The Search for the Dice Man Read online

  Laughing, Kim broke away from Honoria and, ignoring me, seated herself in a patio chair quickly held for her by the good-looking Japanese, Akito.

  ‘Well, Kim,’ said Honoria, her blue eyes intense with something, but whether pleasure, interest in her cousin’s escapades, or combativeness, I couldn’t tell. ‘Where have you been?’

  ‘Into New York last night,’ Kim said. ‘Then here this morning. Then Mr Akito kidnapped me as I arrived and insisted he show me the river.’

  From behind her chair Akito smiled easily and, after his older colleague and Mr Battle had settled into chairs, seated himself next to Kim.

  ‘The victim went willingly,’ he said in barely accented English. ‘It may even have been her idea.’

  ‘Details,’ ‘said Kim. The point is we had a lovely morning, and – how are you, Uncle?’ This last she addressed to Mr Battle, who looked as if he deeply disliked being called ‘Uncle’, which, I guessed, probably accounted for Kim’s using the term.

  ‘I’m fine, Kim,’ he said with a scowl. ‘I’m fine. I’m glad you’ve all enjoyed yourselves. Gentlemen, have you had lunch?’

  ‘Miss Castelli introduced us to a most interesting pizza restaurant,’ said Akito. ‘Part of a chain, as I understand it.’ I was impressed that his little half-smile indicated absolutely no suggestion of what he might be thinking about the merits of eating at the local Pizza Hut.

  ‘How are you, Nori?’ asked Kim, her wide brown eyes mischievously alert. ‘Haven’t you got a wedding coming up one of these days?’

  ‘Oh, yes, I think you’re right,’ said Honoria. ‘But in the winter, I believe. I’ll have to check my calendar,’ she added in a tone of heavy irony.

  Kim finally turned her eyes on me, a glance that although little different from the one she’d bestowed on the others, nevertheless sent my heart unexpectedly racing ahead as if a fire alarm had been set off. Although Kim was smiling and her eyes were bright, I, though unaware of it at the time, was glaring at her: I knew chaos when I saw it.

  ‘And you must be Larry,’ she said. ‘I bet you know the date. Nori says you’ve got a good head for figures.’

  Since my head, if not my eyes, had been gaping at her breasts, which I was sure had been swaying bra-lessly beneath her loose sweatshirt, her statement that I had a good head for figures seemed to be some sort of double entendre. I flushed.

  ‘February twenty-eighth,’ I managed to answer.

  ‘He wanted the twenty-ninth,’ said Honoria, smiling. ‘But I pointed out there was no such date.’

  While everyone else smiled at this little hit, I felt another burst of annoyance. I knew that the invasion of Kim was a Saddam Hussein: a sudden, unexpected new element which was bound to upset the markets. Chaos had come.

  8

  The rest of the day only proved my first intuition was correct. When we ended up playing tennis for an hour and a half Kim continued to be provocative – in all senses of that word. While the rest of us dressed in trim white shorts, blouses, socks and tennis shoes, Kim came out as the feminine equivalent of Andre Agassi: scruffy sneakers, raggedy cut-off blue jeans, and a multicoloured T-shirt that looked like an explosion in a paint factory.

  And her playing style was no better. Whereas Honoria and I had competitive spirits of Superbowl quality – she’d been taking lessons from the age of six – Kim played as if she didn’t have a care in the world. Honoria and I, partners, fought for every point as if our victory alone would stave off a nuclear holocaust, and Akito played the same way, racing and diving and grunting and grimacing with quite un-Japanese passion.

  But Kim played as if she were a child at a Sunday picnic, each point a lark. If she missed an easy overhead she smiled and shrugged. If she accidentally hit a woodshot that turned out to be a winner she laughed, not noting that her accidental winner was sending both Honoria and me into the kind of deep depression that normally takes years of therapy to overcome. Kim played hard but didn’t seem to distinguish between her winners and her losers. Even Akito, lusting after her with his healthy male appetite, was clearly annoyed at her lack of devotion to beating the crap out of us. He tried to join in her smiles when she smiled and her laughter when she laughed, but his smile came out a grimace and his laughter like a sumo wrestler’s grunt.

