thing. We’ll stay long some puts in case someone asks later—though that ain’t gonna happen. But
if
it does, we can claim the whole thing’s some kind of esoteric hedge.”

“How long to cover?”

“Two days, maybe a little longer. Still plenty of time to get set up.”

“And the bid’s not coming until the end of next week?” Peter asked.

“Scheduled for the weekend after next.”

“This sucks. One day we’re certain they’re going under, the next we’re scrambling to keep from getting ripped a new asshole.”

Stuart grinned. “You sure learned to talk the talk. Whodda thought that when you carried your Opie-from-Mayberry ass into this hell-hole six months ago?”

“Cut the bull,” Peter said, wishing to concentrate on the excitement promised tonight, working with Stenman. “Let’s cover and recover. We’re not here to lose money.”

“Ain’t that the truth, brother?” Stuart said. “The ever-loving truth.”

 
P
ETER ARRIVED HOME SEVERAL HOURS EARLIER THAN USUAL
. Henry greeted him at the door. “Hey, dude,” Peter began. “Sorry, Henry. I’m starting to sound like Stuart. How you doing, old man?”

Peter looked around his new place. Cool temperatures marked the month of November, but once the morning fog burnt off around eleven a.m., the days brightened and the evenings remained clear. Through the sliding glass door facing south and west, he had a dual view of the finish line at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club and the white waters of Dog Beach. Living more than a dream come true, Peter sometimes felt the need to pinch himself.

“Can you imagine living on the East Coast, Henry?” he asked. “Temperature’s near zero. I’m complaining about fifty degrees, and they’re at zippity-do-dah.”

Peter walked by the gas fireplace and inhaled the odor of wet lacquer. His interior decorator—borrowed from Stuart—had decided to apply a maple finish to his pine mantle. It didn’t look any better than before, Peter thought, only darker and smellier. Through the kitchen door, he traipsed to his refrigerator, opened, and grabbed a beer and a pack of processed meat. Henry stared in at the shelves, his green eyes locking on a half-gallon of milk.

“Yeah, you too,” Peter said, balancing the milk, an imported beer, and a package of chicken slices.

Setting everything on the new kitchen table, Peter slipped off his sports jacket and laid it over a reclining chair that faced his fifty-inch high definition television. He opened the curtains to a window showcasing the mountains. In the mornings, in the east, he had the explosion of sunrise through one vantage point. In the evenings, he could watch the sun, sinking below the horizon, in a furious blaze to the west. One hundred and eighty-degree views of paradise. Peter had always assured himself, in the unlikely event he ever came into the chips, he would never change his lifestyle.

Now that he had money, he understood the psychological underpinnings of that rationalization: it was something people with nothing said to control their envy. Having a view to end all views and owning new, wonderful toys wasn’t necessarily an evil thing. Kate Ayers was a perfect example. She had an expensive Jaguar, grew up in a mansion with everything laid in her lap, and yet she was as good and pure a person as existed on this earth. Suddenly, thinking about purity, the image of Peter’s mother filtered through as a dose of reality. Drew had often said that Hannah was the purest person he had ever known. Peter agreed. And he suspected she wouldn’t completely approve of the way he currently lived. The excess. The extravagance.

Peter turned the twist cap on his beer. Foam crept over the lip as he tipped and gulped. He then rolled several skinny slices of salty, processed meat and bit just as Henry purred.

“I know—your turn.” Peter poured a generous helping of whole milk into Henry’s bowl, then sniffed. “Litter box is smelling a tad ripe, old man—even from here.”

He set his beer on the oak coffee table and went to the second bathroom. Henry’s bathroom. Peter held his breath and lifted the litter box. Exiting the front door, he proceeded down the six steps, around the corner of a storage building, and across the driveway he shared with four other condos—attached in pods of two—to a dumpster.

Finishing his litter disposal task, he retraced his steps. At his door, a black man, wearing a Charger football cap finished off by graying hair, stared through the open crack in Peter’s door. The man was stooped, even hunched, as if he carried an invisible sack of rocks on his neck and back. He began calling in a tentative voice, “Mr. Neil? Mr. Neil? You home, Mr. Neil?”

When Peter got to the bottom of his steps, he heard: “Mr. Neil, it’s Charles Jefferson. Guy living in your mama’s house.” Jefferson craned his head and neck though the front door.

Until he heard those words, Peter hadn’t been conscious of how tense he’d become. Remnants of his earlier brush with violence, he guessed.

“Mr. Jefferson,” he called.

