The Search for the Dice Man Page 3

  ‘Contact him!’ Mr Battle exclaimed, now sitting ramrod-straight in his chair and glaring at me. ‘Arrest him, you mean! My God, man, you must have some idea why they’re looking for him!?’

  ‘I really don’t!’ I answered, feeling myself squirming. ‘Years ago – almost twenty years ago – he got in some trouble with the FCC for disrupting a television programme and the unauthorized release of mental patients, and, uh, a few other matters. But the FBI indicated they wished to see him now about something else.’

  Mr Battle, still eyeing me, rose from his chair and moved slowly forward with the soft tread of a predator about to pounce on its prey before the hypnotic spell was broken.

  ‘This is a serious business, my boy,’ he said.

  ‘Yes – I mean no. I’m sure my father hasn’t done anything serious. I think they just wanted to talk to him about something.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Mr Battle, coming to a halt three feet away and gazing at me again with that sceptical-physician stare that implied he was still seeking the exact nature of my fatal illness. ‘The FBI doesn’t send two men to question a son who hasn’t seen his father in fifteen years because they only want to talk to the man.’

  Mr Battle stared on another moment and then turned away with a sigh.

  ‘This won’t do, Larry, won’t do,’ he said as he slowly returned around the pingpong table to his seat behind it. ‘I can’t have my daughter marrying the son of someone on the FBI’s “most wanted” list.’ With another sigh he sat down and swung around to face me.

  ‘I want her to marry the son of a man who is respectably deceased. I think you may tell people that this FBI visit was to ask you about a former employee. Do you understand?’

  ‘I think I do.’

  ‘It’s safe to say it’s in your interest to see that your father stays boringly buried.’

  ‘I agree, but suppose –’

  ‘Your personnel file states that your father is no longer alive,’ Mr Battle said, beginning to shuffle some papers on his desk. ‘Let us be content with the official truth.’

  He then rang for his secretary and turned to gaze at the monitor on his desk – the interview was over. Until I could prove otherwise, my father would probably remain, in Mr Battle’s mind, a corpse and a mass murderer.

  5

  Larry’s session later that day with Dr Bickers began with Larry’s claiming that when he began to lose money in his trading it made him feel as if his whole life was getting out of control, and he wanted to be able to control this anxiety with something other than tranquillizers.

  Dr Bickers, ignoring Larry’s usual complaint, asked why he was so upset this afternoon. Only then did Larry briefly mention the FBI visit to his office that morning.

  Dr Bickers, scrunched in his chair like a shrivelled potato, rarely made more than two or three explicit comments during an entire hour and was content now to revert to his traditional commentary.

  ‘Mmmmm,’ he said.

  ‘No, no,’ Larry said irritably. ‘After these months now with you I don’t think my problems have anything to do with my father.’

  As Dr Bickers reverted to his usual silence, Larry leaned back against the back of the deep leather chair he was sitting in, and with the memory of the damned FBI visit, felt his irritation rise.

  ‘Not that it’s been easy,’ he said, trying to give his voice a soft confidence he wasn’t exactly feeling.

  ‘After all, he deserted me when I was barely twelve, disappeared to go off and lead his own mad life with no thoughts for me or my mother or sister. As you know, for a while I let that act poison me just a bit, made me resent traits he had, mentions of him, every aspect of him that I noticed in myself …. But thanks to these sessions together, I really don’t think that he’s my problem any more. It’s the trading losses.’

  Larry straightened himself in his sitting position and glanced at Dr Bickers, who was peering up at him expressionlessly, a wrinkled turtle peering at a passer-by.

  ‘Hey, it’s not easy. I have to endure constant reminders of his life and what it stood for – not only the physical garbage of the book he wrote and articles about him, but human garbage too – people showing up and telling me how much they adored him or hated him …. Me throwing them out after the first faint words of praise.’

  Larry sighed.

  ‘It’s been hard,’ he went on, ‘but I’ve been toughened by it. By committing myself to order and reason I think I’ve managed to pretty much erase his presence from my life. Sitting here today I can say with some confidence that that he’s not an important factor in my life.’

