The Search for the Dice Man

‘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 plane. 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.

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.