The Search for the Dice Man. Luke Rhinehart
religion or ceased to sleep. Then he’d have to be pensioned off – at the age of twenty-nine, probably.
‘The grains are rallying now, especially beans,’ announced Jeff gloomily – as if all over the country corn and wheat and soybeans were bursting upwards in a personal effort to thwart Jeff and his firm.
‘Just maintain our stops and let me know if they get hit,’ I said, flinging my suit jacket over the back of a computer monitor and throwing myself into my swivel desk chair.
As Jeff left I began examining my main monitor, which had quotes on all the stocks, bonds and futures I was actively trading. My phone line buzzed.
‘Yes?’ I said.
‘Hi, darling, I miss you,’ came the lovely voice of my fiancée. Honoria, who also happened to be the daughter of the head of the firm, Mr Battle. Oh, I was a winner in those days.
‘Hi, sweetheart,’ I said, leaning back in my chair and smiling.
‘Daddy’s house guests this week are two inscrutable Japanese bankers, one of them with a conspicuous interest in sex. When the tall one first met me he was masterful and flirtatious and eyeing all the more protuberant parts of my anatomy, but when he learned I was a VP at Salomon Brothers and engaged to you he lost interest and spent the day with an old issue of Playboy.’
‘Say,’ I interjected, ‘what are two Japanese bankers doing as Mr Battle’s guests, anyway?’
‘I asked Daddy that and he was strangely secretive. I think he may want them to invest in the firm.’
‘Not likely unless they actually buy him out. He’s not thinking of selling, is he!?’ I added with a brief flash of panic.
‘Of course not, dear. He’s grooming you to become head of the firm as soon as he retires at the age of ninety-nine.’
I frowned at the thought of Mr Battle’s longevity. ‘You know,’ I said, ‘I’d just as soon not see any more than I have to of your father and these Japanese this weekend. Maybe we can spend the day on my sailboat.’
‘No, no sailing, dear. When I want to be bored and seasick at the same time I’ll let you know.’
‘Oh, yeah, right.’ Honoria only liked water that was as flat and predictable as concrete.
‘However, we can take a walk down to the river. When are you coming?’
‘On the early train tomorrow morning. And I’m really looking forward to being with you this weekend.’
‘Me too, darling. Oh, oh, big call coming in, have to say bye-bye. I miss your cock.’
And she hung up.
Her abruptness was typical. She enjoyed wealth and style, but liked to mask her enjoyment by sudden small eccentric acts of rebellion which made her seem detached and cynical. She was really a sexually conservative woman, and her saying that she missed my cock was one of her tiny acts to épater les bourgeois. When we were actually making love she somehow rarely seemed to notice my cock.
After I replaced the phone I let my gaze wander to the photograph of Honoria and myself on the bookshelf beyond my desk and complacently admired the handsome couple we made: me tall, dark and broodingly good-looking – a sort of gangly Richard Gere; she slender, blonde, nicely proportioned, exquisitely coiffed, flawlessly complected, and rich – an elegant Cybill Shepherd.
From the first time I met her, about a year earlier, I loved being with her, loved exchanging Wall Street gossip and admiring each other’s trading coups, loved telling people we were going to get married, loved calculating our yearly income. A check of all the technical and fundamental indicators rated Honoria triple-A – a definite ‘buy’ I knew that I, a poor orphaned nobody, was lucky to be where I was, if only I didn’t blow it.
Another incoming call.
‘Mr Potter on the line,’ said Miss Claybell, my secretary. ‘I believe he wants to talk to you about his investment in the BBP 21st Century Futures Fund.’
‘I’ll bet he does,’ I said. ‘Put him on.’
The BBP 21st Century Futures Fund was my personal brainchild, a mass of money – currently about eighteen million dollars – which we invested in various futures markets. The fund was unique in that we guaranteed a return of at least 2 per cent, even if the fund’s value shrank and showed a loss. In effect, the company was promising to absorb any losses that the futures trading would show over a one-year period. This unique gimmick made the selling of a futures fund to conservative investors much easier. After all, how many investments – other than treasury bills and bonds – were guaranteed against loss? And the BBP Futures Fund promised it might return anywhere between 15 and 50 per cent per year. Since its inception two years earlier, money had come pouring into the fund, money from both speculators and more conservative investors like Mr Potter. And the fund’s value had increased about 32 per cent a year. I had every right to be proud. Except for the last three months.
‘Hello, Larry Rhinehart speaking,’ I said in my dynamo trader voice.
‘Ah, yes, Mr Rhinehart,’ said the gravelly voice of the filthy-rich Mr Potter. ‘Arthur Potter here. I see the net asset value of the fund fell for the third straight week.’
That’s right, sir.’ I was tempted to say, ‘I purposely let it fall again so we could have a chat,’ but knew the irony would be either resented or lost.
‘Markets tend to go both up and down,’ I continued aloud, ‘and our BBP Fund is no exception.’
‘Since I put that million in eight weeks ago the value of the fund is down about 7 per cent,’ Mr Potter went on. ‘If the fund goes bust how do I know –’
‘The fund is not going to go bust, Mr Potter. You’ve seen the record over the full two years. Does it look like the record of someone about to go bust?’
‘Those figures could have been fabricated.’
I sighed. The trouble with Wall Street was that since so many people cheated it was hard for an honest man to be trusted.
‘Then why haven’t we fabricated the figures for the last eight weeks?’ I asked. ‘If we’re cheating, why stop cheating?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Mr Potter. ‘Perhaps you’re just being clever.’
‘Mr Potter, sir,’ I said, ‘for you to lose your money the firm of Blair, Battle and Pike would have to go bust. You don’t seri –’
‘Like Drexel, Burnham. Lambert,’ said Mr Poner.
With the phone gripped between my right shoulder and ear, I snapped a wooden pencil in two and resisted the urge to throw the fragments across the room.
‘Normally, as you know,’ I answered coldly, ‘we ask clients to commit their funds for one full year. If you wish to withdraw your money I’ll personally recommend we make an exception, but you’ll have to take your 7 per cent loss. If you want your guaranteed 2 per cent profile you’ll have to wait the full year.’
The silence on the other end of the line made me know I’d scored a direct hit.
‘Mmmm,’ said Mr Potter, and within thirty seconds he had hung up, having indicated he wanted to stay in the fund.
I finally smiled and dropped the two pieces of pencil into the metal waste-paper bin. The other thing that made the BBP Fund unique was that BBP, in return for guaranteeing the investors against losses, was taking one-third of the investors’ profits, the highest profit percentage in the industry.
I tipped back in my swivel chair and felt a little angry at Potter and his ilk. No one seemed to appreciate what I’d accomplished since October 1987.
Up until that month – all through the 1980s – BB&P had made money the way most firms did – the old-fashioned way: by doing nothing. That is, they bought and sold stocks for other people and themselves,