  ‘Mmmmmm,’ said Dr Bickers’ voice from off to one side. It was his third major contribution to the day’s session. Agreement? Question? Larry was so used to rambling on he barely paused to wonder.

  ‘I suppose some sons might have succumbed to the temptation to follow in their father’s footsteps,’ he went on. ‘But not me. I’ve gone the opposite way. And hey, look, I’m rich, successful, well adjusted – except for these recent nightmares about being caught naked, too many calls and going bankrupt – and in five months I’ll be marrying Honoria! A beautiful woman who shares all my interests and – so I really can’t complain, despite my recent losses and having a father who betrayed and deserted me and will always stand as a symbol of irresponsibility.’

  ‘Mmmmmmm,’ said Dr Bickers firmly.

  Larry stood up and began to pace.

  ‘… A man who stands for all that’s perverse in human nature, a man who was willing to destroy everything to pursue his harebrained theory, a theory that defies all that is sacred, dignified, restrained and decent in life, a man who was mad, besotted with sick sexual salaciousness, a slave to inconsistency, a man who couldn’t bother to bring up a son, a poor helpless child who worshipped him, but who this madman tempted into adoration and then abandoned for fifteen years, fifteen terrible, hateful monstrous abandoned years that I had to live through until this moment when I am … uh … at last … at last … uh … cured.’

  White-faced, breathing heavily and with fists clenched, Larry stopped pacing and turned to face Dr Bickers.

  Dr Bickers, his chin lowered toward his chest, glanced up over his rimless glasses.

  ‘Mmmmmm,’ he suggested.

  6

  ‘Hubie’s Tavern’ was the local hangout for futures traders, and I headed there automatically after fleeing my unsatisfactory session with Bickers. Bond traders had a more elegant hangout (their ‘drinking establishment’) a few blocks down; stock brokers had a half dozen local pubs they indulged in; the clerks had their watering hole; presumably, the custodians had theirs too.

  Since Hubie’s was home to two or three dozen young men (futures traders were mostly young men – there being no such thing as an old futures trader), all of whom considered themselves brilliant and daring, the tavern was considered lively and trendy. Actually it was noisy, crowded, smelly, dark and undistinguished, but since none of us ever looked at anything or anyone except each other and the occasional beautiful woman who made an appearance (a professional in every sense of the word), we thought it was terrific.

  When I arrived I was immediately hailed by Brad Burner from a corner table and unthinkingly traipsed over. I didn’t usually join the daily after-hours parade to Hubie’s and had forgotten that I’d be forced to talk to people. Only as I was lowering myself into a chair did I notice that the other people in the booth were Jeff and Vic Lissome.

  ‘We know it’s been a bad day when Larry’s driven to drink,’ commented Brad, who was Vice President in charge of all trading and thus my only superior other than Mr Battle himself. Brad was a big, bluff man, good-looking in a rugged sort of way, who nevertheless wore clothes even more elegantly tailored than those of Mr Battle.

  I slid in beside him.

  ‘Not a bad day at all,’ I said. ‘Just couldn’t resist seeing more of you guys.’

  ‘I think he’s forgetting about his two visitors today,’ said Vic, who as
usual was himself quite far along the path of forgetfulness. ‘You guys must be in even worse shape than I thought.’

  ‘We didn’t do bad,’ said Jeff. ‘Especially compared to last week.’ Jeff had an innocence that often meant that no secret and no loss was ever long kept from the curious public at Hubie’s – or anywhere else Jeff went.

  ‘What’s this about visitors?’ asked Brad. ‘We getting some new clients?’

  ‘Yeah, tell us, Larry,’ said Vic. ‘How many shares of the BB&P Fund did the FBI order?’

  ‘FBI!?’ echoed Brad. Both he and Jeff looked at me in astonishment.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said casually. ‘They’re investigating the largest case of insider trading in history and have reason to believe Jeff’s involved.’

  Jeff went so pale and looked so terrified that all three of us burst out into raucous laughter.

  ‘So what was it all about?’ Brad asked after we had all quieted down, although Jeff was as pale as before.

  cThey wanted to find someone I knew once,’ I answered as casualty as I could. ‘I couldn’t help them. It had nothing to do with finances.’

