The Day Trader (14 page)

“If you had the chance to be with her, would you take it?”

“We both know that isn’t going to happen.”

We walk in silence for a few moments. “Do you and your wife have children?” I ask.

“Yes. A boy, five, and a girl, three. Roger Junior and Alice. They’re good kids. I’m very proud of them.”

That’s nice and all, but what I want is an answer to my question about Anna. “Let’s just say an opportunity with Anna, or someone like Anna, presented itself. What would you do?” I’m ready for another guarded answer, but that isn’t what I get. Like I said, Roger’s a pretty straightforward guy.

“I don’t know, Augustus. I was with only a couple of women before I met my wife, and they weren’t much to look at.” He glances down as we walk. “My wife’s a wonderful person, but . . . well, I doubt anyone would put her in Anna’s league physically.”

“There aren’t many women in that league.” Not even Melanie.

He grimaces. “I’d like to think I could resist, but given the right situation, I don’t know that for sure. She’s an incredibly beautiful woman.” He looks over at me. “Are you happy now? Is that what you wanted to hear?”

I thought it was, but now that he’s admitted it, I don’t feel any better. I point at the Capital Grill. “There’s the place.”

“Did you come here with Mary for lunch today?” he asks. “Is that how you knew about this place?”

“Yes.”

“Did she ask you or was it the other way around?”

I’m a little uncomfortable answering because I know what he’ll think. “She asked me,” I reply quietly.

“You dog,” he says, slapping me on the back. “You just better hope that old man I hear she has at home doesn’t find out and hire some goons to come looking for you. I bet he’s possessive as hell. I know I would be if I were eighty years old and I were married to someone as pretty as Mary.”

“She was being nice,” I say firmly as we walk into the restaurant. “I’m just starting out at Bedford, and she wanted to make me feel welcome. That was the extent of it.”

Roger holds up two fingers to the same maître d’ who was working the floor this afternoon. “I’m just starting out at Bedford too, and she hasn’t asked me to lunch.”

“She will.”

“Sure she will.” Roger laughs as we follow the maître d’ through the restaurant.

When we’re settled at a table with our drinks, Roger picks up his beer. “Here’s to you, Augustus. Thanks again for the help tonight,” he says, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand after gulping down half the glass’s contents. “So, are you married?”

“No,” I answer, shifting uncomfortably in my seat.

“Girlfriend?”

“Nope. I’m unattached.”

“Lone wolf, huh? Guess that’s why you were asking about Anna. Got your eye on her, don’t you?”

“I don’t dip my pen in the company ink. That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“Bullshit. You’d do the same thing I would if you got the chance.”

He’s probably right.

Roger takes another long swallow of beer and relaxes into his seat. “I’m going to take your advice about the trading, Augustus. I’m going to be very careful.”

“You just need to ease into it.” I’m glad Roger doesn’t push too far into my personal life. I’ll tell him what happened to Melanie at some point, but I don’t feel like talking about it now. “Don’t fall into the churn-and-burn mentality. You do that and you’re only making money for Michael Seaver.”

“I know. I may be new to the game, but I know what his angle is.” Roger looks out over the restaurant. “You’re a golfer, right?” he asks, changing the subject.

My eyes flash to his. “Yeah, but how did you know?”

“Didn’t I see a putter leaning against the wall in one corner of your cubicle?”

I smile. “Yes, that’s right.” Sometimes I practice putting on the carpet in my cubicle. I did the same thing before and it irritated the hell out of Russell, but I didn’t care because it really helped ease stress.

“Do you play a lot?” he asks.

“I did a few years ago, but it costs so much and the public courses are always crowded.” Plus my clubs are ancient—I got them at a garage sale right after Melanie and I were first married—and after a while I got tired of the disparaging looks I got from other people on the first tee. “How about you, Roger?”

“I play every once in a while. Maybe we should go out sometime.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Roger chuckles. “It’ll be interesting to see if we ever do.”

“What do you mean?”

“Ideas hatched over a drink always seem good at the time, but people don’t usually follow up. It’ll be interesting to see if we do.”

Roger is a candid guy. I’ll say that for him.

