Man in the Middle

by Ken Morris

  “I’ve been offered a position with the Los Angeles Public Defender’s office. I plan to accept.”

  “Are you sure? You could go into private practice. With your grades—”

  “I have no interest—you already know that. I have other news.”

  Ayers also knew not to argue with her. “News? I hope it’s good.”

  “I’m engaged. I’ll be getting married in January.”

  “Married?” The suddenness of the announcement and her intonation troubled him. He tried to disguise his suspicions. “This is a surprise, Kathryn. Who’s the lucky man?”

  “The professor I worked with on the textbook—you haven’t met him. Frederick Drammonds.”

  The name Frederick sounded ancient. “How old is he?”

  “Not that it matters, but he’s forty-two.”

  “That’s sixteen years older than you . . .” Ayers regretted his words.

  “Please, Father. Let’s not get into it.”

  “Are you happy?” he asked.

  “Of course,” she said, not sounding happy. “I’m engaged to a steady man. He’s kind, he knows what he wants, and he wants me.”

  “Dear?”

  “Yes,” Kate said laconically.

  “I’m pleased, of course. And . . .”

  “And what, Father?”

  “I’m sorry for the way I treated you. That I told you to quit seeing Peter.”

  “I forgave you a long time ago. You were right. He turned out to be . . .”

  Silence. Seconds passed. Ayers thought Kate might be holding her breath. His heart wrenched against his breastbone.

  “I, uh, I need to call Mom. Tell her.”

  Kate hung up.

  Ayers thought he understood some things about Peter Neil that had escaped Kate’s notice. Peter had lost everyone he ever cared for. That made commitment for him especially difficult. He nearly imparted this information to Kate, hoping to make her feel better. He was glad he hadn’t. Peter was a topic better avoided.

  Clutching his briefcase as if it were a life preserver, Ayers plunged into the endless darkness. Half an hour later, he methodically explained speech recognition—and how it worked—to the three people in his life who frightened him more than death itself.

  Peter arrived home at six-thirty, still unsettled over what had happened in Stenman’s office.

  Dawson, Dawson, Dawson.

  The name stuck in his head like gum on a shoe.

  What an asshole.

  His anxiety made sense. If they happened to find out that the agent— the man with a compulsive desire to tear them down—was in town, poking around, they’d naturally get someone to follow him. Tailing Dawson resulted in that picture of their meeting at the sports-bar. Thankfully, whoever trailed Dawson that night never made it to Sammy’s Restaurant. If they had pictures of that meeting, Peter could never explain why he’d run down a railroad track to meet the pain in the ass.

  As he entered the kitchen, the message machine strobed. He hit play: “Peter, it’s Ellen Goodman. Please call. You’re a sweetheart.”

  “What the hell?” He erased the message. Things were getting worse rather than better.

  He hadn’t been sweet. He hadn’t been anything. They hadn’t even talked since the day of their breakup. And the nicest thing Ellen had said that day was that he was a born loser and would regret what he was doing.

  After ordering in a pizza, he hesitated, then dialed Ellen’s number. Might as well get to the bottom of this now, he decided.

  “Hello.” Her voice sang.

  “Peter. Returning your call.”

  “I love the cat.”

  “What cat?”

  “The calico. He looks like a young Henry.”

  Peter glanced at Henry, the furry, fifteen-year-old ball of shedding, gray fur now ensconced in a corner of the living room sofa. “You have a cat?” he asked.

  “Of course, Peter. And I’m sorry for having said what I said. We got along most of the time, didn’t we?”

  “No, Ellen, we hardly ever got along.”

  “Stop being funny. I hear you’re doing really well at your new job. Gosh, Peter, I was a fool to let you get away. I’m glad you—”

  In the background, Peter heard a faint purring and interrupted Ellen. “What did you mean when you said I was sweet?”

  “Giving me the cat. I named him Peter, after you.”

  “I didn’t give you a cat.”

  “Of course you did. Are you’re trying to be mean?”

  “No. Someone else gave you that animal. Try Craig Hinton.”