  And I hated the way Kim frolicked around the court in her raggedy shorts and tight T-shirt, her breasts bouncing and swaying and doing all in their power to take my eyes off the ball. She was a few inches shorter than Honoria and more compact, with taut tanned legs that looked as if they belonged on a gymnast. And it also irked me that Akito often seemed as distracted by Kim’s swoops and sways of breasts as I was. Chaos.

  When it was over, Akito shook hands with us, the winners, with all the grace of his ancestors on the battleship Missouri at the end of World War II. But Kim bounded to the net as if greeting long-lost friends, her dark hair wild, sweaty and straggling about her face as if she’d almost drowned. Honoria, who had played twice as hard, although gleaming with perspiration, was nevertheless still as neat and dignified as a monarch greeting commoners at a royal reception.

  Then later, when we were all having drinks on the patio, Kim showed up with a sweatshirt emblazoned with the logo ‘Losers enjoy more free time’, a clear affront to her guardian and all the right-thinking, high-earning people present.

  ‘This Château Borgnini is one of a kind,’ Mr Battle announced to one and all, holding up his glass so that the sunlight shimmered through it, giving it a deep purple glow. ‘It’s so expensive most French people don’t even know it exists.’

  ‘It is delightful,’ pronounced Akito, with a smile and a slight bow of his head to his host.

  ‘I prefer a cold beer,’ said Kim. ‘But it does look lovely in these glasses, that I admit.’

  ‘Daddy bought it last spring in Paris,’ said Honoria.

  ‘It cost three hundred dollars a bottle,’ announced Mr Battle proudly. ‘You might give it a decent try.’

  ‘I’ve always wondered what an eighty-dollar glass of wine would taste like,’ said Kim, taking a small sip from a fresh goblet poured for her by Hawkins. She paused. ‘And now I know.’

  ‘Wonderful, isn’t it?’ suggested Mr Battle.

  ‘Yes it is,’ said Kim. ‘I’m glad I’ve discovered something else I can do without.’

  ‘Aren’t you being a little ostentatiously philistine?’ I said, annoyed at her rudeness. ‘Most women I know would fake an orgasm from a single sip.’

  ‘I save my fake orgasms for men,’ said Kim, and poked Akito with an elbow to show she’d just made a good shot. Akito joined her in loud laughter.

  ‘Oh, Kimsy, stop trying to shock us,’ said Honoria, smiling. ‘It’s adolescent.’

  ‘I know,’ said Kim calmly, looking at me. ‘But being surrounded by parents does that to me.’

  ‘What happened to that guru you were so enthusiastic about?’ Honoria asked, changing the subject.

  ‘He was brilliant,’ responded Kim, now drinking again from her beer. ‘I decided I wasn’t quite ready to become totally enlightened.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I’m too young. I’ve got too many mistakes I haven’t made yet. Enlightenment is for people who’ve grown tired of their mistakes.’

  ‘What about people who never make mistakes?’ asked Honoria ironically.

  ‘They don’t need enlightenment,’ countered Kim. Then she smiled. ‘Only friends.’

  Mr Battle and Mr Namamuri, who had shown little interest in the subject of enlightenment, were now both standing.

  ‘Ah, gentlemen,’ said Mr Battle. ‘Enough of this frivolity. If you would be kind enough to bathe and, uh, get dressed, Mr Namamuri and I would like to have a chat in the library. There’s a Jacuzzi down by the pool, Mr Akito, but – in half an hour if you don’t mind’ – this last directed to me as if I were the only one who might be delinquent.

  With that he marched off with his older guest, and Akito and I, mere vice presidents, scurried
off to do as we were bid.

  Mr Battle’s ornate study had ceiling-high bookcases on two whole walls, an impressive map of the world filling the third wall, and floor-to-ceiling windows on the fourth. As far as I could tell, Mr Battle himself rarely entered this room except to impress certain visitors. His actual working study was a smaller room near his bedroom which contained only quotron machines, stock tables and tax guides. Whenever I’d seen him in the formal study the old man liked to stare with quiet dignity at the rows of books, as if he might absorb their contents without actually bothering with reading. When I once asked him what books he had in his library, he’d turned and gazed at me for a long moment with his usual dignity, and replied: ‘Hardcover.’