“What are you investing in?” Roger asks after the waiter has served us our second round.

His question reminds me that I made thirty-five grand today—thanks to Jack Trainer, the same guy I was cursing at lunch. I’m suddenly worth more than a hundred thousand dollars, with the big check still to come. It’s overwhelming.

“You all right, Augustus?”

“Yeah, fine.” I can tell Roger wants to know what I was thinking about so intently, but he doesn’t push.

“What are you investing in?” he asks again.

“Psychiatric practices and gun manufacturers,” I answer immediately, doing my best to keep a straight face.

“Really?”

Roger doesn’t know whether to take me seriously or not. Vincent would take one look at my expression and realize I was kidding, but Roger hasn’t known me long enough. “Absolutely.”

“Why?”

“Last time I checked more people were getting divorced, more people were shooting up schools and workplaces, and more people were committing suicide. Which means more business for those kinds of companies all the time.”

“Okay,” he says, holding up one hand, “I’ll give you all that, but gun manufacturers? The government’s trying to put them out of business, for Christ’s sake.”

“Which will only make people want to buy guns more in the short term. The market really only cares about a company’s next quarter results.” I pick up my scotch. “Shouldn’t be that way, but it’s true.”

Roger nods. “I thought maybe you were bullshitting me, but it all makes sense.”

“I
was
bullshitting you, Roger.”

“Oh,” he says, glancing away.

“I’ve bought a few stocks to hold for the long term. I haven’t actually started to day trade yet, but I will soon.”

“Care to be a little more specific about those stocks you bought? That sure would be helpful.”

I hesitate. I don’t want to be giving out recommendations all over the place. Helping Roger personalize his software was one thing, but taking him completely under my wing would be quite another. “Well, I really don’t want to—”

“Oh, I see,” Roger interrupts, suddenly sounding annoyed. “No sharing tips with the guy buying you dinner.”

“I just don’t think I ought to be—”

“You’ll give Mary a killer tip,” he blurts out, “but not good old Roger.”

I freeze. “Mary?”

“Mary told me all about the tip you gave her. She wouldn’t tell me the name of the company, but she said she almost tripled her money this afternoon. I guess you and she had a pretty cozy lunch after all.”

“She told you about a tip I gave her?” I ask incredulously.

“She told all of us. Bragged about putting a bunch of money into a satellite company or something you told her about, and how an hour later it went through the roof. You were out when she jumped out of her seat and started yelling. Christ, I thought she had won Lotto. Slammer looked like he was going to strangle her when he found out what was really going on. He, Daniel, and Mary have an informal agreement to share hot information with one another. But she said you told her to keep it quiet, so she couldn’t say much.”

“But when it hit, she—”

“She shouted all about it,” Roger says, angry. “Slammer was about to throw his computer at her. He actually picked it up for a second, but then he put it back down, grabbed his briefcase, and took off. He was mumbling to himself about how you couldn’t have possibly known the stock would go up that much in such a short time without some kind of inside information. He yelled across the floor that he was going to sic the Justice Department on you. Then he called Mary some pretty awful names.”

“Christ,” I mutter. “She hasn’t done very well in the market lately and I was just trying to help. That’s all. It was just one little tip.”

“
Little?
Jesus, she bragged about making almost two hundred thousand bucks on the trade.” He extends his right hand across the table as if he wants to shake mine. “Good to know you, pal. I like a man who thinks of two hundred grand as ‘little.’ ”

“Like I said, I was just trying to help a friend. There’s nothing between us.”

He pulls his hand back and smiles. “I don’t care why you gave Mary the tip. What I care about is that you didn’t give it to me. I want to make certain you understand that if you give
me
a tip like that, I won’t tell a soul.”

“I didn’t have any inside information, Roger.”

He shrugs. “Hey, I’m not at Bedford to make ethical judgments. I’m just here to make as much money as I can any way I can. I figure everybody out there knows the stock market is a tough sandbox to play in, and that things go on in it that aren’t always visible to the naked eye. And I’m not saying that’s what happened in this case,” he adds quickly. “All I’m saying is that I don’t give a damn either way.”

