The Day Trader (13 page)

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 glad 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.

“What are you going to tell your wife about tonight, Roger?” I ask, glancing over the cubicle wall at him.

“Nothing.”

“Aren’t you usually home by now? I thought all you government workers left your offices by three thirty, and that was why the Beltway turned into a parking lot by four.”

“I told you before, I usually didn’t leave my office at the DOE until five.”

“Well, it’s after eight now.”

Roger shrugs. “So what? I’m allowed to come home late without her permission,” he says, annoyed.

I shake my head. “Roger, you should tell your wife what you’re doing here at Bedford. It’s not right to hide it from her. It’s her money too.” The woman needs to know that her husband is dealing with his midlife crisis by taking a huge risk that could ruin both of them.

“Ignorance is bliss,” he says absentmindedly, not taking his eyes off his computer monitor. “Hey, how about some dinner?”

I was going to stop by the grocery store on the way home and pick up a frozen dinner to eat in front of the television while I watched a baseball game. With that and a six-pack I’d celebrate the Teletekk win.

“Tell you what. I’ll even take you to the Grand,” Roger continues, still fascinated by what I’ve shown him. “I know it’s expensive down there, but you’ve gone way beyond the call of duty staying late with me tonight, Gus.”

“What did you call me?”

“Gus,” he says hesitantly, looking up from his computer for the first time since I rolled my chair out of his cubicle. “Was that wrong?”

Slammer’s nickname is beginning to stick, and I need to stop the momentum. Once a nickname catches on, you practically have to start a new life to get rid of it. “Call me Augustus.”

“Sorry,” he says insincerely, rolling his eyes. “So how about dinner?”

My first reaction is to say no, but, after all, I have given him a ton of free advice and three hours of my time. “All right, but forget the Grand. Let’s go to a place I know over in the mall.” I appreciate Roger’s offer, but I doubt they’d let me back in the Grand anyway. And I don’t want that story getting back up to the trading floor. We shut down his computer and head for the door.

As we walk through the mall I notice that Roger is almost as tall as I am—about six-four—but he’s much thinner. His rugby shirt sways loosely about his gaunt torso as he moves along in his uncoordinated gait, and his legs appear pencil thin inside his poorly fitting jeans.

“I actually never got your last name, Roger.”

He hesitates. “It’s Smith,” he says, grimacing. “Now I ask you, how bland is that? Roger Smith. When I was growing up I always wanted to change Smith to something more interesting. Like Van Horn. Then people would call me Dutch, you know, and right away I’d have a hook.” He shrugs. “But I guess I’m a pretty boring guy, so maybe the name fits. At least, I’ve been boring up until now.”

Sitting in the conference room a week ago with Seaver, Roger struck me as the dark, brooding type who wouldn’t ever have anything interesting to say, a person I wouldn’t want to hang with. But as he chattered away in front of the computer tonight, I came to find that one-on-one he’s basically a pretty good guy. He’s brutally honest—especially about himself—but he doesn’t constantly talk about himself the way most people do. Maybe he’s just shy at first. I can understand that.

As I think back on it, I realize that it took three hours to set up Roger’s software because besides his questions about the market, he got me to talk about my senior year of high school football—the season Vincent and I led our team to an undefeated record and the Virginia state championship. When I’m honest with myself I have to admit that nothing else I’ve done in life has ever come close to giving me the same high I felt that night we won everything. Sometimes, after a few drinks, I try to reminisce with Vincent about those days, but he never wants to talk about them. He went on to bigger and better things in his football career, so I guess he considers a high school championship small potatoes. I wish I did.

Roger seemed sincerely interested in hearing about that season. It wasn’t as if he were asking the questions just to keep me helping him. At least, it didn’t seem like he did. “Are you from around here, Roger?”

“I’ve been in the Washington area since college.”

“Where did you grow up?”

“Um, Indianapolis.”

“So, where’d you go to college?”

“The University of Maryland. College Park over on the east side of town.”

“Why Maryland if you’re from Indiana?”

“My older cousin went and liked it. And I’d always been interested in seeing the East Coast.”

“What year did you graduate? I had some friends who went to Maryland.”

Roger ignores my question because he’s focused on an attractive Asian woman wearing tight leather pants and spike heels who’s walking ahead of us. She’s carrying a small Victoria’s Secret bag. “Did you get a load of Anna today in that short little skirt and tight top? She didn’t leave much to the imagination.”

“Anna usually doesn’t,” I say, chuckling. When Anna walks through the swinging doors to deliver a package, action on the trading floor just about comes to a standstill. Most of the traders at Bedford are men, and they all try to get a look.

Roger sighs. “She’s so beautiful.”

“In an exotic way.”

He snaps his fingers. “Right, exotic. Like an island girl. She’s got that incredible body too. Nice firm chest, shapely ass, long legs, and tight, tight abs.”

“In your dreams,” I say, laughing louder.

He hesitates ever so slightly. “What do you mean by that?”

“Her abs must be in your dreams. Somehow, I don’t think you got to see that much of her. I mean, this is your first day at Bedford.”

“Oh, right.” Roger grins. “No, no. One of the guys on the trading floor was talking about her this afternoon while you were out. He said he saw her jogging around here at lunch last week, and she was wearing a cutoff tank top and biking shorts. He said her stomach was really tight, Gus. I mean,
Augustus.
”

The Asian woman strolls into a boutique and my eyes follow. “Do you have a good relationship with your wife?” I ask hesitantly.

Vincent is the only person I talk to about things that really matter, but he’s never been married so he can’t relate to what it feels like to wake up beside the same person every day of his life. He’s usually seeing at least three women at the same time. One he’s just started to date, another who probably considers herself his girlfriend, and the third who he’s in the process of dumping—even if she doesn’t realize it. Vincent goes through women like most people go through bread, so he has no idea what commitment means. No idea how I could take Melanie, and our relationship, for granted. But Roger might.

“What kind of question is that?” he asks defensively, his mood darkening. “I have a very good relationship with my wife.”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend you.”

“What
did
you mean?”

This afternoon, while Vincent and I were talking about Melanie, it tore me up to think she’d had sex with Frank Taylor. But I wonder if I was actually mistaking jealousy for love. In fact, I wonder if that was all I ever did. Did I break down at the morgue because I’d lost my soul mate, or because experiencing the death of someone I had been so close to served to remind me of my own mortality? We got together so young. Melanie always said that would turn out to be a problem. “Do you ever think about other women?”

“In what way?”

“Being with them physically.”

“Of course, I do. That’s just part of being a man. That’s the way we’re programmed when we drop out of the womb.”

“Have you ever—”

“No,” he says curtly.

“Ever come close?”

He lets out a long breath. “Once or twice.”

“But you didn’t?”

“No,” he says firmly.

“You think Anna’s beautiful, don’t you?”

“She’s one of the most beautiful women I’ve ever seen,” he says honestly, his eyes focusing on something far away. “She could be in magazines.
Cosmo
or
Penthouse
. Clothes on, clothes off. Either way, the issue would sell a million copies.”