Storm Front

CHAPTER 14

NEW YORK, New York

Time was running short. The ghosts were blinking. There were three of them left, flashing pink-white, pink-white, pink-white. They would soon be deadly again. The window of opportunity was closing fast.

Whitely Cracker waited until the last possible second, until he had all three of the ghosts lined up perfectly. Then he slammed the joystick hard to the right, making Ms. Pac-Man plow through them in quick succession. A jubilant sound escaped the machine. A 400, 600, and 800, packed tightly together, floated toward the air. Victory. Victory. Victory.

Ordinarily, Whitely loved that move. Line ’em up, mow ’em down. The ghosts never knew what hit ’em. Nothing was more satisfying.

Except today, it gave him no satisfaction. And so, even though there were just a few pellets left to gobble before he reached the next screen, he committed video suicide, leaving Ms. Pac-Man to be consumed by the soon-to-be-regenerated ghosts.

Then he left the arcade room. He was still wearing his driving cap and driving gloves, having just made the trip in from Chappaqua. Finally, he took them off and got to work. He had his own ghosts to avoid.

The margin call bothered him, no question. He had played it cool on the tennis court, because no one wants to see their investment manager looking otherwise. But the first thing he had done on returning to the office was take a gander at Lee Fulcher’s account. The grand total was $43,509,184.33, and Fulcher wanted everything, right down to those last thirty-three cents. It was just damn inconvenient, to say the least. Whitely was in a moment where he needed more liquidity, not less.

Still, a client was a client. And it was Fulcher’s money, after all. Whitely had assigned Teddy Sniff to come up with the cash from whatever holes he could find it in, then done his best to put the whole thing out of his mind.

He settled in front of his MonEx 4000, entered his password, and began making trades — unaware, as ever, about the cameras monitoring him.

Whitely could feel himself growing more serene as he settled in. His brain had been working on what moves to make the entire time he had been playing video games, and he came out swinging. It sometimes surprised Whitely where the trades even came from. At times, it was like they burst unbidden from his subconscious, and he was just following his impulses.

He had just successfully bid on six thousand troy ounces of gold when the instant messenger function on his MonEx filled the top of his screen. It was from another trader in Manhattan.

Thanks for buying that option from me, but why are you just giving me money? You know it’s never going to drop that far.

Whitely paused for a second, trying on several possible replies. He went with:

What can I say? Consider it corporate welfare.

He went back to his next trade, dumping a few hundred thousand shares of a blue chip stock that he had a hunch was going to miss its earnings expectations. Then the IM popped up again, from the same guy:

The great white is up to something.

Having already gone the modest route, Whitely kept with it:

Just trying to make you look good. And I might be willing to do it again. How about Mickey D’s at 60?

Having tossed out the bait, he waited to see if the guy would bite. Sure enough, he did.

You’re nuts. But sure. How much?

Whitely wrote back quickly.

350?

The man would know he meant 350,000 shares. And he didn’t hesitate.

Done. Easiest money I’ll make today. I still think you’re nuts.

Whitley was considering if he should try to lure the guy into one more supposedly-too-good-to-be-true deal, but he became aware that Theodore Sniff was lurking in his doorway again. Ordinarily, he would have just ignored the accountant. But since he had given Sniff a specific errand, he might as well get it over with.

Whitely looked up. Sniff was wearing a suit that looked like it had been balled up and stuffed in a trash can for several days before he put it on.

“Teddy, did you sleep in that suit or something?” Whitely asked.

“No, I… It just came from the cleaners,” Sniff said. He was always at a loss to explain his various deficiencies to his boss. Of course, only so much of it was Sniff’s fault. It was as much Whitely’s incomprehension as anything. Men with perfect hairlines could seldom understand balding.

“Well, tell them to actually press it next time,” Whitely said. “Or maybe switch dry cleaners? I’m just trying to look out for you, buddy.”

“Thank you.”

“By the way, did you get anywhere with that girl from Match dot com?”

“We met for coffee and now she doesn’t answer any of my messages,” Sniff said. “I winked at her three times, but she just ignored me.”

“Well, look on the bright side: It’s better than that girl from quote-unquote ‘Ridgefield, Connecticut’ who turned out to be a Slovenian prostitute,” Whitely said. “Anyhow, what’s up?”

“It’s… it’s the Fulcher margin call.”

“What about it? We ready to deliver? He needs the money by three.”

“Yeah, about that…” Sniff said, and suddenly he couldn’t look at his boss. The carpet in front of him had gotten far more interesting.

“What, Teddy?”

“We don’t have it.”

“So you keep saying. But how is that even possible?”

“Well, that donation you just made didn’t help,” Sniff said.

“Still, I… I just don’t understand: My trades are good. My trades are great. I can count on one hand the ones that go bad in an entire month. I’ve got to have one of the best win-loss records in the business. How is it possible we don’t have the money?”

“I’m just telling you what the books are telling me,” Sniff said. “The books don’t lie.”

“Yeah, well…” Whitely said, running his hands through his perfect coiffure, actually mussing it slightly.

“So what do we do about Fulcher?”

Whitely stared into the distance. He tented his hands, brought them to his lips, and held them there for ten seconds.

“His margin call is at First National,” Whitely said at least. “We know some people there. Call them up and convince them to hold off on the margin call for a week or two. We’ll make sure Fulcher knows we did him the favor and tell him to just rest easy, that we’ll have the money when the time comes. And by then, we will.”

Sniff mumbled something that Whitely couldn’t hear. Only the sensitive microphones picked up the words and piped them straight to the eighty-third floor.

And the words were: “I doubt it.”