I’m still trying to figure out why Mary would tell everyone about Teletekk. Given how secretive I was being at lunch, she had to realize I wouldn’t want it getting around.

“What were you doing before Bedford?” Roger asks.

“Paper sales.”

Roger leans back in his chair, a perplexed expression on his thin face. “I thought you had been a trader for a long time.”

“No.”

“Then how do you know about all that stuff we talked about tonight?” It’s as if he suddenly feels cheated. As if his newfound confidence at Bedford was based entirely on the fact that I was some kind of expert with years of experience under my belt. Now that he’s found out I’m not, he’s questioning his own confidence because my advice might not be as valuable as he assumed.

I pick up a piece of bread and begin buttering it. “I’ve been studying hard for two years. I was ready.”

“But you have no real experience.”

I enjoy the fact that I’ve quickly become the star of our group. As much as I hate that Mary blabbed to everyone about Teletekk, in a way I’m sure it gave me credibility. Now my cover’s blown. “I ran a ghost portfolio that grew three hundred percent in one year.”

“Big deal, so did I.”

“And I made seventy-seven grand on my first major trade a couple of weeks ago.”

Roger glances up, a glint of a smile creeping back into his expression. “On how much of an investment?”

“Ten thousand.”

He whistles softly. “Damn, that
is
good. And I assume you put some of that money into the tip you gave Mary.”

“Of course.” Day trading is now my career, and I’m proud of it. Suddenly I picture myself as one of those guys at Salomon Brothers in New York who yells into the telephone about reaching down throats and ripping out hearts. A god of the market. I’ve never wanted anything so bad in my life. The high I’ve experienced with my Unicom and Teletekk wins rivals what I felt that night we won the state football championship—I’d resigned myself to never experiencing that kind of rush again—and I want more. “I made another thirty-five grand today on that investment.”

“You really do know what you’re doing.” Roger is back to being impressed. “Can you keep your winning streak alive?” he asks.

“Absolutely.” As I look more closely I see that beneath his beard are bad acne scars.

“And if I’m remembering correctly, you told Seaver you were starting with over a million bucks last week. Right?”

“That’s right,” I say slowly. Maybe that’s how Mary found out. Maybe Roger told her.

“How in the world did you save a million bucks selling paper?”

I hesitate. “I didn’t. My mother died recently. There was a million-dollar insurance policy on her life and it turned out I was the beneficiary. I had no clue I was going to get all of that money until the will was read.” I don’t feel guilty at all about making up this story. It’s none of his business how I really got my money. “It was quite a shock.”

“I bet. I’m sorry for your loss, but that’s a nice way to ease the pain,” he says, sliding to the end of the bench seat and standing up. “I’ve got to go to the men’s room. I’ll be right back.”

As he stands up to go, a worn brown wallet tumbles from the back pocket of his jeans onto the floor. He walks away without realizing it, so I lean down and pick it up, curious to see what’s inside.

CHAPTER 10

I live in a quiet, middle class area of northern Virginia just outside the Beltway in a bedroom community called Springfield. South of downtown by twenty miles, Springfield is a mix of nineteen sixties ranches and split-levels. It might have been a very desirable neighborhood back then, but now it’s occupied mostly by first-home, blue-collar couples who both have to work, and the elderly who can’t afford to move to Florida or a decent retirement home. Washington’s newly rich high-tech population lives west of the city along the Potomac River. And the
very
wealthy live in Middleburg, an hour farther west near the Shenandoah Mountains.

Melanie and I drove out to Middleburg one Sunday afternoon a few years ago to take in the beautiful Thoroughbred horse country. We were silent most of the way home, each painfully aware of what the other was thinking. That we’d never be able to afford even the smallest of the picturesque farms we’d driven past. That we’d never be able to afford a single horse let alone the herds that dotted the vast green fields rolling down in front of the stone mansions perched on hills far back from the country road.

My neighborhood is forty years old and the oak trees are tall and full. Their roots push up sidewalk sections in many spots to form natural jumps for the young children on their bicycles. We don’t have street lamps and the thick green summer canopy easily blocks out the faint light of the moon and the stars, so the neighborhood is dark after midnight, when most people have turned in for the evening.