  ‘Are you sure!?’ asked Jeff, as if his life depended on it.

  ‘I’m sure. And if we are involved in massive insider trading I sure as hell wish it would show up more on the bottom line.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Brad, grinning broadly. ‘Another few months like you’ve been having and we’ll have to get Vic back in there, right, Vic?’

  ‘He can have the fuckin’ job,’ said Vic, snorting into his now empty glass. ‘It’s all a fuckin’ fake anyhow.’

  ‘True,’ said Brad, still grinning at me. ‘But some of us are better at faking it than others.’

  7

  I spent the weekend, as I often had during the summer, at the Battle mansion on a hill overlooking the Hudson River in upstate New York. The place was originally built by the financier Jay Gould as an early-twentieth-century rural retreat. The fact that it had thirty rooms and resembled an eighteenth-century English manor house didn’t seem to faze either Mr Gould or Mr Battle, both of whom looked upon the estate as roughing it. After all, trees could be seen, grass, wild animals (rabbits and an occasional deer) and even mountains – the distant Catskills looming across the river in the distance. The fact that they usually viewed these wonders past the heads of the household help waiting on them hand and foot didn’t interfere at all with their sense of roughing it.

  The mansion was ornate, the grounds gracious, the view of the Hudson River and distant mountains spectacular, and Mr Battle pointed all this out to every new guest and then never noticed any of it again. But someday, I hoped, if I could just stay on the straight and narrow path of upward mobility, it would all be mine!

  But as I drove up the winding drive that Saturday morning in a cab from the train station I knew that chance was always trying to upset the applecart of my personal life with the same arbitrary interventions that ruined some of my most scientific trades. Accidental meetings, absurd attractions, arbitrary diseases, suddenly exposed secrets – life had a horrible tendency to undermine the orderly man with sudden chaos. The unexpected appearance of the FBI and my having to confess my father’s existence to Mr Battle was a tiny tremor of warning that accident, like death and taxes, was always with us.

  Now as the cab slowed to a halt opposite the ornate columns of the formal entrance, and the tall and lugubrious Hawkins came with slow dignity down the steps to greet me, I was both pleased by the opulence and a little depressed by it. I knew that the place would be so crawling with well-dressed people that life would seem as formal as a tea party. Mr Battle even insisted that Honoria and I sleep in separate bedrooms, whether from the illusion that we hadn’t yet slept together, or to maintain the façade of Victorianism, I couldn’t tell.

  I got slowly out of the cab, paid off the cabbie and watched Hawkins pick up my suitcase and lead me up the steps. The ‘family’, Hawkins announced solemnly, was out back on the patio.

  Although my whole march up the ladder of success led to precisely this elegant mansion owned by my boss and future father-in-law, something about it made me feel out of place. What was it? Why didn’t I feel comfortable with the people who shared my vision of a life of reason, rapaciousness and riches? Why didn’t I care more about the things I was supposed to care about? Why did Brad Burner’s enthusiasm for various numbered or named Porsches or BMWs seem so trivial? I owned a Mercedes but only as part of my uniform of success. I honestly couldn’t tell the difference between driving my Mercedes and driving a Honda Accord or Chevy Corsica, but knew if I began driving around in a Corsica I would soon be seen as on the way out.

  I continued through the huge lower hallway to follow the formal and funereal man in black, then up the long winding stairs towards my guest bedroom. Along the staircase were hung paintings and drawings: a Matisse next to a Norman Rockwell; an oil portrait of a grinning Ronald Reagan next to what looked like a giant Rubens nude.

  Why couldn’t I appreciate my colleagues’ obsession with their clothing, furniture, cars and connoisseurship of art? I myself owned three original oils by a famous avant-garde artist whose name I could never pronounce, but I thought of them like my car and suits – pan of my necessary uniform. And I derived less pleasure from looking at my an – or anyone else’s – than I did at looking at a sunset over the river. Since I hated spending a cent more than I had to, it pained me considerably to have to pay thousands of dollars for things I didn’t really want. Looking at them as necessary business expenses, I deeply resented the IRS for not letting me deduct them from my income tax.