  He’d hit a raw nerve, knew Ellen was combusting—he’d heard her huffing before—and promptly hung up.

  “Sorry, Ellen,” he said to himself, “but I’m not going to get re-involved. No way.”

  The phone rang. Peter lifted the receiver, then put it back down. He lifted a second time and left the handset uncradled on the coffee table. He took a cushion from the sofa and softened the beeping sounds meant to alert him that his phone was off the hook. When the line went dead, he reassembled his sofa, leaving his phone inoperable.

  Two hours later, Peter and Henry dragged themselves to bed. The anvil that was Peter’s head hit the pillow, hard. In half a minute—as if on anesthesia—he went under.

  The following morning, the radio woke Peter to an upbeat oldies tune. He punched the off button. “G’morning, Henry,” he said. The cat felt heavy on his feet. “Time to rise and shine. I feel marvelous.” He sung the words as he slid his feet into his slippers, pushed himself to his feet, and stretched.

  “I love going to work, Henry. I love you, Henry.” He ruffled the animal’s head-hair. Henry slid off the bed.

  As the two shuffled towards the bathroom for inspection, Peter said, “Hope there aren’t any ill effects from the tête-a-tête with the boss yesterday. They seemed satisfied, even happy, with me.”

  At that moment, Peter felt a throb against the base of his skull.

  “Nothing prophetic,” he told himself.

  Peter decided Stuart was right. About everything.

  For a week, Muller needled and bullied Peter—did everything he could to rattle him. Howard Muller hated him, and that hatred became supernatural in its intensity. At the beginning of the following week, after several companies confirmed what Peter had already uncovered through research, PC stocks soared. Including what he saved Stenman Partners on Muller’s short position, the firm’s profit tallied over three hundred million.

  On Friday of that week, Howard Muller summoned Peter into his Civil War museum.

  “You have made a big mistake, Neil,” Muller began.

  “I’m sorry, but I tried to talk to you first—”

  Muller stood. “Your job was to make a convincing argument to me, not Stenman. You never usurp my authority. That is insubordination.”

  Peter wondered if Muller actually believed such tripe.

  “You will regret this,” Muller continued. “Thinking you’re so damn brilliant, above it all. Watching your back won’t do a damn bit of good, either, you miserable nothing.”

  “Listen, Howard, I didn’t mean—”

  “Go to hell, Neil.”

  Peter almost smiled. This was a game he had never played before, but one in which he suddenly felt comfortable. He had four-of-a-kind, and no matter how much bluff and bluster Fat-Head chose to display, four-of-a-friggin’-kind was a three-hundred million-dollar winner.

  “Get out,” Muller continued.

  Peter obliged without further comment.

  On the following Tuesday, Stenman phoned Peter. “At nine tonight,” she said, “you will assist me. Do not be late.”

  The rest of the day, Peter’s head swam in roiled waters. He tried to figure out the implications. First, he hoped he had nothing more to fear from the Dawson incident. More importantly, everyone knew Stenman handpicked only a few traders to work directly with her. He hoped tonight was a first step towards bigger things. If so, the timing was perfec
t. In less than two months, bonuses would be paid. How much would be in his check? A few hundred thousand? A half million? A million?

  “Hey, dude,” Stuart whispered in the middle of Peter’s financial whatif’s. “You and I have a small problem that’s got to be taken care of, today.”

  “Huh? Whatta you mean?” Peter asked, the spell broken. He looked at his quote machine and tried to figure out if any of his positions were under water.

  “We’re both short Uhlander Pharmaceutical.”

  “So?” Peter’s attention shot to his selective ticker. UHLN scrolled across his screen, trading up thirty cents on the day—no big deal. “Stock’s a dog, going lower—Chapter 11 bankruptcy was how you phrased it last week when we initiated our short. Remember that discussion, Stuey?”

  “Yeah. I was wrong.”

  “You had a guy on the inside who said they were out of cash, and unable to raise any more in the market. I checked last quarter’s 10Q, called the company—your guy was right.” Peter looked at his position: short four hundred thousand shares at sixteen bucks; stock currently at fourteen and change; long two thousand put contracts representing another two hundred thousand shares. All a bet that the stock would trade much lower.