  After Hawkins brought some brandy Mr Battle offered everyone a cigar, only the older Japanese accepting. I was baffled about what this meeting with the Japanese was all about. Mr Battle was the principal owner of the privately-held firm of BB&P and as far as I knew was not interested in selling any of his interest.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ he began, standing with dignity in front of his giant wall map of the earth as if he were Patton about to outline his latest offensive. ‘I believe we may be able to help each other.’

  It was indicative of Mr Battle’s isolation from the common men of Wall Street that he was clearly unaware of the ancient joke that had been going around for months that Ivan Boesky always used this classic line as a preface to his requests for illegal insider information. The two Japanese bankers, sunk as deeply into huge cushioned chairs as I was, stared back at the grinning Mr Battle with their usual classic inscrutability.

  ‘We need capital and you need our expertise,’ Mr Battle went on. ‘In particular in the area of futures trading. Although our dollar volume may be below that of other firms, I can say with pride that Mr Rhinehart here is at the cutting edge of futures trading, a man with vision and discipline, an asset for which other firms have envied us for years.’

  I doubted that more than a handful of people on Wall Street had ever heard of Larry Rhinehart, and BB&P’s futures trading operation was so small Merrill Lynch would probably account for it under ‘misc. operations’ and ‘petty cash’ Would the Japs fall for this line?

  ‘Your bank,’ Mr Battle continued, pacing with slow dignity back and forth in front of the huge map, as if plotting the final outcome of a world war, ‘wants access to a futures trading operation. We have one of the best. It is time to talk.’

  Indeed.

  Akito, dressed with almost unrealistically neat elegance, cleared his throat. Mr Battle looked at him politely.

  ‘We would like to speak with Mr Rhinehart alone for a few moments if you could be so kind,’ he said, then smiled and bowed his head slightly.

  A flicker of doubt crossed Mr Battle’s face before it was replaced with a smile.

  ‘Of course, of course,’ he said. ‘Although, although …. Of course!’

  As we all stared at him expressionlessly Mr Battle looked a trifle upset at being kicked out of his own study, but with one final ‘Of course’ he turned and strode with dignity from the room. As baffled as he, I sipped at my brandy and hoped I looked inscrutable.

  As soon as the door closed with the minutest of dignified ‘thumps’, Akito rose, strode to the window and stared out a brief moment at the glorious gardens. I couldn’t get over how Western Akito seemed; only his smooth olive complexion and slightly slanted eyes and inevitable collection of small bows identified him as Japanese. Otherwise, he was too large a man, too athletic, too handsome, and too interested in Kim to be a stereotypical Oriental. As I stared, the man suddenly wheeled and addressed me with a small bow and slight smile.

  ‘Why do you gamble with your firm’s money?’ he asked softly.

  My inscrutability, if it ever existed, was now shattered.

  ‘Gamble?’ I managed to reply.

  ‘You risk your firm’s money but guarantee profits to the clients. You can lose, the client cannot. Since no one can predict the direction of markets, you are gambling.’ Although Akito again bowed slightly and was still smiling, the content of his words was like an artillery barrage. I could feel myself flush.

  ‘Gamblers always lose,’ I now snapped back. ‘You may have noticed that I do not.’

  ‘True,’ said Mr Akito. ‘and we wish to know why you do not.’

  ‘Why?’ I echoed, again baffled. ‘Because I know what I’m doing. I use systems which –’

  ‘Excuse me,’ interrupted Mr Akito, ‘but systems are bullshit. Systems do not work. Systems are gambling.’

  He marched towards me across the deep carpet, his shiny narrow shoes sinking deeply in, as if he were crossing a lush lawn, and stopped a few feet away. Didn’t the man know that the Japanese hate confrontation, hate directness, believe in saving everyone’s face?

  ‘We have noticed how in your trading when one of your trades loses money it seems to be always relatively small amounts,’ Akito continued. ‘But then every now and then you put larger sums into a trade and inevitably it seems these trades turn out to be profitable. We are alone now. We wish to know how you manage to avoid losing.’

  Damn him! What the hell is he driving at!?

  ‘By hard work, damn it!’ I wanted to shout. And then I suddenly felt a quiet burst of joy: the bastards must really think I’m something if they suspect I must have a secret formula. Or did they think I was cheating in some way? Were they actually asking how I cheated?