  And the subtle differences between suits, sports cars, vacation spots, athletic clubs somehow escaped me. Mr Battle had almost ordered me to quit the Red Rider Athletic Club, pointing out with a subtle shudder that most of the people who belonged to it were athletes.

  I had always assumed that I would have to spend time doing what I didn’t really like doing in order to become rich and successful so I could then do what I did like doing. Instead, I was finding that success consisted of doing a lot of additional things I didn’t like doing.

  As I turned at the top of the stairs to head down the upper hall I suddenly said: ‘What am I doing here, Hawkins?’

  ‘Preparing for lunch, sir,’ Hawkins replied without breaking stride.

  ‘Ah, right.’

  When Honoria arrived at my room to bring me down to meet the guests I embraced her with a pleased smile. Seeing her dressed with stunning casualness in a pool-blue jumpsuit that showed off her figure, I realized that I’d never caught her off guard: she was always groomed, coiffed, made-up and ready. As I held her my heart didn’t leap, but my male vanity felt its usual surge of satisfaction: what a priceless acquisition! And mine! Or soon to be so. I gave her an extra squeeze.

  ‘Is that Jap still on the make for you?’ I asked after we’d exchanged a light kiss and were headed down the stairs.

  ‘Oh, yes, last night he came on to me like an eager college sophomore,’ she said gaily, linking her arm in mine. ‘But today I think he’s shifted his interest to Kim.’

  ‘Kim?’

  ‘Yes, you know, that kook cousin of mine whose escapades I’ve told you about.’

  ‘Oh, her,’ I said, looking to see if the Japanese were down in the hallway. ‘I thought she moved to the west coast or something.’

  ‘She did. She went there to see some famous guru.’

  I vaguely remembered Honoria’s telling me about some black sheep of the family who was shamefully interested in things like the I Ching, tarot, nature hikes and nuclear disarmament, and even more shamefully unable to hold a job or accumulate money.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ I said as we headed through the hall towards the patio where some sort of meal was being served.

  ‘But now she’s back,’ Honoria went on. ‘Much to Daddy’s disgust. And when she’s not chatting with sexless spirits on some astral plane she’s often enticing sexually charged bodies on this earthly pla
ne. I think she’s already got Akito salivating and – ah, speak of the devil.’

  As we moved out on to the patio Mr Battle was standing near a large round table, and past him three figures were making their way up the lawn towards us. As I casualty tried to brush down my hair in preparation for meeting them I was puzzled to see Mr Battle frowning at the approaching people as if in disapproval. As we came up beside him he turned to me and whispered fiercely: ‘Be brilliant.’ And added strangely, ‘And ignore the girl.’

  The girl. Walking with a jaunty bounce between the two neatly-dressed Japanese bankers and clutching them both firmly by the arms was a lovely young woman whose striking photograph I realized I had noticed once in one of the Battle albums. Dressed with heretical informality in sneakers, jeans and a sweatshirt, she was laughing easily at what the taller and more impressive of the two men had been saying. She had a glowing vitality that immediately made her seem out of place, impolite even, her vibrancy almost resembling that of a woman in heat.

  Although the two Japanese were dressed identically in business suits, they were otherwise opposites, the one being tall and broad-shouldered with a thick head of wavy black hair, and the other short, plumpish, grey-haired and bespectacled. When the three grinning newcomers came to a halt near the table, Mr Battle bounded forward with a sudden warm smile.

  ‘Ah, Mr Akito and Mr Namamuri,’ he boomed. ‘I hope you’ve had a pleasant outing.’

  As he introduced the two men Kim looked at me with such mischievous boldness I worried my trousers were unbuttoned. I nevertheless put on a superficial smile and bowed to Akito’s bow and pumped his hand with as much warmth as I could, which wasn’t much since Akito had a grip whose vice-like crush implied long hours practising karate or some other fortifying regimen. We exchanged a few brief inanities about the markets and then turned back to the women.

  ‘Don’t I even get a “hi”, Nori?’ asked Kim, and, after the briefest of pauses, the two women embraced, Honoria smiling at Kim as might a mother at a lovable but incorrigible child. ‘Nori’ was the family nickname for Honoria and a vast improvement it was over the original, but Nori preferred Honoria, especially from her inferiors, which was almost everyone.