  Stuart continued in a whisper. “Give me a friggin’ break, dude. Things change. At least I stay on top of my positions—and yours, I might add— unlike mammoth skull over there.” He pointed a forefinger in Muller’s direction. “I’m told a pharmaceutical out of Switzerland is going to make a takeover bid at twenty-six. They don’t care if there’s no cash—they want the patents. Bid’s coming end of next week.”

  “Shit,” was all Peter could manage. If true, he stood to lose over four million on the position, plus another four million on soon-to-be worthless puts.

  “We gotta move,” Stuart said.

  “You sure about your information, Stu?”

  “Come on, Petey. I don’t bullshit my friends. Yeah, I’m sure. I got you into this one . . . but all’s well that ends well. We’ll cover and get long. End up making money.”

  “I don’t know. Where’d you get the information?”

  “Where you think? The Swiss buyer’s banker is a contact. Came right out of the bowels of Stratton Brothers’ Corporate Finance Department.”

  “Christ, Almighty. We can’t sit around and do nothing.”

  “We’ll split purchases and cover the short. Here,” Stuart said, handing Peter a buy-ticket. “I’ll get started after you fill in your ticket.”

  Peter wrote the stock symbol, then coded the ticket with his trading account.

  “After we’ve flattened the short, we’ll get long some calls through the offshore accounts—end up making some money on this thing. We’ll stay long some puts in case someone asks later—though that ain’t gonna happen. But if it does, we can claim the whole thing’s some kind of esoteric hedge.”

  “How long to cover?”

  “Two days, maybe a little longer. Still plenty of time to get set up.”

  “And the bid’s not coming until the end of next week?” Peter asked.

  “Scheduled for the weekend after next.”

  “This sucks. One day we’re certain they’re going under, the next we’re scrambling to keep from getting ripped a new asshole.”

  Stuart grinned. “You sure learned to talk the talk. Whodda thought that when you carried your Opie-from-Mayberry ass into this hell-hole six months ago?”

  “Cut the bull,” Peter said, wishing to concentrate on the excitement promised tonight, working with Stenman. “Let’s cover and recover. We’re not here to lose money.”

  “Ain’t that the truth, brother?” Stuart said. “The ever-loving truth.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  PETER ARRIVED HOME SEVERAL HOURS EARLIER THAN USUAL. Henry greeted him at the door. “Hey, dude,” Peter began. “Sorry, Henry. I’m starting to sound like Stuart. How you doing, old man?”

  Peter looked around his new place. Cool temperatures marked the month of November, but once the morning fog burnt off around eleven a.m., the days brightened and the evenings remained clear. Through the sliding glass door facing south and west, he had a dual view of the finish line at the Del Mar Thoroughbred Club and the white waters of Dog Beach. Living more than a dream come true, Peter sometimes felt the need to pinch himself.

  “Can you imagine living on the East Coast, Henry?” he asked. “Temperature’s near zero. I’m complaining about fifty degrees, and they’re at zippity-do-dah.”

  Peter walked by the gas fireplace and inhaled the odor of wet lacquer. His interior decorator—borrowed from Stuart—had decided to apply a maple finish to his pine mantle. It didn’t look any better than before, Peter thought, only darker and smellier. Through the kitchen door, he traipsed to his refrigerator, opened, and grabbed a beer and a pack of processed meat. Henry stared in at the shelves, his green eyes locking on a half-gallon of milk.

  “Yeah, you too,” Peter said, balancing the milk, an imported beer, and a package of chicken slices.

  Setting everything on the new kitchen table, Peter slipped off his sports jacket and laid it over a reclining chair that faced his fifty-inch high definition television. He opened the curtains to a window showcasing the mountains. In the mornings, in the east, he had the explosion of sunrise through one vantage point. In the evenings, he could watch the sun, sinking below the horizon, in a furious blaze to the west. One hundred and eighty-degree views of paradise. Peter had always assured himself, in the unlikely event he ever came into the chips, he would never change his lifestyle.