The man spun, a wide-eyed look of fear on his face.

“Thank the Lord it’s you, Mr. Neil. I was afraid you gone and left your door open and somebody think I tryin’ steal your stuff.”

“What’re you doing here? Rent’s not due. Is everything okay at the house?”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Neil. It look good as you can believe. I got me a part-time job—nothin’ much, but at a nursery, movin’ stuff, waterin’ plants and all. Maybe turn into full-time after a month. But I got me half-price on some plants. I put ’em into the ground—they look good. You don’t like ’em, you can take ’em out, y’know.”

“No, no. I’m sure they’re fine. Let me pay you for them.”

“No way. You the kindest man I ever knowed. No. If I get full-time, I gonna pay you more rent money.”

“Forget it.”

Peter noticed Jefferson’s beat-up car in one of the visitor’s spots along the outer boundary of the condo common grounds. He owned a VW bug, and not of the recent retro variety either. Primer and rust spots highlighted jagged holes in the body, and random cracks webbed the windshield. On the bumper, a sticker read,
God is Great
.

“Are the bushes the reason you drove all the way out here?” Peter asked.

“Huh? Uh, no. This.”

Peter climbed the steps and stood next to his tenant. Charles Jefferson held something in his thick hands—the hands of an honest worker, Peter decided. Callused with split nails. Jefferson, probably not quite forty-five, had gnarled and arthritic fingers. His bristled cheeks had three or four nicking scars, looking like pink worms against his pitch-black skin. He extended an envelope for Peter to take.

“You brought a letter?” Peter asked.

“It was addressed to your mama. Said
urgent, final notice
on the outside. I was afraid it was a bill and you might get your car or TV or something else taken by the repossessors.”

“Thanks, Mr. Jefferson. How about you come in and join me in a beer or a cup of coffee?” Peter skimmed the outside of the envelope. The letter had been sent from a mailbox business in Carlsbad.

“No, I couldn’t. But thank you, sir. I gotta go to work now. Working just east of here at the mall on Via de la Valle.” He pronounced the name of the street phonetically, so that Valle came across as
valley
instead of
vayeah
.

“I know the place,” Peter said. “Good luck, Charles. And please, call me Peter. I hate being called Mister Neil.”

“Thank you, sir.” Charles said. “Come by sometime. See the house. Stay for dinner. Please.”

“I’d like that, Charles. Say hello to the family.”

Charles nodded, then plodded down the steps. Peter watched him amble to his car. It took several tries before the engine coughed itself into ignition. They waved goodbye, then Peter, stepping inside, opened the letter. It read:

This is a final notice. Your mailbox, number 408, has a balance due of $23.77. If you wish to maintain this mailing address, please contact our office no later than November 23. After that date, we will no longer accept letters on your behalf. Any mail already in your box will be held for two weeks, then returned to sender.

A name and phone number accompanied the note. He had two days before they would close his mother’s account. Why, Peter wondered, had she leased a mailbox in Carlsbad? That was at least a twenty-minute drive from her house. It made no sense.
Carlsbad
? His mother had died in Carlsbad. Was that a coincidence?

Peter phoned. He learned that his mother had rented an oversized space with a rental rate of just over twenty dollars a month, before tax. She had paid in advance for seven months. The seven months ended a week ago.

“Is there anything in the box?” Peter asked.

“I do not know. I will check.” The woman had an East Indian accent. She had indicated that she and her husband owned the franchise and hated to close out an active box and disrupt a person’s mail. They understood people often forgot when their leases ran out. That’s why they always sent notices and allowed a grace period.

A few seconds later, she returned. “Yes, Mr. Neil. There is mail. Two registered envelopes. It appears we signed for them and your mother saw them, but put them into her box. That is a strange procedure.”

“I don’t get it,” Peter said. “The registered mail arrived at your office?”

“Yes, it was many months ago—in late March. I noticed when I peeked into her box for you just now. We signed and notified Ms. Hannah Neil. The letters still rest there.”

“Anything else in the mailbox?”

“Oh, yes. A letter, also. It is addressed to you, in care of Hannah Neil. And some pizza ads and all.”

“Thank you. How do I get the combination to the mailbox?”

“Oh, no. Not a combination. A key.”

“My mother is dead. How do I get into her box if I don’t have the key?”

“Oh, my. I do not know. Perhaps a court order, unless you have the key. If you have the key, you just put it in the lock, turn, and open. It is simple. I cannot give you another key—that is very against the law. A court order, perhaps.”