  I relaxed and let a quiet smile appear on my never inscrutable face.

  ‘A lot of people would pay a lot of money to know the answer to that question,’ I announced.

  Akito, towering with un-Japanese bulk, looked down at me with intense scrutiny.

  ‘Yes,’ he finally said. ‘I believe they would.’ He continued to look down at me.

  ‘My official answer,’ I went on, ‘is that I have a knack for using some of the many technical systems for entering and leaving markets and for determining the amount of capital I put at risk for each trade.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Akito,‘a knack.’ He turned briefly to Mr Namamuri, who was sunk so low in his easy chair and was so engulfed in cigar smoke that when I first followed Akito’s gaze I thought it was a pile of smouldering rags with two shiny shoes attached. A voice miraculously emerged from the smoke.

  ‘We interested in buying your “knack”,’ the old man said, his round face and thick glasses emerging briefly from the haze, then fading.

  ‘But not,’ said Akito, turning to stare down at me again, ‘without having a clearer idea about what it is.’

  But it was only a knack! A lot of damned hard work, some sharp brains, and a knack! I managed to meet Akito’s blank gaze with my own nearest equivalent.

  ‘Perhaps you have some theories about my knack,’ I suggested.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Akito.

  ‘Well?’

  Akito again turned to look at the older man, who from behind his cigar apparently released some smoke signals that Akito was able to interpret, although nothing I could catch.

  ‘Our theories are irrelevant,’ he said. ‘Our bank is interested in creating a futures fund, possibly through your firm, a fund that would begin with approximately a hundred million dollars and expand from there. It is possible we would be interested in having you as one of the traders, possibly the chief trader. All this is possible, but not before we know all there is to know about your knack.’

  A hundred million dollars!! My God, with that amount of money you could affect markets, work them up and down like yoyos!! And the chief trader! I’d be watched by everyone on the Street to see my every yawn, my every burp!! ‘Rhinehart’s just bought soybean oil!’ someone would report and the price of November bean oil would go through the roof!

  I leaned back deeper into my chair, sipped my brandy and tried to keep my hands from shaking the tumbler. I attempted an exaggerated yawn.

  ‘That’s interesting.’ I said. ‘A big futures fund managed by my … knack’ I sipped at my
brandy. The only trouble was if I started to try to tell Akito what I thought my knack consisted of – namely disciplined following of the technical indicators I’d developed – Akito would think me a fool or a liar – a fool if I thought my system would continue to work, or a liar because I was actually beating the markets with some kind of inside information. I wished desperately that I’d accepted Mr Battle’s cigar so I could hide behind some smoke the way Namamuri was.

  ‘It might make a quite profitable marriage,’ Akito said, a soft smile crossing his face for the first time. ‘Our capital and your … knack.’

  Swallowing the last of my drink I stood up and strode forward and brazenly patted the huge Akito on the shoulder.

  ‘It might, it might,’ I said, grinning. ‘But of course, as Mr Battle said, others have also expressed an interest in my knack. I’m afraid you’ll have to give me a bit of time to think it over.’

  ‘Oh, certainly,’ said Akito, smiling politely. ‘We totally understand. But you do see that we must have confidence in your technical indicators before we could entrust such a large sum to your excellent guidance?’

  ‘Oh, yeah. No sense in tossing away a hundred million on gambling.’ I grinned again. A hundred million! Just to begin with! If only I had a saleable knack!

  ‘Exactly,’ said Akito, and he gave me a return smack on the back that sent me staggering several steps across the room like a drunk.

  Namamuri’s slitted eyes followed my staggering surge like those of a snake following a wounded mouse.

  9

  Although I went searching for Honoria to gloat with her about what a big deal the Japs thought I was, it turned out I wasn’t given much chance to brag about my triumph. In the gardens out east of the mansion she and Kim were sitting on a stone bench overlooking a small pond on which four or five ducks swam in picturesque bucolic charm, but, from what the gardener said, probably shitting and pissing the pond into an unusual state of pollution. It was a lovely Indian summer afternoon, with a few early-fall leaves floating in the pond like tiny toy golden ships.