  Now that he had money, he understood the psychological underpinnings of that rationalization: it was something people with nothing said to control their envy. Having a view to end all views and owning new, wonderful toys wasn’t necessarily an evil thing. Kate Ayers was a perfect example. She had an expensive Jaguar, grew up in a mansion with everything laid in her lap, and yet she was as good and pure a person as existed on this earth. Suddenly, thinking about purity, the image of Peter’s mother filtered through as a dose of reality. Drew had often said that Hannah was the purest person he had ever known. Peter agreed. And he suspected she wouldn’t completely approve of the way he currently lived. The excess. The extravagance.

  Peter turned the twist cap on his beer. Foam crept over the lip as he tipped and gulped. He then rolled several skinny slices of salty, processed meat and bit just as Henry purred.

  “I know—your turn.” Peter poured a generous helping of whole milk into Henry’s bowl, then sniffed. “Litter box is smelling a tad ripe, old man—even from here.”

  He set his beer on the oak coffee table and went to the second bathroom. Henry’s bathroom. Peter held his breath and lifted the litter box. Exiting the front door, he proceeded down the six steps, around the corner of a storage building, and across the driveway he shared with four other condos—attached in pods of two—to a dumpster.

  Finishing his litter disposal task, he retraced his steps. At his door, a black man, wearing a Charger football cap finished off by graying hair, stared through the open crack in Peter’s door. The man was stooped, even hunched, as if he carried an invisible sack of rocks on his neck and back. He began calling in a tentative voice, “Mr. Neil? Mr. Neil? You home, Mr. Neil?”

  When Peter got to the bottom of his steps, he heard: “Mr. Neil, it’s Charles Jefferson. Guy living in your mama’s house.” Jefferson craned his head and neck though the front door.

  Until he heard those words, Peter hadn’t been conscious of how tense he’d become. Remnants of his earlier brush with violence, he guessed.

  “Mr. Jefferson,” he called.

  The man spun, a wide-eyed look of fear on his face.

  “Thank the Lord it’s you, Mr. Neil. I was afraid you gone and left your door open and somebody think I tryin’ steal your stuff.”

  “What’re you doing here? Rent’s not due. Is everything okay at the house?”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Neil. It look good as you can believe
. I got me a part-time job—nothin’ much, but at a nursery, movin’ stuff, waterin’ plants and all. Maybe turn into full-time after a month. But I got me half-price on some plants. I put ’em into the ground—they look good. You don’t like ’em, you can take ’em out, y’know.”

  “No, no. I’m sure they’re fine. Let me pay you for them.”

  “No way. You the kindest man I ever knowed. No. If I get full-time, I gonna pay you more rent money.”

  “Forget it.”

  Peter noticed Jefferson’s beat-up car in one of the visitor’s spots along the outer boundary of the condo common grounds. He owned a VW bug, and not of the recent retro variety either. Primer and rust spots highlighted jagged holes in the body, and random cracks webbed the windshield. On the bumper, a sticker read, God is Great.

  “Are the bushes the reason you drove all the way out here?” Peter asked.

  “Huh? Uh, no. This.”

  Peter climbed the steps and stood next to his tenant. Charles Jefferson held something in his thick hands—the hands of an honest worker, Peter decided. Callused with split nails. Jefferson, probably not quite forty-five, had gnarled and arthritic fingers. His bristled cheeks had three or four nicking scars, looking like pink worms against his pitch-black skin. He extended an envelope for Peter to take.

  “You brought a letter?” Peter asked.

  “It was addressed to your mama. Said urgent, final notice on the outside. I was afraid it was a bill and you might get your car or TV or something else taken by the repossessors.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Jefferson. How about you come in and join me in a beer or a cup of coffee?” Peter skimmed the outside of the envelope. The letter had been sent from a mailbox business in Carlsbad.

  “No, I couldn’t. But thank you, sir. I gotta go to work now. Working just east of here at the mall on Via de la Valle.” He pronounced the name of the street phonetically, so that Valle came across as valley instead of vayeah.

  “I know the place,” Peter said. “Good luck, Charles. And please, call me Peter. I hate being called Mister Neil.”